The Truth About Vegetarian Diets (Watch This First)

It's gotta be covered all the time, you know, with those life-giving plants. So, but the annual, that's what they do. So annuals and perennials, and so the annual monocrops, of course, are a system that nature does not recognize as a natural system, and there's no way to sustain it. The only way to sustain it is by doing the things that humans are doing now. So applying fossil fuels, using plows and tractors, using fences, and ultimately a great deal of energy, because that is the only way to fight that constant battle against the perennials that would like to take, take the planet back and create more, more life. That's, that's their job. That's what they're here for. And we are— every time you do agriculture, you are fighting a battle against those perennial polycultures. It's one of the reasons it takes so much energy.

So, so essentially, um, basically mono, monoculture, monocrops aren't natural at all by any means, um, supposed to grow naturally. And humans have to basically fight an uphill battle with all this energy, TNT, as you said before, to grow those monocrops.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem. And before we had fossil fuel, before humans had figured out how to use fossil fuel and to build those machines, so before the Industrial Revolution, what humans used instead was other humans. So this is why agricultural societies always end up slave societies, because anywhere from, you know, 80 to 90% of the population has to be enslaved to provide labor and also draft animals of course, come in handy. So those two, you know, that's the way that it was done before. And what this means is that, you know, everybody mentions, you know, Athens is the great birthplace of Western democracy. 90% of the population in Athens was enslaved, okay? And you can talk about the year 1800, that's the year that, you know, the fossil fuel age really begins. But in the year 1800, three-quarters of the human beings alive on the planet, fully three-quarters, lived in some form of slavery, indenture, or serfdom. Okay, so for anybody to have leisure time, it meant that a whole bunch of other people had to be enslaved. And that has been the pattern for 10,000 years, is these highly stratified, hierarchical, militaristic civilizations. And that's what it requires for anybody to have, you know, time to do, you know, the arts and sciences that we think of when we say civilization. It means that a whole bunch of other people have to be immiserated and kept in these horrible conditions, backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk. So it's, I don't see this as a positive motion in human history. And Jared Diamond says that agriculture was the biggest mistake that the human race has ever made, in part because it's inherently unsustainable, and in part because it destroyed human society. It made us hierarchical and militaristic and violent and all that great stuff that we're fighting. And it goes back to this living pattern that's based on drawdown of natural resources and the inherent unsustainability and violence that's required to do that.

So just a theoretical question on that one. If there was no agriculture today, so, you know, none of it ever happened, would you think there would be like— basically the way I see agriculture, it did help, I guess, cities be formed, like things like TV, what we could basically call civilization today. If it was never formed, do you think that would still happen, or would we have advanced the way we have, or what's your opinion on that?

I don't think so. I think that indigenous people who are living in a harmonic balance with their natural environment, with, you know, the living community around them, they have different technologies. They don't need to make those kinds of technologies. They have technologies that are spiritual technologies, and they have technologies that are about getting what they need to survive without hurting the land around them. And that's a very different kind of technology than the technology of agriculturalists, which are technologies of domination. So I think that they're very different. I mean, this is gonna set you on a very different path in terms of what you think you need and how you think you're gonna get it. I mean, like a lot of people say, well, you know, beavers make dams, so what's wrong with dams? And, you know, my response to this is, well, when beavers make dams, what they create is wetlands, and wetlands are the most species-rich habitat on the planet. So they're making way more life when they build a dam. I mean, an extraordinary thing happens when beavers build wetlands. And contrast that to the dams that humans make. We create deserts behind our dams. We kill the forests when we make dams, completely different. So I would say that, you know, there are ways to use technology. Humans always make technology, we are tool-building animals, but what kind of technology? Is it technology that's inherently democratic? That anybody can learn to make, anybody can learn to use, or is it technology that requires hierarchy, that's gonna require the destruction of your environment, which means it's going to be a violent process, it's gonna require a military, because people don't willingly give up, you know, their trees and their soil and their water and their fish and everything that's destroyed by industrial processes like mining. And the only way that I think, you know, we're able to have this in the industrialized world is that we live behind a military barricade. So we outsource the violence to other places, poor places, and we pretend that it's not happening, but it is happening. And right now people in China are dying to get the rare earth metals that create the magnets for windmills. You know, everybody, "Oh, we're gonna go green, we're gonna build windmills." Just amazingly destructive process to get those rare earth minerals out, just creates toxic sludge all over the land. So here's these people in China, like literally, dying so that we can pretend we're being green by making windmills. And it's not moral, it's not just, and it certainly isn't sustainable. So I think we're gonna have to look past that barricade, that military barricade, and really acknowledge the cost of this way of life, and that, you know, there's a basic value problem here. You know, does the world exist for us to use, or are we simply one more participant who should— we need to take our place again as as, you know, life-affirming participants in those biotic communities. Otherwise we're all dead. I mean, it's a kind of a grim choice at this point. You know, there's—

