Don’t eat this movie
AMERICAN agribusiness, hellbent on controlling the Earth’s food supply, has unleashed genetically engineered plants that are taking over family farms and threatening the health of the nation.
It may sound like Hollywood science fiction, but it’s the truth about what’s happening on farms today, according to filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia. And consumers, she says, need to understand what is at stake and demand changes -- before it is too late.
In her polemical documentary, “The Future of Food,” which opened Friday at Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, Garcia lays out this doomsday scenario.
Starting with the dawn of modern pesticides after World War II, Garcia builds her case by telling the personal stories of farmers whose lives were upended when courts ruled that Monsanto Co. owned the crops in their fields, not the other way around, because of the unique nature of genetically engineered plants.
With rudimentary scientific explanations, bolstered by a cast of sympathetic scientists, she asserts that these untested laboratory-created plants have the potential to unleash a massive health crisis (caused by widespread antibiotic intolerance and serious allergic reactions). To leave viewers with some sense of hope, the story of the rise of organic family farms concludes her third act.
Garcia doesn’t waste time balancing her views with a defense from the other side. The world has heard enough of what corporations have to say for themselves, she says. This is simply a call to action.
Producer-director Garcia researched genetic engineering and corporate farming for three years, using funds from the estate of her late husband, the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, to finance the project.
Her film may overreach, with anti-genetic engineering experts who claim to know the motivations of companies such as Monsanto, and general claims about birth defects that aren’t backed up with data. But if she is even half right, she will continue the family tradition of whipping up a crowd and creating a sensation.
In addition to Los Angeles, the “Future of Food” is playing in New York City and opening soon in Minneapolis, Berkeley, Cambridge, Mass., and Boulder, Colo., among other cities.
I spoke with Garcia about the film by phone last Friday.
Question: What made you aware of the issues surrounding genetically engineered crops?
Answer: I became a vegetarian in college in the 1970s and began studying the difference between organic and regular agriculture. As I tried to eat a healthy diet, I became interested in the political issues with food. I wanted to crystallize these ideas in a film, to tell people the things they may not know about their food.
But my interest goes back to when I was in high school in 1965. I won first prize in a Cincinnati science fair for an experiment [using radiation to modify seeds]. It was clear to me then the effect that people can have on plants.
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Q: Awhile back, you made a couple of minor documentaries -- “Poco Loco,” “All About Babies,” “Grateful Dawg” -- but nothing this ambitious. Why should I believe that you understand such a complex scientific issue? Why should I trust you to tell this story accurately?
A: You shouldn’t. I present a position in an advocacy film; I’m not trying to give all sides of the story. This is a big issue. I tried to make a film that makes sense; I built an argument based on facts. Monsanto does control the seed supply in our country. It is the dominant company in genetic engineering. The company is suing farmers to control those genetically engineered seeds. There is no oversight of genetically engineered crops. And the idea that we need genetic engineering to solve world hunger has been disproved.
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Q: In your film, you challenge the assumption that genetically engineered food is safe, but your proof seems incomplete.
A: The hard thing about talking about the safety of genetic engineered crops is that these foods haven’t been tested. There is an absence of proof that genetically engineered products are or that they aren’t healthy. Until there are some serious studies, we aren’t going to know.
The government says the corporations have tested the health safety of the plants. And the corporations say the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] says they are OK. They are covering for each other
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Q: That’s a statistic?
A: I’ve read somewhere that there are more food allergies, and I’ve talked to grocery store managers who say people are coming up to them all of the time talking about food allergies. That didn’t used to happen. You can’t even have peanuts in New York City schools any more because there are so many allergies to peanuts. We don’t know how or whether genetically engineered foods are contributing to that, but it’s happening.
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Q: Monsanto is the focus of your film, but you don’t quote Monsanto or allow anyone to represent its point of view in your film. Doesn’t the truth require a full telling of the story, or at least allowing the accused a defense?
A: I asked Monsanto for an interview. We told them we were making a film about genetic engineering, and they sent us a CD by the big PR firm for all of the biotech companies. We used it all through the film. To my mind, it is more telling than to allow the manifestation of the corporation to be some nice guy presenting an image of the corporation as a person. I chose to use what they chose to give me.
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Q: Our country’s food system is designed to deliver the lowest cost food to consumers. Your film champions organic food grown by family farmers, which may be all to the good, but isn’t it elitist? Those foods are more expensive and not widely available.
A: We don’t pay the true cost of food in our country. Food is cheap in the grocery aisles, but billions of tax dollars go to subsidize that food. We don’t pay the cost of obesity from high-fructose corn syrup, the cost of pollution, the cost of health problems.
Food has been an elitist issue, so far. But it is possible for all kinds of people to relate to good food, sitting at the table with family, good conversation. It’s so much a part of being human. I hope the revolution that’s already happening on the coasts will spread to the middle of the country. There is a farmer in Kansas who got a bunch of the “Future of Food” DVDs and is selling them at her farm stand. They understand that the sense of community that used to exist in the Midwest is being harmed by corporate agriculture.
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Q: I felt outraged by the story of Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer sued by Monsanto for patent infringement after its genetically engineered seeds blew into his field and took root without his knowledge. And I was sickened by the thought of the federal government failing to conduct health studies of these genetically engineered foods. At the same time, I felt manipulated. I didn’t believe that I had been given the full story.
A: Film is by nature manipulative. It is wrenching to hear Percy tell his story. It is upsetting and it is disturbing to learn about the lack of research. I wanted it to be intellectually challenging, but the only way change is going to take place is if people have an emotional reaction. I don’t know if I unfairly manipulated things. I’m not a journalist. I’m a filmmaker.
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Q: Do you think you went too far by using photos of Nazi troops and other nightmarish images? I didn’t see the connection between them and genetically modified food.
A: The point is that pesticides and fertilizers came from military technology. Is that heavy-handed? Well, yeah, that thought crossed our minds. But nerve gas was turned into pesticides. Hey, it’s a film about agriculture. You can only show so many tractors.
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Q: What do you hope to accomplish with the film?
A: I hope that people will challenge the genetically engineered food industry’s takeover of our food supply, challenge its presence in our food supply, and, then, appreciate family farms. I want them [people] to not make assumptions about their food safety.
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Q: There is a bit of irony in using $1 million from the estate of your late husband, Jerry Garcia, to try to force people to face reality. Most people associate the Grateful Dead with escaping reality.
A: Only 30% of Americans think they have eaten genetically engineered foods, yet virtually all of us have. They are already participating in that reality, they just don’t know it. I’m doing them a favor. They can sit down and in 90 minutes have a deep understanding of something they would have to spend years studying to learn as much.
The reality of Jerry’s life is that, 100 nights out of the year, he played for 30,000 to 80,000 people. That was his reality. He sweated his way to the top. You don’t do that by escaping.
