This etching is titled "Feeding the thankless masses" and is about those who have worked in agricultural production for the tens of thousands of years since our species first learned to cultivate the earth. There is an universal agreement amongst anthropologists that the advent of agriculture led directly to civilisation, economy, and the city state. With that also came war, government and the beginning of social class struggle. Prior to this era, human societies depended on all members of the tribe to work together for the entire group to survive. When cultivation of the land began and food security was guaranteed, individuals within the groups who managed these food resources began to hoard the power and wealth they had over the rest. In the meantime, the populations that lived with abundant resources became dependant on those providing the food and thus became subservient to them. Desire for better production yields led to greater technology and need for protection of these resources begat the city state, which led to the creation of government and armies. Our entire species and modern society would collapse in an instant without the availability of abundant and inexpensive food. In our zeal to guarantee that, we have set on a course to destroy the very earth that provides us this sustenance while simultaneously conditioning an entire society to be oblivious to not only the nature of food production but the sheer inequity of food availability to the vast majority of our species. Profit driven motivations of the agricultural-industrial complex supercedes all notions of environmental sustainability and nutritional purity. With what the rich nations dispose of from their annual over production, there are exactly zero justifiable reasons for any single human being to be starving to death.
