I
believe we’ve all found the key component in this film to be sustainable agriculture.
With the film’s discussion primarily being on factory farms, mono-culture, and
the differences between conventional and renewable farming. All of which are critical
to our understanding of this situation we are now facing in agriculture. We now
want to produce more food than we ever before, all while keeping it cheap. Whether
that means people get black mailed, like the Fox’s or Russ Kremer’s experience
with essentially being forced into commercial hog production, the system we
have now does not allow for deviation. This system is costing us in a variety of
ways, our health, the environment, and even the economy are all being effected
by our drive for cheap food.
I
think Russ Kremer’s statement “when you only have one choice, you have no
choice” rings very true with today’s society not just in terms of farming. When
you are unaware of a situation there’s little hope it can be changed. This is
where I think we are now, too few people realize what their eating, what it has
gone through to get to their plate, or how it’s affecting the world around them.
We live in an age where time is money and we think about the consequences of
our actions later.
This
film is especially important to me because I’m working with wildlife. I’m
trying to convince people we need to conserve wildlife and wild places they've never
heard of and probably can’t see the connection to why it needs preserving. The
reason films like these are important is because if we cannot educate people
about their own food I’m not sure how I can educate them about wildlife conservation.
This
film has some neat suggestions about changing the system. From the unique city
gardens like those of the Growing Power company. Where even Karen Parker the
co-director of the company states that now her “food has names!”. She knows her
food from start to finish, which is a state that all of us would benefit from. Then
we have the sustainable farms of Joel Salatin, with his cattle, chickens, and
other animals rotating among the fields for the heath of all. While these
methods of farming work for some I don’t think the majority of people will take
this sort of thing upon themselves unless they realize something needs to
change. So my question is how we can bring this to the public's eye? We know films like this do poorly, we know the companies are against us, but some how we need to get information like this out to the public.
"too few people realize what their eating, what it has gone through to get to their plate, or how it’s affecting the world around them. We live in an age where time is money and we think about the consequences of our actions later." This is totally true. I know that if it weren't for school and documentaries that I have watched, I would also have no clue about where the food that I eat comes from which is a scary thought. I think its important to inform our society on where their food comes from so they are able to make the healthiest choices.
ReplyDelete"We live in an age where time is money and we think about the consequences of our actions later." This is completely true. Before watching this movie I thought it was important to watch what I eat, but not I know it is. Even when I am short on time I still need to worry about what is going in my body and about what went into the body of whatever I am about to eat.
ReplyDelete"When you are unaware of a situation there’s little hope it can be changed. This is where I think we are now, too few people realize what their eating, what it has gone through to get to their plate, or how it’s affecting the world around them." I agree with this for the most part, but also think that this alone is not enough. I think there are a lot of people who know themselves that what they're eating isn't healthy or of high quality, but even if they did know what needed to, it wouldn't change too much. I would bet most people have been eating the way they do for a good period of time, and even if they found out exactly what their diet was like (how bad it is), it wouldn't change their diet too much for a few reasons. #1 is that they've been doing it for however long already, and even if they could do better, they're probably content with what they're doing because they've been doing it for so long, and likely don't understand or care too much about the change in trying to eat better. #2 is they don't want to or don't have the means to change. Maybe most people in this situation are poor, and don't have the income to buy and eat higher quality food, or they're too busy and don't have enough time to try to research and pick out higher quality food (or put work into trying to do something themselves). #3 goes along with that last part: they're unmotivated and lazy or not determined enough or too busy to try to make a significant change for themselves.
ReplyDeleteIn order to change on a large scale, there would need to be effort put in by a group of people to make the change for someone easy. It would need to be laid out for someone: "Here is how what you should do to make a positive impact on your diet, and here's how you should do it", and provide easy access to materials or methods needed to get easy access to resources that allow for this change.