This past summer the movie Food, Inc. was released in the United States. The movie presents the case against the highly industrialized food system of the United States. The film claims that in the drive to lower production costs for food, particularly meat, producers are creating externalities that make the system unsustainable in the future.
One solution, according to the film, is for consumers to demand more food from regional producers who rely on sustainable methods of production. While these producers create fewer externalities, they also have lower yields. While this may not be a problem for most Americans, who should likely be eating less food (especially meat)anyway, this is an issue for the rest of the world.
The global population will top nine billion people by the year 2050. Many experts think that food production will have to increase by 70% by then to prevent mass starvation. This will likely require a mix of solutions, and industrial agriculture cannot be ruled out of the equation.
After watching Food, Inc. you had an opportunity to explore one of the options below (each option has clickable links in it):
- Explore the Food, Inc. film Web site to find out more about the film, its purpose, and what consumers can do to change the industrial food system
- Read a news article on the future of food from Reuters or from National Geographic or from the latest issue of The Economist
- Explore the Slow Food International Web site or the Slow Food Germany Web site to find out about the Slow Food movement and local sources for sustainable agricultural products
- Explore criticisms of Food Inc. on Monsanto's Web site where it defends itself, or where it lists other groups with their own criticisms of the movie
- Watch Michael Pollan, one of the creators of Food, Inc. deliver a presentation called "What's in the Beef?" where he discusses the link between America's food system and three of the most critical issues of the day: the health care crisis, the energy crisis, and climate change.
What did you learn from your exploration about the present or future of food production? Write a blog comment of no more than 10 sentences sharing what you discovered. Make it meaty (ha!)- share facts, theories, connections you make to economics class, etc. Don't just waffle on vaguely about the looming food crisis. Post by Thursday 26 November midnight for a second chance or by Sunday 29 November as a final deadline.
I have found the movie Food, Inc. to be very interesting and full of information I believe to be true, although the bias against large, industrial farming becomes immediately obvious. I had a look at Monsanto, one of the most influential multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations in the United States and have now developed an opinion contrasting the one portrayed in the movie. Monsanto produces 90% of the world’s genetically engineered seeds. At this point, this may not seem significant, but most experts agree that genetically engineered food is the only way to support our rapidly growing population. Today, 38% of the world’s land mass is used for agriculture. In the next 40 years, there will be an almost 50% increase of the world population. In the past, human population has increased exponentially, while agricultural advancements increase in a linear function. Continuing to create food in the traditional ways are therefore obviously impossible and something new, faster and better is needed. Although it sounds like playing good, genetically engineering food is not that unnatural. All it does is speeding up the process of evolution, selection and natural survival of the fittest to meet our ever growing needs and by creating the perfect plants. Although the way Monsanto handles work may not be perfect, I am sure they have purely good intentions and are giving their best in developing adequate food for everyone in the 21st century.
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer: The opinions expressed here are the views of Moritz Sturm and do not necessarily reflect
the views and opinions of anyone else.
On their web page, Monsanto claims that the accusations made against them by Food Inc. which suggested that food supply is domintated by corporate farms, are completely false. Their statistics read that 98% of farms in the US are family owned and operated. These statistics check out with nearly every website on the web, however it must be remembered that these are the current statistics and are not any indication of what the future has to hold.
ReplyDeleteThe life of an average farmer is changing rapidly, and it has been for a while now. In Kansas for example, the number of farms has decreased by 4,000 over the last 15 years. The difficulties created by competeing with corporate farms has caused people to predict that only 30% of the nation’s 2.1 million farms will pass on to the second generation, and less that 10% will reach the third generation. As Hunsinger, a farmer from Kansas said, “The family farm is getting to be a very rare item”.
Moritz is right, with the population increasing as it is, new methods of increasing production are necessary. However, the corporate farms developing these methods cannot hide behind the image of the old country farms, claiming the family owned businesses are going strong. It is a blatant lie, and one very easily used against them as in the case of Food Inc.
http://legacy-by-design.com/news/family-owned-farms-decline.html
The movie Food Inc. closely relates to the topic of market failure, a situation in which the market in equilibrium produces an output level –either too much or too little- that society finds unacceptable. In this case, beef production instigates a lot of negative externalities, such as the energy crisis, health crisis, and climate change. As mentioned in Michael Pollan’s "What's in the Beef?", the current food system is causing negative externalities that are highly affecting our society. For example, our modern food system uses up 20% of the fossil fuel available in the world, and 500$ goes to treat chronic diseases that derive from our unhealthy diets. Beef, chicken, corn, soya etc. are all demerit goods that are overproduced by producers who do not consider the external costs involved in mass production of these goods. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the government to reduce the quantity of these goods supplied through government policies such as enforcing indirect taxes on the goods, or restricting the output for firms. Although Moritz states that mass production is convenient due to the drastically rising population, the negative externalities should still be considered and fixed by the government, especially since the abundance in food production in the meat market is causing severe health and environmental problems worldwide. Hence, in order to solve these negative externalities, Pollan suggests that we “go to farmers’ markets” and buy more “locally processed” foods. This would eventually help producers consider the external costs as well as the private costs that come from mass production, which would decrease supply from S1 to S2, and increase the price of the goods from P1 to P2 and decrease the quantity of these goods from Q1 to Q2. If the government and consumers work hard to diminishing overproduction of these demerit goods, the health problems, environmental problems and the energy crisis would be solved in the near future.
ReplyDelete-Jung Hyun Kim-
Now that I have read the article on reuters about "The fight over the future of food", my opinion which I had after watching the Food Inc. movie has changed dramatically; at first I thought that it was inhumane and wrong to overstep moral boundaries to produce the largest possible output of food, however now I realise that there is no mentionable alternative.
ReplyDeleteThe article states that over 1 billion people suffer from hunger, as the do not receive enough food to be healthy. Therefore, everything should be done to stop this from happening, and in desperation methods like Genetically Modified (GM) crops can and should be used. A quote from a Kenyan called Rajul Pandya-Lorch backs up my argument, he resents people telling them in Africa that biotechnology is bad, "If it helps us to solve a problem, we should try it." It is not understandable how some countries in Africa like Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania, who especially suffer from hunger, do not allow GM crops as they are a security risk, one can never be sure if the food which is flown in is safe, that is not only true for GM crops.
Many countries oppose GM crops because they have not been tested enough, which makes people suspicious, "without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it" (Bill Gates). This is unacceptable and might very well be the reason for people to die, but environmentalists seem to block out this thought.
Although this may be slightly off-topic, I would like to address this thought: due to the swine flu, many people have let themselves be injected with the vaccinem even though the vaccine has not been extensively tested either. How can the GM crops be any different? The food crisis to which we are moving toward is a very real threat, and may have worse affects than the swine flu was ever projected with having: in my opinion, to avert it all possible solutions have to be tried out.
Overall, food has a very inelastic demand since it is an essential good and humans need it in order to survive. Currently there is a dangerous market failure with fast food firms creating a lot of problems, such as negative externalities (costs of the consumption of fast food goods that are felt by the people not involved in the production (third parties), as shown in the movie Food Inc. Fast food is a demerit good, a good with negative externalities because producers and consumers are not paying all of the costs and they are overproduced and over consumed. After researching more on the Food Inc. website, which was full of advertisements such as postcards, lunch boxes, posters and many more, I found a lot of information about health issues, such as obesity which “over the last two decades has tripled in children and adolescents aged 6 to 19” in the US, and actions that normal consumers should take, such as signing petitions, such as the mom competition in which over 50,000 mothers signed and food tips, such as: “eat at home instead of eating out”, where no consideration is taken of the businesses of restaurants which if it declines drastically unemployment may become an issue. However, right now in America there are “more than 25% of adults and nearly 1 in every 5 teens obese”; this has become a global problem and even in Australia there are about 62% people over weighted. It is predicted that “by 2015 2.3 billion people worldwide could be likewise”, creating a major increase in health problems such as diabetes, heart ailments and cancers. If we could make the fast food firms not only pay the accounting costs, but also all of the externalities created, then they would have to pay over $100 billion annually in the US on ‘only’ obesity-related problems, which would decrease the quantity supply, decrease the consumption, and prevent the market failure. Taking in consideration that there will be a huge population growth over the next years, it is clear that people are not going to be fed by small agricultural farmers and the rate of starvation would increase. The question to ask is: Is starvation worse or better than obesity and diabetes, which is also involved in the “2 million deaths contributed to a lack of sufficient physical activity“, cancer deaths, uncomfortable life style and shorter life expectancies? This question is difficult to answer and many factors, such as mass production, the health care of people and the development of firms have to be taken in consideration in order to find a true solution.