Yeah.

We're out of time. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. So let's just switch gears for a second. Let's talk a bit more about grains. After reading your book, grains don't only seem like a really bad health choice, but obviously one of the most destructive crops to the planet. I just wanna set up this question with a couple of quotes that I pulled from your book. The surfeit of US grain and the starvation in poor countries are not inverse but proportional. Why should people in Cambodia be dependent on the US for basic sustenance? And it costs a farmer $3 to grow a bushel but only fetches $2. The difference is paid by the federal government. So corn, now we know that corn is cheaper to buy than it is to sell, and obviously the difference made up by the US government. So can you please explain why the US government subsidizes corn and how does it actually affect the rest of the world?

Yeah, this is a real problem. There's essentially 6 corporations that control the world food supply. That should scare people. 6 corporations control the world food supply.

What are the 6 corporations?

There's Continental, there's Cargill, Monsanto. I'm trying to remember what the other ones are off the top of my head. I should have written this down before you called. Anyway, Cargill and Continental, for instance, they each account for 25% of the grain trade. So two corporations control half of the grain around the entire planet, but that should be terrifying. Cargill is the third largest privately held corporation on the planet, third largest privately held corporation on the planet. And there's five companies that control 75% of corn, and there's four that control all the soybeans. So it's like, you know, it's a monopoly. Because they have a monopoly, this is what they're able to do. They can drive the price of those grains below the cost of production, which is to say that no matter how hard farmers try, they cannot keep their heads above water, there's no way. And so they're always having to produce more just to try to, you know, make ends meet. So every year there's more of a surplus and every year they can get less money for it. And so then the next year they've got to go out and do the same thing. And, you know, hand in hand with this, of course, there's more fertilizer, you know, more of these industrial processes this endless battle to try to make, to force these plants to produce, you know, even bigger seed heads and shorter stems. And now we've got genetic engineering, which is its own kind of nightmare. But anyway, that's what's going on sort of economically, is that these poor farmers, there's no way for them to do this. I mean, they would be out of business immediately. And that monopoly power means that they can, you know, that those corporations can make the price that low. So what happens is the US government steps in and gives subsidies to the farmers. And that is just a direct contribution right into the profit margins of those corporations. It didn't used to be that way in the United States. We used to have a completely different kind of farm policy because they recognized that those surpluses were always gonna work against farmers. So that all changed. And now it's all just about corporate profits. I think part of the reason is that way more people used to farm. I mean, half of us used to live on farm, wasn't that long ago. Now farming is a statistically insignificant occupation in the United States. 'cause it's less than 3% of the population. So people don't have a clue what's going on in farm country, but what's going on is actually a lot of suicide. Suicide is the number one cause of death for farmers right now in the United States. In other countries, that's true as well, but that's how grim the situation is, okay? No matter how hard they work, they can never make back their production costs, let alone enough money to live on. So then the government kicks in with all this money because of the farm policies put forward by these corporations, okay? You gotta understand who's the guiding hand behind the government, you know, and it's the giant corporations. And then there's these huge surpluses, And so you get two things with that. One is you get factory farming because the grain is so cheap, you can feed corn to cows and you can torture them and, you know, create this hell for animals, but you will get cheap meat at the end. And the other thing that they do with the corn is they, it's called agricultural dumping. And they go to poor countries and they flood the market. And this drives the peasant farmers off their land, out of business and into urban squalor. And this is