Rantings About Evil Corporations and Food - How Original.

As I said in an earlier post, I have been on a healthy food kick lately. Somehow moving to Alaska has caused me to gain 15 lbs. I have been forced to abandon my jeans because the hipster, slim and low cut, prefaded Levis I own are so tight around my pelvis that I can feel the seeds of my future children being slowly crushed to death. My favorite vintage, snap-button, cowboy yoke, flannel shirt is stretched so tight at the shoulders that I could Hulk Hogan it apart. Overeating, over-beering, lots of weight lifting and mma, and my body adjusting to the cold has bulked me up so much that I decided to try to cut out all non-wild meat and up my vegetable intake.

In the spirit of my back to the Earth food kick, I queued up Food, Inc. and the Future of Food on my Netflix and they arrived this weekend. I knew about Food Inc. and was in no major hurry to see it because I had read Fast Food Nation a long time ago. Being a “foodie” I am already interested in the topic of food and food production, stay abreast of the news, and have crunchy, organic friends who fill any gaps by sending me articles and links. I have a lot of hippie virus in my veins as well as coming from a line of family farmers. Thus, it is in my genes to be a fan of smaller farms, organic farming, and knowing where your food is from and how it gets there. Obviously, I’m more than a little biased against giant corporate “food” producers (I use dick quotes because I find it hard to label high fructose corn syrup laden products as food) and the FDA and other industry captured regulatory bodies. Thus, Food, Inc. was preaching to the choir. It preached well though.

Food, Inc. wasn’t the most aesthetically stunning movie ever made. It doesn’t have the graphics, flashy transitions and rocking soundtrack of a documentary like Dogtown and Z-Boys. It is also mellow. That is, it lacks the confrontational shock value of Michael Moore movies or the tension filled, undercover journalism of The Cove. What Food, Inc. does, is to present a lot of information and a little opinion by passionate, well-spoken, intelligent and likable talking heads. All of the people in this movie are genuinely interesting to listen to, be it the Iowa farmer growing 100’s of acres of corn, to the mother who lost a child to E. coli and is now an activist trying to improve FDA regulation.

As you can see by the interviewees, Food, Inc. covers a lot of ground in two hours. Just about everything is examined including the actual “how” of production – from the industrial Iowa corn and soybeans to chicken ranches and cow feed lots to an organic farm in Virginia; the “why” of our current food system – the industrialization of agriculture by fast food companies, the Farm Bill and corn subsidies that support this system, and the economics and ideology of organic farming; the “who” of system – the farmers, the corporations controlling output, the consumers, and the supposed regulating bodies; the “what” results of this system – outbreaks, diabetes, pollution and lawsuits against farmers and people trying to buck the system.

This is one of those eye-opening movies that probably won’t be seen by the right people. It is going to be watched by people like me who already try avoid fast food and soda and eat more (preferably organic) veggies. I am an elitist, educated, privileged liberal so I have trouble accepting that a lot people don’t actually know what they are doing to themselves eating the crap out there. I’m also lucky enough to be able to afford real produce (Although, my container of produce from Full Circle Farm is only $47, so it is not that expensive.). I wonder how your average Joe Six Pack would react when they would find out that the diabetes epidemic is largely connected to government policies, or that produce would become cheaper and more plentiful if people knew their power as consumers.

It is regrettable that this documentary and similar movies and books get pinned with being “propaganda” and unfair. It’s not just one of those movies that attacks and then stops. It offers alternatives and demonstrates that a reliable, sustainable and Earth-conscious approach is obtainable. It leaves you feeling good; that if you just go out there as a consumer and demand food that isn’t pumped full of things that [God, Yahweh, Mohammad, Buddha, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, The Big Bang, Evolution or FILL IN THE BLANK] never intended us to eat, things can be righted and we can achieve harmony once again.

Then I watched Future of Food, which leaves you in an apocalyptic doom state of mind. While much of Food, Inc. was focused on consumers and their relationship to their food, Future of Food was based on the food production system itself. Reading through IMDB reviews, Future of Food obviously seems like a Monsanto hit piece. It may be, it may not be, and that is the problem. How can we call it unfair or biased when there is no other documentary or even news story to compare it to? There is no other company to write or film about. There is no other company to compare Monsanto’s ethics and practices to.

[Editors note: According to MS Word this was last modified 4/20/2010. I have been meaning to finish it for a month so excuse an abrupt end.]

Know this, Monsanto is a giant corporation. So giant that it sells 90% of all genetically engineered seeds. They made $2 billion in net income in 2008. I’m not going to say all giant corporations are evil monsters whose only goal is current quarter profit without consideration of any externalities or the future it is creating, but have you ever heard of a corporation that big who doesn’t have that goal?

In an effort for efficiency, I will point out my one inexcusable problem with Monsanto and try to wrap this up. Monsanto owns the patent on a seed technology that produces plants with sterile seeds after one planting. That means the crops do not reproduce. THEY DO NOT REPRODUCE! Somebody created crops that eradicate millions of years of evolution. Hell, if you are a creationist, they just spit in the face of God’s divine work. How fucking sick in the head do you have to be to create crops that don’t replenish themselves? How sick to invent technology that could wipe out the base of our entire food supply?

These crops have apparently never been planted outside of the lab, which is good. But what if they are? Do we trust Monsanto that they are not? The wind and pollination are not controllable. Roundup-Ready crops have already bred with farmer’s non-Roundup crops. What happens when these Terminator crops (yes, the bastards actually named the technology Terminator) start spreading and the next year no farmer’s crops grow? It would make Soylent Green look like a documentary. I’m a glass half-full kind of guy, but goddamn, knowing this technology exists scares the piss out of me.

Anyhow, in between the time I started writing this post and now I stumbled across this article in NY Time: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html In case you don’t feel like reading it, in short Roundup-resistant weeds are sprouting up and it is going to require more pesticides and plowing to grow crops, exactly the opposite of what Roundup-Resistant crops were supposed cause. Just like experts and supporters of conservative, eco-friendly agriculture proposed. Maybe all these crazy, hippie, liberal progressive, idealist farmers that have been saying pesticides and GM crops are bad aren’t as crazy, hippie, liberal progressive, idealists that they are made out to be.

I’m too happy to continue this post. The little bit I have written has already made me angry and depressed. Maybe in some future post I will rant about how narcissistic, instant rewards society is the cause of all this, or maybe I’ll pull out a conspiracy theory that it is actually the globalist illuminati forcing this system on us in order to enslave us, or maybe I’ll just shut my self-righteous, holier than thou mouth and stop thinking that I can solve the world’s problems. Yeah, that last one sounds pretty good.