ReplyDeleteI have explored the website of Slow Food. Slow Food wants to “defend biodiversity in our food supply, spread taste education and connect produce“, and so it stands for everything what is against the methods of fast food and what we have seen in the movie Food Inc. It started in 1986 in Bra, Italy 62 members came together. It is a non-profit organization and has 100,000 members in 132 countries.
ReplyDeleteThe market of “healthy food” is a market failure, as the output level is much too low to be acceptable for our society. Healthy food is under produced and most of all under consumed and the average person is not able to get the benefits of good, healthy and correctly produced food. The organization Slow Food is trying to raise awareness with events and campaigns. By raising awareness it is trying to increase demand and therefore increase the output onto a more acceptable level for the society.
So this organization is doing the job that the government should actually do. Unfortunately, such organizations are still not very heard off and do not have the power, which the big companies who produce the “fast food” have. Thus, I think it is worthwhile looking at the Slow Food homepage and maybe rethinking our eating habits and start to become more aware of what we eat everyday.
http://www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/mission.lasso
What we eat, where they come from, and how they are manufactured have been clearly proven by the movie Food Inc. On the other hand, people are concerned with ‘how to feed all 9 billion’ and insist that food system in US is justifiable. However it’s not time for us to complain about food shortages to meet the level for 9 billion people because currently 33% of native cattle, sheep and pig species are endangered, 300,000 veggies are disappearing, and 75% of world’s fisheries are at risk. Slow food movement started from sustaining different edible things and bringing them back to our table.
ReplyDeleteHeritage turkeys show a successful story of healthy food comeback in US.
Today is Thanksgiving. Mark Scherzer who raised 100 heritage turkeys this year says that even though it takes twice as much and a lot of money to raise them, he sold them all. Despite the high cost, more people are choosing heritage turkeys due to shifts in their values on “good, clean and fair food.” Personally I would buy expensive but clean and safe food even if I had to eat less.
In conclusion, instead of focusing on getting food production cost low by lowering the quality, and making them unhygienic, I think we should protect mentioned species and consume locally and with season.
I found the movie Food Inc. to be very eye opening and fascinating to watch. It exposed what is really happening to the food industry of the world, mainly of course the United States. The way these companies are working around laws and tricking the farmers and government in their favour is horrendous, and I am very glad that such a film was produced just to show viewers what they are really eating. As the problem with the oncoming population increase is very true, and the amount of food needed for the world will also rise, there are other ways instead of inhumane treatments of animals to feed us. By indulging more and more into this industrial way of producing foods, the externality costs will just grow and grow as well. Health care is a big one, and with the high speed and unfortunate carelessness of hygiene in the current factories, imagine what will be happening in ten years. Continuing this factory style will just get worse and in the long run only bring about negative consequences. Christy made a good point with not focusing too much on the amount, but preferably on the production and safety of our food. I completely agree, and I think that if the problems with the current food production in the States was more apparent to the population and people were more informed, then there could be a change. The movie really touched me and even though I'm not one of those extremist animal rights people, i could see how wrong the whole business is. If people are so focused on the money and are going to such extremes already, then one can only hope that most of us will make it to 2050! I dont think I'll ever touch a burger again! :)
ReplyDeleteIn economics, we had a chance to watch the movie Food.Inc that had been released in the States before and the movie brought me into terrifying shock. As the film tried to expose the ugly truth of the highly industrialized food system going on now, I realized that our nation’s food supply contains a variety of problems and that solutions should be brought up. In the film, many interviewers reveal the severe conditions of the food industry, mainly rooted from few coporations controlling the whole system as they tend to put profit priority of the health and sanitary of the consumer, safety working conditions of the worker. The huge conglomerates, such as the meat packing firms, produce massive amounts of meat which is done by injecting chemicals in chickens to make them bigger-breasted, for instance. As the world population will reach nine billion people by the year 2050 and we really need massive production to prevent starvation and poverty around the world, these firms may seem like doing the right thing. However, those artifically modified foods and the systematic method that the firms seem to use, actually cause E.coli, obesity and diabetes among people, which shows that if we keep require massive production in this way, our health will not be protected and in the end everything may be disastrous. Also the food is manufactured in inhumane conditions in the factories, transported nearly 1500 miles to reach us which cause huge environmental pollutions. Moreover the firms hugely disadvantage the farmers since their honesty and effort to revive the food industry is shaded by the huge markets like Wall-mart and therefore, it is relatively difficult for them to promote and sell the healthy products to consumers. The issue of farmers being disadvantaged would be closely related to the economy and as we had seen from other articles previously, the farmers would face surplus which means that the demand of the consumers would not fulfill the supply of the farmers, entirely caused by the huge companies controlling the food industry. In order to solve these problems, we need to be aware that the food we are facing everyday is not healthy and that we need new recommendations as I personally think that the expansion of the local farmers and their productions into the huge markets would be it. In this case, we would be able to buy healthy products from nearby stores, the firms would be reliable since they are approved of selling healthy food and moreover the economic problems such as the surviving problems of farmers would not arise. In sum, we are in an important point to decide which direction we should go out in the food industry which is closely related with our future and I strongly think bringing up the local farmers into this industrialized society and them cooperating with the firms would really convert the ugly truth into a happy ending.
ReplyDeleteFrom my exploration of Michael Pollan’s “What’s in the Beef?”, I believe that the current food production system in the United states is an example of market failure because of the negative production and consumer externalities. Without a doubt, the current food production system means that one framer can feed nearly eight times as many people than before as stated in the presentation. From the Reuters article, it is also undeniable that the world’s food production has a hard time to keep up with our growing population. However, the current food system is not the right solution, despite its ‘appeared’ efficiency. Negative Production externalities include problems with the energy and climate crises. As Pollen said, 20% of the fossil fuels used in the US is from the food market and 1/3 of greenhouse gases are emitted from the same market alone. Furthermore, there are consumer externalities, which primarily have to deal with the health crises because these processed foods have too much sugar, fat and salt. Pollen mentioned that this has caused a sudden rise in numerous diseases, mainly diabetes, and US$500 billion would be needed to treat all these preventable chronic diseases. Our goal to feed the masses as efficiently as possible has just caused more problems and costs to be shifted in other areas, thus we still end up in a failed market. We should instead clearly look into other solutions for greater volumes of cheap, healthy food. This should begin by considering the law of demand, thus, we, the consumers, should being this by changing our own diets.
ReplyDeleteAfter exploring Michael Pollan’s: “What’s in the beef?” ,I believe that that the current food system existing in the United States is a perfect example of a market failure where we have, consumption externalities as well as production externalities. An average farmer in the US can feed almost eight times the amount of people as compared to an average farmer before World War 2. All what people want is fast, cheap and easy food but what they don’t think about is the effects this food is having on the world as a whole. As Choon Ho mentions, the externalities are that 20% of the fossil fuels used in the US are by the food market, they release 1/3 rds of the greenhouse gases and the US spends US$500 billion to treat people who suffer from diabetes, obesity and other chronic preventable diseases. We know that there are millions of people who are starving and we need to feed them but, I don’t think that this is the right way. These “cheap calories” are costing us our life and we need to find an alternative. We know that at the present rate of population growth, it is practically impossible to feed the whole world on organic and safe food but, I think that we should try to find a way in which we can have a balance of organic and genetically modified(or cheap high calorie) food. Also, as consumers ourselves we should switch to healthier organic food rather than canned or GM food; as Pollan says, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” and, “focus on quality rather than quantity.”
