Food Inc.

I recently watched Food, Inc. again. I think the movie presented a lot of great facts regarding our current food system. It definitely made me consider not eating meat after seeing all those factory farming operations. I don’t actually buy non-organic meat, and really try to buy local organic meat, if at all, from a nice farmer about 15 miles from my house. It is amazing to see how much agriculture has changed since WWII.

Part of me thinks it is great that we can produce so much food at such a cheap monetary cost, but what about the other costs involved with growing this cheap food? A few years ago I really started getting involved in the local food movement. The reason? All the recalls on things like spinach for E. coli, and peanut butter for salmonella poisoning. At that point I knew something was seriously wrong. I had never really thought about food before, not because I didn’t like high quality, but because I just assumed it would be safe like when my mom grew her garden. How wrong I was.

Now I feel almost obsessed about local and organic food. I use the term organic loosely here though. It seems to me that there have been so many changes to what the USDA thinks “organic” means. So now I am more likely to ask a local farmer what he does, whether he is certified organic is less important to me than what he says he does to his crops, his animals etc.

One of the interesting points from the movie was from the CEO of Stonyfield saying it would be impossible for everyone to eat within 100 miles of their house. I wonder how accurate that is. I know that there are definitely places where it is more difficult to find quality food, but I do wonder if it is possible. I guess I am just lucky to live in the area that I do, which I never expected I would say :-) Even though we have a short growing season, it seems to work out.

I am anxious to have a lot of storage crops this year. This will be the year of preservation for me…well that is the plan. Can I do it? I sure hope so. It would be really wonderful to be one of the blogs that commits to eating only from their food stores through the winter. How exciting would that be? Not to have to rely on a grocery store for anything. We’ll see how plausible that is. Although I have to say, we have been eating mainly rice and beans for the past few weeks in an effort to save money at the grocery store, and it is all stuff I already have on hand, not bad :-)

Has anyone else seen this movie? What did you think about it? I’ve heard some people say there weren’t enough facts involved, but I disagree. I think there were just enough facts to make you want to do more personal research and prepare in your own personal way. Overall, excellent movie!