It is not the aim of this blog to try and talk the world into becoming vegan, or even vegetarian but rather the goal is to discuss the object of living with less. Since I started this blog on November 30, 2011 I have discussed a plethora of topics around being a woman/writer/artist who lives part time in a project called Tiny House Ontario and how this huge, but Tiny project is going and is effecting me.
But there is something going on here in Canada and the United States that is too huge to ignore and has me really worried. Right now we in Ontario and a whole lot of the USA are living through an historic and dreadfully bad drought. The Canadian government has been nearly silent on the issue but recently I read an article out of the United States which explains briefly the reasoning behind the USDA’s sensible recommendation that citizens give up eating meat on Mondays. It carries some mind boggling statistics and information in it. Even so, the article does not go far enough (in my opinion). The most significant missed topic in the article is that it does not discuss what the USDA and farmers already know. Here it is! Livestock are being and will continue to be “dumped” because farmers cannot afford to feed them. This means (for those of you who did not come up on farms) that they sell mostly ALL of their animals as livestock for slaughter. This might seem like good news if you are a meat eater (initially) but here is where you are wrong, this means that there will be a lack of breeding stock next year. You will start to see huge price jumps at about Christmas for the cost of meat and the price will keep on raising. Truth is, it will take a few years for the animals and the farmers to catch up.
The hostile and arrogant reaction of the politicians quoted in this article is totally off the mark*. They flaunt their stupidity on the subject of meat. Not just on how it is produced but the time of production as well as the costs of production are not noted at all. These clowns absurdly suggest what they will do, which is to “eat more, put pounds of meat on display and call the USDA heretics”. What they are saying in essence is we are going to eat it all up until it is gone and leave nothing for you. It is greed and ignorance at best!
The sad fact is, I am commenting on this subject because a lot more people will go to bed hungry this winter in both the USA and Canada and for the next year or two as well, if there are not GREAT growing years coming our way. I wish it was not going to be this way, but it is. Quite simply, we have not had nearly enough rain. Below is an image from NASA Earth Observatory. There is more info from them here.
What I am asking, is to buy some food from your most local farmer and please eat less meat for the next couple of years. I know it sounds cliche, but if we all do a little bit there will be a little bit left over for the poorest among us.
I can’t tell you how much that I hope I am wrong.
*I want to qualify that I am not partisan or even particularly interested in who is who. These folks are way too far from me to make me even remotely interested in finding out anything about the particulars of the political affiliation.
Tiny House Ontario 