As people everywhere celebrate Earth Day, there’s clearly a lot of progress to cite in the world of agriculture and food production. There’s an organic garden on the White House lawn. There’s a community garden at the USDA headquarters in Washington, mirroring the community gardens and farmer’s markets that are sprouting up like wildflowers in towns and cities all across the US. Heck, there’s a movement afoot to replace lawns with vegetable gardens and even a tiny bubble of a movement leaning toward “vegan farming,” which pushes agriculture away from the use of animal-based fertilizers let alone the pesticides and other nasty stuff the organic farming movement deemed passé long ago.
“There’s a lot of good things happening,” says Gene Baur, the president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary — the nation’s leading farm-animal protection organization. “But not enough.”
Calling attention to what it calls “one of the most underreported stories of the decade,” Farm Sanctuary is stepping out this Earth Day to remind people everywhere about one very important scientific notion. As they state in their press materials: “If we really — really — want to get serious about tackling global climate change, we need to start looking at what’s on our plates.”
Using United Nations and Intergovernmental Panel research to back up the case that animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions (ahead of the entire transportation sector), Farm Sanctuary’s “Green Foods Campaign” is actively campaigning to get Green Foods Resolutions passed in cities and towns all across America.
What exactly is a Green Foods Resolution? It’s forward-thinking legislation in which cities and towns aim to reduce their carbon “foodprint” by offering citizens greater access to plant-based foods through local farmer’s markets and community gardens, and educating folks about the environmental and health benefits associated with eating more plant-based foods.
“Switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, carpooling, recycling — these are all great ways we can lessen our carbon footprint,” says Baur, “but when compared with the difference you can make simply by eliminating or reducing meat and animal products from your diet, other aspects of green living pale by comparison.”
For Baur, a vegan, the choice to not eat meat or animal products was simply a matter of being honest about where his food was coming from.
When most people sit down for a nice steak dinner, he tells Tonic, “They’re disconnected from the animal who was killed — and probably abused — to produce that meat. They’re eating in a way that is inconsistent with their own values. There’s willful ignorance — a desire not to know [how that food went from living and breathing to sitting on a plate.]“
“But it also goes to what happens to the environment,” he says. “Eating animal food is extremely inefficient. Even those who consider themselves environmentalists are eating foods that contribute significantly to environmental destruction.”
The movement to change that has already begun. In October 2009, the small town of Signal Mountain, Tenn., became the first town in America to pass a Green Foods Resolution, according to Farm Sanctuary. And just last month, Alexandria, Va., did the same. There’s currently a resolution pending in New York City. And earlier this month, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to establish “Meat Free Mondays,” part of a broad movement encouraging restaurants, grocery stores and schools to offer more plant-based choices to customers and students.
Aside from legislating green eating, Baur has hope that with every passing day, more and more people will join the Vegan movement. “The best thing to do is to become vegan. Just try one meal a day. Having spaghetti and meatballs? Try it without the meatballs. Or put on veggie meatballs, which are readily available now; or use vegetables instead of any meat type things.”
From Baur’s point of view, anyone who continues a meat-based diet is “supporting an abusive animal farm system … and living in a state of denial. We want people to make choices … to eat food that doesn’t make them sick. It’s a basic idea, but right now the way people are eating, we’re causing heart disease, cancer, obesity. If people made the choice to eat more consistently with their own interests, we would see a shift toward more plant-based foods, and a shift toward sustainable agriculture — an agricultural system that doesn’t destroy the planet.”
Not everyone will agree with that course of action. But Baur’s convinced that time will prove him right. As it stands, animal-based diets “are wasting vast resources, polluting water and there’s no way it’s sustainable.”
As a result, “Change is going to happen,” Baur says. “It’s just a matter of how it happens.”
Photo by by dirkjankraan.com via Flickr.