ReplyDeleteBeing a vegetarian I opted for the most anti-meat sounding approach: “What’s in the beef” and I’m glad to say that now I’m even happier with my lifestyle choice.
ReplyDeleteFood is most likely ranked number one on the necessity list, and our global demand for it is increasing by one hungry newborn at a time. Now it seems rather unfair that it is this dominant industry – a complete market failure − that just happens to be global warming’s best pal: 1/3 of all unwanted greenhouse gases originate from the modern day mass production of food (transportation, fertilizer, pesticides, processing).
However it doesn’t have to be this way. If the government would stop pumping money into the overproducing food sector and subsidise the farmers who implement production methods that don’t result in such externalities such as a “hideous landscape” and the 20% of “fossil fuels that go into feeding ourselves” as well as the horrific conditions in which animals are kept and workers are forced to do labour.
We need a new approach that doesn’t follow in the carbon footprints of fast food chains. In my opinion the answer lies in the hands of organic low profile farmers; the government should subsidise them, invest in positive advertisements that support them as well as funding research to maximize production with minimal externalities. The government must also make it mandatory for large grocery stores to offer more ecologically friendly food, so that consumers have an option to increase the demand for these goods and thus shift the demand off the fast food market and onto the slow food one as well as gradually lowering the long term price.
I watched Michael Pollan's presentation on how he believes the food system needs to be changed. He brings up some very interesting arguments, for example how the energy, health care and climate change crises are all just being driven faster by the unhealthy way of food produce. 20% of our fuel is used to just to feed ourselves, and 500 billion dollars are being used to treat and research diseases linked to the American diet. These valuable resources could very well be used on other things than fixing the mistakes people made in their diets. The oil-dependancy will just rise with the rise in demand for food when there is the increase in the population, where then the scarcity of a sustainable amount of oil is a big problem. The unhealthy produce of food market has so many negative externalities and extra costs that it seems ridiculous that it came so far. Humans are consuming 500 calories more now, and are generally fatter - 17 pounds heavier. A third of our population is overweight, another third is obese. What we can do to change is to just "vote with out forks". It doesnt seem like much input if you think of just yourself - but if you think of the entire population of the United States, that being 308 million human beings, if everybody worked together and changed to demand to healthier and more organic foods, it would make a huge difference! The demand is the main problem - and after all we are the consumers who control the demand, and if we make a change, the market will change to fit us, hopefully that being for the best.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading the reuter's article "The fight over the future of food", I was able to establish my belief that the market for food in 'global basis' is NOT a market failure(the status of market in equalibrium produces an output level either too much or too little-the society finds unacceptable).
ReplyDeleteMany of the respondents pointed above that the method of genetically modified (abbreviated 'GM') food is not the appropriate solution for global hunger despite the current status of deficient food supply for increasing global population.
Nevertheless, the Green Revolution has kept its way to increase the yield of production with help of science; pesticides, fertilizer and most importantly, seed development (gene modification of seeds). For example, having massive investment in hybrid rice, China was able to produce 10 tons per hectare in 2000s in contrast to 2 tons per hectare in 1960s. Norman Borlaug, the movement's architect, even received Novel Peace Prize in 1970 to save millions of people from starving by enabling the developing nations to produce copious amount of food, reflecting the achievement of GM foods.
Furthermore, the prominent philanthropist, Bill Gates, had argued that "the fight to end hunger was being hurt by environmentalists who insist that GM crops shouldn't be used in Africa", supporting the GM food supply in Africa. According to the World Bank, the global food price has been rising by 75% since 2000, while the price of white wheat has been rising by 200%.* Furthermore, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help, pointing out that the threat of malnutrition is the world's forgotten problem', says the World Bank as it demands urgent action.* As the UN and World Bank's documents show us, many civilians in Africa is starving and dying from malnourishment.
Therefore, in my opinion, the market for food globally is not a market failure in a sense, that the food supply is getting to the satisfactory level for all of the global community with help of the genetically modified food, which reduces the price of food while boosting the production. It is rather the the food supply with traditional and organic way that is the market failure, considering the externality of all the people dying from starvation: nothing can be valuable than human's life, with supportive quote of Kostas Stamoulis, director of the FAO's Agricultural Development Economics Division, "the people who can feed the world with organics are taking extraordinarily dangerous proposition."
*http://www.heraldscotland.com/2008-the-year-of-global-food-crisis-1.828546
Consuming only 10% of our income, food prices in America are the lowest in the world and in history -- ever, but the cheap prices come with steep external costs. Having watched Pollan's "What's in the beef?" I have learned that these externalities range from unsightly landscapes to the output of 20% of fossil fuels into food production, which is also responsible for producing 1/3 of greenhouse gases, to the $500 billion spent on preventable chronic diseases (such as Type II Diabetes, which a shocking 1/3 of Americans born after 2000 will contract). The production system pays none of these costs; it all falls to the consumers, many of whom cannot afford to make consumer choices that would alleviate some of the costs, such as those related to health.
ReplyDeleteHaving the curtain lifted on the factory-style mass productive food system in America was eye-opening and, quite frankly, rather disgusting, but as much as I wish that food production could be returned to small farmers and good old-fashioned sun-fuel, I think it's just not a practical or realistic expectation considering the projected 50% world population increase. The mass-production style food system is going to be necessary to generate enough food to feed 9 billion people. However, I do wonder if a compromise could be struck, a compromise between the industrial farmers and the fresh food movement, wherein the industrial farmers would apply their methods of mass-production to producing more "real" and diverse foodstuffs while the environmentalist factions incorporated more environment and health conscious alterations into the system to reduce the externalities. If such a compromise could be made -- and it would certainly take time -- we could theoretically keep up with feeding the exploding world population while reducing the external costs. I do agree with Pollan on the subject of consumer voting ("voting with your fork") -- I think that by purchasing more fresh foods and less "edible food-like substances," we as consumers will be signaling to the food industry that we want change, and that will be the first step towards compromise.
In my opinion Food Inc shows a false reality about the current and future food market. As Moritz said there are 38% of the worlds land mass used for agriculture. This fact has alerted me and has drawn my attention to a very serious issue. South America is experiencing a rapid growth in population. With a growing demand in food, “agriculturalists burn hundreds to thousands of hectares.“ This deforestation has an immense impact on the environment and harms the Amazon Rainforest badly. Fast growing countries like Brazil have got to industrialize their food system to prevent large-scale deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in the future, usually done with the „slash-and-burn technique“. With a 50% increase of the world’s population it is extremely necessary to develop an efficient food system including genetically changed food. If South America does not majorly develop a industrialized food system then external costs of global warming, (caused by the deforestation) will increase by 60 percent. My opinion is that Food Inc fails to understand the current and upcoming problems of the global food market.
ReplyDeleteBy Leonard Gorbach
http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/02/04/global-warming-101-costs/
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0811.htm
How on Earth are we going to feed 9 billion people around the globe by 2050?! The answer does not lie with small, organic, low profile farmers as Astrid opts for - on the other hand, Industrial Agriculture, while not being the most tangible or agreeable form of Food Production, is the only method of mass producing food that actually works, to a limit, which we have.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the movie Food Inc. may or may not have been something new for the average consumer, it certainly contains many incorrect or biased facts about industrial agriculture. Monsanto, for example, allegedly 'refused' to take part in the film Food Inc. Monsanto disagrees, saying that in fact, they invited the entire film crew to visit and learn about the ongoings in this company.
