http://vimeo.com/8812686
The first feeling I got while I was watching this video was fear. I was the most scared when I heard that in 2050, the world's food production will have to be doubled. I will be alive during this time, with a family! What will we do? The food we will be eating will definitely not be healthy if we don't start supporting local farms and organic products immediately. I am a little bit discouraged because I don't foresee people changing their ways very dramatically in the near future. I frequently ask myself if we will ever start realizing the consequences of our actions.
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give a man a fishing rod and he will eat for a lifetime." I feel that this is part of the solution to the unbalanced global food market. We are so focused on helping people, yet we don't even understand that we are actually hurting them when we provide them with goods. We need to come up with a solution that will help people in the long term, rather than on a one time basis. Furthermore, food drop offs help in the short term by providing a meal, but hurt in the long term by lowering the value of local food.
"By choosing a dish of lentils instead of steak, he consumes 1/6 of the farming land and 1/12 of the water and this leaves more for others." This quote speaks directly to me because I have chosen not to eat meat. This is one of the biggest reasons why I do not eat meat. I find that the quantity of meat and the frequency it is eaten at is not sustainable.
While rereading this post I have decided to comment on it further. Since watching King Corn, I have thought a lot more about the corn industry as well as the meat industry. I never understood the extent of the brokenness of the corn industry until I watched this video. The two farmers who bought an acre of corn spent months growing corn on their farm. The disheartening part of the video was the fact that the farmers could never predict where their food was going to end up. Isn't the point of growing food to reap the benefits of it? The only benefits at this point is money and in my opinion it does not provide enough of a reward for all of the hard work and soul that is put into growing a crop. Furthermore, if I were to grow an acre of corn, I would want to see it distributed to my family, my neighbors and my friends. I would like to see my corn distributed to local restaurants and businesses. I want my corn to nourish and make people happy. The corn industry is the opposite of that, since they turn the corn into syrup and mix it into every other product on the shelves today. People are not even aware that they are eating corn! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, corn is involved for most Americans. Most of them probably don't even know it. If Americans don't know about the corn that is put in their food, what else don't we know about?
ReplyDeleteThis also made me realize that the meat industry is even more corrupt than I had thought. The cows are forced to eat a corn fed diet, which is unnatural and unhealthy. The cows can only survive a few months on this diet! A cow is a living, breathing animal not only meant to serve us humans. We are NOT better than any other animal and we do NOT have the authority to treat animals so poorly for our "benefit." Not only is this bad for the animals, it is bad for humans! The fat content in corn-fed cows is much higher than those with a natural grass diet. I was shocked to find out that if you were born in the last thirty years, you probably have only eaten meat from corn fed cows! Right now some people may think we are living the high life, but one day this will come back around to haunt humankind. We cannot go on like this forever, and it will end one day. Whether it ends poorly or positively is up to us.