What does it mean to have an agency in our food system today? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

First and foremost it means having a basic understanding of how food gets to our table. It means understanding and truly grappling with the fact that if you are going to eat meat the life of an animal will be taken, for instance. It means understanding that the tomatoes from Mexico that you buy out of seasons are grown one way and the tomatoes you buy from your local farmer in season are grown another way.

It also means, I hope, that you have chosen to take part in at least some of the processes that gets food to your table. It means taking a class in pig butchery with my organization, the Good Meat Project, for instance. It means, picking up a recipe book and learning how to make broth out of bones. It means making your own pickles. Maybe you only learn to butcher a pig once. Maybe you only make your own broth once. But that one time allows you to revalue the food you buy from the grocery store, from the farmers market. It allows you to truly understand everything that went into that jar of pickles in your fridge.

It means learning to cook. Knowing how to cook makes you a more informed consumer. It helps you to understand, over time, that a grass-fed rib-eye steak from a steer that grazed for four years on pasture might cook differently than a grain-fed rib eye that only grazed for the first year of it’s life and then spent the last year of its life in a confined animal feeding operation.

It means asking questions, then asking them again. Asking your grocery store clerk, your farmer at the farmers market, your waiter how the food you are buying from them was raised. Demanding that they know too.

These experiences, this knowledge makes you an informed consumer, and as an informed consumer you can demand better food and better standards of food production. That, my friends, is agency.

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

* Meat: Which countries have the most responsible meat production and consumption practices?

* Food: How does food production and consumption affect the way communities function?

* The United States of America: How is the food system in the U.S. different from Europe?

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