One of the bedrock tenets for supporters of our industrial agriculture system — monocrop farming, large scale livestock production, reliance upon chemical fertilizers, genetic engineering and pesticides, etc.— how else are we to feed the world?
industrial agriculture
From USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack: A Failure to Communicate
Four years into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, some Americans are losing confidence that the conventional wisdom at our disposal, whether liberal or conservative, is capable of restoring the financial security and opportunity we once enjoyed.
A Conversation with Anna Lappé on Climate Change – video
While carefully connecting the dots between industrial agriculture and climate change, food activist and author Anne Lappé underlines the inherent problems of conventional agriculture and the terrible costs to the planet.
The Unconventional Harvest: Farm Sanctuary
There is a war between several animal rights organizations and modern industrial agriculture. This battle is political and personal and it is spilling out into the open. On the front lines of the animal rights movement with the founder of the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York.
TEDxManhattan: Changing the Way We Eat
February 11, 2011 The TED talks have garnered a following and popularity throughout the world – many folks like to listen to passionate thinkers and doers who are on the cutting edge in their field, whether it be design, science, technology, global issues…they are “riveting talks by remarkable people.” These talks have inspired other communities […]
As We Sow: The Corporate Farm – Part 3
I started “documenting” in 2001, not “making a documentary” exactly, because I really didn’t know what it was going to end up being. The New York Times had run a series of articles about the disappearance of small towns across the Midwest, about communities drying up and farmers forced off the land. I wanted to […]
Industrial Agriculture and the Organic Alternative: Rachel Carson’s Contribution
Part 2: However insightful it was, the organic vision that Howard and his peers, notably Lady Eve Balfour in England and J.I. Rodale in America, had outlined by 1950 was incompatible with the changes then transforming commercial agriculture. The components of this transformation were not all that new – chemically derived fertilizers and pesticides were introduced in the nineteenth century and hybrid seeds and mechanized tractors became commercially available during the 1920s.
The New Film: Food Inc.
CBS News Interviews journalist Michael Pollan, along with Food Inc. producer and director, Robert Kenner. Tomatoes that don’t taste like a tomato (but hey, they also don’t bruise), cloned animal meats (really?), and a look behind the curtain of food production in America; this film presents a grim view inside our present food system. Michael […]
A Conversation with ‘King Corn’ Filmmaker Curt Ellis-Part 3 – video
King Corn documentary filmmaker Curt Ellis shares his experience growing an acre of corn in Iowa.
