On my most recent trip to Wales, I took along the New York Times Bestseller (paperback edition) of Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I highly recommend the book for anyone wanting to learn more about life on the farm and what is involved in rasiing plant and animal life to live on instead of using the local mega-mart. The author catalogues the decision made by her family to move from Arizona to southern Appalachia and all the trials and tribulations that happened during the first year of becoming self-sufficient. The book is well-written and easy to read and packed with interesting facts on raising and eating many forms of plant and animal life. It also has plenty of troubling facts about the sad state of the planet based on our lack of respect for it, such as:
- About a third of all our calories now come from what is known, by community consent, as junk food.
- Purchasing that banana from Ecuador does not so much help the farmer, who makes $6/day as much as the CEO of Dole, who is worth $1.4 billion, because so much money is made in the global reshuffling of food that benefit the processors, brokers, shippers, supermarkets and oil companies. (Oh, yeah, "We do it all for you!)
- Of the 400 million turkeys consumed each year, more than 99% of them are a single breed: the Broad-Breasted White, a quick fattening monster bred specificially for industrial-scale setting...if one were to somehow escape slaughter it would not live past one-year because it would collapse under its own weight, which means it cannot breed and makes for an easy meal because it cannot protect itself from predators that fancy turkey meat!
All in all, the book was an interesting read for anyone interested in learning more about what one can do to turn back the tide of industrialized and globalized food by growing more plants and animals for personal consumption (or sharing with others) and supporting local farmers.
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