World Ark Magazine - January/February 2008 - (Page 35) “A survey of community gardens in New York found that having a garden improved residents’ country settings, more and more of the world’s meat and animal products are produced in or near urban areas. Consider this: People in developing countries now consume half of the world’s meat, thanks to rising incomes and exploding urbanization. And people in cities in these countries are not just consuming more animal products, they are also becoming centers of production. In Bamako, Mali, for instance, 20,000 households keep livestock in the city. In Harare, Zimbabwe, more than one-third of households keep chickens, ducks, pigeons, rabbits and turkeys. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 74 percent of people keep livestock, while in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the figure is 80 percent. Even in industrial countries people can be found raising bees, worms, chickens and other animals. But there can be too much of a good thing. Thanks to unregulated zoning and subsidies that encourage largescale livestock production, massive chicken and pig operations are moving closer and closer to major urban areas, including in China, Bangladesh, India and many African countries. This, says Michael Greger, a veterinarian with the Humane Society of the United States, is “bringing together the worst of both worlds—the congested inner cities of the developing world combined with attitudes toward their neighborhood, reduced littering, improved the maintenance of neighboring properties and increased neighborhood pride.” B ILPO’S SOJOURN, FLICKR GHANA CHINA INDIA 48% urban 40% urban 29% urban www.heifer.org January/February 2008 | WORLD ARK 35 http://www.heifer.org
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