-Farm News photo by Karen Schwaller
Nikki Putnam Badding was a featured speaker at the 2024 Northwest Iowa Ag Outlook in Spencer. She educated producers about consumer trends and behaviors, and how it applies to agricultural practices for the improved health of plants, animals and consumers.

SPENCER — Healthier environments for food production produce healthier foods for consumers.

This was the word from Nikki Putnam Badding, registered dietician and director of human nutrition initiatives at Alltech, an agri-food multinational. Putnam Badding is also the managing director of Acutia, a human health and wellness subsidiary of Alltech.

Putnam Badding said the World Health Organization has pinpointed poor nutrition as the single greatest threat to world health, including in the U.S.

She said the world population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2060, which she said would require an increase in food production of 70 percent. She said only one-third of the world’s land is being used for agriculture, with “not much more” being able to be used for that purpose. She said less than one-third of that land is useable for food production, so farmers need to figure out how to produce more nutrition with available land.

“Can you produce 70 percent more food with what you’re doing?” she asked. “Providing enough food for everyone isn’t enough … if we can provide more nutrition in every food product, we might be able to do this.”

Putnam Badding said utilizing technological advancements and innovative practices would pave a path toward that goal — such as vertical farms, urban farming, cellular agriculture and more.

She said nutrient-dense soils produce higher yields of more nutrient-dense foods. That is often done through crop rotation, cover cropping and reduced tillage, which help break down organic matter in the soil and bring it into the plant. It also allows the soil to hold moisture longer, which enriches plants and makes more nutrient-dense foods.

Putnam Badding said crops grown with these practices have been shown to be 20 percent more nutrient-dense — including tests done on corn and soybeans.

She explained that a hand-held instrument called a “spectrometer” (which will be available to the public at some point) can be held up to a fruit, vegetable or grain (and meats in coming years) in the grocery store and it will be able to analyze the degree of nutrient density.

Those foods with more nutrient density would require eating less of it to receive the same amount of nutrients as eating more of the same foods that have less nutrient density. She said if growers could produce this kind of nutrient-dense food, it would increase efficient use of land, taking less room to grow food to feed more people and animals.

Protein production

Putnam Badding said protein production is of the utmost importance because of its link to human health. She said something like cellular production (lab-grown meat, for example) can help produce more protein than only growing it via livestock.

“They use some cells, mix it with their media and other ingredients, and there you have protein … lab-grown meat,” she said, adding that the meat can be manipulated to increase the nutrient density, which may not be found in traditionally grown meat.

She said this process could reduce the risk of allergens and issues related to food safety, and possibly reduce food waste, which she said is a big piece in the sustainability puzzle.

She said it’s very expensive, and the infrastructure does not exist to create lab-grown meat, but it will most likely be coming in the future.

Putnam Badding said a process called “precision fermentation” can produce proteins identical to those in eggs, milk, lobster and collagen. She used as an example non-dairy whey, which she said is grown from yeast, but looks and tastes identical to dairy-produced whey. She said it’s readily available now, but is still expensive.

Putnam Badding said insect proteins are on the rise, including growing crickets, mealworms, black soldier flies, grasshoppers, etc.

“Insect proteins have been shown to help with gut health, and have anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular benefits — it’s helping create something (protein) with something we didn’t have before,” she said of the farming practice.

She added that animal protein appears higher in protein value than plant proteins, needing less of it in order to meet nutritional requirements. This goes hand-in-hand with providing more nutrients with less foods.

She also said of the debate over whether grass-fed beef is healthier than grain-fed beef, there is almost no difference in the meat’s nutrition — and if anything, only a slight benefit from the grain-finished beef. She also said there is not much notable difference between traditionally-raised eggs vs. cage-free eggs.

Putnam-Badding said if the whole world went vegetarian, the amount of plant food needed to be grown would increase dramatically, creating issues with where all that food could be grown with the limited amount of land that can be used for farming, and would create even more greenhouse gasses due to by-product waste, etc.

She said livestock contributes to the delivery of nutritious food on land that is not being (or cannot be) farmed.

Putnam Badding said eliminating livestock to use that land to grow more crops would not be more sustainable for human health or sustainability — something she said is a common misconception. She said animals use land that cannot be farmed for plant production, and livestock produces foods high in bio-availability, which means the human body can take in all the nutrients and use them for healthy body digestion.

Greenhouse gasses

Putnam Badding said agriculture is often villainized for methane and greenhouse gas emissions, but said agriculture accounts for only 11 percent of greenhouse gasses in the U.S.

“So often we look at agriculture only through the lens of greenhouse gas emissions, but the definition of sustainable agriculture is so much more,” she said, adding that sustainable agriculture enhances environmental quality and preserves natural resource spaces.

She said composting crop by-products produces five times more greenhouse gas emissions than if those products were fed to a dairy cow, and emissions then came off of that dairy cow. Those same by-products placed into a landfill would produce 49 times more greenhouse gas emissions than if they would have been fed to a dairy cow, which in turn would produce more product to create other nutritious foods.

Organics and GMOs

Putnam Badding said there is a lack of evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventionally-grown foods, and that there is also a lack of evidence for nutrition-related health effects that result from consumption of organically-produced foods.

She said there is also no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organic and conventionally-produced foods.

She went on to illustrate that studies show there are no adverse effects of consuming genetically modified organisms (genetically engineered foods) as they relate to allergenicity and nutrient adequacy; that no human disease or condition has been linked to consumption of those foods, and that they are safe and no riskier to consume than non-GMO foods.

In summary

She said plants and animals are both essential for food and nutrition security.

“If we are going to eradicate poor nutrition in our own country and worldwide, we need both food sources — even those things like insects, cellular cultivation, precision fermentation — we might end up needing those things, too. We just need more food and more nutrition — not getting rid of certain sectors of agriculture.”

Putnam Badding said sustainability doesn’t begin and end with environmental impact, but also the impact of the people who share that environment.

“Sustainability, environmental impact and human health all go hand-in-hand when we talk about agriculture,” she said. “Soil and plant health, animal health, environmental health and human health are all deeply interrelated.

“Agriculture has two of the most important jobs in the world — to protect the planet and nourish the people on it,” she said. “To me, this is the true meaning of sustainability in agriculture.”