A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Credit: Moscow Ministry of Agriculture and Food I'm a loyal reader and financial supporter of the British non-profit news outlet The Guardian , and subscribe to its "Animals Farmed" newsletter. Every couple of months or so, the newsletter arrives in my email inbox with news of the wild, weird world of what we still call farming, but that mostly just looks like mass murder at this point. Even just reading the little summary blurbs about the stories is an excellent reinforcer of my efforts to ramp back my meat consumption to almost nothing. I used to love my farm set when I was a kid, but realistic play with a modern-day "farm set" would require stuffing your cute plastic animals into an overcrowded, hellish stink-barn for a very short life of misery, with not a whiff of green grass or fresh air to be found. So let's start there with my first link from this morning's newsletter, about how Russian industrial farms are experimenting with virtual rea...

     Who has the right to own land?      In countries like Canada, we decided some time ago that it’s either government, aboriginals or people with enough money to buy a piece of tierra firma , and many of us get along just fine without owning land. While almost 70 per cent of Canadians own their own homes, it’s not a prerequisite to happiness.      But the issue is more complex in countries like Nicaragua, where owning land can make the difference between being able to feed your family and going hungry.      Subsistence farmers in Nicaragua can survive on the most minimal incomes if they own enough land to grow their food. Their basic diets of corn and beans may be monotonous and not diverse enough to guarantee good nutrition, but at least the calories are sufficient to keep a family going.       But that breaks down when a poor family doesn't own land or can't plant on someone else's land. ...