Fed Up! Is a 2002 documentary that clocks in at just under an hour, and is a mainly fact-based documentary that examines how American agriculture went from, in the early 20th Century, a localized industry designed to serve the needs of small pockets of people around the nation, to an oligopoly of international corporations who have destroyed family farming, profitability for many entities along the 'food chain,' poisoned the environment, and made the worst foods possible the cheapest, due to blackmailing the federal government into subsidizing bad, fast foods and genetically modified foods, while making it next to impossible for organic and local foods to thrive.
Directed by Angelo Sacerdote, this film has the feel of a PBS or cable documentary, but is a serviceable introduction to the whole topic of modern agriculture, not only in the Unites States, but globally. A dozen or more talking heads pop up throughout the film, and these folks must be 'stars' of the forces opposed to the corporatization and commoditization of food because, in almost all the other films I will be discussing in this review, these same folks tend to turn up, saying almost all the same things they say here. Of course, not all the films have all the same experts, but it's interesting to note how many of these films feature the same messages and techniques.
One of the memes that gets going in this film, that all the others pick up on, is the rightful demonization of the Monsanto corporation (along with others, such as Cargill and ConAgra), after the bad Supreme Court decision to allow the patenting of genomes for crops. The consequence has been that small farmers, whose fields are polluted with genetically modified and genetically engineered products, often have to pay 'fines' to Monsanto for the company's pollution of their crop rather than receive reparations and damages for this act of genetic and natural sabotage; a legal oddity that reverses the liability role so long established in English common law.
While the film is a good watch, in terms of substance, artistically, the film has a bit of a slipshod approach to editing, and the use to older, black and white public domain footage. However, it does a good job of tracing the post-World War Two trends of Big Business and the fallacy that the Green Revolution of the 1960s was meant for and designed to end world hunger. No, in reality, it was meant to cheapen production, at all costs- the health and safety of the public, as well as the wages and benefits of the workers in the industry, whose once high paying jobs have given way to dangerous conditions and illegal immigrant workers who are de facto modern slaves. The film also touches on mono-crop fields, and the problems of working against, and not with, Mother Nature. Overall, it is a film as primer into the subject, and that I watched it first was just fortuity.
Directed by Angelo Sacerdote, this film has the feel of a PBS or cable documentary, but is a serviceable introduction to the whole topic of modern agriculture, not only in the Unites States, but globally. A dozen or more talking heads pop up throughout the film, and these folks must be 'stars' of the forces opposed to the corporatization and commoditization of food because, in almost all the other films I will be discussing in this review, these same folks tend to turn up, saying almost all the same things they say here. Of course, not all the films have all the same experts, but it's interesting to note how many of these films feature the same messages and techniques.
One of the memes that gets going in this film, that all the others pick up on, is the rightful demonization of the Monsanto corporation (along with others, such as Cargill and ConAgra), after the bad Supreme Court decision to allow the patenting of genomes for crops. The consequence has been that small farmers, whose fields are polluted with genetically modified and genetically engineered products, often have to pay 'fines' to Monsanto for the company's pollution of their crop rather than receive reparations and damages for this act of genetic and natural sabotage; a legal oddity that reverses the liability role so long established in English common law.
While the film is a good watch, in terms of substance, artistically, the film has a bit of a slipshod approach to editing, and the use to older, black and white public domain footage. However, it does a good job of tracing the post-World War Two trends of Big Business and the fallacy that the Green Revolution of the 1960s was meant for and designed to end world hunger. No, in reality, it was meant to cheapen production, at all costs- the health and safety of the public, as well as the wages and benefits of the workers in the industry, whose once high paying jobs have given way to dangerous conditions and illegal immigrant workers who are de facto modern slaves. The film also touches on mono-crop fields, and the problems of working against, and not with, Mother Nature. Overall, it is a film as primer into the subject, and that I watched it first was just fortuity.
