Wednesday 24 October 2012

We Feed the World

I think the point of this documentary is that we are producing too much food, but then distributing it in the wrong way to people who don't need it as much as others. That seems to be the gist of it, but it ranges over the finer points and has a little trouble getting to a clear message.

We see several examples of various areas of food production, such as fishing, agriculture and poultry farming, and see that industrialisation is taking a toll. Various people claim that the organic, or the hybrid approach is best (depending on their particular stance), but certainly a lot of food is being produced, and the poorer countries are being bent over to make profits for large companies.

This isn't exactly news to me, having seen several documentaries along this line over the years. This one happens to be Austrian, so perhaps a different crowd will see this than those who saw the other ones. And yet... I still don't hold out any hope for things changing for the better. As this film points out, companies are running this, and companies are in this to make money. Everything else can go hang. Until someone either steps up with a big pile of cash to help out poorer counties, or companies see profit in helping them themselves, these documentaries will still be valid for many years to come.

I think I'm inured to these by now. I feel like I should feel depressed and wanting to do something, but it isn't there. So too goes the world?

[END]

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