Small-scale free-range pig farmer Tammi Jonas recently appeared in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation expose on corporate food giant JBS. The biggest meat company in the world, JBS has been pursuing endless growth under a cloud of corruption scandals, devouring more and more of the global food industry. Shoppers at any of the three largest Australian supermarkets are likely eating products from JBS. When Jonas learned of JBS’s takeover of her local abattoir near Daylesford in Victoria, she was “gutted”.
Jonas’ Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths, operates under very different principles to JBS. It employs ‘degrowth’ approaches to save land, work-time and money. Degrowth focuses on quality, re-localising economies and satisfying basic needs and promises a more ecologically sustainable future.
As climate change affects harvests and Russia’s war on the Ukraine has cut vital food exports, resulting scarcity has pushed up international grain prices. This year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the European Union’s European Environment Agency, have pointed to degrowth, or decoupling growth from prosperity, as a strategic approach to prevent and mitigate the impacts of climate change and curb limitless growth. Jonai Farms is an example of degrowth in practice.
