Customer Reviews

The Future of Food

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Informative documentary about our food supply. Includes information about the Genetically Modified food industry, and farmers who try to resist GMO and get sued by corporations. A different DVD which shows the destructive nature of GMO / chemical farming on both the farmers and the soil, ...and shows an active solution taking place in India is "How to Save the World". Watch "The Future of Food" first, and then the enlightening "How to Save the World", for a incredible real world solution that is happening now. Both are entertaining and can educate you on what is really happening to food and farmers in the USA and other countries!

The Future of Food documents what is currently going on with the food supply in the US. Monsanto, a multinational corporation who was formerly in the pesticide business (agent orange, ddt) is now one of the biggest seed suppliers in the world. And not just any seed, it's genetically engineered for a number of purposes.

Monsanto has been suing farmers who have not bought seed from them but end up with it growing in their fields from no fault of their own. In one very well known case a farmer, Percy Schmeiser, was told by his neighbor that the neighbor's truck had a hole it's tarp and a lot of Monsanto's' 'round up ready' seed was dumped on his field. Monsanto tried to sue him (and many other farmers - google and you'll see links to many of the cases) and he spent his life savings fighting them. He just recently won his case after 10 years!

The film has wonderful and informative interviews with Andrew Kimbrell, director of the center for Food Safety, Fred Kirshenman, a well known sustainable farmer, and a number of experts and scientists who document first off how GE food was pushed on the American people with no disclosure and no testing as well as the devastating potential for destruction with messing with our food supply for profit.

There's a lot we can do. Support small farmers and farmers market's. Join a community supported agriculture program where you get a box of fresh from the field organic fruits and vegetables each week. We also need to demand labeling. Right now we don't know which foods we buy are genetically altered and which aren't. If our food is labeled we can make informed choices.

I highly recommend this film - it's important information for us all.

A MUST-SEE! Thank you to Ms Garcia! This is the VERY BEST, most informative and well-done documentary on the matter. The essential is summarized in one place: a DVD that is real easy to follow. It is quite comprehensive. Some very strong reports/interviews from well-known scientists, and testimonials from genuine farmers. Also all the animations are excellent. And the photography is in many places beautiful (especially the part filmed in Mexico). On the top of that, it is also the best documentary I've ever seen, flowing along an amazingly informative path. I highly recommend it for a) those who know about this matter, and b) those who don't know yet about it :~]

If you live in the US and eat food, you have to see this. If you are not familiar with GM(genetically modified) foods or do not intentionally avoid GM foods, you are probably consuming them. Soy, corn and canola are the main crops being manipulated by the "White Coats".

Deborah Garcia(widow of Jerry Garcia) shows what is going on in the Corporate agriculture world. There must come a point where man says "Haven't we screwed things up enough, is profit more important than what is right and just?"

The corruption that is engulfing the whole agriculture community is unreal. If grown properly and organically there should be no need for fertilizers and pesticides. If the soil is mineral rich than crops should grow unhindered. Read "One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukoka, if you can get your hands on a copy. He explanes thoroughly how to grow crops naturally with as little human intervention as possible.

Thank you Ms Garcia for this enlightening documentary.

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that a documentary, with the availability of sound, image, and graphics, should be at least as captivating as a well-written article on the same topic. Alas, "The Future of Food" is not that. The content is critical for our time -- modern agriculture, with its promise of feeding the world, has not only not delivered on that idea but has polluted our environment, robbed us of nutritious food, impoverished our farmers, killed our biodiversity, and made us all sick and antibiotic-resistant. The interviews are riveting and relevant, and even though I am well-versed in the topic, I still learned quite a bit from the film. The problem is not in the planning or the topic, but in the execution. With a boring and distracting narration style, a complete lack of creativity, and sub-standard graphics more akin to a middle-school project than a professional film, the creators miss an opportunity.

None of this will stop the convinced from watching this important film. But if this message is going to reach the general public, it's about time we bring the same level of hard work and professionalism to these documentaries as mainstream filmmakers brings to theirs. "Food, Inc." is an excellent example of the way it can and should be done.

I believe everyone should see this dvd. If you eat you will want to learn what is going in within our food system; how the very food we eat will soon be taken over and regulated by large food companies who have no interest in supplying us with healthy food, but who do have a interest in completely controlling every aspect of food production and distribution. This is a very educational documentary that every person should see, and then we all need to fight like crazy to keep the regulations of the production of food from falling into the hands of large corporations such as Monsanto.

