Ten Things to Do

This web page links to Frances Moore Lappe's website. What got me thinking about her was an NPR story this morning about there being enough food for the world's poor, in light of growing population, less sustainable food choices being made, and the use of bio-fuels.


The first is old news, in fact it's been predicted for well over a hundred years. Ms. Lappe's book Diet for a Small Planet was really influential for me when I was in school --in fact I took a class just on hunger and food. In DSP, Ms. Lappe points out this is a myth, demonstrating that there is indeed enough food to feed the world's people --the problem is in fact a combination of our personal and political choices. The basic premise was sustainable diets are less meat intensive, many more people could live off the grain we feed cattle than can live off the meat from the same cattle. Of course, the extra (unnecessary) agricultural production is not environmentally healthy either.

On the second point, it turns out that as populations in India and China become wealthier they are eating more meat -adding to the problem. This is a relatively new and unexpected problem. But it's not their problem it's all of ours. We must all act. The solution offered by Ms. Lappe and her daughter in their new book Hope's Edge is similar to what Ms. Lappe first advocated in DSP: eat closer to the original source i.e. vegetarianism. What's different is the additional emphasis on going organic because of the carbon footprint of "modern" agricultural methods, and they write about buying local --when fuel production competes with feeding the hungry shipping that food halfway around the world makes even less sense. Here's a quote from 'Abdu'l-Baha:

As humanity progresses, meat will be used less and less ...man's food is intended to be grain and not meat. When mankind is more fully developed, the eating of meat will gradually cease.

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 170)

And from the Universal House of Justice:

As the laws brought by Bahá'u'lláh become known and operative throughout the world, we believe that humanity will find the proper balance in adjusting itself to nature and to the world of animals. As in so many other areas, the Teachings of Bahá'u'lláh in this regard follow the golden mean: kindness toward animals is definitely upheld, vegetarianism is encouraged, hunting is regulated, but certain latitude is left to individual conscience and in practical regard to the diversity of circumstances under which human beings live. For example, the indigenous peoples of the Arctic would be hard-pressed to subsist without recourse to animal products.

(20 November 1992, written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer)

So what do your "individual conscience and circumstances say to you.

just some food for thought,
-jeff