Thursday 22. of January 2009

By: goat

We Feed the World is an amazing documentary with very little actual commentary from the Austrian Film maker, Erwin Wagenhofer, follows the people and processes involved in today modern food industry. He subtly counterpoints the processes from different production points of view, from that  of farmers right through to industrial chicken farming and everything in between.

Starting in Vienna, he show cases the (literally) the mountain of returned or slightly stale bread which is set for destruction every single day which is repeated in cities around the world. He talks to smaller farmers, now no longer able to compete against mechanized industrial farms. It looks at the fishing industry in France, allowing a veteran Pecher (fisherman) make the comparison between small private fishing boats compared to the industrial trawlers – in economic, ecological and quality terms.

They head to Spain and look at the biggest greenhouse in the world, covering more than the area of all or Belgium. They touch on the social and economic destruction for the farmers of developing African nations when the huge surpluses of these Industrial Greenhouses are ‘dumped’ into the local markets, undercutting already impoverished farmers by up to 70%.

A trip to Romania to Romania looks at where two different centuries meet. Horse drawn carts and huge industrial farms. Local farmers still working by hand find it hard to compete with the mechanized modern world, where the temptation of GM crops are starting to be overwhelming in preference to the traditional crops. Where Globalization yet again proves to increase the gap between rich and poor.  

And the most shocking of all, he takes you through, start to finish, an industrial chicken farm. Be warned, it is not so much garish but simply shocking how cold and mechanical our systems have become. A word of warning – this section can get difficult to watch at the end.

Finally, we meet the CEO of Nestlé, the World's biggest food corporation and 27th biggest biggest across the board, who feebly talks of the reasoning behind privatizing water....
It is a must see documentary.

In German, the embedded video is the first of 10 parts on YouTube with English subtitles.

Recommended Viewing: if you find We Feed the World interesting, we recommend you follow it up with The World According to Monsanto.