The solution is not an easy one to find. Food Inc. merely restates existing problems and dilemmas while not suggesting any new solutions - they stay relatively neutral throughout the film. What people do not realise is that if the government stopped subsidising the big companies, and instead turned to the smaller, less 'hideous' producers, the world would begin to starve, if not now, in 2050.
The methods of producing food are not perfect - but I'm sure that companies such as Monsanto are attempting to solve the overdramatised issues which are presented in the film Food Inc.
The fact that consumption of food could result in energy crises, health care crises and global warming is very disturbing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments that the industrialization of food has been a major market failure and it is no doubt that this dire situation will push America in to worse economic slump if not dealt with immediately.
It will take time as it requires change in the habits and mindset of an entire nation.
Not only time, but it also requires incentive on the governments part to subsidize healthy food (so as to make it available to the poorer section of the society who spend a larger portion of their income on food) and regulate the easy influx of cheap and unhealthy food in to the markets.
What I found exceedingly interesting is the irony behind this grim crises; it seems one of the main problems is the mindless CONSUMPTION.
In the face of the current economic crises the American government is encouraging people to save more money, while the prices of vegetables continue to rise.
This is a vicious cycle, as people have no choice but to buy cheap food in order to deal with the current economic crises.
Not only that consumption in a key part of the GDP of a country. In fact, it’s a measure of economic growth.
People will buy cheap food to save money; in the end spend their savings to treat various health problems caused by these unhealthy foods. Moreover, the poor have absolutely no escape from this vicious cycle.
As American’s are learning to save, China is learning to spend more. One important lesson, we hope, China will learn from the US will be to encourage consumer spending on services (like fitness) rather than food.
As population grows exponentially, agricultural growth is too slow to meet the demand of this rapidly growing population. But after watching the film I feel America is consuming more than is really needed while poorer nations are suffering heavily from the looming food crises. Mean while, Americans need to learn to accept that: there will always be an opportunity cost to sustainable development.
After I have seen Food Inc. and "What's in the Beef?", and when I saw that 1/3 of the American population are obese, I felt that what they call "edible food-like substances" are overconsumed. I think there will be no changes if consumers do not change because it is just a business for the producers, and it seems that most of their aim is to gain more profit which businesses have in common. Actually I think I will hesitate eating even if I only knew about my personal cost, but if people are able to accept their private cost,
ReplyDeletethey need to consider more about the externalities. For example, if you die from obesity (caused by eating), definitely your family and also coworkers will be affected, or most of these foods are packed in cartons or plastic bags, so you may create a lot of litter by consuming them. Also they need to know that the money they paid to purchase the food goes to big factories which are also harming the environments. If people start to consider about these things plus there own health, there should be a decline in demand as we learned in our class.
However changing life style is very difficult thing to do, so I think the slow food campaign is a good way to solve the situation. It will give us the opportunity to communicate at tables again, and also we will be eating "real cooked food" which will also solve the problem of overeating, because when people eat slowly, and chew well, you will be full with less food.
I think that both Astrid's idea of the government subsidizing organic farmers and Molly's idea of combining organic farming with industrialization could help the current food market. I read the National Geographic article, and in several places, the food economy has improved, but not due to large companies. When farmers have rotated crops, not just growing corn, they get higher yields per acre, and, in instances where local farmers have been able to use modern, genetically modified seeds with good fertilizers, food production has drastically increased, without needing to use gross CAFO's (concentrated animal feeding operations) where animals are not well cared for. According to the National Geographic article "It takes up to five times more grain to get the equivalent amount of calories from eating pork as from simply eating grain itself - ten times if we're talking about grain-fattened U.S. beef," so if the government didn't subsidize grain so much, grain prices would rise,but it wouldn't be wasted in unnaturally feeding cattle, and could become more available to the general population, who, especially in the US, should be eating more grain and less meat anyway. Considering the pollution, water poisoning, and other externalities or third party costs currently being created by large factories, it is clear that the current way our food is being produced needs to change. Jung Hyun said the government needs to change the system, but I think it is also the consumers, as well as the producers, who need to decide to produce and consume high-quality goods. Governments should stop subsidizing corn and similar goods to the extreme, instead subsidizing small, local, organic farmers who have diversified, and should prevent companies from continuing the gross, unsanitary methods of food production they are currently using. But consumers need to decide to support organic food, grown in places where firms take good care of employees, and produce high quality food. Our modern methods of food production need to change, but not in the direction of growing factories which pollute, don't take care of workers, and don't produce good food.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching "Food Inc" and the video "What's in the beef", I am appalled to discover what we're really eating.
ReplyDeleteMicheal Pollan brought up some very interesting points in his presentation. For example, who knew that 20% of fuel is used just to feed ourselves, and $500 billion are being used just to treat diseases caused by unhealthy diets? We are wasting valuable resources that could be used for much more important problems; not problems that are caused by our own laziness. Furthermore, a third of all green house gases that are polluting our planet come from the food system. How could we let this happen? All producers care about today is efficiency, how to make as much money in as little time as possible. While before World War II one farmer could feed 20 people, a farmer today can feed 150. Beginning of the 20th century, the average person spent 24% of their income on food, and now it's only 10%, the lowest it's ever been.
How can we change this? While it seems almost impossible for us, as individuals, to do something about this huge problem, it really isn't. All we have to do is "vote with our forks". For example, we need to regionalize our food, so farmers will actually profit by changing from the industrial system. Things we can do individually include planting a garden, actually cooking our own food, and lastly, eating together at a table. Small things like these can actually make a big difference. In the end, it all comes down to what Micheal Pollan put in simple terms: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants."
I explored the Slow Food website Germany. In paricular the frankfurt region program was based on bio products in which they believe is the best food, with the best externalities. Their program is against the fast food world we live in. An example of this would be their slogan "Wir machen Fast Food gerne zur Schnecke." Translated into english it says: We happily make fast food to a slug. They have open houses in the rheingau where visitors can be persuaded to slow food. Since fast food is an inelastic good, it is questionable if this campain will actually have an effect on the consumers and stop the bad market failure and turn it into a good market failure.
ReplyDeleteThe movie Food, Inc. is closely related to our economics class. It claims that beef producing companies are examples of market failure, which means that the market in equilibrium produces an output level- either too much or too little- that society finds unacceptable. They produce too much of beefs which are demerit goods. Because producers and consumers do not pay all of the costs, including external costs, beefs are over-produced and over-consumed with very cheap prices. Nowadays, industry has developed and more beefs are produced in shorter periods. It is true that they are cheap and most of the consumers will decide to buy these foods because of substitutes (choice of buying either expensive organic foods or cheap unhealthy foods). However, we have to understand that these goods are produced with lots of chemicals that might kill us. These over-produced unhealthy foods lead to serious health crises, as explained by Michael Pollan who presented “What’s in the Beef?”. People are dying because of diabetes, E.Coli, or any other serious diseases caused by eating. Therefore, Pollan suggests the producers to be ‘dependent on the sun’ and produce foods naturally, and suggests consumers to understand what is in the beef and buy more local, organic foods in the farmers market. Government interference is necessary here; governments have to do something to solve the problems by the negative advertising to lower demand and by the indirect tax on the good or its resources, for example. Although this might not be very effective, they have to do these to make sure that more people now consider also the external costs, not only the private costs, so that we can reduce the demerit goods.
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.reuters.com/commodity-corner/2009/11/12/michael-pollan-whats-in-the-beef/
I understand that it is incredibly naive to rely on the morality of people as to the way the animals are being treated. In this case I believe humans fulfil the Darwinist approach of being very selfish, but maybe if we could use this selfishness and point it into another direction, we could create a new and healthier lifestyle. According to Michael Pollen, the life expectancy of people who were born in 2000+ is going to decrease and mostly due to unhealthy food leading to consequential chronic sicknesses which then questions the efficiency of this kind of food production.
