“Peo­ple always say they’re going to go get local, grass-fed beef, but no one says they’re going to their SPCA to get their local dog meat,” says Nas­sim Nobari. She is pro­gram direc­tor and co-founder of the Mil­lah­cay­otl Asso­ci­a­tion, a group that, accord­ing to its web­site, ​“seeks to fos­ter sus­tain­able and just food sys­tems that are inde­pen­dent of ani­mal exploitation.”

Nobari was speak­ing Decem­ber 6 at the People’s Har­vest Forum in San Fran­cis­co, a week­end con­fer­ence orga­nized by Mil­lah­cay­otl to address food jus­tice, hous­ing issues and urban agri­cul­ture through the lens of ani­mal lib­er­a­tion. She says she hopes to adapt the food sov­er­eign­ty move­ment — which calls for food pro­duc­tion to be healthy, envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious and, cru­cial­ly, demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly con­trolled — so that it no longer looks towards ani­mals as food sources.

The con­fer­ence also aimed to give ani­mal advo­cates insights into oth­er agri­cul­tur­al issues. Get­ting a bunch of veg­ans to come hear about the Zap­atis­tas’ strug­gle for auton­o­my in Mex­i­co, or a San Fran­cis­co group work­ing to increase fruit and veg­etable access in the (incon­gru­ous­ly named) Ten­der­loin neigh­bor­hood — as the People’s Har­vest Forum did — cre­ates a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty for dia­logue, says Mil­lah­cay­otl co-founder Chema Hernán­dez Gil. In fact, Gil and Nobari say they believe their con­fer­ence is the first to bring togeth­er these issues.

The forum began with jour­nal­ist Christo­pher Cook, author of Diet for a Dead Plan­et: Big Busi­ness and the Com­ing Food Cri­sis (the sub­ti­tle has changed since pub­li­ca­tion, it was orig­i­nal­ly ​“How the Food Indus­try is Killing Us”). Cook, whose work has also appeared in In These Times, paint­ed a grim pic­ture of U.S. agri­cul­ture: poor labor con­di­tions, unhealthy food, envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion and increased cor­po­rate con­trol — and still peo­ple are left hungry.

Soci­ety should not blame abus­es sole­ly on bad actors, he argues, but also direct its atten­tion to the con­text with­in which these actors oper­ate. Cor­po­ra­tions like Mon­san­to, Wal­mart and Cargill ​“are not an aber­ra­tion, they are a nat­ur­al prod­uct of cap­i­tal­ism,” he says.

While Cook’s prog­noses are far from rosy, he main­tains, ​“Solu­tions are already out there.” Organ­ic and agro-eco­log­i­cal food pro­duc­tion is proven to work, he says, so the prob­lem is not one of tech­nol­o­gy but instead of ​“eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics and power.”

He didn’t explic­it­ly advo­cate a veg­an diet but called on peo­ple to eat less meat, cit­ing the industry’s dis­re­gard for human work­ers, eco­log­i­cal impacts and farmed ani­mal welfare.

While the con­fer­ence was specif­i­cal­ly themed around ani­mal lib­er­a­tion, many of the first day’s speak­ers did not fea­ture ani­mal ethics in their organization’s work or in their presentations.

Improved ani­mal wel­fare stan­dards are a com­mon goal for food reform­ers, but for many they are not a top pri­or­i­ty. Even those who put ani­mal treat­ment in the fore­ground — for exam­ple, Joel Salatin, whose work has been fea­tured in Rur­al Amer­i­ca In These Times—often call for a ​“humane” approach to meat, dairy and eggs as opposed to a ful­ly veg­an food sys­tem. Salatin and oth­ers sup­port ani­mals hav­ing ample space to pur­sue bio­log­i­cal­ly ingrained behav­iors and live a hap­py, healthy life, with slaugh­ter as quick and pain­less as pos­si­ble. This con­fer­ence, said orga­niz­ers, was aimed to start putting ani­mal lib­er­a­tion — an end to the slaugh­ter alto­geth­er — into the conversation.

Anoth­er first day speak­er was Hernán­dez Gil, with a talk enti­tled ​“The Col­lapse of Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Food Sys­tems.” He had grown up in a small town (coin­ci­den­tal­ly, also named San Fran­cis­co) made up large­ly of indige­nous peo­ple in Mex­i­co, with local, plant-based agri­cul­ture. (In fact, the name ​“Mil­lah­cay­otl” comes in part from ​“mil­pa,” the Nahu­atl word for the tra­di­tion­al cul­ti­va­tion of squash, corn and beans.)

Accord­ing to Gil, his rur­al village’s time-hon­ored food cus­toms have been chang­ing in large part due to cheap U.S. corn (espe­cial­ly since NAF­TA, he said) and the influx of cor­po­ra­tions like Coca-Cola.

The forum’s sec­ond morn­ing was accom­pa­nied by a whole lot of organ­ic per­sim­mons, grown about 150 miles away by farmer Helen Atthowe. (Ever the intre­pid reporter, I gave one a try. And then another.)

The first day had dealt in var­i­ous ways with cor­po­rate influ­ence on the food sup­ply, and while the sec­ond day didn’t drop this theme, it also more direct­ly con­front­ed the ani­mal question.

