Why Industrial Agriculture is Unsustainable

Fresh: Sustainable Food Production in America

Directed by Ana Sofia Joanes (2009)

Film Review

This documentary examines why industrial agriculture is inevitably doomed to failure. After detailing numerous financial, environmental, and human health crises linked to factory farm systems, the filmmakers explore the growing family farm movement. The latter seeks, above all, to re-localize US food production. The issue of local food production is especially relevant in 2020 with the current breakdown (thanks to COVID19 lockdowns) in globalized industrial food production.

In addition to profiling various family farmers who have abandoned factory farming, the film features Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire and the The Omnivore’s Dilemma); the 2009 president of the National Family Farm Coalition; the manager of an independent farmer-supported supermarket in Kansas City; and Will Allen, former pro basketball star and founder of Growing Power (a community-supported urban farm and training center in Milwaukee).

The film explodes a number of corporate myths about industrial agriculture. First and foremost is the claim that we can’t feed a global population of seven billion without factory farming. There are now three decades of yield research revealing that traditional multi-species farming methods (still practiced by 80% of the world) are far more productive (in calories per acre) than industrialized monoculture. As several farmers in the film reveal, traditional farming methods are also more financially sustainable. Farmers employing traditional methods spend far less on pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, and vet bills because their soils, plants, and animals are much healthier.*

The second major myth the film debunks is that factory farming lowers the cost of food by replacing human labor with technology. While Food Inc CEOs and shareholders pocket their profits, society as a a whole pays the cost of industrial agriculture with increased unemployment, environmental degradation, and health care costs. The latter stems from an epidemic of food contamination (with toxins and harmful pathogens) and chronic illness (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer).

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*Two distinct effects are described: 1) The avoidance of herbicides and pesticides allows soil organisms essential for plant health to thrive and 2) Ruminant livestock thrive on the natural grasses their digestive systems evolved for, in contrast to the grains they are fed on factory farms.

Anyone with a public library card can view the film free on Kanopy. Type “Kanopy” and the name of your library into your search engine.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/fresh

The Future of Work and Death

The Future of Work and Death

Directed by Sean Blackwell and Wayne Walsh (2016)

Film Review

I found this documentary really disappointing, owing to the mostly one sided view it presents of modern technology. Many Silicon Valley gurus predict 25% of unskilled robots will be replaced by robots by 2025, with as many as 60% of blue and white collar jobs replaced by mid-century. Already software programs are making key administrative decision regarding mortgage applications and insurance claims, as well as assisting doctors with diagnostic and treatment decisions (they make fewer mistakes than doctors).

What bothered me most about the film were all the claims made about industrialized farming and industrialized medicine improving our quality of life by making food cheaper and rendering people “disease resistance.” Although industrialized agriculture makes food cheaper, the food it produces is far less nutritious, in addition to being contaminated with toxic chemicals and frequently pathogenic organisms. Meanwhile the industrialization of farming has also destroyed 90% of our topsoil, in addition to contaminating much of our drinking water.

Moreover health in most people is deteriorating, not improving, with a decline in US life expectancy. Recent decades have seen an exponential increase in chronic illness, due to air pollution and toxic contamination of our water and food.

The filmmakers also wrongly attribute the 40 year increase in lifespan last century to the marvels of modern medicine. The vast majority of epidemiologists attribute the spike in life expectancy among white Europeans to improved nutritional levels. With minority life expectancy closer to that of developing countries, it seems safe to assume that increasing European longevity relates to their ability to monopolize an unfair share of the Earth’s resources.

The last half of the film concerns the transhumanist movement, which seems to focus mainly on anti-aging research and ways of using artificial intelligence to allow very rich white people to live forever by uploading their consciousness to a computer platform.

Anyone with a public library card can view this documentary free on Kanopy. Type “Kanopy” and the name of your library into your search engine to register.