ReplyDeleteThe efficiency is questionable because the money that may have been saved during the production is spent on the diseases that follow. Our lifestyle has led to a boom in an industry which creates unhealthy foods which is not desirable i.e. market failure. It should not be the quantity of food that is in the center of our focus but the quality, because this leads to the reduction of health costs and with the money saved one could subsidize farmers who live in poorer countries.
Another point which I find quite controversial is that if I remember correctly our last blog entry was about the great surpluses of corn and milk, which was dumped collectively. If we have such a shortage of food, why isn’t the milk transported to areas where the food is needed. This would be an alternative solution to that of creating masses of unhealthy food. In a different film called “we feed the world” it is claimed that with the current food production rate “12 billion people could be fed” nevertheless 100 000 people starve daily and 800 million suffer from hunger.
Concluding one can say we do not have a quantity problem but an allocation problem which needs to be solved and agreeing with Choon-Ho we also as consumers need to change our lifestyle and focus on a healthy diet.
I forgot to cite my source:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zeit.de/2006/20/01_leit_1_neu
I forgot to cite my source:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zeit.de/2006/20/01_leit_1_neu
I agree with Moritz that the world will come to a point in which it will not be possible to feed all people with the land it has available. I it seems like the easiest way to simply increase the output of the farm land we have available by using genetically engineered crops which can withstand herbicides, grow bigger and are overall a lot better than the natural crops. However, we have to consider the dangers which the genetically modified crops bring with them.
ReplyDeletePioneer Hi-Bred is a manufacturer of genetically engineered corn, they claim that their “genetically modified (GM) Liberty Link corn survives doses of Liberty herbicide, which would normally kill corn” they say the reason for this is that the herbicides become inactive within the crop. Jeffrey Smith is the author of the international bestseller, 'Seeds of Deception’ and he found that when Pioneer advertises their product like this they don’t bother to mention that when the corn in eaten by humans, some of the inactive herbicides may reactivate within human intestines and that can cause damage as severe as the death of nerve cells in the brain. We have to consider that there are many side effects to changing the course of nature by genetically modifying crops; in addition to these dangers the farming industry uses 70% of the worlds fresh water only to contaminate it with an increasing amount of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides if this current trend continues then it will be hard to get clean fresh water in highly populated areas.
I think instead of playing around with evolution by genetically modifying crops, we should rather establish new farming grounds using the technologies we currently have. A common feature which city designers look into at the moment are vertical farms which are buildings placed in the middle of a city, “one-square-block farm 30 stories high could yield as much food as 2,400 outdoor acres, with less subsequent spoilage.” The immense emissions produced by the transport of crops from the countryside would also decrease if the farms were right in the city instead of the country side, the amount of air cleansing in the city done by plants would also increase by quite an amount due to the increase of plants in the city.
Sources:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-rise-of-vertical-farms
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_637.cfm
The movie ‘Food Inc.’ was very appealing, because it showed me what is really happening to the food industry of the world and main attention on the United States.
ReplyDeleteI found it great that the viewer can experience where the food we eat is coming from, because when you go to a fast food restaurant like Burger King and order yourself a chicken burger, you should know what you are eating.In America a person consumes 200 pounds of meat per year and with a population that is rapidly growing, the agricultural growth is too slow to meet the demand; therefore the competition for meat will increase and people may have to find substitute goods.
Beef manufacturing companies produce an excess amount of beef, which are an example of a demerit good. A demerit good has negative externalities, because producers and consumers do not pay all of the costs, these goods are overproduced and over consumed.
Industry and technology have currently developed to a level where more beef can be produced in a shorter time period.More consumers will buy this cheap food, because beef is an example of a substitute good. However, beef and other goods are produced with many chemicals such as peritoneum based fertilizers and pesticides that can harm human beings and kill them. The artificially modified beef and other types of food can cause diseases such as E.coli, diabetes and increase obesity among people. This proves that if we keep necessitating massive production in this way, consumers’ health is in danger. In Michael Pollans video on ‘what’s in the beef’, it states that health care among energy crisis and climate change are the main problems on how food is manufactured these days. “500 billion dollars of our health care costs are going to treat preventable chronic diseases linked to the American diet.” Michael Pollans wants us to be more dependent on the sun and less reliable on oil, so that we can gain more sustainability.
All in all the methods of producing beef are not the finest, but agreeing to what Viola said, consumers need to change their lifestyle and focus more on a healthy diet. For many people it will be a difficult change, because in a local supermarket organic and healthy food such as lettuce is more expensive than a burger at a fast food restaurant, but they just need to overcome this change and focus more on their balanced diet and healthy food choices rather than purchasing goods they want rather than goods they need.
I watched Pollan give his presentation on "whats in the Beef". i agree with choon ho, the market for beef in the United States is the example of a market failure. the price and quality of our beef is very low, sometimes, like corn, for example, the cost of production is lower than the cost to purchase the good because of heavy subsidies by the U.S. government. This eaves many externalities to be paid by the american citizens, and citizens of other countries as well. Michael Pollan correctly states that the three main problems in the U.S. today, health care, the energy crisis, and the environment, can all be linked to the beef industry. This means everday citizens of every country are now paying the cost and externalities of a dangerous, harmful industry. it is directly resulted in the rise of many diseases, increased the dependence on foreign oil, and is harming the environment every day. To solve this problem, however, the U.S. government needs to take control of th e industry and split all the major companies up into smaller ones, and take similar actions to those taken by Theodore Roosevelt during his presidency. however, there will be massive opposition to this, as it will seem like the government is no longer being lassez faire. this is a problem which needs to be solved, but the best apparent solution is blocked by the very people it is trying to help.
ReplyDeleteI looked at the Food, Inc. film Web site to find out more about the movie, its intention and about possible suggestions to change the industrial food system.
ReplyDeleteIn Food, Inc., which we have seen in class, filmmaker ‘Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer’ and shows that ‘supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations.’
Food, Inc. tries to show American consumers he inhumanity of producers who ‘often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.’, in order to supply the largest amount of output at the lowest cost of production which is a basic economic rule.
On their Website, one can find a number of advices to consumers which would like to get involved and do something against this ‘prevalence of convenience food and industrial agribusiness.’ For example they listed 10 (golden) rules to change the food system which include daily actions like ‘eating at home instead of eating out.’ and drinking water instead of sweetened beverages.
Further on, one can find a number of hyperlinks to the Websites of petitions that try to do something against the momentary food supply in America which cares too much about the maximization of profit and far too little about the welfare of the consumers.
As we have seen a major problem of food supply was in the meat sector which is controlled by four companies owning more than 80 % of the market. In my opinion, a possible solution would be the nationalization of this market sector and subsidizing small farms like the farm shown in the ‘In the Grass’ chapter in Food Inc. ,and therefore having more small farms with traditional food productions and species-appropriate livestock breeding.
I watched the video by Michael Pollan called "What is in the Beef?". I enjoyed the video and agree with many of his claims. I was surprised (in a good way) when he started to mention the many externalities that we humans produce when buying processed food. However, I wanted to mention his "plan" to make the US more dependent on the sun and make our food better. Although I wish it were true, I found most of his "plan" a fantasy. Firstly, the effort needed to rule out the farm industry in the government to simply lower subsidies in those areas would be immense. Secondly, to make people rely on food grown in their area would be very, very hard. Some people live in places where things can't be grown easily, and there will always be a demand for seasonal goods and goods from other places. Thirdly, this "plan" would be almost impossible for any small country or one with a small GDP. It is pure fallacy to imply that they could release their dependance on cheap, manufactured food for the "good of the world". I wish it were true, but it seems Pollan is living a dream.
