After having seen the documentary The Future of Food presented by Slow Food Victoria as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, I now know what a conservative must feel like after a Sunday afternoon outing to see a Michael Moore matinée. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way a conservative and see myself on the anti-meat, anti-oil, anti-car, anti-Bush, pro-Green Party, pro-social inclusion policies, pro-choice, pro-informed decision side of the playing field. However, the lumping of genetically modified (GM; which in effect is a misnomer by definition as all aricultural crops are ‘genetically modified’ by selective breeding) crops in with the bogey men of corporate greed, non-sustainable farming practices, and bad lawmaking is just bad film making.

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Through 89 minutes of fear, uncertainty and doubt, the director of The Future of Food , Deborah Koons Garcia tries her hardest to throw as many modern, middle-class concerns into the air and hopes that they fall and all stick to genetically modified crops. It is clear from the description that Garcia gives to the Massachusetts School of Law Education Forum, that she bases her motivation to fight modern crop improvement on a high school science fair experiment she performed in 1965. She describes the random mutagenesis of a group of plants as “thicker, bigger, and just more deformed looking. I remember thinking at the time that these.. are the plants that I would not eat.” This sort of irrational ‘I don’t know what it is, but I know that I don’t like it’ approach to the firms production (and the majority of the anti-GM movement in general) is a cop out to sensible, thought-out, and unambiguous argument regardless of what is the topic at hand. I’ll not spend too much time debunking the many inaccuracies, fallacies, fanciful wishes, illogical arguments, contradictions and outright lies of this movie makes against GM crops in general, as the majority have all been given attention over at AgBioWorld. What I will focus on is the distraction of movies such as these on peoples attention on what needs to change in the future of our food production, rather than what makes juicy sound-bites and plays to pre-existing ill-informed paranoia. 

Rather than targeting industries that are actively trying to reduce resource usage when selecting a target for for militant film making, why not highlight those practices that are actually making the biggest difference to the world we live in? The Future of Food simply grasps for the low hanging fruit of peoples irrational fear of the ‘chemicals’ in GM crops? Surely the fate of global climate warming is a more clear and present threat to all of us than the trite example of the lone women in all of middle america that started wheezing in response to a possible interaction with transgenic corn product. A 2007 report on UK organic and non-organic farming practice indicates that the three highest energy users in the current UK market, adjusted for consumption, are the milk, beef and poultry sectors. The study concludes that “for a climate-friendly diet we therefor recommend that people and business buy food that is.. organic, seasonal, local, unprocessed, and with less (but better quality) meat.” These are hardly recommendations that are difficult to agree with. What is difficult is to understand is why people like Garcia are turning people away from the very technologies that allow people to grow foods with little to no pesticides, in more places, with less processing, and higher nutrition. While these traits are all capable of being engineered into and delivered to farmers (and when I say engineered this includes the processes of selective breeding; the magical, historical and culturally significant past times of all Mexican’s according to Garcia), the current backlash in Europe and other countries regarding the corporate practices of a few of the worlds largest agribusinesses, regardless of the end goal for these technologies and irrespective of Monasanto’s lawyers, limits the chance that these goals will ever find enough backing for the long and costly research and development required to make it into production. 

Admittedly, the untangling of transgenic technologies in food production and large-scale agribusiness practices is no mean feat. However, the corporate policy of Monsanto (the real target of the film), regardless of how brazenly greedy and illogical the film maker tries to make it appear, in no way affects the science behind what are essentially safe, modern ways of growing more food with less resources. Regardless of how much anyone pines for the ‘good old days’ as raised in the iconic scenes of idyllic, 1950’s farm life in this film, the current global consumption requirements of predominantly city-based populations has lead to the commoditisation of food production we see today. 

Individuals decisions on eating closer to the bottom of the food chain, from foods grown closer to them, with less processing and embracing the act of eating in general, has nothing to do with rational design of food crops and more to do with taking a look around for what the bigger picture tells, rather than being obscured by the GM trees. It is for this reason that I believe that GM and organic farming practices can and should be integrated to reduce energy consumption of food production, rather than being separated by ideological barriers that reduce the flexibility and sustainability of global farming practice. By combining more holistic approaches to farming methodology and increasing the use of rationally designed crops, we stand a chance at being able to step forward rather than being tethered by the fear and bad practices of the past.