Monsanto achieved in 1992 that the FDA approved genetically modified foods considering them to be "generally regarded as safe" (GRAS). This is total nonsense. In the first place, you cannot regard genetically modified food as "substantially equivalent" to natural food, for the simple reason that in nature the exchange of genes between different species is impossible. In the second place, genetically modified food IS dangerous. The scientific investigation of Dr. Arpad Pusztai on Monsanto-potatoes produced serious harm to rats. Since this study was financed by Monsanto, he got fired within hours. Genetically modified foods are prohibited in Europe and Japan. In the US, genetically modified foods are not fed to laboratory rats, but directly to the people. If you live in the US, YOU are the guinea pig. This film shows that this food can produce severe allergic reactions.

In the US, there were 0 acres with genetically modified crops in 1980, and they went to 100.000.000 acres in 2003, with soybean, corn, canola and cotton as the major crops. Tests are now being performed on the rest of the living community including fish, livestock, poultry, trees, etc.

Monsanto not only determines what consumers will put into their bodies in the US, since those foods are not labeled, but they also virtually took over all land where corn, canola, soybean and cotton is being produced. They even aggressively pursuit the family farmers who had a tradition of improving their seeds naturally, saving part of them for the next season. Some years ago, when we still lived in a world wherein justice prevailed, when a farmer had cattle, it was his duty to fence them in, in order to prevent them damaging the crops of his neighbors. Capitalism has gone so wild nowadays, and the power of the big corporations has increased so much, that corporations now change this ancient justice system in order to suit their needs. So we now arrived in a situation where inspectors of Monsanto are crossing the whole country to find genetically modified crops on land of farmers who are suffering from this cross pollination. Monsanto then accuses those farmers of the theft of their patent ! I hope I can live long enough to see one day, justice will prevail again, and Monsanto will be prosecuted for the genetic pollution of the farm land of the US and Canada, that is already affecting Mexico also.

This movie also shows that food engineering is not good for us. Genetic modification doesn't produce any nutritional value. Those foods are only good for Monsanto, so they can sell more Roundup. Now, they sell this technology as if "it will help feed the world". Nothing could be further from the truth. There is enough food in the world for everybody already, the point is that the hungry are too poor to buy food. On the other hand, Monsanto puts now a "terminator" gene into their seeds, so that seeds cannot be saved and used for a next harvest. The big question is : what's gone happen when all those "suicide genes" will cross pollinate with other crops around the world ? Will we then be feeding the world ?

The future of food is in our hands. When we buy organics, we don't take care only of our own health, we also show we care for the farmer and the future of the world - for the future of our children. It's up to you.

This DVD that came out in 2005 is so well done, entertaining
and groundbreaking that I was shocked I had never heard of it.
When I first saw it, I was so fascinated by this carefully researched and informative film that I immediately told everyone I knew about it. I assure you, it will affect you too. Debra Koons Garcia, formerly married to Jerry Garcia, has done an incredible job of covering the subject of genetically engineered crops, seed, food and everything you might want to know about
this crucial new field. She interviews farmers, severely affected by new laws and a Consumer Reports expert that in simple terms explains the science and its global ramifications.
It also explains the political aspects of why genetically engineered crops are being forced on the U.S. and the world and the government officials, who are at the heart of this corrupt corporate mess. It's all done without beating you over the head,
in a straightforward manner, with facts that are unassailable.
I am an award winning documentary producer, so it takes alot to impress me. She should have presented it for an Academy Award nomination. It's so important a film right along with "An Inconvenient Truth", that every American should see it. I don't know the filmmaker or anyone connected to this film and have never written a review of a DVD before this. For your health and the health of your family, see this, buy this, spread the word.

Other reviewers have called this a "Must See" Documentary, and that cannot be over-stated! The public truly must become aware of and informed about what is being done, behind our backs, to the food we eat to sustain our lives. This film exposes the greed and the frightening prospects of corporations gaining patents on the essential elements of life for power and profit, and that while being dismissive of the dangers they manage to circumvent any oversight as to safety of the products they unleash on a public which is largely unaware. This documentary is interesting and absorbing but it is also an important wake-up call for people to become informed about this issue so that some sanity can be regained over our lives, our democracy, our agriculture, our food industry. The recomendations in the last section of the film about supporting local sustainable agriculture are an important step to regaining control by "voting" with our food decisions and purchases. The DVD also has very interesting and informative extra interviews.

Documentary, pretty well done. Primarily focused on genetically modified food, it also touched on how organics are grown and the utter lack of protection for land and natural resources. What was appalling was the connections the US government has to the corporations who not only create the genetically modified foods, but place a patent on the results. Can you imagine someone patenting corn? But they have and it's legal. Also lots of details on how this affects farmers, how they are being legally challenged by this patenting, and how many of the modified foods cause awful things (one specific modified cell has 100% causal rate for breast cancer, but because the modification is patented institutes who work to find cures for cancer can only study the cell if they pay the millions of dollars fee to honor the patent) and they are not labeled on ingredients. It is not required that they be indicated on ingredients. It was pretty sobering and indicated yet another level of awareness is needed on the part of consumers.