Long ago, all people gathered or grew their own food. But gradually most people specialised into other lines of business, selling the time they worked for tokens which you call money. With that money, they could buy food. Today in the rich countries, hardly anyone grows their own food any more. Hardly anyone knows how to. So growing and selling food has become a big business.



This involves  several giant corporations which increasingly own all rights to vital seeds and also make the chemicals farmers have to use to make them grow into plants ready to harvest. Machines harvest the food (in most cases) which then has to be stored in silos or refrigerated buildings. Trucks and airplanes then transport the food around the world and it ends up, after processing, on supermarket shelves… where you buy it. This system is very new, it makes lots of money for those who run it and it is very good at producing lots of food. But there are hidden costs… and I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about damage to people’s livelihoods, damage to the environment (land, sea, rivers, air, forests) and damage to people’s health.

The Meatrix: Let Moophius take you and Leo, the pig, on an animated tour of industrial farming.

It’s not all gloom though.

Things are – as ever – changing. People are beginning to see that money isn’t everything if making it damages the planet so badly that the future is bleak. So many farmers are beginning to convert their farms to sustainable farming (which is what they were anyway before industrial farming took over).

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