The Battle for Farm Land

One Vegan's perspective

A vegan friend asked my opinion about the farmer uprising situation and as I was writing (and writing, and writing) I realized my thoughts (as a long time activist for social justice, environment, animal liberation, peace, equality, etc) might be interesting to others. So I’m sharing the thoughts I wrote to my friend. Please comment, I’m interested to know what you think!  

Disclaimer: I haven’t actually read the text of the new world orderers but I’m assuming it’s true the 1% are trying to grab all farmland and using the language of “climate crisis” and “environmental catastrophe” to justify it. 

First let me say I’ve always (well, for a very long time) been philosophically opposed to the idea of private land ownership.  (Interestingly, in Cuba, people own homes but they don’t own land.  And after something like 20 years of paying rent, they automatically own their home!).  I understand why people get into buying land, especially now with the move to achieve off grid independence and freedom from authoritarianism, but ultimately I tend towards the indigenous ways of living with the land - honouring its sovereignty.  Of course we know that, because of this relationship with the land, when the colonizers arrived to privatize everything they were easily able to steal almost everything.  Now, when indigenous warriors try to prevent pipelines, they have to go to court and  “prove” that their ancestors lived on (and “owned”) the land.  Frustrating and absurd!  I’m guessing you and I agree that our governments were founded on theft and murder.  Somehow, I think this is true on a global level, if we go back far enough and examine the ways land owners (those original herders) established themselves, and how society grew around that.

So, in order to survive, indigenous people - who were previously nomadic and had figured out a way to live relatively harmoniously alongside each other - were suddenly forced to settle down, attain land and put up fences.  Over the centuries, this private land ownership thing became normalized … except for the “communist” minded who celebrated public spaces and insisted on preserving park lands and wild spaces.  I often say, what would NYC be without Central Park?  Or Vancouver, without Stanley Park?  Most older cities maintained some kind of centralized public park space.  But modern developers just want to clearcut and pave everything, and sadly municipal governments go along with that and grant them permission.  So the idea of public land has been all but eliminated, along with the public land itself.

Now, the 1% want all the privately owned land too.  And they’re using our language, and twisting our philosophies, to take it.

Regarding the vegans, specifically, of course there are all kinds of vegans.  We’re right and left, communist and capitalist, wealthy and poor, all colours and nationalities and genders.  But what binds us is our vegan plant based lifestyle.  So … how to divide and conquer that group?  Whether they’re doing it intentionally, as part of their Great Reset agenda, or whether it’s happening naturally, these are my thoughts on how they’re benefitting from it:  

First: Understand the vegan headspace.  Vegans, especially new vegans, often feel isolated from family and friends.  The hardest part of being vegan is the social isolation that results … at least until we find our new vegan friends.  Many, as I understand it, turn away from their efforts at plant based eating simply because of the social rejection that results.

2.  For vegans, Covid offered a way back in to “regular mainstream” society.  Suddenly all of us could share in a common fear, and the pain of isolation.  Many vegans began to focus on the zoonotic element, attempting to reach across to the carnist world and explain that if only we were all vegan we wouldn’t be in this mess.  Covid was empowering in that way, vegans had a new message that surely must resonate with our new friends.  We all wanted an end to the out of control virus situation.  I think this was a strong bond for vegans, back in early 2020.  Now that it’s become clear the virus was likely developed in a lab, the vegans have lost some of their zoonotic messaging power (though some don’t want to surrender it).  Still, though, we can argue that humans wouldn’t do this to other humans, there’d be no virus manipulation labs if the world were vegan, but it’s not as strong a message as "the virus evolved from a bat."  So the wind is out of those sails, and the initial division of the covid bonded vegan camp began.

3.  Then vaccines were introduced, and the mandates, and I think this is where the vegan community really began to split.  Some embraced the vaccines, and the mandates, while others of us began to see that something was seriously wrong with the dominant narrative.  Sadly, the bridge across this great divide only widened as hatred of the unjabbed was promoted, and began to fester.  Those of us vegans who didn’t go along with the all-must-jab crowd found ourselves increasingly isolated and that’s a tough place to be.  While many believed that jab was the only possible solution to the virus, I’ve met many people who only surrendered to the jab so they could travel, or keep their jobs, or because their partner/friend/parent insisted on it.  (I also know people whose long time relationships fell apart on this basis).  So now we have three groups of vegans:  those adamantly opposed to all of the covid narrative, those adamantly in favour of all of it, and those who aren’t sure but went along, many for reasons other than health.  Either way, once people have the jab in their arm, they’re invested.  They might not defend the agenda overall, but they feel a natural need to defend their own personal decision.  The ego doesn’t like to be wrong.  