ReplyDeleteI always knew that McDonald’s and other processed food is unhealthy, but after watching Michael Pollans “What’s in the beef?”, I was shocked about the negative externalities of processed food/McDonald’s. I didn’t realize that 26 oz. of oil go into the production of a quarter pounder burger as well as 13 pounds of carbon, which pollutes the air. There are a lot of other negative externalities coming from processed/fast food, such as 20% of the fossil fuels used in the US coming from the food market and 1/3 of greenhouse gases being emitted from it, and 500 billion dollars being used to for health issues linked to and coming from unhealthy eating. The facts presented by “Food Inc.” were also shocking and showed the ugly side of processed food. I think that in order to change this, people need to change their diet and lifestyle and get used to eating healthier, and the government should subsidize organic and other healthy food, which would increase both the supply and the demand of healthy/organic food. I like Pollans slogan “Eat food. Not too much. Mosly plants.” If people stick to that, we could lower these externalities and could increase the demand healthy food.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the GM (genetically modified) foods, I think that they should not really be encouraged to be produced. However, in places where people are quite short on food and are starving daily, such as in parts of Africa, they should be tried out. It is not understandable that countries such as Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania do not allow GM foods to be produced. They should try it out and see what happens – it could solve some problems they have concerning the issue of food/starvation. I do, however, not see this as a long-term solution, especially not in Europe and the U.S. The future of food lies in organic and healthy food, ideally. People should shift from eating unhealthy to eating healthy. If consumers and producers of processed and unhealthy food realize the negative externalities that the market brings about, and the government would encourage productiona nd consumption of healthy food as opposed to unhealthy food, there might be a change in eating habits and people would focus more on producing and consuming healthy food which doenst have negative externalities, thus decreasing the output level of unhealthy food markets and increasing the output level of healthy food markets.
Timur Irdelp
As quite a few people mentioned, the amount of oil that’s being used for us to eat is devastating. But once again, the future brings new ideas and new developments. There is a group of scientist that has had the idea of “vertical farming”, which is almost like farming in skyscrapers.(http://www.gizmag.com/go/7500/) This will be very space efficient and it enables farming close to big chunks of people, meaning that there won’t be much transportation needed. That way, the oil consumed for bringing people the food will decrease by a lot, until food consumption won’t have much to do with oil consumption any more. The only drawback of this is, that it might be somewhat expensive to build, but seriously, with all the “revolutionary” renewable energy ideas of scientists I feel like money doesn’t even matter. So the world’s actual problem will turn out to be the space. If people don’t find a way to grow things on the North Pole, scientists need to make everything more space efficient. Right now, the easiest way to do so is genetically engineering the crops. Since the 60s genetic engineering has been increasing but in order to be helpful in the future, governments need to support research because this seems like the best method to prevent everyone from starvation in the future.
ReplyDeletePS.If we are lucky, no one will ever have to experience the year 2050 because the world is ending in 2012.BTW
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7500/
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5A909H20091110?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=11621
The movie “Food. Inc” pointed out the problems caused by the mechanical massive production, which is prevalent nowadays, and therefore it truly brought up debatable issues throughout the society since the movie mainly treats the topic that is directly affecting human lives, food. In the movie, large conglomerates were depicted as producing low quality food due to massive producing methods with unsanitary procedures, especially in meat-packing industries. I do agree that this may be the picture of today’s food supply industry, however as National Chicken Council published their opinion, there definitely may be some exaggerated parts in the movie. The biggest point is that the “niche marketing” that this film is strongly advocating is not a realistic solution, assuming that the world population may reach nine billion by the year of 2050. The supply only from the local farms may not fulfill all the requirements and so, the statement from the movie keep urging local marketing as a more convincing way to lead the food industry is only considering the situation of elites-such as Michael Pollan did-that normal people wouldn’t be able to do. Moreover, the scene that showed the chicken-broiler system and criticized it contains quite an exaggeration; NCC insists that the breeding is done in a “traditional matter”, which means without any “genetic modification”, and moreover they mentioned that this method of production has helped to expand the market which makes sense under the economic rules that we learned, that an increase in quantity supplied will lower the price of the product. Therefore, we should also see the positive sides of the food system that is going on today, as it is more effective and economical in cost. However, as I looked through the opinion that NCC published, it didn’t defend itself from sensitive points that this film tackled; big companies controlling the government to direct regulation in their favorable way, their preference on profit over awareness of consumer health and so on. Therefore, as we can not judge an issue from one side, there definitely will be an ugly truth hidden behind the large conglomerates, however, the movie has emphasized some parts more negatively to look more persuasive. Though, it is true that the present situation should be modified in some way so that the health of worldwide consumers can be approved and I think the local farms should make an incorporation with the large companies to transport their productions to huge markets that consumers could access easily and we can guarantee that the products that we are consuming are healthy. I strongly agree with the urgent situation that the movie is arguing and that new solutions are needed to solve the significant problem such as promoting the incorporation of local farms with big companies, however we need to admit that there are some exaggerations contained in the movie.
ReplyDeleteI read the article "If words were food, nobody would go hungry" from The Economist which talks about the rising price of food and the inevitable rise in malnourishment that comes with it. I stumbled across this: "the annual $7 billion that the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a think tank in Washington, DC, estimates will be the bill for developing countries to protect agriculture from the impact of climate change." Astrid points out that "1/3 of all unwanted greenhouse gases originate from the modern day mass production of food (transportation, fertilizer, pesticides, processing)." The junk food industry is therefore not only causing health issues in the US, as is explained in Food Inc., but it is also worsening conditions for developing countries. By contributing to the climate change, the US is forcing developing countries to spend valuable money on protecting the crops they've got instead of increasing their yield. "At their meeting in L’Aquila in July, the Group of Eight (G8) large rich economies promised to increase spending on agricultural development by $20 billion over the next three years." The question is, how much of this money is benefitting third world countries who are actually in need of more food, and how much of it is going to corn subsidies and the fast food industries in countries that suffer from over-consumption of food especially meat? During 2007-08 "world food prices experienced their sharpest rise for 30 years" could this have spurred the fast food industry, causing not only consumers to go for the cheap fast food options, but also making bulk-production the natural thing to subsidize?
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the movie Food Inc. and the presentation Of “What’s In the Beef” by Michael Pollan, I can strongly agree with Austin and Choon Ho to say that the food economy in the United States is an example of a market failure. A market failure is when the market in equilibrium produces an output level of either too much or too little that society finds unacceptable. In this case the market is producing way too much and the beef is considered as a production externality. On average an American consumes over 62 pounds of beef each year and that is just the beef and not including all of the other meats like chicken and pork. This is a problem because the producers have found a way to produce the beef for such a little price; therefore they can sell it for a little price. The government has placed loads of subsidies on corn. As a result corn is now used in almost every food, including beef. Since there has been loads of subsidies placed on these foods the cost of production is way lower than the cost to consume the good is. Therefore the consumers are now responsible to pay these externalities that the subsidies have caused. In my opinion I believe that there must be something done to stop this from happening. In the presentation Pollan comes up with the conclusion of making food from the sun. I have to strongly agree with his idea because this way the food that we eat will be healthier and the cost may become cheaper. We will not have to rely on factories to produce our food in such horrible conditions and maybe the corn in some foods will be lower. And as a result of all this the obesity rate may lower hence the lower production of corn. So in conclusion I believe that the food market right now is a huge market failure and I strongly believe that someone needs to take control of this situation before it gets worse than it already is.
