The Hidden Violence in Our Food Chain (Even When It’s Vegan)

May 31

They told us eating plants would be the answer.

That if we just stopped chewing on muscle and bone, the planet would exhale.
That animals would rejoice. That the soil would heal.
That a carrot was harmless and kale, salvation.

But the truth lies under the topsoil, doesn’t it?

Hidden beneath the soft promises of oat milk and tofu are fields carved from ancient forests, rivers rerouted for almond groves, and insects, billions of them, dying with every harvest.
We swapped blood for chlorophyll, but violence didn’t disappear.
It just learned how to grow in rows.

The Quiet Devastation of Monoculture

Imagine a single crop stretching horizon to horizon.
No hedgerows. No shade. No variation.
Just corn, or soy, or wheat. The same seed. Again. And again. And again.

It looks efficient. Clean. Productive.
But this is a graveyard in disguise.

Insects vanish. Birds starve.
The soil, stripped of diversity, becomes dust masquerading as dirt.
What we call “modern agriculture” is a system that demands sterilization.
And every sterilized field is a war zone where only the crop survives.

Even vegan foods, especially vegan foods, are often born here.

The tofu in your stir-fry?
That likely comes from genetically identical soybeans, grown in a field sprayed with pesticides so potent they silence the hum of life.
The almond milk in your morning coffee?
Each drop pulled from trees fed by California’s shrinking rivers, in orchards so dry bees die mid-flight.

Veganism, when industrialized, can be just as thirsty, just as extractive, just as ruthless as meat.

The Beetle Beneath the Tractor

No one hears the crunch of a tractor’s tire over the soft body of a beetle.
No one mourns the vole whose burrow is crushed during plowing.
No one holds a funeral for the earthworm drowned in synthetic nitrogen.

And yet, they die.

By the trillions.

A single acre of plowed land is a battlefield.
The battlefield renews each season.
Each seed planted in a “clean” field is a victory over thousands of unseen lives.

We rarely talk about them…these quiet deaths.
Because they do not scream. They do not bleed like cows.
They vanish like whispers.

What We Lost to Grow Your Lentils

Before the soy and the lentils and the sunflowers, there were forests.
Lush, ancient canopies that breathed moisture into the air and gave sanctuary to birds whose names we’ll never know.
Before quinoa, there were wild grasses, and deer that grazed them, and foxes that stalked them.

Land use is the most violent act we’ve normalized.

A vegan burger may not require a cow.
But it often requires thousands of acres of cleared land.
Pesticides that leech into rivers.
Tanks of water that used to belong to fish.

Even our moral choices come with shadows.

We pretend otherwise because it's easier to sip our smoothies and say “no animals were harmed” than to face the fact that they were.
Just not in slaughterhouses.

The Illusion of Clean Eating

Vegan food is often marketed as pure.
“Clean,” they call it.

But clean for whom?

Not for the migrant worker bent double under a summer sun, fingers raw from harvesting spinach that’ll be washed three times, wrapped in plastic, and labeled organic.
Not for the indigenous communities displaced by soybean plantations in Brazil.
Not for the bumblebee colonies collapsing because almond orchards bloom without wildflowers to feed them after.

“Cruelty-free” is a label we slap on a system built on exported violence.

The cruelty didn’t end.
It just moved offshore.
Or underground.
Or into the bellies of dying bees.

Can a Carrot Be an Act of War?

A carrot is quiet. It doesn’t bleed. It doesn’t thrash.
But its existence often comes at the expense of an entire ecosystem.

Every food we eat is an exchange.
We take. The earth gives.
The question is not whether harm exists.
The question is: how much? And where? And to whom?

There is no such thing as an innocent bite.

Not when strawberries are grown with plastic mulch and soil fumigants.
Not when spinach fields rely on groundwater from aquifers nearing collapse.
Not when vegan sausage links are made from ingredients grown in landscapes emptied of wildness.

Even your smoothie has ghosts in it.

The Ethics of Scale

One tomato grown in a backyard garden, hand-watered and surrounded by bees and birds…that tomato sings with life.

That tomato is a hymn.

But scale it up.
Grow 10,000 tomatoes in a greenhouse powered by fossil fuels.
Ship them across oceans.
Package them in plastic.
Sell them to a million people.

Now the tomato becomes a commodity.
And the ethics begin to rot.

Veganism, when practiced close to the earth, can nourish both body and biome.
But industrial veganism is still industrial.

And industry always demands blood.

The Lives We Don't Count

We tally cows. We count chickens.
We speak of pigs and their pain.
But we don’t speak of spiders or field mice.
We don’t talk about the frogs caught in irrigation pumps.
We don’t write poems for the sparrows starved by insecticides.

There are lives too small to trend.
Too inconvenient to consider.
Too many.

But they are lives nonetheless.

Every year, agriculture kills more animals than all the slaughterhouses combined.
We just don’t count them.

Because we never knew their names.

Toward Something Kinder

So what do we do?

Do we stop eating?
Live only on sunlight and breath?

No.
But we can eat with eyes open.
We can ask better questions.

Where did this come from?
What was here before this field existed?
Who grew this? At what cost?
Is this food a prayer…or a product?

We can learn from indigenous food systems, which tend to life rather than extract it.
We can grow some of our own. Even one tomato in a pot is an act of resistance.
We can support regenerative farms. Small-scale cooperatives. Local producers who know the names of the bees on their land.

And we can honor every bite.

Even the lettuce. Even the lentil. Even the lives we cannot see.

Love Is a Kind of Agriculture

To love the world is to feed it gently.

To farm as if the future matters.
To plant not only for ourselves, but for the insects, the birds, the microbes.
To see a carrot as a gift and not a right.

There is a way to eat that listens.
A way to grow that grieves what’s lost.
A way to bite into a peach and whisper thanks to the tree, the wind, the worm.

Veganism is a beautiful intention.
But intention isn’t insulation.

Even kindness leaves footprints.
Let us at least make them light.

If you’re trying to reduce the harm in your own food chain, a great place to start is by growing some of your own food…even in a small space.
This countertop hydroponic garden lets you grow herbs and greens without soil, pesticides, or wasteful packaging. A beautiful first step toward mindful food.