And, I believe, the political “left” were specifically targeted with “do it for the common good, do it for your neighbour” messaging.  This is what the “left” is about, right, looking after each other?  Making small sacrifices (using less gas, eating less meat) because it’s good for the environment.  Sharing a portion of our wages (in the form of taxation) to create a collective pool that can be used to support all of us (and especially the less fortunate) in the form of healthcare, things like libraries and fire stations and courts and park maintenance (not things like war profiteering and big paycheques to politicians!).  So the message became “if you’re NOT getting the jab it’s because you don’t care about anyone but yourself” and squashed (censored) any mention of alternative healthcare, medical freedom, the right to choose, and personal privacy.  They did not want us having that old important discussion about the fine line that exists between doing what’s best for the self, while maintaining consideration for the collective.  And the left leaning vegans really began to feel the pressure.

4.  The “anti-jab, anti-mandate” social uprising began, around the world, though you wouldn’t know unless you went looking for it.  Speaking from my own experience, it was videos of masses of people out in the streets in Italy, France, England, Australia, that kept my head above water during this time of feeling severely isolated in late 2021/early 2022.  During the trucker movement  (thank goodness for the trucker movement!!) I began to reach out and find freedom loving people in my country, and my community.  Maybe, together, we could actually prevent this dive into full on authoritarianism, maybe together we could exercise our rights and stand up to our governments!  So, whereas the past several years I’ve really only been interested in making “friends” with vegans, suddenly my vegan community had fallen apart and, being a social creature and needing social companionship (even if it’s only online), I started to make “friends” in the non vegan world again.  Eventually, I began to find the freedom loving vegan people, and thankfully am settling into a whole new tiny, but lovely, vegan freedom loving tribe.

5.  Then, as news of the jab injured and jab failures started to hit the mainstream, Russia did what they had been warning for years they would do if NATO continued to threaten, they invaded Ukraine. After years of corporate media Russiagating, plus the Trump Derangement Syndrome (as it’s called), plus the Covid mind warp, the masses were pointed in a new direction.  We had a new enemy.  Humans have been so programmed to think in terms of good guys and bad guys, they too often just easily fall into line on one side of things or the other.  (Whatever happened to neutrality?!?!)  Of course the censorship, then, extended from “don’t talk about covid or the jab” to “don’t talk about the war.”  After a few months, and as it’s becoming clear that Ukraine Nazis are not going to defeat Russia (as was predicted), it’s time for a new narrative.

6.  Enter the farmland crisis.  As I said I don’t know all the details but I know the uprising is huge.  I LOVE when people stand up to and say “NO” to authoritarian power grabs, but this one is more complicated because animal farmers are defending their right to continue animal farming. As a vegan activist I can absolutely defend their right to be farmers on their own land, but I can’t defend their right to forcefully breed and imprison and torture and murder animals.  But the land grab message has been tied to “climate” and “environment” and other Great Reset word twisting so, I don’t know for sure, but I imagine there are some vegans (the pro jab ones?) who (perhaps secretly) are now cheering for the WEF agenda that, they think, will end animal farming.  It’s surprising how few vegans are also social justice activists, how few understand the interconnectedness of oppression and how power is used to enslave us all.  So those are likely either uninvolved in the farmer/farmland crisis, or they’re ok with it as long as it means the end to animal farming.  Which of course, it doesn’t.  It’s probably only a few of us who have been activists for decades, who understand about patriarchal and hierarchical power and how it manipulates and controls the masses, who are watching this situation (as we have witnessed so many others, like the Iraq invasion based on a lie of weapons of mass destruction) and wondering how and where we can get involved.  And of course it’s tough for vegans to remain neutral when animal lives are involved, since we see ourselves as carrying the voice (HELP!) they are unable to speak.

