“An Environment Of Greater Equity”
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Veganism is a revolutionary force in the class war:
all over the third world, even where meat is scarce or pastoralism is irrevocably destroying land, meat is a prestige. Automobile usage is another.
The wealthiest eat the most meat and drive the most, and are often the most gorged and overweight, hence the typical gut of rich and powerful elites in Africa and elsewhere in the third world.
But if a society hedges closer to veganism, that means more calories will generally be available to its individual constituents, since growing plants is far more sustainable and efficient than growing animals which eat plants.
So that society would naturally enable an environment of greater equity and less classism.
On the other hand, if a society hankers hard after meat, that means fewer people will eat of the greater resultant scarcity in overall available calories.
The meat-centric society will inevitably breed the conditions for less equality and for harsher stratification, just because of how much meat production usurps of limited environmental resources.
Read the rest at The Scavenger >>
Related, from the New York Times, an article about a simple vegetable farmer’s market in a low income neighborhood:
This is not the new omnivore’s playland of the Union Square Greenmarket or the ambitious farmers’ markets you can find in Port Washington, Huntington or other affluent Long Island communities. There are no artisanal cheeses, heirloom tomatoes, $8 organic breads, grass-fed beef, spinach/goat cheese quiches or local musicians singing James Taylor songs. Instead it is just three tables full of fresh produce: corn, broccoli, eggplant, collard greens, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cilantro and the rest, neatly arrayed on tables under white Quik Shade canopy tents.[...]
It may be a stretch to believe a once-a-week farmers’ market will have a huge impact on eating patterns. Tavis Nembhard drove his grandmother, Avril Powell, still in her church dress, who bought three dozen ears of corn for herself and various family members. “The kids want that big M,” he said, referring to McDonald’s. Still, in the warm sun, everyone happily lugging home burlap bags of corn and boxes of squash, eggplant, lettuce, peppers and the rest, it felt, at the least, like a step in the right direction.
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