The Article (DominEarth)
Food, Vegan, Huh?
Have you ever asked yourself why a few radicals and Grandma are the only ones around you who grow their own food in gardens? Did you ever wonder why people do this thing called vegetarian?
Do you want to know some of the reasons why people adopt vegan diets? Okay... Let's go!
Since the turn of the century, food-crop production and the new thinking behind 'industrialized' food sourcing has changed the way we look at the land and the ways in which we 'use' it. Around the same time in our history, the relatively new phenomenom of 'urbanization', or, people flocking from traditional family/farm situations to the cities to work in factory jobs for more money, drove 'conventional' farming underground. Within three generations, growing our own food became a lost art. In the bulk of our population today, farming and farmers are considered out-dated, unrealistic, gothic; Quaint images from the past.
As recently as the 20's, in response to early signs that the ag-chemical trend was destructive and unsustainable, a 'new' movement had begun - dubbed the 'organic' movement whose purpose is to re-introduce farming methods which are in harmony with the ecology of a given region. Basically stated, modern 'sustainable' agriculture is looking to the past (pre-industrialization) for chemical free methods of pest and weed control, soil health, and production and rotation concepts. 'Organic' farming is, in fact, a retro-fit 'conventional' farm concept. The irony in the 'organic' movement is that prior to 100 years ago, conventional farming WAS organic, and for the most part sustainable as well.
The advent of 'veganism' as we know it today began in 1944 in the U.K. when a group of strict vegetarians were concerned (annoyed?) by people around them proporting to be vegetarian yet still eating fish, eggs, and dairy products. The word is a shortening of 'vegetarian'- taking the first three and last two letters, effectively the "beginning and end" vegetarian-ism.
The keen among us have noted that recent developments in food thinking have brought corporate giants into the vegetarian and organic food movements. Walmart has an OrganicTM line of foods. All major grocers now offer a wide variety of processed vegetarian and vegan options. These examples have in fact lowered the cost to average people to go vegetarian, vegan, and organic - but don't buy it all.
Adopting a Vegan diet is a lifestyle. In a corporate controlled environment in general, and in the food 'industry' culture in particular, veganism is a way of changing our relationship to the food we eat, making conscious choices and participating in one of the three basic necessities of life directly, vs. having it packaged and delivered by any number of medium. Eating vegan challenges us to inform ourselves about our sustenance, about our ideas and attitudes about food, and about the culture of consumption - we learn that food is not a luxury item nor a mindless self-indulgence. It is a fundamental right that every being have access to healthy food.
A vegan diet avoids the use of all animal products, where-ever possible. No eggs, no dairy, no meat, poultry, fish. Some even avoid the use of insect products - honey and silk. Obviously many don't wear leather, and many refrain from wool. A natural effect of going vegan will be that we begin to prepare more meals from scratch using fresh produce and whole grains/legumes. In other words, we will begin to move backwards through the distribution system, towards the sources of our food.
Up to 70 percent of the vegetable matter grown in our economy is intended for animal feed. The water, land, transportation, and chemicals used in this feed production create huge negative impact. If our culture adopted a vegetable based diet over night, in other words if all crops were cultivated for human consumption tomorrow, we would be over-producing plant food matter by over 7 times, and we would actually need to reduce the area of land currently in use for agriculture while still enjoying food abundance un-heard of in history.
Considerations for going Vegan
Many of us choose veganism based on desire to improve the lives of other classes of animals.
Most of us understand that the 'meat industry' has traditionally seen animals as 'units' of food, and thus caused great suffering to those consumed. Animals raised for mass consumption are done so with factory precision, with little or no concern for the psychological well-being of the creature itself. We've all by now been exposed to the campaigns of PETA and others, demonstrating with video footage and pictures the conditions which modern 'farm' techniques entail, not to mention the testing of all things chemical and biological on lab animals. Animal rights also come to issue when we consider the use and abuse of wild animals of all kinds, both affected directly as hunted or caught, and indirectly as eco-systems are altered or destroyed to make way for domesticated animals and their feed production.
As with the consideration given to animals and their environments (which directly affect well-being), so too do we view our own environment and how it is affected by our food choices. Fished-out oceans, burnt out jungles (to create grazing land), and arid pasture lands falling to desertification, to feedlot and packing plant operations ('factory farms') which may dwarf moderate sized towns; We consider the impact of modern commercial 'animal husbandry' and what's it's doing to our earth. Pollution, deforestation, and spread of anti-biotic resistant, inter-species disease are just a few areas of concern. Mono-cropping, anti-biotic compound use, petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, and genetic engineering are all being driven in large part by the meat and dairy (and mono-cropping) industries as they search for new ways to be competitive on the open market. Most people alive today are aware that the same company (Monsanto) who created the 'defoliage' chemical Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War are also the leading corporate force (among others) behind genetically engineered crops, often with built in 'suicide' genes designed to curtail natural re-seeding or 'volunteer' seed.