ReplyDeleteAs the Film, the Food Inc website is used to underline the opinions expressed in the film. The producers of the website are conveying the idea, that Quantity does not necessarily man Quality, and make the consumers aware by lifting the opaque veil between product and consumer. The website uses shock tactics, and heavy bias, to further cushion the rising demand for cheap, but detrimental food, and unravelling the negative externalities, that the consumers are so unaware of. In Addition, does the website advertise its advertisement, to be put on other sites, and therefore catalysing the effect, which they would have by only one site. Nevertheless, is the main purpose of the internet site, to focus on the individual, by supplying a variety of approaches that a consumer can do to correct this market failure.
ReplyDeleteA consumer alone feels and appears extremely weak compared to all of these humungous food companies, creating a scarcely divided monopoly that we have in the US today. The website and film want to persuade the individual of the opposite, since the food companies are all dependant on sufficient demand. By changing eating habits, and turning to local producers, it forces the big and powerful firms to diminish by time, and turn to more sustainable and organic products. The website urges visitors to sign petitions so that the voice of the crowd is heard, and cannot be ignored any further, since the food companies have so much influence in the American government.
After watching Food Inc. and the presentation of Michael Pollan, I had a clear view on, how the food system, especially in United States, worked. Definitely the food producing in America was a ‘market failure’. The market for food was producing too much, which caused a lot of social, economical and environmental issues.
ReplyDelete“What is in the Beef?” asked Michael Pollan. With the Mc Donald’s Burger, he explained us the complex systems of the food system. Due to his explanation, (and as we saw it in the Food Inc. film) ‘producing beef’ was closely connected to the producing of raw food materials (corns, soy, etc to feed the animals). In this method of producing food, Pollan mentioned three key problems that are caused. 20% of the fossil fuel goes to this food system, 500 billion dollars to prevent chronic diseases and 1/3 of the green house gases come from this process.
Furthermore, after world war two, the ability of feeding people of a single farmer has increase to 8times, 150people, compared to only 20 people before making the case even worse. It’s because the food system now is more close to a ‘factory’. This change of food system after the WW2 made us eat 500 more calories a day, which makes us, due to Pollan’s research, 2/3 of us 17 pounds (about 8kg) fatter and 1/3 obese. Again, this made the government spend even more money on health cares.
Additional, he also mentioned the seriousness of environmental pollution caused by producing a Mc Donald’s hamburger. By producing one burger, 26oz of oil (about 4 drinking cups) is needed and 13lbs of carbon is released which is equal to burning 7 pounds of coal. This already is a quite serious problem if we consider the quantity of burgers being produced. However, it gets even worse as we look at the farming system. One big farm produces the equal amount of waste of 3 million people (# of population in the city of Chicago). However, the farmers have not a provision to clean up the waste unlike the citizens in Chicago. Therefore, the pollution gets worse everyday.
Due to this inefficient food system, everyone gets negatively affected. Therefore, it is quite logical to call the food system as a ‘market failure’. To solve this problem, it is important that we must try to avoid eat to produced foods, and eat slow foods. Pollans phrase ‘Eat Food, Not too much. Mostly plants’ got really into my mind. Nowadays, we eat too much meat and have an unbalanced, unhealthy diet.
I, as well as many other, found Food Inc to be a very eye-opening movie, which makes some very good points, which we, as a society need to consider. However, many of the critics of Food Inc point out that we also need to keep in mind that there are a lot of people in this world, and, somehow, all of them need to be fed. Therefore, although I agree that some things need to change in terms of government policy and oversight, however we need industrial farming in order to supply the world with food. Sadly, industrial farming means farming run by large corporations which are driven by the profit motive, and thus follow basic economic principles in order to gain that profit. Because of this desire for an ever greater profit, the food industry is simply looking for ways to cut costs, and I do not believe that there is anything wrong with that. I do, however, believe that certain cost-cutting measures which have recently become popular are very harmful to our well-being as a society. Because food, which, being needed for survival, is very inelastic any questions people have about the safety of their food, will not result in much decrease in sales. Because of that, and the large corporation's ever greater cost-cuts, the "invisible hand" will never be able to regulate the food industry in such a way, that the food industry is not a market failure. I therefore believe, that the some amount of government intervention in the food industry's quality control is needed.
ReplyDeleteAfter researching the Food Inc. website I discovered that there is no “real” alternative stated. The alternatives mentioned in the movie, such as “normal” farming don’t have the potential to feed the population in 2050, which will have increased by 100%. I find the website and the movie quite ridiculous: the movie only states specific cases in order to promote their argument. The market failure is obvious but it also originates from the countries poor health care system and lacking support for citizens. Al though many negative externalities,an impact on a party that is not directly involved in the transaction, for 3rd parties are created the vast majority of the population gains from the demerit good of fast food. The health issues created affect the minority of people and in my opinion the solution for the government is to pay for the lack of hygiene in the factories. Interestingly, the food inc. website is full of advertisements: lunch boxes, for example, this is a product which is indirectly positively affected if fast food product decrease in demand. This proves that the movie is bias and that the pro- affects of fast food companies are not mentioned. I find it shocking that the Food Inc. website demands for genetically modified plants to be illegal, this is a scandal because low GDP countries need large amounts of food at a low price: Rajul Pandya-Lorch from Kenya backs up this argument "If it helps us to solve a problem, we should try it." I find fast foods are the only solution to a upcoming problem but that many problems still have to be removed.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the movie Food Inc. I was shocked when I saw the amount of fast-food which is consumed everyday by so many people all around the world. What shocked me most is that you can get a burger for 1$, but it costs much more money to buy some vegetables. This is why I decided to explore the website of slow food. Slow food wants to raise awareness about the food that we eat, and want to show people “the importance of caring where their food comes from, who makes it and how it’s made.“ I think this is very important, especially for young people. Children need to learn more about their food, and not just eat what is put onto there plates. But the problem with these organizations is that there are far to little of them, and people do not take much notice of there actions. A law should be made that all schools must have healthy food, which is approved by these companies such as slow food. This would help children to get a healthy meal at least once a day. But since the costs would be very high, this is an unrealistic goal.
ReplyDeleteIn some way demand must be increased for healthy food, and prices need to be lower. It is not acceptable that families only eat fast-food, just because they do not have enough money to buy a few vegetables for a healthy meal. This is clearly a market failure, were a solution needs to be found soon.
http://www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/mission.lasso?-session=slowfoodstore_it:54B263EF1b90d315ADPgT25D892E&-session=slowsitestore_it:54B263EF1b90d315ADNSQ25D8932
The Movie Food Inc. was quite schocking to see after have expirienced to eat some fast food on a corn or meat basis. The meat used in fast food is produced at the lowest cost nand sadly also át lowest quality.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the Clip “What is Beef” I am not only shocked to see what we are eating when we consume fast food, but also how many and what third parties we effect. Therefore the market for beef is considered failed because it has so many negative externalities. Homo-sapiens waste so many recources to be able to produce all goods we need and most importantly wants. The recources should be allocated properly and could be used in other more effective ways. In total 20 % of our global fuel is used just to feed the countries in which the needs are exceeded and the wants are overconsidered. Considering this 500 billion dollars flow into medicine resulting from this so called “American diet”, which are partly very unnecessairy. The next question then is what will we do when our fuel supplies run short? People are so dependent on specific recources just because the money doenst flow into a wide spread market or several markets. The way it is at the moment where we spend our recources and money on unnecessairy things shows us that the human race is undereducated. People should be shown what will happen to us in the future if we depend on single markets or goods.
Therefore if we have to and want to reduce the quantity demanded and supplied for beef people need to be educated to be able to invest their money into an either wider spread markets or into several different markets. The facts presented in the video can be viewed there, but i thought is was more important to evaluate and show my opinion than capoy and pasting the info. I think the way everybody else did their blog comment was totally fine, but most just copy what the articale said and didnt do much evaluation. The way you can interpret things is differen, but my opinion is just that everybody needs to reallocate their recources including their money.
