The term "sustainability" is all the rage in food marketing today. Sustainability reports are front and center on every grocery and restaurant chain website. Television ads use the term at every possible opportunity, often making sure a few vintage pickup trucks are included in the shot. And it’s getting hard to find any items in the grocery store that don’t try to squeeze in the word sustainable, no matter how tight the space.

But American farmers, the people who are actually raising the crops and livestock and are the envy of the world in terms of sustainability, have largely been left out of the discussion, according to several speakers at the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) annual...