Want To Build A Sustainable Future? Start With Farm Stands

The path to a sustainable future is through increasing our connectedness with nature, but how do we get there? In this essay, I want to make the case that farm stands are an excellent avenue to get people closer to nature, connecting them to local farmers and produce. If we want people to eat local food, we need to make it easier to find and manage farm stands.

Humans’ Impact On Their Ecosystem

Humanity’s negative impact on the environment is pervasive and widespread. According to a recent study, 14 of the 18 categories of Nature’s contribution to people’s life like regulation of air quality, climate and habitat creation have seen a decline since the 1970 [2]. This decline jeopardizes our health and mental well-being. Multiple indicators are showing that the human-nature relationship is failing [3]. Climate challenges are posing a threat to human existence and extreme weather alone has caused about 120 billion USD in insured losses in 2021 [8].

Focusing on changing human behavior is therefore an effective way to deal with environmental problems and protect environmental sustainability.

Human behavior is the underlying cause for many of the ecological crises faced in the 21st century [11]. To combat this, pro-environmental behavior plays an important role in decreasing the waste of natural resources, reducing the emission level of pollutants and reducing environmental damage. Focusing on changing human behavior is therefore an effective way to deal with environmental problems and increase environmental sustainability [6].

Nature Connectedness

Nature connectedness refers to an individual’s subjective sense of their relationship with the natural world [12]. High levels of nature connectedness are positively associated with pro-environmental behaviors and well-being [4].

In other words, nature connectedness is an indicator of the health of the human-nature relationship [3]. Increasing nature connectedness:

  • Increases pro-environmental behaviors
  • Improves the individual’s well-being
  • Has a positive impact on our environment

nature connectedness bar chart

The Role of Businesses

Businesses that hope to positively influence humans’ impact on the ecosystem should aim at building products that improve their users’ nature connectedness.

Businesses play a central role in climate change and ought to be part of the solution [13, 14]. Online technologies in particular can produce personal, social and situational factors affecting pro-environmental behavior [6].

Businesses that hope to positively influence humans’ impact on the ecosystem should aim at building products that improve their users’ nature connectedness.

Zero Mile Labs’ mission is to build tools to help people be more connected with nature. Our first product, CropStand, allows farmers and small food producers to advertise their produce in a location-based platform. With CropStand, our aim is to get people to purchase produce locally, while increasing their connection with nature by bringing them directly to farmers and gardens where their food is grown. CropStand provides the means to:

  • Discover produce grown near you
  • Purchase produce on-site through the app
  • Get in contact with your local farmers
  • Start selling your own produce in few easy steps

We are just starting out but we make constant improvements to the platform. Try it!

Start with Food and Stay Local

What better way to form individual experiences than with food?

With the realization of the benefits of nature connectedness to individual well-being and the environment, there is now an increasing focus on the best ways to engage with people on the subject [1].

Nature connection is subjective, formed through individual experiences [8,9]. What better way to form individual experiences than with food? We are connected with food. It is part of our daily lives and culture. Climate change is more evident with food and land [18].

Food is contact with nature enhanced by senses and emotions. Farm stands are a great, battle-tested way to connect people with the farmers who grow their food as they provide:

  • Access to locally grown produce
  • A chance to connect with local growers
  • Visibility into how produce is grown

Connecting with local farmers and eating local food is a pathway towards sufficiency [16] and backyard gardens increase biodiversity [17].

We want to bring farm stands to the 21st century. To do what we need to:

  • Make it easier to find and purchase local produce
  • Increase the the number of people that grow produce locally, in their backyards
  • Make it easier for people to create and sell from their own farm stand

At Zero Mile Labs, we are trying to do all of these things, together.

Conclusion: Nature Connectedness Is Both the Problem and the Solution

There is a trend towards people losing touch with the natural world [15] just when research is demonstrating how dependent human health and wellbeing is on the natural ecosystems [4]. In this essay we illustrated how farm stands are a great way to increase nature connectedness and get more people into consuming local food. Farm stands contribute to the sustainable future we dream of: a future where the food we eat is grown locally, where we stumble upon backyard gardens during our city walks and where our friends and neighbors contibute to our everyday meals.

References

[1] Lumber, R., M. Richardson, and D. Sheffield. 2017. Beyond knowing nature: Contact, emotion, compassion, meaning and beauty are pathways to nature connection. PLoS ONE 12: e0177186. HTTPS://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177186

[2] Sandra Díaz et al. ,Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change.Science 366,eaax3100(2019).DOI:10.1126/science.aax3100

[3] Richardson, M., Hamlin, I., Elliott, L.R. et al. Country-level factors in a failing relationship with nature: Nature connectedness as a key metric for a sustainable future. Ambio 51, 2201–2213 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01744-w

[4] Leanne Martin, Mathew P. White, Anne Hunt, Miles Richardson, Sabine Pahl, Jim Burt, Nature contact, nature connectedness and associations with health, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 68, 2020, 101389, ISSN 0272-4944, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101389.

[5] Steven Peters, 2019, USA Today, Want to make your life more environmentally friendly? Here’s 30 ways https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/17/climate-change-30-ways-to-make-your-life-more-environmentally-friendly/39366589/

[6] Tian H, Liu X. Pro-Environmental Behavior Research: Theoretical Progress and Future Directions. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 31;19(11):6721. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19116721. PMID: 35682302; PMCID: PMC9180624.

[7] Christie Manning, The Psychology Of Sustainable Behavior, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, 2009, https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/p-ee1-01.pdf

[8] United Nations Climate Change. January, 2022. Available online: https://unfccc.int/news/un-chief-phase-out-of-coal-is-key-climate-priority#:~:text=Phasing out coal the main priority&text=He said that organizations such,Agenda and the Paris Agreement.

[9] Zhang, J. W., Howell, R. T., & Iyer, R. (2014). Engagement with natural beauty moderates the positive relation between connectedness with nature and psychological well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 38, 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.12.013

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[11] Kaaronen, R.O. Affording Sustainability: Adopting A Theory Of Affordances as a Guiding Heuristic for Environmental Policy. Front. Psychol. 2017, 8, 1974

[12] Christian Martin, Sandor Czellar, The extended Inclusion of Nature in Self scale, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 47, 2016, Pages 181-194, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.05.006.

[13] Responsible Business Conduct and Climate Change, UNEP, UNFCCC Secretariat and OECD, https://mneguidelines.oecd.org/responsible-business-conduct-and-climate-change.pdf

[14] Human Rights, Climate Change and Business, OHCHR, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/materials/KMBusiness.pdf

[15] Soga, M. & Gaston, K.J. (2016). Extinction of experience: the loss of human-nature interactions. Frontiers in Ecology and The Environment, 14(2), 94-101.

[16] Laura Niessen, Nancy M.P. Bocken, How can businesses drive sufficiency? The business for sufficiency framework, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Volume 28, 2021, Pages 1090-1103, ISSN 2352-5509, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2021.07.030. [17] Jha, S.,  Egerer, M.,  Bichier, P.,  Cohen, H.,  Liere, H. &  Lin, B. et al. (2023)  Multiple ecosystem service synergies and landscape mediation of biodiversity within urban agroecosystems. Ecology Letters,  26,  369– 383. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14146

[18] Climate Change Impacts, NOAA, August 2021, https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts

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