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QEW Interest groups: Other areas being explored |
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Agriculture and Diet The connection between our diets and the crisis in global ecological sustainability is often overlooked in the focus on what others are doing or what we think they should be doing. There are manifold problems "out there" that need urgent attention, and we often feel powerless as individuals. But one of the ways we can exert the most influence in the world (besides voting for environmentally responsible leaders) is "voting" with our food purchases. As Jeremy Rifkin put it dramatically, "Eating is the ultimate political act."
When we consider how many times each year we "vote" in this manner, it is hard to escape the conclusion that ecologically responsible eating is one of the most powerful things we do as individuals: Moreover, we should never underestimate the political clout we can exercise over the food system when we organize as consumers and make an impression on decision-makers. |
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Every time we take a product off the shelf and put it in our shopping cart, we set in motion a chain of events that stretches back to the producer, sending the clear message to the market, "make more." And many of the food production and processing practices we stimulate in this way are causing grievous harm to our fragile planet—from the destruction of rainforests for beef production to the depletion of aquifers for dry land farming, from the contamination of water with farm chemicals to the loss of genetic diversity and integrity of the world's seed stock.