Our success depends on interacting the earth for the benefit of both humanity and nature, as all life has intrinsic value, and we are responsible to the earth from which we came.
In order to produce the mass quantities of food required to feed the United States—a nation of 321 million people—the focus is not on environmental care but on efficiency of food production. This is wrong. Machinery has overpowered the current state of agriculture, and in the case of the meat industry especially we have seen technology’s potential to harm rather than help. While already a vegetarian, reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma allowed me to reexamine and thus reinforce my rationale for those choices: I have been a vegetarian since birth, so often times that choice is a passive one. There is a surplus of healthy options available for me without much active effort on my part, as a good portion of my family, immediate and extended, is vegetarian. In the modern age, the claim that humans need meat for optimal survival is unsubstantiated; in fact, a conscious vegetarian diet has been shown to have health benefits as well as environmental benefits.