In our modern society as things become automated, valuable knowledge and genetic diversity is being lost because individuals and the communities they live in have become detached from their food supply. The individual in general gives little thought to where their food comes from and how it gets there. Most people’s knowledge ends at the grocery store shelves. Most take for granted all the individuals, time and energy involved in getting their steak from field to fork. The internationalization of food production has created a bad case of the haves and the have not’s. One group can easily control another simply by controlling the food and water supply, therefore it is necessary for both individuals and the communities they live in to become educated about and involved in the production and distribution of their food sources, this in tern will create a conscious, conscientious society, and healthy empowered citizens.
The first step is always education, as technology advances and knowledge about sustainable farming practices increases; people have begun to forget even the basics about what they eat and how it got there. Mindlessly eating a frozen burrito, or the burger from a fast food chain happily ignorant to the damage they are doing to their bodies and the environment because of the choices they make or are not making.
Individuals need to understand the wheres and the hows to make responsible choices about what they are consuming. According to one study from the Humane Society, “Production of chicken meat, for instance, requires 14 times as much energy and 40 percent more cropland per unit of protein as the production of soybeans.” People need to understand fully that the steak they eat was once a cow and that the eggs they eat indeed came from chickens; apples do grow on trees and so on and so fourth. Comprehension that the hamburger they are eating was once a cow that ate grass and grain and was most likely factory farm raised in a filthy,...