another book i could write but won’t because i would rather see it written by someone from that community: how vegan demands for the rights of animals STILL overlook the rights of farm workers. and how the demand for more vegan options will place further burden on those farm workers. who are humans.
and i could have sworn that we just had this convo on Tumblr recently too, but somebody missed that memo…
Is this meant to be serious? You posted a video highlighting the plight of migrant farm workers, and your solution is for people to eat less vegetables?
I hope your book would’ve detailed the subsidy structure that promoted a commodity crop surplus, stressed more yield per acre, increased the use of pesticides and fertilizer, and lead to the growth of multinational agribusiness corporations. We now sell corn for less than it costs to grow it, and family farms are no longer viable. Subsidies support feedlots and value-added corn products, such as Fritos and Pepsi, not farmers or consumers. An agricultural system that once depended on diverse, labor intensive farms now depends on some guys in the Midwest driving back and forth in tractors or combines for a few weeks per year.
In contrast, vegetable farms are not subsidized nor heavily mechanized, yet producers must compete with artificially cheapened processed foods. Thus the heavy labor requirements must be cheap (i.e. dependent on immigrants). It’s amusingly disappointing that the same people who don’t want to pay more for vegetables also argue that farm workers should make more. You don’t think that a greater increase in vegetable consumption would maybe shift policy and maybe even create more jobs through a return to diverse, labor-centered farms? It’s really laughable that you blame vegans for an increased burden on farm workers, and not the government policies that drove consumption and devalued human labor.
Yeah, better that someone else write that book.
13 Notes/ Hide
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emmeranne reblogged this from supersoygrrrl
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liquornspice reblogged this from so-treu and added:
badass commentary...Healingsakina. =D
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supersoygrrrl reblogged this from caramelbaloney and added:
Also let’s look at how the meat industry routinely exploits the poor and immigrants along with extremely unsafe work...
