>>REVIEW
THE FUTURE OF FOOD
DIRECTED BY Deborah Koons Garcia
Opens Friday, November 18
Plaza Theatre
The Future of Food is one of the most disturbing and compelling documentaries to be screened across North America since The Corporation. It invites us into a nightmare world where biotech corporations modify (and then patent) the DNA of plants, and then launch legal attacks on anyone who challenges their laughable and contemptible "right" to modify the fabric of life for profit.
Of course, this nightmare world is not some science fiction creation – it’s our own reality. A chief villain emerges as filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia explores the rise of genetically modified (GM) plants, and the bad guy is none other than the mammoth biotech company Monsanto. The St. Louis-based maker of Round Up has an estimated 11,000 patents for plants that it has modified.
Absurdly, Monsanto legally owns any plant that has its patented DNA, and the company has taken aim at many farmers who are "illegally" growing Monsanto-modified plants. One of the best-known victims of the biotech behemoth is Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser, who found Monsanto canola on his land and was sued by the company, even though he didn’t plant it. Garcia talks to Schmeiser and other farmers who have had their lives nearly destroyed by Monsanto’s insatiable greed, and finds that their rights have been severely eroded by the failure of governments to regulate and think reasonably about biotechnology.
The situation as portrayed in the film is bleak. In the U.S., the government bodies that are supposed to be regulating the biotech industry hire former Monsanto employees. Monsanto then gets the green light from the government to do as it pleases.
Canada’s record on GM organisms is hardly impressive either. In 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Schmeiser had infringed on Monsanto’s patent by growing canola that he never planted or wanted.
Garcia shows that the biotech industry’s long arm has also reached south, deep into Mexico. In 2000, GM corn was discovered in the state of Oaxaca, where farmers grow many different strains of corn. The introduction of GM corn has threatened the diversity of the region’s corn, helped along by government policies that make it cheaper for Mexicans to buy imported corn than to grow their own (corn is subsidized in the U.S., but Mexican farmers, like Canadians, receive no subsidies).
Biodiversity emerges as an important theme in Garcia’s film – 97 per cent of the vegetables that were grown at the beginning of the 20th century are now extinct. Biological diversity helps protect against famine, and where there are only a couple of strains of a vegetable, food security is at a much greater risk. The question Garcia raises is, "should we be worried about this?" The sensible answer: yes, of course.
In the last minutes of the film, Garcia points to some signs of hope. Because the biotechnology industry’s insanity is doing nothing to benefit the food consumer, people are looking for alternatives. Sustainable and organic farming is gaining popularity – North Americans are buying more organic foods than ever, and the number of farmers’ markets is on the increase. People are choosing wisely where they can, and in doing so, challenging those who want us to eat the GM crumbs from the corporate table. |
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