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Jan. 10th, 2013 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serafaeryI think maybe it's time for me to read Lierre Keith's book, The Vegetarian Myth.
She's all about our fast-degrading and depleting topsoil due to heavy agriculture, from too much grain production and "mono-cultures" that destroy biodiversity.
"I want a full accounting, an accounting that goes way beyond what’s dead on your plate. I’m asking about everything that died in the process, everything that was killed to get that food onto your plate. That’s the more radical question, and it’s the only question that will produce the truth. How many rivers were dammed and drained, how many prairies plowed and forests pulled down, how much topsoil turned to dust and blown into ghosts? I want to know about all the species—not just the individuals, but the entire species—the chinook, the bison, the grasshopper sparrows, the grey wolves. And I want more than just the number of dead and gone. I want them back."
As a vegan-leaning localvore, this appeals to me greatly. Getting away from Big Ag in total, not just industrial factory animal farming (which she condemns, too).
Since I was exposed to her "blood and soil" idea about a year ago, it has haunted me. That everything in life is tied to death. I watch our shiny glitzy TV commercials and think about how desperately we want to divorce ourselves from death, and from our innate nature as hunters, as killers. We want to be sweet and gentle and innocent. But within food there is death. All food, not just meat. It needs to be there, ugly and decaying, in the soil, in order for nutrients to develop and provide for life.
We as a culture don't want to face this. We are so squeamish. As industrial, agricultural civilizations, we don't want any part in the natural cycle, we want to pretend we'll never die. Shun the elderly, ignore the sick and the poor.
I want to be a gentle creature, but I want to be authentic, too.
She's all about our fast-degrading and depleting topsoil due to heavy agriculture, from too much grain production and "mono-cultures" that destroy biodiversity.
"I want a full accounting, an accounting that goes way beyond what’s dead on your plate. I’m asking about everything that died in the process, everything that was killed to get that food onto your plate. That’s the more radical question, and it’s the only question that will produce the truth. How many rivers were dammed and drained, how many prairies plowed and forests pulled down, how much topsoil turned to dust and blown into ghosts? I want to know about all the species—not just the individuals, but the entire species—the chinook, the bison, the grasshopper sparrows, the grey wolves. And I want more than just the number of dead and gone. I want them back."
As a vegan-leaning localvore, this appeals to me greatly. Getting away from Big Ag in total, not just industrial factory animal farming (which she condemns, too).
Since I was exposed to her "blood and soil" idea about a year ago, it has haunted me. That everything in life is tied to death. I watch our shiny glitzy TV commercials and think about how desperately we want to divorce ourselves from death, and from our innate nature as hunters, as killers. We want to be sweet and gentle and innocent. But within food there is death. All food, not just meat. It needs to be there, ugly and decaying, in the soil, in order for nutrients to develop and provide for life.
We as a culture don't want to face this. We are so squeamish. As industrial, agricultural civilizations, we don't want any part in the natural cycle, we want to pretend we'll never die. Shun the elderly, ignore the sick and the poor.
I want to be a gentle creature, but I want to be authentic, too.
