What is this world we live in? If I eat an egg I endorse
killing male chicks and the awful living conditions of mass chicken farming,
where the lights are left on all night to make them grow faster and the hens can’t move much. If I eat some chicken, pork or beef I have no idea where it
comes from. I don’t know how the animal spent its life. I can merely buy based
on an environmental label which I hope means the animal came through good
conditions.
If I buy a vegetable from the Netherlands or Spain, it’s
most likely grown on plains of plastic, under incomprehensibly large artificial
greenhouse conditions, where immigrant workers from Africa are paid next to nothing and have no fixed contract. In Spain when they do get work, it's 35 euros a day; they live in slums on the outskirts of the fields without access to
running water. The water is used to grow tomatoes, sucked out at an unsustainable rate from the region's groundwater.
Land is being bought up in Romania by investors looking to
exploit ‘Bio’ organic labels, a business worth €21bn across europe and €7bn in Germany alone. They buy land from small landholders, receiving a subsidy
of €300 per hectare from the EU to grow organic on an industrial scale, removing biodiversity, local culture and local livelihoods from the region. Making the land economic and building processing
structures makes the land a very good investment. The aim: take and control
vast areas of land to maximise profits and scalability. Smallholders sell their
land at €2,500 per hectare, a fraction of the price of land in Switzerland or
Germany (€35 – 70,000). What can the smallholders do after selling their land? Presumably
work in the investors' factories for a limited wage – if they are lucky enough
to get a job there and not viewed as unreliable. What justice is this?
As a consumer, how do I avoid causing massive destruction
and contributing to social, environmental and animal distress? If I eat soya instead of meet, I
deforest rainforests to make room for soya plantations. If I eat meat I cause animal suffering. If I eat vegetables/fruit I
contribute to exploitation and mass scale unsustainable farming across the EU. This
includes overuse of pesticides, biocides and nitrogen fertilisers. If I drink
milk or eat cheese I cause calves to be torn away from their mothers directly
after birth, who are artificially kept on hormones that keep their milk coming.
My own body ingests various toxins and hormones along with the nutrients. All
this before we even consider produce from outside the EU.
Yes, I can buy my vegetables from a certified farm shop or local market. That's no solution for those who are forced to buy from discount supermarkets - unless we maybe agree that food should be a larger part of our consumptive budget. What about the other billions of people on earth? Is it really possible to feed that many mouths with this form of production?
Yes, I can buy my vegetables from a certified farm shop or local market. That's no solution for those who are forced to buy from discount supermarkets - unless we maybe agree that food should be a larger part of our consumptive budget. What about the other billions of people on earth? Is it really possible to feed that many mouths with this form of production?
Besides, I eat more than I need to and exercise too little. I stare
at my computer screen all day, sitting on my office chair. I expect to be kept
warm in winter and cool in summer, supplied with goods to meet my every desire
and I am relentlessly advertised goods which I have no need of. I expect to get healthcare on
demand and fair working rights. I am one of 80 million people living in
Germany. I am one of 1.2 billion living in developed countries. I am one of
over 7 billion humans living on this small planet. I am one of the lucky ones.
Fairtrade, bio/organic labels and certifications claim to
solve these problems. Yet they remain by-in-large unchecked and untrue to their
original goals. They do not achieve what the consumer might hope - and normally assumes. I could eat
vegan and grow my own food, but that is a huge challenge. Besides, if I do that what impact would it have on the poorly paid and exploited workers? Who is the real winner in this system? The
consumer, the producer, the worker, the supermarket, or wealthy stakeholders? How
do we propose to feed 7 billion people with bio products? Industrial scale is
still necessary, low prices and market share even more so.
The rich list in the UK doubled their wealth to £519bn in the last 5 years, while the average growth rate from 2009-2013 was -0.03%. Does this seem like an equal distribution of wealth, with a large trickle down potential? Not to mention that GDP is generated as much from producing goods as it is from selling cigarettes, cleaning up oil spills and treating cancer.
The rich list in the UK doubled their wealth to £519bn in the last 5 years, while the average growth rate from 2009-2013 was -0.03%. Does this seem like an equal distribution of wealth, with a large trickle down potential? Not to mention that GDP is generated as much from producing goods as it is from selling cigarettes, cleaning up oil spills and treating cancer.
What is this world we live in? What are we doing in the name
of profits, production and consumption? The great success of the 20th
century was that humankind solved production. We became able to produce more
goods than we could consume. It stopped being a case of not having enough
workers to produce products, but not having enough people to buy our products.
The free market. Success goes to those who can sell. More, more, more.
Most of us are workers supporting the system, driving it ever forwards in the
pursuit of exponential growth. Exponential - a function humanity doesn't understand. We forgot about the planet that supports us and that scale has its limits.
The planet cannot continue in this way for much longer. What are we doing?
Please help me figure it out.
Please help me figure it out.
