Agribusiness proponents claim that genetically modified (GM) food crops will lower costs, increase yields, decrease the need for chemicals and help stave off world hunger.  Opponents worry about the health risks and the threat to the environment-fearing that in the frenzied quest for higher profits, only minimal research has been done to prove the safety of GM crops.  Enter: "The Future of Food", a troubling exposé into the reality behind the unlabeled, patented, GM foods that have secretly entered our marketplace in the past decade. 

The documentary examines the collusion between industrial interest and political forces that are changing our diet as huge multinational corporations, ie. Monsanto, ConAgra, etc. seek to control the world's food system.

From Source Watch.org:

"Monsanto, the makers of Agent Orange &‘RoundUp' weed killer also owns the right to sell the patented ‘RoundUp' ready seeds. They developed ‘Terminator Technology', a.k.a. ‘suicide seeds', in which the seeds coming from a first planting would be sterile thereby forcing farmers around the world in the Roundup Ready System to buy their seed from Monsanto every year rather than saving their best seed for the next years planting, a traditional and economical practice... Fears were also expressed that Monsanto's terminator genes could spread to wild plants".

As Dr. Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental leader, physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books points out in various interviews:

"As the corporations that came out of warfare gained control over the chemical industry for warfare, they became agrichemical giants, because they deployed chemicals used for war into agriculture. Over time, they bought up the seed industry...& they bought up the biotech industry. And, of course, these guys are the same people who sell us the medicine in pharmaceuticals. So what we've got, a convergence of death and destruction..."

"...you're getting the food base of the world, which should be something like ten thousand crops, being reduced to mainly four GM crops (soybeans, corn, canola and cotton). The crops are not adapted to any ecosystem and are genetically modified to be herbicide resistant /pesticide resistant (seeds inserted with BT toxin).  All of them in the hands of one company, Monsanto, controlling ± 90% of all GM seeds sold anywhere in the world. A homogenous seed supply threatens the safety of the world's food supply..."

"As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness...As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalization pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply..."

Ideally, everyone should know what's in the food we're eating and make purchasing decisions accordingly.  Partly through its political connections, Monsanto and other "merchants of greed" have been able to keep the general public in the dark re: the dangers posed by eating untested and unlabeled GM foods.  The public's anger when they finally learn that they've unwittingly fed their families unlabeled GM foods, leads to ever more secrecy by the industry-in Europe, for example, GM Crop Trial Locations May Be Hidden From Public.  The fears expressed more than a decade ago by GM crop opponents have turned out to be vastly underestimated as underscored by some of the recent headlines:

Health Issues:

• July 18, 2002:  Industrial Corn-Destroying Our Health & Environment

"Our entire food supply has undergone a process of "cornification" in recent years, without our even noticing it...[I]n the U.S. most of the corn we consume is invisible, having been heavily processed or passed through food animals before it reaches us. Most of the animals we eat (chickens, pigs and cows) today subsist on a diet of corn, regardless of whether it is good for them. In the case of beef cattle, which evolved to eat grass, a corn diet wreaks havoc on their digestive system, making it necessary to feed them antibiotics to stave off illness and infection... Why corn? Because it's the cheapest thing you can feed any animal, thanks to federal subsidies.

But even with more than half of the 10 billion bushels of corn produced annually being fed to animals, there is plenty left over. So companies like A.D.M., Cargill and ConAgra have figured ingenious new ways to dispose of it, turning it into everything from ethanol to Vitamin C and biodegradable plastics

The problem in corn's case is that we're sacrificing the health of both our bodies and the environment by growing and eating so much of it. Though we're only beginning to understand what our cornified food system is doing to our health, there's cause for concern. It's probably no coincidence that the wholesale switch to corn sweeteners in the 1980's marks the beginning of the epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in this country..."

• Feb 4, 2008:  Obesity Becoming World Crisis

As the rest of the world follows our dietary trail (high fat & low nutrient content), the consequences are similarly dire: "Obesity is on a dramatic rise in the developing world, as impoverished locals are increasingly introduced to mass-produced imported food that's often cheaper than their local fare".

In Of Plants and People, a DailyKos diarist sums it up best:

"The personal costs of eating the American diet for each one of us is that we will shorten our lives with chronic diseases...My cost is a real one, as is the price we all pay when we eat the diet that best serves the needs of the agribusiness industry but not our own bodies...

We are paying the food industry to create a food system via subsidy that harms our health individually and collectively...Reflecting the needs of the capitalist industrial economy to promote disease and then spend to cure it because it is the most profitable approach for large corporations..."

Environmental Devastation:

• May 3, 2007:  Biodiversity: Farming Will Make or Break the Food Chain
• February 18, 2008:  Consequences of GM Crop Contamination ‘Are Set to Worsen'

What is the alternative to large-scale industrial agriculture?

Demand sustainable organic products!!!  Numerous resources are available online, ie.:

• Earth Save.Org
• Food Alliance.Org (various links)
• Slow Food USA

The two articles mentioned below deal with the integrity of the "organic" label: 

• How Organic Is Corporate/Industrial Organic?
• Can Organic Integrity Be Preserved with Big Corporations Moving into the Market?

In closing, I urge you to read this inspirational DailyKos diary:  "My Small, Local Stimulus Package"