WAYNE ROBERTS

Dangerously low levels of sustainability in the food industry may skyrocket to the top of the to-do and worry-about lists of business executives, government officials, and perhaps even environmentalists and shoppers.

Four uprisings of global significance surprised the world in 2011, and the spirit of all four will surprise those who manage the food system in 2012—which leads to my choice of year-end and year-beginning indicators that pick up the colors of these uprisings in emerging habits related to eating.

There’s everyday unsustainable, and then there’s completely off-the-chart unsustainable. In this second slot, we can put the worldwide move to Western-style meals centered around livestock fed on cheap corn and soybeans. Feeding three squares of meat to the world’s expected 9 billion mouths in 2050 would require doubling of global grain production, which in turn would require entire rainforests converted to corn and soy monocultures.

Last week, the flashbulb explosion met the population explosion, as news cameras clicked at several newborns identified as the seventh billion humans in the world. Now that the global birthday party is over, it’s time for new thinking about preparing food for a party of seven billion.

Move over, Bill Shakespeare. The whole world is no longer just a stage, and we merely players with our entrances and exits. Today’s world is otherwise occupied, as people in over 1000 centers around the globe play their role, take their entrances and exits around platforms, portals and places— the Three P’s of 21st century movement politics—as in Occupy Wall Street. The city-based food movement is based on many similar principles, so city officials and food advocates should take a close look and wave their jazz fingers when they see an idea that can be adapted.

Food planning can play a lead role in ensuring that food provides what’s needed to stick to the ribs of city cohesion.

One way to make out a slim ray of hope from today’s global financial crisis is to look from the vantage point of 2008, and &-- forgive me for going so far back into the mists of time --1973.

Once regional planners come alive to the planning considerations of cities designed for mental health, human scale and biophilic connections, they need to locate spaces and activities that can make pay the freight of high-spaced city land. This, in my opinion, is where urban agriculture wins its day in the sun. What Swiss army knives and scarves are to multi-tasking in the wilds, urban agriculture is to multi-tasking in the cities, which is how it pays down the high cost of urban land to support it.

Going further back in time than the 1980s and ‘90s, there’s a possibility that a new conversation of mental health and city form could duplicate the transformation of urban planning a century ago.

A lot of people blame fast buck artists for bringing on the 2008 economic crash, but few have yet looked to slow money artistry to get the economy moving in a better direction.