The Future of Food
May. 30,2004Before compiling your next grocery list, you might want to watch filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia's eye-opening documentary, which sheds light on a shadowy relationship between agriculture, big business and government. By examining the effects of biotechnology on the nation's smallest farmers, the film reveals the unappetizing truth about genetically modified foods: You could unknowingly be serving them for dinner.
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hyped garbage
Best movie ever!
Absolutely the worst movie.
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
The Future Of Food, an 88 minute long documentary, released in 2004, and directed by Deborah Koons Garcia, wife of the late founder of the 1960s rock band, The Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, is a film that rehashes many of the same points made in the earlier films, yet also goes a bit more deeply, penetrating into the web of how Monsanto, and other agribusiness giants weave a web of control and oligopoly that reverberates up and down the food chain, and puts the squeeze on the small, family farmer, even waging a war on them. The film shows how a Canadian farmer named Percy Schmeiser stood up to Monsanto and was ruined by a corrupt Canadian judiciary (although, if one follows the link provided, it seems that Schmeiser actually got the upper hand in 2008!).The film also details how these corporate thugs, mostly in the petrochemical and insecticide and herbicide industries, have cornered the market in the seed industry, and how ridiculous patent laws have allowed the first company with the idea to patent natural plants to do so, and how they have tried to standardize patent laws worldwide so that an American or French company could somehow dictate the agricultural and food policies of developing and Third World nations, in a sort of corporate colonialism that is bound to engender not only health, but political, problems in the future. The destruction of native cultures is just part of the problem, for the larger issue is the absurdity of patenting life itself, and stating that Crop X belongs to a foreign company, thus allowing foreign interests to lay economic and legal rights to products they had no part in cultivating, while also allowing these unevolved and monoculture crops great range and susceptibility to droughts and pests they cannot fight off, for even Monsanto's Round Up Ready soy beans are showing their limitations as a food source, whereas Mexico's natal and diverse forms of corn, which occasionally remix with wild and progenitor breeds prove hardier and more resistant than the genetically modified corn from north of the border.The film also brings to light what is called the Terminator Gene that has been developed in certain crops, which was designed so that limits on crops could more easily maintain crop process. The utter folly of this, were these strains to become dominant, is that famine would be rampant, and the very development of such a gene, alone, should be enough to convince any legislative body of the folly of allowing corporate empty suits to have any say in the vital national security issue of feeding the masses. All in all, The Future Of Food is likely the best and most information rich of these documentaries in conveying the scope and depth of the issues surrounding America's insane agricultural process.
This documentary is a terrifying eye opener that every American should watch. The future of our food truly depends on the educating of American citizens. Our food is being tampered with in an unnatural way and the long term ramifications are unknown. We deserve to know what is in our food and it is our job to DEMAND it! This film opens your eyes to the risks of GMO's in our food, the corruption that is our food industry, the injustices small farmers face at the hands of corporations, and the danger of tampering with mother nature. If we don't fight for the complete elimination of GMO foods we may wipe out any indigenous agriculture we have left. Please watch this and any other informative documentaries on food. Tell your friends and loved ones. Sign every petition you can, and contact your local legislature to share your voice!
SOON -- and that they comments, seeing as there are only ~5! Very Interesting that even though Amazon.com sells it, IMDb has no hyper-link for/to it (up in the right-hand corner of its title page there) like they do virtually all other films (and/or the/an official website link!! What the hell's w/ that?? Anyway, Y'all can also get this most-excellent DVD at peaceproject.com , I'm quite sure. It's really disturbing -- also re: so many other fine film documentaries -- that so few people have seen and are (apparently) unaware of its existence! If people don't get their act together, we're REALLY in a LOT of trouble, Y'all -- and i don't mean only re: food/s!!
A very watchable documentary suitable for all ages. We took our 3 kids (as young as 6) and they all got something out of it, even tho the content was serious.Shows effectively how we are losing diversity in the seed / gene pool; that agricultural ownership is being concentrated in fewer hands; and that large conglomerates (such as Monsanto) are aggressively pushing genetically modified seed and chemical herbicide, as well as driving the family farmer out of business.Like you'd expect in something like this there's a sort of relentless one-sidedness, and some of the scientific explanations seem a bit superficial. But well worth the time & price of admission.