For humans, food is both a basic necessity for life and a source of pleasure and problems. In the rich world, the basic needs have long been satisfied. Meals play a key role in social life and there is great interest in food and cooking. At the same time, there are problems of affluence such as obesity and diet-related cardiovascular diseases.  Food serves as the agent of dispersal for many diseases, and food safety is therefore very important. The food we eat must be safe and we must exercise control over the entire chain from cultivation and animal breeding to processing and intake. Residues of preservatives and other toxicants may occur in both fodder and food, and also in surface and ground water, our most essential basic necessity. Another important factor is how, and in what, we package our foods.

Food consumption is an area where individual decisions can make a difference; supply will follow demand and it's already happening. But first we need to look at the current landscape:

• The way food is produced and the way we eat create huge costs that are not reflected in our food bills. Some are actual dollar amounts (subsidies and cleanup costs that we pay for in taxes); some are damage to the environment (pollution and loss of wildlife habitat); some are loss of quality of life (tasteless food, loss of the pleasure of preparing food and eating together); and some are health issues (obesity, diseases, poor nutrition, contaminated food).
• Agribusiness farms employ chemical-intensive systems that pollute land, air, and water.
• We transport much of our food from centralized factory farms—instead of buying it from local sources—which is a poor use of resources and a contributor to air and water pollution.
• We're losing our wild places because of wasteful agricultural practices such as uncontrolled grazing and fattening up animals with diets of factory-farm corn.
• People get much of their meat from pollution-causing factory farms and feedlots.
• More and more of our food production is controlled by a few large producers. Buying from small, independent producers allows us some input into how our food is grown. 

"Sustainability means living in such a way that there are enough resources to live well, in an alive, thriving environment—indefinitely."
— Jon Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables.