Food, Inc.
So you don't want to take the time to read "Fast Food Nation" or "The Omnivore's Dilemma"--you can spend a mere hour and a half and get all the same amazing, eye-opening information! This looks like this year's "An Inconvenient Truth," but for the food industry.
Opens June 12 at Film Forum. I'm there. Who's with me?
Meanwhile, check out the awesome resources on the movie website.
5 comments:
On a related note, I wonder if there is something powerful about the imagery of local farming these days, above and beyond the health and politics aspects. It's an anxious time to be an American, and somehow I feel comforted by the sight of small farming, red barns, green fields, rows of fresh tomatoes, etc. Like the barnyard stories you read as a kid. It's like we're reconnecting with an essential part of the American mythology.
Nice header, by the way. What is that a teensy ant?
I think it's a bee. Or a fly? Some cute little flying thing.
This looks so good. Thanks for posting.
Again, organic and small farms sound good until you start being realistic about how many humans we are trying to feed and the inherent inefficiencies of "organic" growing.
It also really does depend on what one means my organic. What about genetically modified foods? It gets complicated quickly.
Here is a page with some very interesting comments on the question:
"Could we feed the current world population using purely organic farming methods?"
http://ask.metafilter.com/98669/Could-we-feed-the-current-world-population-using-purely-organic-farming-methods
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Here are a few interesting articles.
"Organic vs Local? Who Cares. Neither is Sustainable.
by Kristin Underwood, Sacramento, CA on 03. 6.09
(Carolyn, the last sentence of the third paragraph is for you. Way to go on that.")
"While last year we were debating whether it's better to buy organic or local (or both), an article in Mother Jones now reports that we have even bigger fish to fry when it comes to our food production. While dreams of our future food system may rely on the romantic image of local farmers, the reality is: this model can't do what we need it to do, that is, feed billions of people.
Future food must also pack a greater amount of calories using fewer resources (water and energy), as well as be affordable, "ecologically benign" and also not abuse laborers and farmers in the process. Most of what we consider "sustainable" today is not - according to the article, only 2% of the food purchased in the US qualifies as sustainable (i.e. adheres to the values listed above). Growing food organically but underpaying workers, or using small-scale local farms really only gets at one part of the equation and won't work to feed the billions of people on the planet long-term.
In that case, is it better to purchase your food from a farmers market, where dozens of farmers truck in their produce each on individual trucks from all over, or purchase your food from a chain store where they ship it "en mass, via large trucks." Considering the transport only accounts for 10% of the emissions from food production, maybe we should turn our focus over to how the food is produced (resource usage). A recent report from Carnegie-Mellon University said, "going meat- and dairyless one day a week is more environmentally beneficial than eating locally every single day." "
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/organic-vs-local-who-cares-neither-is-sustainable.php
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"Organic vs Non-organic Farming - The Debate
Organic farming only uses naturally occurring chemicals or traditional remedies to control pests and diseases.
According to public perception, organic food is the healthy option. Sales of organic produce have rocketed over the past few years with the organics industry sending out messages of safer, healthier food created by farming practices which are better for the environment. But is it really as good as we think? Critics argue that organic farming leads to the risk of contamination with potentially dangerous bacteria and mould toxins, and increased levels of 'natural pesticide' found in organic produce could even be as dangerous as synthetic chemicals.
So who do we believe? Are organic fruit and vegetables as harmless as they appear? And why do they cost so much? In this piece, common views about this subject are discussed."
http://www.rsc.org/Chemsoc/Chembytes/HotTopics/Organic/Index.asp
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"The Fallacies of Organic Farming
Wishful Thinking vs. Science
Contemporary proponents of organic agriculture and opponents of genetically modified food believe "pure" food confers some special kind of virtue on those who produce it and those who consume it. They fail to acknowledge that organic chemistry, genetics, and molecular biology have been essential to twentieth century advances in agriculture, such as plant breeding, and are instrumental in ensuring there is enough food for everyone.
DeGregori tells us, "In recent decades, as the doubts about the benefits of science and technology have grown in some segments of society and become essential dogma in some areas of academia, radicalized youth have taken to the streets in opposition to science and to the institutions that they identify with."
He then makes a convincing case that these people are mistaken in believing they are defending the poor and powerless, when in fact it is precisely these people who need our technical advances the most."
http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/20252/The_Fallacies_of_Organic_Farming.html
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"GM Debate: Dispelling myths
I participated in a number of 'GM Nation?' debates in the early summer of 2003, both as a plant molecular biologist with relevant research interests, and as a panel member of Cropgen (www.cropgen.org). Cropgen is a consumer and media information initiative that makes the case for GM crops, helping to achieve a greater measure of realism and balance in the GM debate that has been running these last few years.
Attendees at the debates I spoke at were largely anti-GM; thus it is not surprising that the government report, which summarised the 37 000 questionnaires returned from the 675 meetings held across the country, found antipathy to GM to be at odds with other polls of the population as a whole. A number of other flaws in the analysis were recently shown by Campbell and Townsend (2003). Nonetheless, the outcome of 'GM Nation?' still puts the government in an awkward position in deciding on the future of GM in Britain.
The debates covered a complex web of inter-related issues: (i) alien, unnatural technology; (ii) food safety; (iii) intensification of agriculture and its effect on the environment; (iv) genetic pollution; (v) being driven solely by profits.
As a scientist, I saw the anti-GM 'scientists' as my principal adversaries, who sought to use their scientific credentials to incite fear in the hearts of the scientifically ignorant with a series of wild statements about the dangers of GM. Yet when challenged, they were unable to supply any peer-reviewed research as evidence to support them."
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v92/n3/full/6800422a.html
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Making Sense of GM
Making Sense of GM: What is the genetic modification of plants and why are scientists doing it? - 9 February 2009
In Making Sense of GM, scientists and agriculturalists are launching a fresh public discussion about GM: one that puts GM back into the context of developing plant breeding and that responds to the public’s questions and misconceptions. Publicly funded work in particular has struggled against misconceptions about Frankenstein foods, vandalism and a costly regulatory burden.
There have been more Google searches on genetically modified crops in the past two years in the UK than anywhere else in the world. While there have been over a trillion GM meals consumed and nearly 120 million hectares of GM crops grown, hardly any of that was in Europe, still less in the UK. It’s not surprising that people have questions about why that is, what GM is, what it does, whether they are eating it and what would happen if they did.
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