I would have to say that harvesting your own food certainly gives you a stronger connection to it. I would compare it to having to earn your allowance and appreciating the toys you can buy with the money you worked so hard for. vs. if your parents just put the toy in front of you at the request. If you take the time to grow food, water it, nurture and so on, then the time invested in them will make you fully appreciate every bite! My mom was a huge gardener and always had some fresh vegetables so I really grew to appreciate her efforts. On the other end of the spectrum, my dad is a hunter and brother is a fisher. I would say I have grown to appreciate where the food comes from and have a new value for it while I'm eating. I would definitely say its a good thing in most instances but I don't think it's very realistic to eat harvested food for everybody on a regular basis. I think I would be less likely to eat meat if I had to butcher every animal I ate just because of the inconvenience. However, if all food had to be harvested entirely, I would definitely eat far more meat. I think hunting is certainly moral, people have been doing it since the start of people. Buying the meat for sale doesn't mean that your saving the animal that you would have to kill. Two wrongs don't make a right and if everybody did harvest their own food, then less would be produced for the masses.
Griffith, Chris. Food Sustainability: Diverging Implications. Bradford, England: Emerald Group, 2004. E-Book.
Seymour, John. The Self-Sufficient Gardener: A Complete Guide to Growing and Preserving All Your Own Food. Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, 1979. Print.
Millertime I like the facts that you are making about becoming closer to your food personally if you take time to harvest it personally. I know that if you take time out of your life to do anything you may value it more then something else where you just had to go to the store and pick it up. With this harvesting you know exactly what goes in and the process it goes threw to get to where it is today. By knowing this process the harvesting item becomes like your own child, you take care of it while watching it grow into a mature item.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to comment on your idea of working in a certain area and not being able to eat that certain food. I know you hear a lot about the meet and diary industry now days. If people only know what these item go threw before they got to our plates. Those individuals like meat processors do know this process, so eating items is less likely because they are more aware of issue of consuming the item.
Great comparison with the harvesting and allowance at the beginning. I can agree that if you spent time growing your own food you would have a somewhat stronger attachment to it, as opposed to just grabbing it off the shelf. I never thought about gardening as harvesting your own food, because that was something I did with my mom too. And I definitely remember feeling a sense of pride when our meals consisted of the food we planted ourselves. I agree with you at the end where you talk about how buying meat at the store doesn't inevitably save the animal. As much as I don't like hunting I don't believe I could ever become a vegetarian. It's easier to maintain an out of sight out of mind view on the meat industry.
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