crockumentaries

[liberty]

Anyone hear about the latest government-funded film extolling the virtues of agrarian socialism? There's a crockumentary coming out on March 22 courtesy of Global TV called Hijacked Future.

http://www.hijackedfuture.com/

Here's a couple of snippets of socialist tripe found on the film's website:

"Aren’t companies developing new seeds all the time? They are -- and that’s part of the problem -- because who controls the seeds, controls our food. More and more, that control is in the hands of a few multinational corporations whose bottom line is profit for their shareholders not necessarily an abundance of healthy food. Should anybody, the film asks, own seeds?"

"The documentary looks at the increasingly fragile base of our North American industrial food system in order to bring all of us consumers of food to a better understanding of just what’s at stake with our daily bread. It asks us to question the wisdom of a system precariously based on oil and corporate seeds while we’re at the same time witnessing the impact of climate change."

At the bottom of the website page is a list of the various government agencies that provided funding for this pathetic exercise in capitalism bashing.

There's also a trailer on the website that you can view. I'm wondering if anyone could identify the various speakers that are featured. Curiously, David Suzuki is not one of them. Must be an editing error.

[grassfarmer]

Liberty? Liberty my ass - are you an undercover Monsanto operative? If not you must be pretty thick if you don't understand the risk to world food security arising from the issues mentioned. There is nothing contained in those two paragraphs that is outrageous - the problem with some of you folks and the anti socialist/communist/cwb comments is you get so caught up on the rhetoric you can't see the wood for the trees.

[liberty]

Grassfarmer, I'm not an "operative" for Monsanto.

Would you care to be more specific about what you mean by the "the risk to world food security arising from the issues mentioned".

The only risks I see to world food supply are those posed by the adoption of socialist policies that punish innovation in the agricultural field. The technical advancements created by supposedly "evil" corporations have increased agricultural productivity on an unprecedented scale, making food available to millions more people than would otherwise be the case.

That's something to be proud of, not ashamed of.

[northfarmer]

no one is forcing the farmers to grow the new seed genetics, they do so freely......we choose to purchase and utilize these new technologies.....in many cases they offer disease and pest reistance, reduce the use of hebicides,obvioulsy we are motivated by increased yields, etc, etc......so the other option is to let our good old big governments do all the genetic developments for us????? i see lots of rhetoric all right!!

[tower]

I haven't seen the documentary yet, so I can't comment on it in particular, but I would say this. We as farmers try to watch our costs, we try to maximize our gross returns, and we try to consider all the angles.. Something that disagrees with our findings for our personal farms is not necessarily socialistic.

Society also has to examine it's costs and returns. I also hope that governments would take a somewhat longer term view than farmers, especially when we have been so hard pressed financially for so many years.

I hope but I don't have a whole lot of faith in that. Maybe if I see the film it will reassure me in that. With seed in particular that is high yielding, based on high fossil fuel inputs, the filmaker might be looking at the obvious rule of diminishing returns. It might also be looking at potential problems down the road from gm seed that has been developed and approved by and with gm company material.

I don't expect that they are saying governments should develop our seed varieties, though I have no problem with the old research stations doing exactly that, they did well. Perhaps with increased concern about the safety and multinational control and ownership of our seed stock there will be some return to public research funding.

Let it happen.