Here is a quote from the Pork Magazine, introduced in the Monsanto web page:"It may be hard to lay down the $7 or $10 for a ticket to this "documentary", but anyone involved with food production, particularly meat, poultry or corn to see what's being said about you and what consumers will increasingly believe to be true. "Consumers may blindly believe what Food Inc. raises as 'facts' without questioning its reliability, and not analyse in a realistic view to their argument.
ReplyDeleteMonsanto is also one of the companies being accused for violating farmers' rights to produce, and monopolizing in the seed industry. However, it is true that over 90% of soybeans in the U.S. contain Monsanto's patented gene, but this is a result of farmers' free choice, claims Monsanto. As Alpha Zeta quotes, "Freedom to grow and produce food in the manner farmers' choose is the only way American agriculture will meet future demand", and if consumers' misperception to agricultural production systems lower the supply, the balance between the increasing demand to the supply will be unequal. Food shortages will be likely to follow.
It is essential that consumers determine which 'facts' are true and not, and to also think with a realistic point of view.
My initial reaction after having seen the Food Inc. movie was a bit of shock about how the animals are treated on their farms and then later on at the slaughterhouse.
ReplyDeleteAfter having read the article "The fight over the future of food" on reuters by Claudia Parsons, I now think that although people might prefer the natural farmers, like Oglio, it is not sufficient enough to feed the fast growing population around the world. The United Nations says that world food output must grow by 70% until 2050 to feed an extra 2.3 billion people. This can only be achieved by going the way Monsanto has been researching into.
A good example for this is China; they have raised their rice yields from two tons per hectar in 1960 to ten tons per hectare in 2004. This shows that through the use of pesticides and advanced machines, more food can be produced for more people.
In my opinion, the movie Food Inc. only shows the disadvantages of technological advancement in agriculture, but the advantages, of which there is one crucial one, that being the effectivity, are not presented. The reuters article on the same topic shows both sides and concludes that if we want more food, the only way is through agricultural biotechnology.
As both the movie Food Inc. and Michael Pollan's "What's in the beef?" illustrate is that in reality, the junk food that is portrayed as being "cheap" is actually very expensive. Although the money directly payed for food is only 10% of our income, the external factors, such as the amount of oil used, the money paid on medical bills for diabetes and other diet related health issues, and the effect that the production of that food has on our ecosystem, make up for the cheap price we pay in the supermarkets. Both sources (Food Inc. and "What's in the beef?") touch upon the health issue especially. Since the cheap food seems attractive to low income families, or generally households that want to save money on food, the demand for that food is high, and at the same time inelastic, due to the fact that fast food is somewhat addictive. The result of the junk food consumption is health issues (for example diabetes), which most likely cost even more to treat than buying the healthy food in the first place. The illusion of cheap food is what keeps the momentary food system running. To solve this, all that has to be done is for consumers to make healthier choices when buying food in the supermarket, or to go to a farmers market when they have the chance. Cooking your own meals, as well as having consistent meals, as opposed to snacking throughout the day, or eating on the run, can greatly reduce the health problem in America.
ReplyDeleteMartin Paul
After watching the movie Food Inc., it was clear to me that we clearly have a problem with the methods of production of food and the resulting availability and demand of healthy food. The common, and certainly not healthy food, comes from mass produced, and genetically modified animals and crops, in order to meet the demand of the world-wide growing population (clearly portrayed in Food Inc.).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sanneke, that there is lack of healthy food available and also a lack of consumption of the healthy food. However, there is a concern with the methods of production of healthy food: It requires huge amounts of space, which is not as easily available, and the method of gaining this land usually results in procedures that harm the environment (e.g. deforestation) and amplify the already present effect of global warming, resulting effects (e.g. famine), which worsen the current food situation even more.
The other concern with healthy food is that it usually is very expensive, and the facts are clear: as the economist states, world wide, there will be 89 million more people earning less than $1.25 a day and 120 million more people earning less $2 a day, resulting in a rise of over 1 billion malnourished people. Obviously, these people are in no position to afford healthy food, if even “normal” food, especially if the price of food has risen by 9.8% in the first 10 months of this year.
Disregarding the issue of healthy and unhealthy food, there is another huge issue coming up, which I have discovered during my exploration: the general supply of food, especially in less developed countries of the world, and the resulting rise in food price (as aforementioned, 9.8% in the first 10 months of 2009). To counteract this, and ensure supply countries are acting out effectively against this (e.g. Brazil and India). However, still huge parts of the less developed countries are fighting this ineffectively. And in my opinion, this is a greater concern than healthy and unhealthy food (a concern only of the developed world) that needs to be dealt with, especially through educational, and technological support of the developed wold.
I agree with what Elayne said about subsidizing and industrializing grain instead of meat, as you can gain more calories from grain than using the same amount of grain to grow meat, as much of the energy is not properly transferred, or lost in a form of heat. The only problem is that many people in the US would not want to change their current lifestyle filled with fat and meat, as one of the greatest reasons why people crave fast food is because they are covered with fat, sodium, and/or sugar, which are body reacts strongly to it; a by-product of evolution. Even so, by increasing production of vegetables rather than meat can not only increase the prices of unhealthy food, but it can also decrease the price of healthy food, shifting the demand for healthy food outwards. This way, fast food restaurants serving healthy (or atleast healthier than the usual fast food restaurants) food can gain a greater share in the American market. Some might say that people would not be able to consume enough amino acids or protein, but there are vegetables such as soy beans and rice which are great sources of amino acids and protein (in the case of soy beans). In addition, ther are subsidies to meat, such as tofu-burgers or buddhist cuisines, which contain sufficient proteins, great tast, and no meat.
ReplyDeletehttp://living.health.com/2009/02/19/americas-healthiest-fast-food-restaurants/ ←a link to healthy fast food restaurants.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Buddhist_cuisine
I would also agree that using the “sustainable” farming presented by the movie would not be able to feed the global population by 2050, as the populations are growing exponentially, especially in countries in Asia and Africa. Genetically modified crops combined with industrialization would not only solve the food shortage, but also malnutrition of people living in poverty, such as through the use of Golden rice (GM rice containing a large amount of Vitamin A). In conclusion, by working to industrialize and support more vegetables instead of meat would decrease externalities such as E-coli from animals, infection in slaughter houses, energy lost raising animals, and food shortages in the future.
P.S. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I read somewhere in the links provided by Ms.Brandsburg (or a link from a link, probably one from Monsanto) which stated that one reason why the American food industry grows many animals is because there are a great portion of land not suitable for crops but are suitable for animals.
Alexander Mire
After watching Michael Pollan`s presentation, we know the problem. We are also informed the best thing to do.However,people, who watched the video will not change easely their eating hubit. This might be because of the responsence of problems.The problem does not appear immediately.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the food, which we eat will develop more to the chemical direction. What do we eat in 1000 years? There might not be any more natural foods. We might only eat pills to live.
Daigoro Kato
I was not able to watch the Food Inc. movie but from what I gather the problem addressed is overproduction of beef and problems with the unhealthy way it is prepared. I looked into the "Slowfish" project which branched off from "Slowfood". Three aims "Slowfood" has is to educate, promote and protect. It informs people that we need to take care of our seas. If, as stated in the instructions, food does run out fish would be a perfect substitute for other goods as it is very healthy when prepared correctly. However in order for this to work we need to save the oceans from the pollutions caused by humans. So what "Slowfish" does is educate people about fish and teach them ways to cook it in a pleasurable way and for all age-ranges. I think it is important to also educate young people, who might think that fast food is yummy, that it is very unhealthy and rather make them take on a lifestyle where they eat slowfood.
ReplyDeleteFamilies are attracted to fastfood because it is cheap so perhaps by making the government raise the price of fast food people will consider healthier options. I do believe that fast food is elastic because people that buy it usually do not have such a high income. Therefore they will notice if the price rises dramatically.
The movie food inc was unreasonable and bias.
ReplyDelete