More Free Press For Food, Inc. - This Time From the Farm Bureau

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

The latest anti-Food Inc outburst comes from the American Farm Bureau. And while their name sounds quite farm-y, the organization tends to be on the wrong side of just about every single issue - wrong for farmers AND wrong for consumers. So it's quite funny how an organization that I view as anti-farmer is calling out Food Inc as anti-farmer.

(Hat tip to Naomi Starkman for sending this website my way.)

When I go to the doctor, I don't ask to be treated with methods from 1912 because I know science and technology have improved medical practices throughout the years. The same is true today with agriculture. Thanks to technology, farmers and ranchers are better able to produce safe and abundant food for our growing nation. This week there is a movie being released in cities across the United States that misrepresents how farmers and ranchers produce food in this country. After reading several reviews of the movie, I am disturbed by the one-sided information being spread about how farmers and ranchers produce food. This movie is an assault on food production and agriculture. No matter the size of your farm or ranch, if you are a modern farmer, using science-based production methods, the messages of this movie are an affront to you staying in business.

You might not want the doctor to give you medicine from 1912, but you also don't want the doctor to prescribe Vioxx, do you? (For those who don't get the inference, Vioxx is a drug that was taken off the market when it was revealed that it caused heart attacks.) Technology isn't neutral - you've got good technology and bad technology. There's the medicine I take to reduce my headaches (good) and there's the Zoloft that made my friend's husband commit suicide (bad).

There are highly advanced sustainable and regenerative farming techniques (good) and there are toxic pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers that pollute our environment (bad). I'm not saying that there are no good effects that ever come from industrial agricultural techniques - just like Zoloft has helped many depressed people in addition to killing my friend's husband, industrialized agriculture has produced an abundant and cheap (if crappy) food supply, allowing Americans to spend less of on food (as a percentage of expenditures) than any other country. It just comes at a price of a myriad of environmental and social ills.

And honestly, I think this post by the American Farm Bureau is really missing the boat here. The movie was not ranting against science and technology at all. It's main thrust was against the corporate control of our food supply and consumers' lack of power or even knowledge over what we eat. That's something all of these companies with anti-Food Inc sites aren't even touching because they know they have no defense against it.

In so many cases, it's not the farmers who are the bad guys at all. They are only doing what they are either encouraged, told, or forced to do by the corporations that control our food supply. They Walmartize our food, essentially. They squeeze every last penny out of the farmers, and the farmers do what they have to do in order to survive. Those who can't or don't adopt the industrial practices required by Big Business get out of farming - or, in some cases, go organic.

And consumers, on the other end of the food system, do the same. We do what we have to do to get by. We need to eat! And while it's possible to opt out of the corporate food system, it's not easy. It requires a very strong commitment to gardening or seeking out farmers and farmers markets and then to cooking. And opting out of the corporate food system is even more difficult (and/or expensive) if you want to eat at restaurants. The most impossible situations for those of us who opt out of the corporate food system are those places where we are held hostage - hospitals, schools, amusement parks, and airports to name a few of these cases.

I have yet to see one anti-Food Inc piece address the corporate control of the food supply, or make mention of the woman featured in the film (Barbara Kowalczyk) whose son Kevin was killed by E. coli in his hamburger, or the family in the movie with the diabetic father who could only afford to eat Burger King. That's what the film is about, and instead of presenting a valid counter argument, those who feel attacked by the film are just presenting straw men, knocking them down, and hoping that we don't see the movie.