Your Dinner Vs. The Planet: The High Cost Of Meat

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Is it necessary for humans to eat meat at the scale we currently do?

Taking note of the sheer number of vegetarian and vegan diets practised everyday it is clear we do not need meat, even if we enjoy eating it. D’Silva, in her journal, written in 2000 for Compassion in World Farming Trust, wrote that cutting out “the costly inefficient factory farmed animal ‘protein converter’” would increase the amount protein we can get straight from the source. This would mean more people could be fed on less food, a positive step in reducing world hunger.

There are a number of potential health issues that may arise with the over-consumption of meat every day and for every meal; obesity has already become a big issue in America, and Europe is catching up. Nierenberg wrote in 2003 that eating meat every day is a more recent phenomenon — until the industrialisation of the process, meat was generally only eaten on special occasions and, even then, largely by the rich.

Gardens Of Hope: Can Seed Libraries Be Saved From ALEC?

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Back in August, we learned of a crack-down in Pennslyvania due to certain activity at the Joseph T. Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg, activity so serious the state dispatched “a high-ranking official and lawyers to a meeting with the library.” Whatever had happened at this otherwise innocent-looking location to warrant such a response?

It seems the Simpson Library was in violation of the Pennsylvania Seed Act of 2004. A member of the Cumberland County Commission, where Mechanicsburg is located, quickly raised her voice and exclaimed, “Agri-terrorism.” Other Commissioners, however, more calmly wondered why the state had taken such interest in the local seed lending library, one among some 340 community libraries across the country at that time which had small seed-sharing programs.

Seeds brought to the library are carefully labeled, placed in small paper or plastic envelopes, then filed, typically using those wooden card catalogs of yesterday. Library patrons check out or “borrow” seeds and take them home to grow in the spring. If the seeds result in a good harvest, gardeners collect some seeds from the plants they’ve grown and replenish the library’s holdings the following fall.

Attack Of The Land-grabbers: Land Grabs Beyond Africa

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Before going further, it is important to recognize that land grabs are not only happening in Africa and, while there is a “global rush to lock up African farmland” by state-owned companies and private investors, different investors have different motives. [21] One group of investors are Arab investors, who have the appeal “that Islam has made significant inroads in Africa, creating cultural and religious links” in their land grabs.

Within this group are Saudi investors, who began a push, thanks to the support of the royal Saudi government and its dictator King Abdullah II in 2008, to “acquire cropland abroad and grow food for export to the homeland.”

Some of these land grabs include the acquisition of land in Ethiopia, in 2009, to grow rice and in Sudan to grow wheat, corn, and soybeans for export to Saudi Arabia. [26] For the land grab in Ethiopia, every day a group of 1,000 locals pick, pack, and load “hundreds of tons of fresh production onto waiting trucks. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the product is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet” as Nancy MacDonald describes it.

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