Summary:
Farmageddon is a well-named film by Kristin Canty that documents several small family farms growing safe and healthy foods. Throughout the film, agents are sent on behalf of inexpedient government authorities that interfere with the famer’s practices. Both the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) continually go to war with guiltless farmers who are doing nothing but contributing healthful crops for their community.
The main idea presented in Farmageddon is that overzealous rules and regulations have been designed to discourage local farms and encourage big agribusiness. During Canty’s visits to small-scale farms, farmers and organic proprietors openly criticize this severe authoritarian scrutiny they have been under. As the film advances, it addresses the startling fact that Americans do not have total freedom when it comes to deciding on what they can eat.
In recent years, the USDA has been preventing farmers from selling raw milk across state lines and its heavy-handed ways have been ruining the lives of small organic farmers ever since. While Farmageddon is not a documentary that promotes the consumption of raw milk, it is however a documentary that promotes social advocacy and change. BigAg has been influencing the USDA, which only leads to an increase in monoculture practices, …show more content…
However, it would have been even more successful had it presented all sides of farming and food production with a sense of equanimity. I found the documentary to be laden with fear to a point where the message that is being presented loses its value entirely. Viewers are presented with interview after interview that seem to run through the same arguments again and again. There is also a huge misunderstanding presented in the film that if a food it “local”, it somehow means that it is safe as well. We know that this is not always the
Farmageddon is a well-named film by Kristin Canty that documents several small family farms growing safe and healthy foods. Throughout the film, agents are sent on behalf of inexpedient government authorities that interfere with the famer’s practices. Both the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) continually go to war with guiltless farmers who are doing nothing but contributing healthful crops for their community.
The main idea presented in Farmageddon is that overzealous rules and regulations have been designed to discourage local farms and encourage big agribusiness. During Canty’s visits to small-scale farms, farmers and organic proprietors openly criticize this severe authoritarian scrutiny they have been under. As the film advances, it addresses the startling fact that Americans do not have total freedom when it comes to deciding on what they can eat.
In recent years, the USDA has been preventing farmers from selling raw milk across state lines and its heavy-handed ways have been ruining the lives of small organic farmers ever since. While Farmageddon is not a documentary that promotes the consumption of raw milk, it is however a documentary that promotes social advocacy and change. BigAg has been influencing the USDA, which only leads to an increase in monoculture practices, …show more content…
However, it would have been even more successful had it presented all sides of farming and food production with a sense of equanimity. I found the documentary to be laden with fear to a point where the message that is being presented loses its value entirely. Viewers are presented with interview after interview that seem to run through the same arguments again and again. There is also a huge misunderstanding presented in the film that if a food it “local”, it somehow means that it is safe as well. We know that this is not always the