The high pitched squeals of children playing outside at recess echo across the green expanse of field strewn with the richness of copper-coloured maple leaves.
As I ponder on the richness of nature, a part of me harbours a tiny shard of shame that I am human; part of that race which has the ability to bring poverty to anything it 
touches, even to the natural world that supports it.
Where ever mankind has settled, nature has suffered and become less diverse, less beautiful, less harmonious and less able to follow it's own intrinsic cycles of birth, renewal and natural death.
We are a species of destruction, even unto ourselves.
In exploiting all that surrounds ourselves, we inevitably destroy the only thing that can possibly bring us a richness, both to our body and our souls.
At no time more than today, as we survey the vast reaches of this fragile planet we call 'home', has poverty of our own kind been more evident.
We only see this if we truly look beyond our own doorsteps, beyond our own towns and cities, beyond our own countries and, sometimes, we do not even have to look beyond our own communities before we are struck with evidence of suffering due to the poverty of both bodies and souls.
When we think of poverty, we envision starving children in third world countries and vast dust bowls where the erosion of soil and the loss of natural water bodies have wreaked their devastation upon the land and it's sentient creatures.
We envision 'lack' in all it's forms. We find no evidence of beauty left, no interaction of life forms and no respite from the discomforts of our everyday lives. These places of 'lack' are places we would rather avoid; places we don't want to think about, places we would rather forget even exist.
Insulated by our warm and spacious homes, we stare mindlessly at television commercials where celebrities hold tiny, large-eyed children on the brink of starvation. We are urged to donate through organizational bodies in order to send a child to school, provide a vaccine or enable a village to drill a new well.
We can barely even imagine the life they must be leading and before changing the channel, we tell ourselves that any money we donate would likely never reach those impoverished places.
Instead, we believe, that our meagre contributions would be filtred out by overhead and red tape and in the end, nothing we do would ever change anything.
In this way, we assuage our discomfort and guilt that we have so much, more than we need, and they have so little. And so, the imbalance grows.
We
live in a society that consumes beyond reason, not because we are cruel or insensitive, but more because we are insulated from the true cost our consumption is placing upon the earth and our fellow beings, including those of our own species.
We have the ability, just by changing some of our own habits, to feed the entire globe and then some.
Meat production in North America alone, requires over 540 million tons of food every single year and yet, just 40 million tons of food would put an end to a large majority of world hunger.
The animals we raise for consumption require MORE THAN 80 percent of the plant products we grow.
At no time more than the present, with the world food stores being dangerouusly low, are the ramifications of this more evident.
Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, has stated that the agency's food costs have risen by more than 40% in 2007. He cites the following reasons for this frightening trend:
- the early effects of global warming which have caused a decrease in crop yields in some areas
- increasing demand of plant products for biofuels and livestock feed
- increasing numbers of humans who consume meat and animal products placing a larger demand on the very grains that the world's hungry require. These grains are now being diverted to furnish the production of meat to meet these demands.
Those societies who are consumers of large quantities of meat are the same ones who are able to afford their lifestyle and, with little consideration for those who their lifestyle is affecting, continue to do so at an unprecedented rate.
We live on a planet which, by our own doing, ha
s become entirely monetarily based. Those with the money control the earth and the flow of her resources to the detriment of the poor and the struggling.
The decrease in world food stores is but one small aspect of animal product consumption and how it is affecting the poverty stricken of the world.
We are all aware that fresh, clean water is at a crucial shortage world-wide at this point in time, and once again, animal production is a major cause.
In developing countries, one of the most crucial needs is fresh water; water which has been there for as old as mankind himself, is no longer there.
Rivers and lakes have disappeared, leaving the inhabitants of the lands destitute and without the most basic needs of life itself, water.
In razing forests for meat and dairy production throughout both developed and undeveloped countries, soils have been eroded and vast deserts have resulted. These lands are no longer able to produce food and the cycles of nature have been totally obliterated.
We have none other than our own heavily laden tables to thank for this. Every pound of animal flesh requires 16 pounds of grain to be produced.
How many people could be fed with the 4 pounds of grain it takes to produce a single quarter-pound beef burger?
We have choices.
Refusing to change our lifestyles is nothing short of living without conscience and maintaining a false belief that we have more right to the earth's resources than our neighbours in the 34 countries of our globe who are currently facing critical food 
shortages.
The next time you visit the supermarket, or go out to your favourite restaurant, stop and consider the impact of your choices.
Putting an end to the impoverishment of the earth and it's people starts no further than what you are putting into yours and your family's mouths.
Our daily choices bring upon each one of us a share in the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of people who die yearly of hunger and hunger related diseases.
Only you, the individual, can begin to bring about the changes that are necessary to bring our planet to one of peace, sustainability and 'enough' for all.
~Jo
"88 Ways To Do Something About Poverty Right Now"
;)
;)
Jo - we certainly have become a world of people who are more concerned with self gratification over preservation as we continue to pave over the best food producing lands this province has.