My name is Clara, I attend King Middle School in Portland, and we are experiencing a food emergency. The mindset of food in America needs to shift to live more healthily and sustainably. Individuals must support our local farmers, who treat their land and animals fairly, over factory farms.

Abusing Earth’s resources, instead of harvesting what the environment can sustain, has been occurring for thousands of years. In the Bible, God says to man, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the Earth.” I believe that Mainers should, instead, view all living things as equal, and think about how we can take just what we need.

Maine has always had a strong focus on agriculture, and most of our farms are small and family-owned. Supporting farms like these over factory farms, with terrible carbon footprints, is a necessity in this constantly warming world.

According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a global shift to a plant-based diet could reduce “mortality and greenhouse gases caused by food production by 10 and 70 percent, respectively,” by 2050. These statistics support the idea that eating fresh, plant-based and local is what our planet and bodies need.

If everyone throws their weight behind the local farm movement, and eats less meat, we will have hope for a livable world for years to come.

Clara Woods
Portland

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