what really has created these gigantic slums around cities in the third world. And it's all about the profit of those corporations. Their goal is to drive those farmers out of business and they've been very successful. So the moment that NAFTA was passed, within 2 years there were, I think, 2 million farmers in Mexico went out of business. And what that meant was they had nowhere to go and they were starving. And if people in the United States wanna understand why there's a problem at the border between the US and Mexico, that's why. Where else are they gonna go? You know, they've been driven off their land, they've got no way to support themselves, they're starving. So what options have they got? And this is true around the world, it's true in the Philippines, it's true in India. And these horrible corporations are, you know, just, destroying everything as fast as they can by having these cheap, very, very cheap foodstuffs. And it destroys the local subsistence economies. And that is exactly what it's intended to do. And it's very successful. So, you know, Indian farmers, they drink poison to die. They take the toxic chemicals they're supposed to put on the land and they've had mass suicides, you know, where a dozen of them will do it at once to try to get somebody to pay attention. But, you know, if you talk to food or democracy activists from around the world, that's the number one problem is this cheap agricultural dumping. And the odd part is that in the United States, all these progressive environmentally-minded people think that this is the way, what we're supposed to be doing, that somehow that cheap grain should go to starving people. They've got it exactly backwards. I mean, all the major hunger organizations, all the democracy movements say exactly the opposite, get your stupid corporations out of our country. You're killing us all, you're destroying our lifeways, you're destroying our traditional cultures, and you're just creating all this, there's millions of people in misery now, all for a little, you know, for their profit. So, you know, on every level, again, this is just, it's unjust, it's miserable, and it's just destructive. And I, this part we really have to get right. There's this one we've had wrong for about 30 years now, we've got it completely backwards. And so again, the agricultural dumping is really, it's a human rights violation. So it's just gotta, we've gotta make this stop, but it means that we've gotta face up to the power of those 6 corporations and sort of name, you know, the man behind the curtain and, you know, the amount of power that they have, why do they have this power, why have they been able to destroy everything, and why everybody is so passive about this process, you know, 'cause the same thing happened here in the United States. People were pushed off their lands, they had to go to the urban environments, and this is the reason why, 'cause they were able to drive that price so low. So does that answer your question?

Yeah, and then some. Just to, I guess, kind of put a summary on what you just, you know, kind of said was that the last place on earth where you would want cheap US grain to go is somewhere like Cambodia or a third world country because of the fact that when they do get that grain, you know, they, they, the farmers can't compete with the price of the US grain. So then that they, because they can't compete, people start buying the US grain and they eventually go out of business. They can't support their family. And that's obviously an industry for the country that, you know, is going to produce revenue for the farmer and for the community. And because the US and people keep sending cheap grain, it's basically destroying the whole economy of that country. Is that correct?

That's absolutely right. That's what's happening around the world. Yeah.

Yeah. One of this question might be a little bit redundant, but we'll just kind of get a summary on it. One of the vegetarian myths is that agricultural foods, foods of peace and justice. With that said, can you explain the grain cartels, which you pretty much already have, who they are, what role do they play in the world's food supply? So if you just kind of put a summary on that, that question.

Yeah, well, you know, they've just got these vast profits. They don't get mentioned very much, but they pretty much control everything. I mean, they're all owned by the same people, whether it's McDonald's, whether it's, you know, your vegan Morningstar hamburger, fake burger, you know, whether it's your your Silk Soy Milk, whether it's, you know, the almonds that you got, it's all owned by the same people.