http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc.. I downloaded an illegal copy. Going to watch it later on tonight. I already know it'll be good. Fuck big food.
Brought to you by the same people who brought us An Inconvenient Truth. Looks like hippy propaganda to me.
Considering 'Big Food' uses it's lobbying power to get government regulators to make it harder for small farmers to sell food directly, thus insuring farmers stay on the commodity plantation, it's actually capitalist propaganda. But hey thanks for playing!
No kidding. Anyways, just got finished watching it now. Maybe for me, coming from farming/ranching/feedlot community, the film hits more at home, but if you can watch it and not be outraged with what has been allowed to happen, I have no hope for you. I want to go tour Polyface now too.
It angers me to see 'free market' types lash out at Pollan, when it is the free markets that have given us Whole Foods, it is free market farmers that are truly profitable. It is market access denying corporatist that foster commodity agriculture.
And IMHO, the kind of "bread and circuses" we should be worrying about is not the welfare to individuals, but the welfare to corporations. That's where the big money is going.
Yep. Interesting thing about Food Inc. One of the people they interviewed was a 'hippie' back in the 60's that along with his friends tried to find different ways for 'food' to be grown, produced and sold using more environmentally friendly methods. Well, fast forward 30 years or so, and he's suddenly one of the guys that got Walmart to buy into 'organic' food. He made a few comments of how BUSINESS and the CONSUMER have the power to reverse the problems that exist right now. Walmart is sure looking impressive to me right now. They talked a bit in the movie about giving the consumer what they want. And if the consumer wants healthy foods, organic foods, whole REAL foods, than they're going to PROVIDE them with that selection. They also had a farmer on there that said that if the consumer would DEMAND better food, the farmer would provide it. No questions asked. I think its pretty obvious that government has let everyone down, and fucked the system up more than most people even imagine. Now its up to the consumer to fix it.
If by corporations you include all the subsidies involved in producing corn, then yes, I agree with you. I would agree with you otherwise as well, but I just figured I should point that out. On another note, did y'all know that big seed companies can go after farmers who clean their seeds and sue them for patent infringement? Indiana used to have 5-6 seed cleaners in every county, now there are probably 1-2 statewide. If the seed companies haven't already forced so many legal fees on them that the guys who provided the seed cleaning service were forced to settle. Absolutely pathetic.
The problem is, however, in reaching that farmer. If you don't live in an area where one can deal directly with farmers, you're forced to try and get the big corporations to listen to you, which isn't always easy. (Oftentimes, you can't find contact information without a lot of effort.) Nobody's blameless in this mess. Consumers trusted big agra blindly, and believed their elected representatives (who get huge campaign contributions from big agra) when they were told that this or that bill would help small, family owned farms.
He was speaking on a broader scale. As in the farmers of America responding to the overall demands of the consumer. But you still make a good point. Some of the people traveling to Polyface Farms for food drive up to 6 hours one way. And they STILL say its worth it. And while you don't exactly have to go to Polyface, even finding a farmers market can sometimes be tough. Especially if you live in the city. Quite true as well. Interesting at one point during Food Inc. they were pointing out all the government officials with ties to big food. Yeah, as if THOSE government officials are going to do what is in the best interest of the consumer, rather than what is in the best interest of the big food company.
I think that perhaps those 'free market' types lash out at Pollan and others who are pointing out the problems with food because they are saying, for example, that there are problems with subsidizing corn, and so many interpret that as meaning that the solution is to subsidize organic spinach. If their message was more explicitly "too much government is causing these problems and a solution would be less government" then sure, libertarian-minded folk would be more likely to be on board. But that doesn't necessarily seem to be what they're saying, so free-marketers are skeptical.
I'm not too sure about organic farms, although from what I've read, they are a HUGE improvement on what we used to get.
Speaking as someone who's been reduced to working in the produce dept. of the local Wallyworld because of how shitty the economy is, I'll say that one of the things I've noticed about organic food is that it tends to have a much longer shelf life, for some reason. We have our non-organic and organic produce located next to one another and the non-organic stuff always goes bad long before (days or weeks) the organic stuff does. Dunno why. The organic stuff generally looks better when it comes in, too. It might be that the farmers are able to be more particular what they ship to Wallyworld if they're organic farmers, or there could be some other factor involved. Still, its really obvious that this is happening if you work there long enough. (Even the drooling idiots I work with who think that "cooking" involves reheating last nights Taco Hell leftovers have noticed this.)
How many threads around here have there been about corporate welfare, as opposed to individual welfare?
Are you fucking kidding me?!?! Have you not been paying attention since.... I don't know 07?!?!? In the 2 years I would hazard a guess that complaint threads about corporate welfare outnumber those against individual welfare AT LEAST 5 to 1. In actuality it is probably closer to 10 to 1.
I just watched Food Inc. last night. It was far better than I thought it would be, but I do have a couple of complaints. Again, Schlessinger is a devotee of the 'more regulation, more government' mind set. I wish they would've interviewed some small local, artisan meat processors, and explain the daunting costs of regulations, and how these hurdles have led to most of the small abattoirs going out of business. The Fatty Mcfatterson latino family, the ones with diabetes, double fisting whoppers? Yeah... I know they were playing up the 'vegetables are expensive' meme, but good fucking god, they were Mexican! It's a well known fact that every old mexican woman can take a hand full of corn flour, fifty cents worth of meat, and a heated hub cap and come up with authentic Mexican awesomeness!!! It's like blacks playing the drums, it's in their genetic code!!! Poor cultures always have the best food, cause they make the most with a little. They couldn't find some blubbery white folk? Other than that, it was okay. Nothing new from Pollan, Salatin was outstanding as usual, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal should be made into a movie.
