Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Future of Food

I just watched a terrifying documentary called "The Future of Food".  It discussed issues with current big business farming practices; including monocultures (which are destroying biodiversity) and genetically modified (GM) foods.  GM food, primarily corn, soybeans and canola, are becoming incorporated into farmers fields, even without their knowledge or consent.  And because the GM foods are patented, the companies creating them can sue (and win) against farmers for having the plants of their property, even if they did not want them there.  Not only that, but no safety tests have been done on GM foods, and the United States is one of the few countries that does not require foods that contain GM foods to be labeled (because the companies that sell them pay lobbyists big bucks to prevent this).  And now that corn is in pretty much everything at the supermarket (juice, yogurt, peanut butter, salad dressing, etc.) in the form of high fructose corn syrup we could be in trouble. Luckily, organic certification requires that food not contain GM products, so there's some assurance there.  Now that I am throughly afraid for the future of farming, I am happy that I will soon be supporting local small farmers who grow sustainably.

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