When People Ask About Sustainability, Produce Has a Strong Story

Written by: Tamara Muruetagoiena, VP of Sustainability, International Fresh Produce Association

If you work with people on food choices, you’ve probably noticed that sustainability is coming up more often. We all want to feel good about what we eat and not just nutritionally, but environmentally and socially as well. And when the topic turns to farming and its environmental footprint, people may assume that all agriculture contributes equally to the problem. 

Here’s what I want them to know: Fruits and vegetables are among the most sustainable foods we can eat.

Here are 3 major reasons why:

Produce farming depends on protecting the land

This is the point I come back to most often, because it’s foundational to everything else. Healthy soil, clean water, and resilient land aren’t just nice-to-haves for fruit and vegetable growers: they are required for survival. If those resources are degraded, they’re extraordinarily difficult to restore, and the farm’s future is at risk.

That means sustainability isn’t a marketing initiative for produce growers. It’s an operational reality. Growers protect these resources because their livelihoods depend on it, season after season, generation after generation. When consumers choose fruits and vegetables, they’re choosing food produced by people who have a direct, personal stake in the health of the land.

Produce growers can adapt and innovate faster

One of the things that surprises people outside our industry is how quickly produce farming can evolve. Because fruits and vegetables have shorter growing cycles than commodity crops, growers can test and adopt new practices more rapidly, like regenerative approaches, improved soil health treatments, and crop varieties bred to use fewer resources.

While crop rotation can’t be used for every field, it is an option for fruits and vegetables that is one of the core regenerative practices. Crop rotation keeps soil productive and gives growers real-time opportunities to adjust their practices. This kind of flexibility simply isn’t available in large-scale, single-crop commodity agriculture, and it’s one of the reasons the produce sector is often ahead of the curve on sustainable growing practices.

The nutrition message and the sustainability message reinforce each other

Nutrition professionals already know the health case for fruits and vegetables better than I do. What I’d add from the sustainability side is that these two messages are genuinely complementary and that’s rare in food systems conversations. Diets built around more fruits and vegetables are better for human health and carry a lighter environmental footprint. When you encourage the people you care for to eat more produce, you’re giving them advice that aligns on both fronts.

That’s a powerful thing to be able to say with confidence. In a landscape where we often feel caught between what’s healthy and what’s “responsible,” fruits and vegetables don’t ask anyone to choose.

What you can share with the people you care for

When sustainability comes up in your work, here are a few things worth passing along:

Fruit and vegetable growers depend on healthy land and water to farm, so protecting those resources isn’t optional for them, it’s essential. Produce farming is often smaller in scale, more diversified, and more adaptable than the large commodity operations that tend to dominate sustainability headlines. And choosing to eat more fruits and vegetables is one of the simplest ways a person can align what’s good for their health with what’s good for the environment.

You don’t need to become a sustainability expert to share these points. But knowing that the science supports what you’re already recommending, from both a nutrition and an environmental perspective, is something consumers will value hearing from you.

As someone who advises people to eat more of them, nutrition professionals are already pointing people toward one of the best choices they can make for the planet.

Feature Image: Credit: UF/IFAS

The post When People Ask About Sustainability, Produce Has a Strong Story first appeared in The Foundation for Fresh Produce’s Have A Plant® blog.