You may ask, "what does meat production have to do with design" and you'd be right to ponder the question, at least on the surface.
We live in a world where things are flown halfway across the world overnight from Japan, an amazing feat of logistics if there is one, yet we never pause to think about the implications of such amazingly complex supply-chains, unless there is a crisis that brings everything to a stop like we are living now.
We convenience-addicts in the west, think nothing of buying a fat steak that was slaughtered a couple of days ago on the other side of the continent and trucked overnight in a refrigerated rig, yet we bitch and moan when steak prices go up at the supermarket because a couple of slaughterhouses that process the large majority of the continent’s meat supply have shut down due to the pandemic and its associated risks of contamination.
At the same time, producers who act as good stewards of the earth continue to be able to produce and deliver their locally raised, grass-fed meat despite more and more people lining up to buy their goods, because they’re the only ones left with a reliable supply.
This affects how we move around the city, the way we get our food all the way to how essential products make it into our homes. What if most of what we ate was produced locally following standards of quality and sustainability that the industrial producers cannot match?
I think nothing of regenerative agriculture and have long been buying my meat straight from the farm. I know that the locally-produced food has the potential to solve many of the ills of monoculture if only governments would get out of the way and stop subsidizing cultures that contribute to pollution and global warming (farm subsidies, anyone?).
I know the person who raises my beef by name and I have all the confidence in the world that he will continue to deliver the highest quality product week after week and I think it's a more robust model in terms of supply reliability, all the while also being better for the environment.
The question is: are you ready to vote with your dollars and change your habits for better health and a better future?
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