7.  The message from the Great Agenda-ers (who, I’ll bet, are NOT vegan) is that we will all soon be using digital id that will track our personal carbon emissions, and control what we buy and don’t buy.  So the meateaters are freaking out because they’re addicts and the thought of having their animal “protein” taken away is terrifying.  They’re already complaining about the rising price of meat, and they’re being targetted with “you’ll eat bugs and cell based meat and be happy about it” messaging.  For whatever reason, many people seem to have no concept of veganism, the thousands and thousands of delicious plant based alternatives that are already available and that millions of us thrive on!!  Rather than their carnist brains saying “maybe now’s a good time to investigate that plant based lifestyle thing and consider how we can support farmers to transition so they can keep their land but become veganic farmers,” they’re digging their heels in and saying NO to the theft of land (which is a good thing) and YES to just carry on business as usual (which is not a good thing).  And, I suspect they’re doing what humans so often do … they’re looking for someone to blame.  Rather than pointing to the source of the problem (the 1%ers who are forcing this on them (that’s just a conspiracy theory)), they prefer to blame someone they can reach out and touch.  And that’d be the vegans who have been pushing this “end of meat” agenda, and now look where it’s taken us (I can hear them saying).

8.  How will the vegans respond?  If they go along with the great reset theft of land agenda, they risk losing their place in the “covid / all must jab” tribe that they were so happy to have become a part of (during those early covid months).  If they reject the theft of land agenda, they’ll essentially be siding with animal farmers.  Maybe some of them (those who aren’t “vegan for the animals”) will return to eating meat and dairy?  So, I’m guessing, many vegans are again finding themselves without a tribe.  And that never gets easier.

My stance is this:  We need agricultural reform.  Using 1/3rd of the earth to grow genetically engineered crops to feed to animals that are forcefully bred and warehoused in horrifying conditions and then murdered so their flesh can manifest as heart disease and cancer and diabetes in carnivorous humans while their mountains of manure poisons global waterways … obviously that’s not a sustainable solution if we want to feed 8 billion people.  But stealing the land of farmers is not the solution either (even though philosophically I remain opposed to private land ownership).  We know that billions of dollars, globally, go to subsidize animal farmers each year.  There’s no reason why governments can’t offer a “just transition” to farmers.  Rather than giving them an ultimatum (reduce emissions or we’ll take your land), any common sense non-authoritarian government would say “you need to reduce emissions and reduce animal farming, for the greater good, and we’re going to help you do that, for your individual AND the collective good.”  And they’d offer training and courses and new equipment and vegan workers to help farmers establish things like animal rescue sanctuaries (for the animals already in existence, while ending the force breeding programs), and mushroom farms, to grow cannabis and hemp, bamboo, quinoa and amaranth and flax and other grains and greens that humans can thrive on.  (For example in Canada there’s a group called Nation Rising that is focussed on this transitioning, although I don’t know their status on the forced jab mandates.  The Animal Protection Party has published a document calling for agricultural reform, but they don’t mention anything about HOW to do that, and they endorsed the mandates.  You probably know groups like Rowdy Girl in Texas and Mercy for Animals organization have some success stories transitioning farmers off animal ag.  So it’s definitely possible!).

Of course Big Ag and Big Pharma definitely do not want any of this so … if they’re not actively encouraging another social division with hatred directed (as always) towards the vegans, and especially the vegan socialist left (as opposed to the lockdown left), I’m willing to bet they’re also not doing anything to promote a sound and reasonable solution for the farmers.  We know that the animal ag industry are one of big pharma’s biggest (if not THE biggest) clients, injecting all those billions of animals with all kinds of anti-biotics and other drugs.  It’s unlikely big ag and big pharma and big global reset agenda folk are vegan … they don’t care about humans, why would they care about animals?  They want control of the entire population, they’re clear about that.  How better to achieve that than have us all isolated and fighting each other so that we simply don’t see their evil hypocrisy.  Is it all intentional, part of their grand scheme?  Or has it just happened this way?  Who knows.  

As a solid “vegan for the animals” and “freedom for ALL animals” activist who celebrates the beauty of the natural world and wants the best for us all, but holds no power to change anything but myself, I’m watching and listening and holding faith that the inherent love of the universe will ultimately prevail.