Wednesday, March 27, 2013

McCoy- Exploration 9

I really enjoyed this film and it honestly opened my eyes to how quickly downhill our agriculture is going and has gone. From the way I understood it, monoculture is taking over the agricultural world (or already has) and it is becoming extremely dangerous. I remember from the film somebody saying that monoculture cannot go on forever. Eventually the soil will be unable to produce the quality and quantity that it does now because of all of the pesticides and fertilizers. The soil is becoming less and less nutritionally balanced because of the farmers not switching around the crops. If the soil isn't full of nutrients than it will directly affect the nutrients in the food that we eat. They provided a statistic that stated the nutritional value has diminished by 40 % in the last 50-60 years. This is incredible, in an awful way. The nutritional value has been almost cut in half, and this could be easily avoided. They said in the film that a medium sized organic farm CAN feed the world. Industrial farms are not needed, they are hurting our economy and are taking away from our agricultural economies true potential.

A question that I have is, Are industrial farms beneficial in some cases? Or could we totally wipe out the industrial farm and lean our whole weight on the conventional farmers. Where does all of the waste go that is infested with hormones, pesticides and all of these other chemicals? We can't use it as fertilizer because that would definitely cause problems. The conventional way of farming worked and it was safer for everyone (especially the animals). Why can't we go back? I think it would help boost our economy by a great deal.

Some direct quotes that I found interesting from the film:
"If we take care of the grass, it will take care of the animals"
"If you want to heal the land, mix it up a little"

7 comments:

  1. I also would ask the question about what they do with all of the waste when it has no productive use. As for the 40% decrease in nutritional value, that is ridiculous. How much healthier could our bodies be if we added half of the amount lost back into our foods?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is sad to see how our agriculture has gone down hill. It makes me sad to see how little respect our farmers are given. I come from an agricultural based community and I know how hard they work for such little respect.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes I also thought it was interesting to think, could our world or country be supported anytime in the future by only organic farming. We would need a lot of people to begin being organic farmers.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think it would be great if we were able to go back to old times and have all conventional farms. This would solve a lot of issues within the economy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I loved that quote too about taking care of the grass and then it will take care of the animals. It makes so much sense and its something I guess I never thought about.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It would be great if we went back to how things were back in the day. Food would be more nutritional and have actual value. It would help the economy by a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I honestly don't see how industrial farms are beneficial. The pollution problem is out of control, and the animals just are not treated with any respect. I think an argument to counter my thought would be the food that is massively produced does feed a large population, but then it's also not very health when it ended up on their plate. With that said, I think traditional farming is more of the way to go.

    ReplyDelete