Future of Food

This week I watched The Future of Food documentary, which traces the rise of corporate control over our food supply, the disintegration and disenfranchisement of family farms, and the excessive efforts to keep the general public uninformed – or misinformed – about the story behind food.

Genetic engineering is the main example through which corporate control of food is examined. This “gene revolution” started in the mid-1990s and was endorsed by US Supreme Court, who declared in a watershed case that corporations not only have a right to patent genes, but that they also “own” any living thing that contains the patented genetic material.

Paradoxically, at the same time genetically modified foods were deemed unique enough to be patented, they were also declared “substantially equivalent” to foods created by selective breeding, placing them in the category of “generally recognized as safe” foods and exempting them from labeling requirements.

According the film, 80-90% of Americans want genetically engineered food to be labeled. Yet US government policies on genetically modified foods do not reflect the will of the people. The “Right to Know” act, drafted years ago, still has not been voted on by Congress. More disturbingly, neither the US Congress nor the US citizenry ever had the opportunity to vote on the issue of patenting life.

The film outlines how corporate control over food has been concentrated further by the consolidation of the pesticide and fertilizer companies with seed companies and the introduction of a terminator gene. Industrial farmers have little choice but to buy sterile seed every year from Monsanto or other large corporations along with the pesticides they more than coincidentally manufacture to be used with those seeds. Over time, the pesticides become less effective, and therefore more chemicals – or stronger chemicals – must be purchased from these corporations. The pesticides and fertilizers are doing damage to the environment and polluting water resources, but the farmers must continue to use them or risk losing their crops. The corporations thus benefit doubly from selling seed that can’t be saved and the chemical applications necessary for the seeds to grow.

Any farmer who wants to opt-out and grow his own seed is still at the mercy of Monsanto, since Monsanto can “take samples” from farms and claim that their patented genes were present in the crops. The law currently holds the farmer responsible for any unintentional or unknown contamination of his crops by patented genes. If the patented genes have penetrated the crops, no matter how they got there, it is the farmer’s responsibility to pay Monsanto.

Undeniably, it is very difficult to “fence out” genetically modified life forms. Life is designed to propagate itself and doesn’t easily “stay put.” Once genetically engineered strains are allowed outside the lab, they are impossible to control. Especially in our increasing interconnected global economy, genetically-modified organisms easily can contaminate and crowd out heirloom varieties, threatening biodiversity world-wide as well as people’s control over their food supply.

The good news is that the food industry is economically dependent on steady patronage from customers. And as awareness of the downsides of industrial food is spreading, so are sustainable farms. People now have more options for buying local food direct from farmers in lieu of industrially-produced products. This gives them power to “opt out” of the industrial food system and destabilize it with changed spending patterns. The catch is that a substantial number of individuals must band together in altering their food-buying habits for consumer power to have any material effect on the food system as a whole.

In the meantime, multi-national corporations have lots of money to throw at impression management. The film touched on just a couple of examples of how large corporations like Monsanto are manipulating people’s opinions and consumption patterns. For example, seed and chemical corporations are promoting their work as the key to ending global hunger. Advancing genetically engineered crops, they claim, is the only way to feed the world's growing population. The intimation is that resistance to genetically engineered crops is tantamount to condemning innocent people to death.

This rationalization of the value of genetically engineered food is just a duplicitous myth that prays on human emotion. As the film points out, people are not starving because there is not enough food. People are starving because they don’t have access to food. Globalized commodity crops have decimated small-scale, diversified subsistence farms. People who used to be able to grow their own food now have to get a job to purchase food – food which often is imported from the United States. Around the world, food choice and food sovereignty are being systemically assaulted in the supposed interest of “feeding the world.”

To combat this, all of us who are committed to advancing sustainable agriculture have to get just as skilled in impression management as the corporations. Our advantage is that we have a genuinely cogent, compelling story to tell with real facts, faces, and images to back it up.