What if we worked with nature, not against it? My vision is for agricultural practices to move away from monocultures, pesticides, and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) and embrace more diverse, perennial polycultures. I envision thriving health for farms, nature, and people, alike. I value working towards a world with greater sustainability, including agriculture. Working with population dynamics and ecosystem cycles builds resilience and diversity. Nature is the manifestation of millions of years of evolution – it offers a wealth of ecological mechanisms that can be applied to agriculture. I aspire for a compiled collection of interventions to tackle the problem of modern agriculture from different sides. A common theme I have noticed splattered across the bloody history of times where science does damage is as follows: simplistic, one-sided, monopolistic, and/or unchallenged approaches may overlook the whole issue. Life is complicated and thus warrants solutions to encompass a wide range of tactics. Governments should establish a committee with interdisciplinary researchers to design a sustainable agriculture plan. The current agricultural subsidies in Canada (and worldwide) should redistribute these funds to subsidize polycultures and tax monocultures via said detailed plan. For example, positive incentives could include using cover crops and a variety of crops. Another potential positive incentive could be falling within an appropriate grazing animal-to-land ratio range (perhaps different among animals). Disincentives should be implemented for using monocultures, pesticides/herbicides, CAFOs, and chemical fertilizers. Perhaps to exaggerate the positive incentives and disincentives, governments could employ a tiered rewards system up to a predetermined limit for each element.

As discussed in the Explained, The World’s Water Crisis: “nothing has as much embedded water as meat”, at a wapping 15,000 L water/kg of hamburger. Yet, global meat consumption per person has been increasing since the 1960s. Despite the astronomical amount of water needed to produce meat, this water consumption is not priced into the product. That is why we can buy cheeseburgers for $2.99 (yes, I just checked the price for the campus MacDonalds on UberEats). This is problematic! My vision is for *some* of the price of water to be reflected in the price of a product. I envision a world where corporations pay for high water consumption and consumers have incentives to buy less meat. I hope that we can purchase meat products in smaller quantities, reserve them for more special occasions, eat more vegetarian/vegan meals, and for meals that do have meat, shift North American standards to accent dishes with meat rather than having meat-centred dishes. I believe that we currently have an extreme mismatch between the pricing of meat/dairy products and their production costs, and environmental impacts. Meat, milk, cheese, eggs (and fruits and vegetables) are subsidized food in Canada. I value consumers having appropriately priced food products that factor in an environmental component, including foods that require high amounts of water for production. I think that vegetables, fruits, legumes, and grains should receive greater subsidies whereas animal products should receive less. I would like there to be government interventions to factor in some of the price of water into meat products (and other animal products too). Much like what Kai and Maia mentioned in class today, by establishing a corporate quota on water consumption after which water is costly/heavily taxed, would ensure that large quantities of water are paid for. Food policy for Canada must change in order to tackle the water crisis, which simultaneously also confronts other environmental issues (such as methane emissions).

As a Biology student, I have certainly learned about this example of trophic cascades in BIOL 121, 230, 209, etc. Today, however, is the first time I’ve learned the context of the reintroduction of sea otters after their 200-year absence due to being hunted to extinction. It is hard to fathom that in 1969 and 1970, the BC Government introduced sea otters into Kyuquot Sound with no consultation of any First Nations groups. In previous years I have only learned about sea otters in the context of the infographic I have attached: “hooray for more kelp and biodiversity!”. Since the age of 12, I have known about and seen ‘midden’ located in island groups surrounding Vancouver Island (see the picture of me attached). Midden is an archaeological remnant of indigenous shellfish farms and essentially a type of early Aquaculture. This summer I learned about sea urchins being a delicacy in many coastal indigenous cuisines (I have attached a picture where I have a dead sea urchin). Sea urchins were described to me as “almost like a buttery fish”. Yet, I still did not make the connection that the decrease of sea urchins and other shellfish would affect the food security, livelihood, and culture of many coastal indigenous communities until we learned about this topic today. The above example goes to show that I have a set of perspectives that can be very narrow at times. Luckily, this can be remedied by broadening our minds by encouraging other people with different perspectives to collaborate on our thinking process. The Recognitional dimension of Justice is very new to me. Yet, right now, I recognize this dimension of justice as absolutely critical and perhaps one that people (myself included) may overlook the most. I strive to be proactive in seeking out other perspectives and asking others about their values and worldviews. When I think about democracy, this is what I would like: more recognitional justice. I hope that future politics and projects work collaboratively with indigenous peoples and other historically (and currently) marginalized communities.