The movie, Food, Inc. opened in Los Angeles on Friday to rave reviews from major media around the country. Industrial agriculture feels under attack and is striking back. Many of the corporate ag businesses and corporate sponsored associations have added sections to their web sites devoted to Food, Inc. The web sites are devoted to “debunking” the “falsehoods” of the movie.
Monsanto has a major section focused on it on their web site claiming Food, Inc. “is a one-sided, biased film” that “demonizes American farmers and the agriculture system responsible for feeding over 300 million people in the United States.”
Meanwhile, the family farm organization, Farm Aid, said, “Food, Inc. is an indictment of the industrial system of agriculture and the policy that promotes it, putting many family farmers out of business, compromising rural communities, degrading soil, air and water, and creating a public health epidemic. Troy Roush, an Indiana corn farmer, said in the film, ‘People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food of us and we’ll deliver, I promise you.’ That’s the epitome of the American family farmer: innovative, creative, adaptable. It’s not to say that every farmer is going to start growing vegetables and selling direct to consumers… that doesn’t represent the entirety of our agricultural system. But our food system is more nuanced than the dichotomies like ‘commodities versus local food’ or ‘conventional versus organic.’ The main point is there are better policies that can reward methods that benefit our farmers, our planet and our health. And if there’s a market for that food, family farmers stand ready to meet the demand.”
The industrial agricultural corporations freak out when their status quo is threatened. They worship at the altar of the almighty buck and when people start growing their own food and reject the corporations, well, they aren’t going down without a fight. And that is what we are seeing happen right now. They put up a good front, but they are freaking out.
Graphic credit: Food, Inc.
Hydroponics Dictionary
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From a technical view the efficiency of growing animals for food is very low and produces lots of unwanted byproducts. We wouldn’t allow this to happen on a lot of other things, but on the one that should be the most important to our body, our food, we do. And all this is letting the moral side of eating our fellow creatures aside, that have the same right to walk the surface of the planet as we do.
Much of the film comes down to this: spend more money now on better food which will result in better health-spending less money- as we age vs. spend less now on cheaper junk food/less healthy food which will result in spending more on our health as we age; more prescription drugs and feeling crumby from being overweight and unhealthy.