When Ally Menzies was a child, her father made yearly moose-hunting trips to Riding Mountain National Park, about 200 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.
Moose was a familiar part of her family’s diet, said Menzies, a wildlife conservation researcher at the University of Guelph and a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation. But when she became a teenager, the moose population started to decline. First Nations and Métis people found it more and more difficult to harvest moose in the area.
Entrepreneurs and adventurers have long traveled the world in search of gold. European empires looted Latin America for its silver and tin. Diamonds attracted the rapacious to Africa. Oil has built enormous empires of wealth in the Gulf states.
Don’t dismiss soil: its unknowable wonders could ensure the survival of our species
Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It’s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it. Soil.
The solution is not more fields but better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories
No issue is more important, and none so shrouded in myth and wishful thinking. The way we feed ourselves is the key determinant of whether we survive this century, as no other sector is as damaging . Yet we can scarcely begin to discuss it objectively, thanks to the power of comforting illusions.