Inclusive in this are instances where the new drive towards Genetic Ownership have seen large multi-nationals (Monsanto, again) attempt to patent and thereby take ownership of natural processes such as plants and animals in the natural world. One of the best examples of this is in India, where drug companies decided to try to patent the Neem tree, desiring to corner the market on its' many medicinal and traditional properties. They lost, thankfully, but this is just one battle in a long and large war which is just beginning.
World Hunger
The potential for abundance (with modern farming techniques) and all of the implications of corporate realities are causing great strains on our human community. While food scarcity is a mammoth issue for over half of the world, food waste is the problem we face here in the first world. Around the turn of the century, when 'agri-business' as we know it today began down its current path, the people behind it truly believed that advances in science and technology could end world hunger. The irony is; it could happen now. Why hasn't it?
Faster than the growing food supply there developed a new form of manufacture, market, and distribution system (industrialization) which was governed by free capital. That's right; capitalism.
What are the basic tenets of capitalism? When demand goes up, supply goes down, and prices go up. When supply is too high, demand for a specific set of product is basically null, so prices necessarily shoot down. In plain english: If we as a planet produced enough economically viable healthy food for everyone, prices would bottom out and the 'Food Industry' would lose billions. They're not going to let that happen. Is there anything realistically cost-prohibitive about shipping excess grains and legumes to the third world? The companies and governments will tell you that it's too expensive to consider indefinitely on a large scale. Consider, however, that you can buy fresh bananas and mangoes for under a dollar a pound, shipped directly from south and central America. Consider that in many countries where malnutrition and starvation happen, things like coffee, cocoa, and tea are cultivated on land which at one time was used to grow food for the local population.Consider also that every animal you might consume from your corner store traveled well over 1000 miles from birth to plate.
Inclusive in this equation is that the least efficient yet still profitable processes win out in a free market economy. Animal feed production (labor, energy, resource, and chemical intensive), transportation and processing, and finally packaging and marketing/distribution of food is horribly out of sync with natural (traditional) methods, but done this way, jobs and capital are created on huge scales, and technology and science gain capital and freedom to continue creating still more ways to directly control our intake of basic nutriment. In many ways, the dominant corporations of our time view every mineral, vitamin, and calorie you ingest as a marketable unit, and the more steps they can employ to get you those units the more money they will make. It's business. If we were to supply those units to countries whose currency is valued at far below our own, profit margins plummet.
Quick facts - the economy of 'natural' intake to output:
~it takes 10-22 pounds of grain and soybeans to produce 1 pound of edible animal flesh.
~it takes 5,000-7,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of edible animal flesh.
~Percentage of corn grown in the US eaten by livestock: 80
~Percentage of oats grown in the US eaten by livestock: 95
~Percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock: 90
~Cattle produce just 100 pounds of flesh protein for every 1580 pounds of plant protein
~One acre of land can produce: 14,000 pounds of sweet corn
~One acre of land can produce: 28,800 pounds of navel oranges
~One acre of land can produce: 40,000 pounds of potatoes
~One acre of land can only produce: 250 pounds of edible beef
~One acre of soybeans produces 462,000 grams of protein- one person's protein requirement for over 23 years
Involved Now
Grow a garden, or get involved in a community garden or CSA in your area. Refrain from eating out at 'big box' restaurants, support your local farmers and grocers. Encourage them to buy local. Check out the farmers markets. Buy fresh as often as possible, as branding and advertising, processing and packaging, transportation and storage are the problem. The old saying 'Think Globally, Act Locally' applies in every way. In our culture, those of us who are even slightly committed to a DIY ethic can never, truly, take it too far. If you can't do something food related yourself, learn how to. If you don't feel like doing that - meet someone who can or already is. Going vegan successfully almost certainly dictates that you will need to join or cultivate community and learn how to grow and share in that community. Most vegans will find that they are involved in the same war with isolation culture in the same was as with other 'modern sanity' movements. Food is one of the simplest areas of common ground that has been lost in modern life. The steps we take to get it back are often subtle, labor intensive, challenging, and even fun, and the consequences of doing so are far reaching and important.
And NO - you will not turn pasty white and wither away to bones and skin tissue on a vegan diet! Stop asking that, and please laugh heartily if you are questioned with this one!
Don't forget to support your local food banks, soup kitchens, Food Not Bombs groups, and elderly folk. Throw a potluck. Eat, think, and be merry!