At the con­fer­ence, Zap­atista posters were held down at the cor­ners by veg­an­ic per­sim­mons. (Pho­to: Day­ton Martindale)

A ​ “ veg­an­ic” approach to farming

Atthowe has been a cer­ti­fied organ­ic farmer since 1988, and has since tran­si­tioned to ​“veg­an­ic.” This refers to organ­ic pro­duc­tion with­out using mate­r­i­al from cap­tive ani­mals, even manure (although some wild ani­mals, includ­ing pol­li­na­tors and earth­worms, play a role).

She says that grow­ing up on a cat­tle farm, where ​“we gave those cows life and then we killed them,” soured her against killing. She has since tried to make an ​“uncon­di­tion­al effort to keep all things alive and growing.”

While she said she holds a high opin­ion of organ­ic farm­ing, she added she feels con­ven­tion­al organ­ics fail to make this effort. She claimed her meth­ods — no insec­ti­cides, no clear­ing land to con­trol weeds, manure-free fer­til­iz­er — not only work but ulti­mate­ly help her farm be more pro­duc­tive. An audi­ence mem­ber ques­tioned whether her approach could be scaled up to feed all human­i­ty. Atthowe says she was ​“not going to say it’s going to be easy,” but insist­ed she believed it was possible.

Joe Kil­coyne, co-founder of Wild Earth Farm and Sanc­tu­ary in Ken­tucky, was anoth­er veg­an per­ma­cul­ture farmer speak­ing at the con­fer­ence. Wild Earth is a refuge for pigs and ducks (with plans to open up to oth­er species) as well as an organ­ic per­ma­cul­ture food pro­duc­er. Unlike Atthowe’s, Kilcoyne’s veg­etable farm uses manure fer­til­iz­er from non­hu­man—and human — sources.

Kil­coyne crit­i­cized human coer­cion over humans and non­hu­mans alike, and called for an anar­chist soci­ety based on mutu­al, vol­un­tary inter­ac­tions. An activist for years, he said remov­ing him­self from rela­tion­ships built on force, and try­ing to cre­ate a peace­ful alter­na­tive to the state could be more effec­tive than direct confrontation.

Anoth­er speak­er, Eugene Cooke, of the orga­ni­za­tion Grow Where You Are urged atten­dees — many of whom had an activist back­ground — to ​“avoid the con­flict and be creative.”

Orig­i­nal­ly from south cen­tral Los Ange­les and now based in Atlanta, Cooke helps cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens in cities, and has worked his own veg­an­ic urban farm since before he knew the word ​“veg­an­ic.”

“Often I’m invit­ed to spaces like these being the only black man talk­ing to you about grow­ing food,” he says, not­ing last weekend’s event was no excep­tion. ​“Con­sid­er­ing this country’s his­to­ry, that’s iron­ic,” he adds.

“The rea­son I grow food is because oth­er than that I have no con­nec­tion to this place,” mean­ing Amer­i­ca, he lat­er adds. ​“So I touch the earth every sin­gle day just to know that I’m still relevant.”

A father, veg­an­ic farmer and co-founder of Grow Where you Are, Eugene Cooke has trav­eled around the world help­ing to set up small-scale, inten­sive local food sys­tems. (Pho­to: prlog​.org)

Food, com­mu­ni­ty and the price of rent

Wrap­ping up the con­fer­ence were hous­ing activists Chi­rag Gun­vantb­hai Bhak­ta and Oscar Grande, who dis­cussed the risk that com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and health food stores can dri­ve up rent prices. In low-income com­mu­ni­ties, health and envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives can be seen as har­bin­gers of gentrification.

For indi­vid­u­als strug­gling to main­tain shel­ter, they sug­gest­ed, veg­eta­bles and ani­mal rights aren’t always the high­est priorities.

The ques­tion of whether the hous­ing cri­sis must be solved before the food cri­sis, or whether both prob­lems can be attacked at once, brought com­ment from Atlanta grow­er Cooke.

One of his com­mu­ni­ty farms in Atlanta had helped make the area a tourist spot, dis­plac­ing the home­less, he explains. ​“Damn,” he had thought. ​“I was the first tool of gentrification.”

But pit­ting food and hous­ing jus­tice against each oth­er is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, Cooke says. He adds that despite the out­come of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, he had also cre­at­ed a space for peo­ple to come togeth­er and learn about each oth­er and their food, and came away with ideas for what to do dif­fer­ent­ly next time.

One audi­ence mem­ber from an ani­mal advo­ca­cy net­work asked what his orga­ni­za­tion could do to sup­port hous­ing and eco­nom­ic jus­tice groups. The answers were com­pli­cat­ed, and they con­tin­ued talk­ing after the forum offi­cial­ly end­ed, but Bhak­ta and Grande did agree on one thing: Their groups would wel­come dona­tions of free veg­an food for meetings.

Grande’s orga­ni­za­tion, Peo­ple Orga­niz­ing to Demand Envi­ron­men­tal and Eco­nom­ic Rights (PODER), helps run an urban gar­den. He says it ​“doesn’t yield a lot of food,” but that his group mea­sures the garden’s suc­cess in terms of build­ing com­mu­ni­ty and spread­ing knowledge.

As anoth­er speak­er, Anto­nio Roman-Alcala, had not­ed the pre­vi­ous day, urban gar­dens can­not pro­vide all the food cities need. There is sim­ply not enough space, he point­ed out, and urban agri­cul­ture lacks the gov­ern­ment sub­sidy struc­ture that sus­tains con­ven­tion­al farming.

So even in San Fran­cis­co, food sov­er­eign­ty does not mean break­ing ties with the rur­al. But some argue it should mean break­ing ties with the slaughterhouse.