"Very soon after the release of Diet for a Planet in 1971, I began to summarize my message this way: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy, as people are denied power even over life’s essentials. I wanted to focus my readers on power."

"At the time, our culture was being hit with a scary message: Experts were predicting imminent famine, as we humans were overwhelming the Earth’s limits... Burrowing in at UC’s agricultural library... to my great surprise, I discovered the experts were wrong. There was enough food for all. Even more shocking, I learned that what we counted (and still count) as available food was what was left over after we devoted vast crop and grazing land to feeding livestock that return to us only a fraction of what they eat."

"United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says 26 percent of the earth's terrestrial surface is used for livestock grazing. One-third of the planet's arable land is occupied by livestock feed crop cultivation... "Going, going…but not yet gone: The Amazon rainforest, one of the most beautiful and important ecosystems on the planet, is being sacrificed for the cattle industry. The developed world’s appetite for beef is driving the destruction, with cleared lands often used to grow livestock feed crops for export." [smithsonianmag.com]

***Question: When do you think the world will understand that global destruction of forests and wild lands to overuse the land for animal agriculture is going release CO2 and methane, and increase deadlier climate change disasters?

With rapid global warming, the ability of the planet to support life will dwindle. Hunger, growing insecurity, international conflict, and numerous climate change refugees will result. Already happening. Without real democracy, we don't control the quality of food either. Add the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, gmo's, mono-crops, and thousands of chemicals to alter processed foods which cause poor nutrition and disease. So when it comes to food production, democracy is as important as it is in other human activity.