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Of course i'm willing to do my share. And i hope you'd do yours, as well. You'd be surprised how little time it takes to feed everyone. A small portion of the p
by southerntofu 5y ago
Of course i'm willing to do my share. And i hope you'd do yours, as well. You'd be surprised how little time it takes to feed everyone. A small portion of the population in the Global North is responsible for feeding everyone, and still most of the production is wasted in animal exploitation (feeding cattle to then eat it is really not resource-efficient if you look at it from an energy transfer angle) and food waste due to the capitalist distribution system (every supermarket needs aisles overflowing with food, 20-50% of which gets thrown out).
Of course, the western "green revolution" model of industrialized monoculture is not the way to go as it has shown over the decades that it degrades the soils and renders them sterile and dry (which is starting to be a big big problem here in western Europe). But permaculture techniques can yield the same order of magnitude of foods in a much more eco-friendly/diverse and health-friendly manner (such foods are much richer in vitamins/minerals).
Let's say i would be willing to give 1 month full-time work every year to help feed everyone. Although from my experience working the fields, i believe that's way more than what would be required. But then, if you really insist that you don't want to work the fields, i'm sure there's probably other ways for you to contribute to society. Maybe you're a good cook? Or know some medicine? Build some cool furniture? Play nice music or recount interesting stories?
In the end, nothing is "for free" because we need to spend time on it. But everything is "for free" because time does not cost us a dime and is easily shared with more people. Arguably, we could maintain our modern lifestyle working ~1 day per week [0] by just removing useless work/jobs. If that were the case, wouldn't you be happy to do your part so that everyone can eat?
[0] Many serious scientists predicted it over a century ago. But the increase in productivity per worked hour has not led us to work reduction but to creating "bullshit jobs" that do not produce anything: accounting, marketing, managers... all of these jobs are only required in a capitalist system but produce exactly 0 value for workers and end-users. Of course, "maintaining our modern lifestyle" with less work does nothing to break our dependence on extractivism and oil/gas as energy source, which we should probably do something about very fucking quickly.