“Vegan Geographies: Spaces Beyond Violence, Ethics Beyond Speciesism,” Part 2 of 2

“There was a spotlight of attention put on industrial animal farming and agriculture. These futures are just not sustainable. But at the same time, we’re enslaving more farmed animals than ever. And some of the figures, which are no doubt an underestimate, we’re talking about 80 billion land-based animals killed in the this sort of farming each year. That’s a stupefying figure to really begin to grasp and understand.” “And I think 2016, 2017, for example, the statistics that I saw in the UK suggested that the intensive farm industry received about £70 million in subsidies. If we can take that investment and place it in ways that are much more sustainable, non-violent, and promoting plant-based diets, and so on, again, that could have such an amazing impact.” “Vegan Geographies” presents examples, illustrations, and case studies on the intersection of veganism and human geography at an international depth.

Dr. White (vegan) shares some of the areas of research that are particularly promising and important for the future of vegan geography. “Certainly, the importance of making the connections with activism. There’s some really interesting work around vegan organic, veganic, farming, not just at local scales, but the question of scaling these up. Some of the focus on our relationships with, say, insects, because one thing about the current ecological crisis is that [it] provokes some attention about the decline in bee populations. To try and take seriously, in ever-deepening ways, the relationship with the natural world and the world around us. Also questions about the soil itself. There’re really interesting ways in which people, communities, are trying to live in much more sustainable ways, recognizing the fertility of the soil, and so on, that are going to be incredibly important if we’re going to arrest some of the ways in which soil is degraded through industrial forms of agriculture.” “So many positive things in the world are based on anarchist principles. It was very much grassroots, bottom-up ways in which people came together to try and help others. Recognizing that the ability to be collective, to work for each other on that mutual basis, that’s the way in which we can thrive.”