Honouring The Land That Feeds Us

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What are your feelings about eating meat?

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I’ve eaten meat all my life.
Not because I made a decision about it —
simply because it was there,
on the plate, part of the rhythm of childhood.

Food was uncomplicated then.
It appeared. I ate it.
No ethical considerations. No questions.
Just the comfort of routine and a full stomach.

At some point I started to notice how much meat I was eating.
How casually I reached for it.
How little variety there was.
And how the ease of it — the convenience —
was part of the problem.

So I began cutting back.
Choosing vegetarian options when they looked promising,
even when they didn’t.
At home I knew vegetarian food could be wonderful,
but only if someone had the time, the imagination,
and the dozen extra ingredients
that creativity seems to require.

Still, the more I thought about it,
the more uneasy I felt with the story behind my meals.

Not about eating meat per se
but about the way our systems work.
The scale.
The speed.
The market logic that turns living creatures
into units of efficiency and return on investment.

Somewhere along the way,
our need to feed a growing world
shifted into something harsher,
something crueler,
something that treated animals
not as animals
but as inputs.

And once you see that,
it becomes difficult to un-see.

I understand why people become vegan —
Grief for the way creatures are handled.
Grief for the land that buckles under the weight of demand.
Grief for the gap between what we say we value
and what our systems actually do.

I haven’t made any grand declarations.
No all-or-nothing vows.
Just a quiet awakening —
a shift toward choosing thoughtfully,
toward eating less meat,
toward noticing the cost behind the convenience.

I’m still learning.
But this much I know:
I support every effort to treat animals well.
To honour the land that feeds us.
To resist systems that forget
that the world is made of living things.