Imagine if the now 7 billion world citizens shared one dinner table.
If you have lived in Battle Creek, MI (as I have), you likely participated in the world's longest breakfast table, a festival spotlighting regionally manufactured breakfast foods (Kellogg's plus others). That was a long table, but nothing like what it would take to feed 7 billion people.
In sharing that proverbial table, we would make sure everyone would have enough to eat, but we would also make sure that we had enough food.
Even with 7 billion people on the planet and millions starving or undernourished, the good news is that we can grow enough food for 7 billion people without doing significant damage to the planet. The bad news is that involves us not growing food for livestock or biofuels. According to a study in Nature magazine, only 62% percent of our crops go towards people food.
As bad as things are with food supplies, if the rest of the world starts eating meat at the rate Americans do, the current world food struggles will be mild compared to what will come. So this also means Americans eating more like the rest of the world instead of the world eating like Americans.
Government — through brutality, war, and yes, policy — and its role in food inequity. We think of Africa and the PSAs on TV asking us to donate money to feed those who don't have food, but look at what NAFTA has done to Mexico.
Growing food in factory farms causes havoc with our food supplies and the environment. So even with more people, we need to grow less food. Those people who have better access to meat should eat less meat. Save some for the rest of the world. Let the animals eat the grass that we can't, and we can get the benefits of the grass by eating those animals. Smaller is better, farm-wise. For those who can, we should supplement what we can buy with what we can grow.
We are all connected at the world dinner table. Our instincts in a much smaller dinner table are to make sure everyone gets enough; that instinct doesn't go away just because we can't see the people at the other end.
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