The Future of Food. Out tomorrow. (********8/10)
Alliance Films is releasing the Morgan Spurlock documentary Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden on August 26th. It’s a pretty weak second effort after his excellent 2003 film Super-Size Me. But it has had a very beneficial side-effect, that being the release of a terrific 2005 documentary under Spurlock’s name. I guess he’s the Tarantino of documentaries now, adding his name to those films he feels are worth watching. And in the case of The Future of Food, he’s absolutely right. This film, also being released by Alliance Films on the 26th, is magnificent. While it’s called The Future of Food, it really deals with the history of food. The amazing corporate greed in the United States that has affected the food of the entire world. The documentary examines how farming used to be one of the most common professions in America, but now the food that reaches dinner tables, both in the States and in Canada, comes from a handful of large agricultural corporations.
We meet farmers who have been sued by these massive corporations. You see, the corporation has created a certain type of seed, one that resists the pesticide that they also sell. Meaning that farmers must purchase those seeds from that corporation once they start using their pesticide. And the corporation owns the patent on those seeds. If a farmer doesn’t want to use their seeds, that farmer is not allowed to have any of those seeds. Which means that if his neighbour DOES use those seeds, and those canola crops cross-pollinate with his own canola crops, that means that now his own canola contains the genetically engineered seeds owned by the corporation. So now the giant company can come to his farm, test his seeds, and sue him for illegally using their patent. And get this - the corporations WIN these court cases. There is absolutely no way for a small farmer to prevent his own crops from mixing with the genetically modified ones, so he has two choices. He can either pay a massive settlement to the big company, (in most cases that company is Monsanto), or he can settle out of court and start buying their seeds so as to be in compliance. Well, three choices. He can also just quit farming.
Why is this a problem? Well, it isn’t merely the idea that a company can patent something which is a part of nature. And it isn’t the fact that this same company can successfully go after small-time farmers for something that they can’t possibly avoid. In short, it isn’t the lousy, underhanded way they conduct business. It’s the genetic engineering itself that is the problem. When crops all come from the exact same genetically engineered seeds, then they are unusually susceptible to diseases and pests. Anything that would destroy one of those plants would destroy them all. Also, there is painfully inadequate testing and laughable controls on these products. Which means that if a genetically engineered food, say a tomato, was making certain people sick with an allergic reaction, there would be no real way to prove it. Because there is no label on the food that states that it is genetically engineered in such-and-such a place by such-and-such a company, there is no way to check across the board to find out if all the sick people ate the same tomatoes from the same company, or if it’s just all tomatoes in the U.S. that are contaminated, or in fact whether it is tomatoes that are to blame at all.
Then there is the “terminator” gene. Much like the concept of “planned obsolescence” in everything electronic or mechanical we buy now. (Cars are designed to last, say, eight years. Because that way, after eight years, you must buy another.) Now crops are being engineered the same way. They last one year. And after that one year, they basically commit suicide. They are now useless. Which means the farmer has to buy more of the same seeds. Every year. Which, again, doesn’t sound so bad until we think about the cross-pollination that occurs with the crops in America. What happens when the starving countries in the world, the countries that grow all of their own food and farm just to barely manage to eat, come across these plants? Suppose the suicide plants cross-breed with the plants in Sudan? And after one year, 2 percent of their crops are dead, never to return. And after two years, four percent are gone. We see commercials touting “genetic engineering” of food as a way to help starving countries. But in fact it could well cause an amount of devastation we can only imagine.
The Future Of Food ends, as do most politically or socially motivated documentaries, with a message of hope. An look toward the actual future of food. And what we learn is that although these giant corporations are basically controlling every aspect of what we eat, in the end the consumers are always in control. To some degree, anyway. There is a revolution going on in the fields of America. And this movie, having been made in 2005, hasn’t seen the full measure of this revolution yet, while we consumers are just beginning to see it. A wonderful, informative film, The Future of Food is well worth picking up on Tuesday.