Have you ever asked yourself why a few radicals and Grandma are the only ones around you who grow their own food in gardens? Did you ever wonder why people do this thing called vegetarian?
Do you want to know some of the reasons why people adopt vegan diets? Okay... Let's go!
Since the turn of the century, food-crop production and the new thinking behind 'industrialized' food sourcing has changed the way we look at the land and the ways in which we 'use' it. Around the same time in our history, the relatively new phenomenom of 'urbanization', or, people flocking from traditional family/farm situations to the cities to work in factory jobs for more money, drove 'conventional' farming underground. Within three generations, growing our own food became a lost art. In the bulk of our population today, farming and farmers are considered out-dated, unrealistic, gothic; Quaint images from the past.
As recently as the 20's, in response to early signs that the ag-chemical trend was destructive and unsustainable, a 'new' movement had begun - dubbed the 'organic' movement whose purpose is to re-introduce farming methods which are in harmony with the ecology of a given region. Basically stated, modern 'sustainable' agriculture is looking to the past (pre-industrialization) for chemical free methods of pest and weed control, soil health, and production and rotation concepts. 'Organic' farming is, in fact, a retro-fit 'conventional' farm concept. The irony in the 'organic' movement is that prior to 100 years ago, conventional farming WAS organic, and for the most part sustainable as well.
The advent of 'veganism' as we know it today began in 1944 in the U.K. when a group of strict vegetarians were concerned (annoyed?) by people around them proporting to be vegetarian yet still eating fish, eggs, and dairy products. The word is a shortening of 'vegetarian'- taking the first three and last two letters, effectively the "beginning and end" vegetarian-ism.
The keen among us have noted that recent developments in food thinking have brought corporate giants into the vegetarian and organic food movements. Walmart has an OrganicTM line of foods. All major grocers now offer a wide variety of processed vegetarian and vegan options. These examples have in fact lowered the cost to average people to go vegetarian, vegan, and organic - but don't buy it all.
Adopting a Vegan diet is a lifestyle. In a corporate controlled environment in general, and in the food 'industry' culture in particular, veganism is a way of changing our relationship to the food we eat, making conscious choices and participating in one of the three basic necessities of life directly, vs. having it packaged and delivered by any number of medium. Eating vegan challenges us to inform ourselves about our sustenance, about our ideas and attitudes about food, and about the culture of consumption - we learn that food is not a luxury item nor a mindless self-indulgence. It is a fundamental right that every being have access to healthy food.
A vegan diet avoids the use of all animal products, where-ever possible. No eggs, no dairy, no meat, poultry, fish. Some even avoid the use of insect products - honey and silk. Obviously many don't wear leather, and many refrain from wool. A natural effect of going vegan will be that we begin to prepare more meals from scratch using fresh produce and whole grains/legumes. In other words, we will begin to move backwards through the distribution system, towards the sources of our food.
Up to 70 percent of the vegetable matter grown in our economy is intended for animal feed. The water, land, transportation, and chemicals used in this feed production create huge negative impact. If our culture adopted a vegetable based diet over night, in other words if all crops were cultivated for human consumption tomorrow, we would be over-producing plant food matter by over 7 times, and we would actually need to reduce the area of land currently in use for agriculture while still enjoying food abundance un-heard of in history.
Considerations for going Vegan
Many of us choose veganism based on desire to improve the lives of other classes of animals.
Most of us understand that the 'meat industry' has traditionally seen animals as 'units' of food, and thus caused great suffering to those consumed. Animals raised for mass consumption are done so with factory precision, with little or no concern for the psychological well-being of the creature itself. We've all by now been exposed to the campaigns of PETA and others, demonstrating with video footage and pictures the conditions which modern 'farm' techniques entail, not to mention the testing of all things chemical and biological on lab animals. Animal rights also come to issue when we consider the use and abuse of wild animals of all kinds, both affected directly as hunted or caught, and indirectly as eco-systems are altered or destroyed to make way for domesticated animals and their feed production.
As with the consideration given to animals and their environments (which directly affect well-being), so too do we view our own environment and how it is affected by our food choices. Fished-out oceans, burnt out jungles (to create grazing land), and arid pasture lands falling to desertification, to feedlot and packing plant operations ('factory farms') which may dwarf moderate sized towns; We consider the impact of modern commercial 'animal husbandry' and what's it's doing to our earth. Pollution, deforestation, and spread of anti-biotic resistant, inter-species disease are just a few areas of concern. Mono-cropping, anti-biotic compound use, petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, and genetic engineering are all being driven in large part by the meat and dairy (and mono-cropping) industries as they search for new ways to be competitive on the open market. Most people alive today are aware that the same company (Monsanto) who created the 'defoliage' chemical Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War are also the leading corporate force (among others) behind genetically engineered crops, often with built in 'suicide' genes designed to curtail natural re-seeding or 'volunteer' seed.
