Government Involvement

While watching this film, I felt very frustrated and angry with the way that our government has handled the treatment of family farms throughout the nation, as well as into Canada and Mexico. The information presented made the U.S. seem to be this monster that is set on receiving royalties from everything and everyone they can by patenting organisms and seeds. I think this is plain wrong. I also feel irritated that so many of the politicians that should be the allies of these small family farmers are the same people that are benefiting at their expense, profiting from either part ownership or employment in the very companies that seem to be trying to put these farmers out of business. I feel the same way about Dick Cheney’s involvement with Haliburton. This energy and oil company (and consequently, the vice president) is profiting off the Iraq War after being contracted by the U.S. government to build and maintain military bases in the Middle East through the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.

I fully support the alternative foods movement, as we’ve been discussing in class, that encourages buying produce from local farmers at Farmer’s Markets. It builds the community by supporting one another and fights the tide of corporate take over with the food that is delivered to groceries stores (which as they said in the film, travel thousands of miles on average before getting to the consumer). I really had no appetite after watching this, and I am now weary and nervous to eat most things for fear they are likely genetically modified. I don’t know what the long-term consequences would be for me physically, but I do understand how it is effecting people globally now, and that is enough to make me want to change my food choices. I hope in the future that foods will be labeled as being genetically modified so we know what we are eating. But I suppose ignorance is bliss, eh?

Smith, Ron. “GMO peanuts could improve health.” Southeast Farm Press; 4/9/2008, Vol.

35 Issue 11, p6-11, 2p. EBSCOhost Research Database. http://web.ebscohost.com.