permaculture

[Skye <skye@tortuga.com>]

Hola a todos

In early winter last year I gave a course in northern Germany. One
morning I listened as two women talked about their vegan/raw food diets.
They talked of how healthy and better they felt, and how more people
should eat such a great diet.

I watched as they breakfasted on bananas (probably from Costa Rica),
drank orange juice (Californian oranges?), put a little margarine
(oilseeds from USA) on their wholemeal toast (wheat from Canada). As I
watched I could see the large tracts of land destroyed in other
countries to grow their food. I could see the poverty of campesinos
trying to produce their food. I could feel the pain as cultural patterns
are destroyed as more people in "developing" countries are brought into
the global economy. I realised the ecological damage and pollution of
the whole distribution system needed to feed these two people.

I came to threee conclusions
1. The vegan diet is basically for the financially priveledged of the
"first" world.
2. That it is environmentally destructive.
3. That socially and ecologically the world cannot afford such a diet.

----------------------
> >It is likely that the next phase of human civilisation will eventually
> >reject animal slavery, just as it did human slavery. I certainly do
> already.

Have we rejected human slavery??? Or just shifted it off-shore!!!! Of
course now we use the more politacly accepted term "free trade zones".
Areas where the might of the US economy has been used to bully poorer
countries into setting up areas where environmental laws are not
permitted, where basic wages do not exist, where basic worker safety
considerations are irrelevant, where sexual harassment is rampant,
corruption the order of the day, where workers can be subjected to
exposure to toxic chemicals banned in USA........ I guess there is a
difference, in the old version of slavery the owners at least generally
burried the bodies of their victims, - now, when a worker starts dying
from toxic poisoning, he/she is sacked - leaving the relatives and
family to cover the pain and financial burden of a slow lingering death
and subsequent funeral.


To live in a way that minimises suffering -
1. Do not buy any food grown/processed outside your immediate bioregion.
2. Do not buy any products made by companies who have operations (or
contrived subsiduaries) in free trade zones in Latin America,
Phillipines, India etc...

Now there is a real challenge!!!

Good Luck!
Skye 
-- 
Skye - Apdo # 391,  Patzcuaro, Michoacan, CP. 61600 México. 
fax  (52) 01 (434) 24743
Profesor y diseñador en Permacultura
Director del Instituto de Permacultura de México A.C.
Talleres de desarrollo humano, planeación participativa y 
economía comunitaria.



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