Inclusive in this are instances where the new drive towards Genetic Ownership have seen large multi-nationals (Monsanto, again) attempt to patent and thereby take ownership of natural processes such as plants and animals in the natural world. One of the best examples of this is in India, where drug companies decided to try to patent the Neem tree, desiring to corner the market on its' many medicinal and traditional properties. They lost, thankfully, but this is just one battle in a long and large war which is just beginning.
World Hunger
The potential for abundance (with modern farming techniques) and all of the implications of corporate realities are causing great strains on our human community. While food scarcity is a mammoth issue for over half of the world, food waste is the problem we face here in the first world. Around the turn of the century, when 'agri-business' as we know it today began down its current path, the people behind it truly believed that advances in science and technology could end world hunger. The irony is; it could happen now. Why hasn't it?
Faster than the growing food supply there developed a new form of manufacture, market, and distribution system (industrialization) which was governed by free capital. That's right; capitalism.
What are the basic tenets of capitalism? When demand goes up, supply goes down, and prices go up. When supply is too high, demand for a specific set of product is basically null, so prices necessarily shoot down. In plain english: If we as a planet produced enough economically viable healthy food for everyone, prices would bottom out and the 'Food Industry' would lose billions. They're not going to let that happen. Is there anything realistically cost-prohibitive about shipping excess grains and legumes to the third world? The companies and governments will tell you that it's too expensive to consider indefinitely on a large scale. Consider, however, that you can buy fresh bananas and mangoes for under a dollar a pound, shipped directly from south and central America. Consider that in many countries where malnutrition and starvation happen, things like coffee, cocoa, and tea are cultivated on land which at one time was used to grow food for the local population.Consider also that every animal you might consume from your corner store traveled well over 1000 miles from birth to plate.
Inclusive in this equation is that the least efficient yet still profitable processes win out in a free market economy. Animal feed production (labor, energy, resource, and chemical intensive), transportation and processing, and finally packaging and marketing/distribution of food is horribly out of sync with natural (traditional) methods, but done this way, jobs and capital are created on huge scales, and technology and science gain capital and freedom to continue creating still more ways to directly control our intake of basic nutriment. In many ways, the dominant corporations of our time view every mineral, vitamin, and calorie you ingest as a marketable unit, and the more steps they can employ to get you those units the more money they will make. It's business. If we were to supply those units to countries whose currency is valued at far below our own, profit margins plummet.
Quick facts - the economy of 'natural' intake to output:
~it takes 10-22 pounds of grain and soybeans to produce 1 pound of edible animal flesh.
~it takes 5,000-7,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of edible animal flesh.
~Percentage of corn grown in the US eaten by livestock: 80
~Percentage of oats grown in the US eaten by livestock: 95
~Percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock: 90
~Cattle produce just 100 pounds of flesh protein for every 1580 pounds of plant protein
~One acre of land can produce: 14,000 pounds of sweet corn
~One acre of land can produce: 28,800 pounds of navel oranges
~One acre of land can produce: 40,000 pounds of potatoes
~One acre of land can only produce: 250 pounds of edible beef
~One acre of soybeans produces 462,000 grams of protein- one person's protein requirement for over 23 years
Involved Now
Grow a garden, or get involved in a community garden or CSA in your area. Refrain from eating out at 'big box' restaurants, support your local farmers and grocers. Encourage them to buy local. Check out the farmers markets. Buy fresh as often as possible, as branding and advertising, processing and packaging, transportation and storage are the problem. The old saying 'Think Globally, Act Locally' applies in every way. In our culture, those of us who are even slightly committed to a DIY ethic can never, truly, take it too far. If you can't do something food related yourself, learn how to. If you don't feel like doing that - meet someone who can or already is. Going vegan successfully almost certainly dictates that you will need to join or cultivate community and learn how to grow and share in that community. Most vegans will find that they are involved in the same war with isolation culture in the same was as with other 'modern sanity' movements. Food is one of the simplest areas of common ground that has been lost in modern life. The steps we take to get it back are often subtle, labor intensive, challenging, and even fun, and the consequences of doing so are far reaching and important.
And NO - you will not turn pasty white and wither away to bones and skin tissue on a vegan diet! Stop asking that, and please laugh heartily if you are questioned with this one!
Don't forget to support your local food banks, soup kitchens, Food Not Bombs groups, and elderly folk. Throw a potluck. Eat, think, and be merry!
