VII. Backyard Gardens: Self-Sustaining Food Source

Bibliography

Brown, Patricia L. “In Latino Gardens, Vegetables, Good Health and Savings Flourish”. The New York Times. 16 Jan. 2010. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/us/17backyard.html.

Hallberg, Basil. “Using Community Gardens to Augment Food Security Efforts in Low-Income Communities”. Virginia Tech edu/papers. 2009. Web. http://www.ipg.vt.edu/Papers/Hallberg%20Major%20Paper.pdf.

Howard, Manny. My Empire of Dirt: How one man turned his big city backyard into a farm: a cautionary tale.  New York: Scribner. 2010.

Slack, Debbie. “Benefits of a Backyard Suburban Garden”. Gardening Know How. n.d. Web.  http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/urban/benefits-of-a-backyard-suburban-garden.htm.

Wehr, Kevin. DIY: The Search for Control and Self Reliance in the 21^st Century. New York: Routledge. 2012.

VI. The Future of Food and Multinational Agricultural Biotechnology Corporations

The Future of Food and Multinational Agricultural Biotechnology Corporations

When one hears the line “Whoever controls the seeds controls the food”, they should take a moment to think about the meaning of that statement. It is a quote from the 2004 documentary film The Future of Food which looks at how genetically engineered foods are being sold in America’s grocery stores. The public is not aware that they are eating this food because corporations like Monsanto do not want it labeled as being produced from genetically modified seeds. They fear that consumers will question the safety of their products (web). Multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto have financially acquired most of America’s seed companies and their former employees have taken control of U.S. government agencies. The U.S. government has allowed Monsanto to form a monopoly and there will be adverse consequences associated with this political decision. There are two consequences that come to mind. The first one is that when a mono-culture crop is a dominate species; there is a higher possibility for crop failure. The other is that when we treat seed as a commodity, there will be starvation because all people will not have equal access to food.

            It has been repeatedly proven that when a farmer plants only one crop there is a higher possibility for failure. Monsanto promotes the idea that they have improved the genetic strain of the seed, but in reality, they have altered them to resist only specific climate changes. Through centuries of agriculture, mankind has developed multiple strains of seed and whenever there has been a crop failure of one strain, another strain has compensated for the lose. In my opinion, Monsanto thinks that food supplies need to be produced using their modified seeds with an assembly line approach. We, as the consumer, are not paying attention because our main concern is food cost and not food security. When a crop fails, we automatically assume that corporations have our best interest in mind. Since they control the seed market, they control the food production.

            Monsanto also claims that genetically modified seeds are the answer to ending world hunger. According to The Future of Food, a farmer will enter into a contract which allows them to plant modified seeds and new seed stock must be purchased after each harvest. This adds to the cost of food production. Family farms are gradually being eliminated and corporate farms are becoming the norm with reliance on biotechnology companies for their seed. Over one-half of the world's farmers reduce operating cost by saving seeds from each harvest to plant the next year. When biotechnology companies begin to treat seeds like a commodity, there will be the inequality to afford them for food production. The biotechnology companies will gain control of food supplies by contracting with only the producers that can afford their seeds. Thus, world hunger will increase as the population is unable to afford the food produced from corporate farms.

            Monsanto is taking more control of the foodstuff market each year. They already dominate the herbicide and insecticide markets and within the last few decades, they have begun to monopolize the seeds that are planted to produce food crops. They argue that genetic engineering is a simply modification of the plant breeding processes; therefore, it does not require regulation. Monsanto scientist can achieve in months what it takes nature decades to accomplish. These same scientists do not know the long-term effects of genetically modified grain on human health. I think we should seriously question how America can trust the security of our food to a corporation that produced toxic chemicals like Agent Orange and dioxin. They have a long history of deception.

           

Works Cited

Garcia, Deborah K.“The Future of Food”.  2004. Sat. 8.Sept. 2012. http://vimeo.com/38269476.

V. The Power of Propaganda: Brokering Brokeback Mountain-a local reception study

The Power of Propaganda: Brokering Brokeback Mountain-a local reception study

            In an article entitled “Brokering Brokeback Mountain-a local reception study” by Harry Benshoff, the reader is informed about the reaction of the filmgoers in the Metroplex area surrounding Dallas, Texas concerning the movie Brokeback Mountain which premiered in 2005. Benshoff gathered his information from two surveys and judged the amount of fear, anger, disappointment, and moral offence generated amongst the community. In other words, the surveys helped him gauge how people accepted or rejected the propaganda that was associated with the film. There were two specific reactions that I found interesting from the results. The first one deals with the feeling that the movie threatened the concept of masculinity. The other one deals with how the film dealt with the concept of infidelity.

            When Benshoff studied the responds, he found that the movie was watched by gay men, followed by urban heterosexual couples, women, and teenage girls. He concluded that women are not threatened with male intimacy on film, but heterosexual men are scared. In fact, some of the male respondents said that they were afraid to see the film. Fear is not a masculine behavior and fear of a movie is certainly not a masculine behavior. Benshoff gave several reasons why this may have occurred. He cited peer pressure from other men, the idea that watching this movie would compromise their sexuality, and that the movie threatened their masculinity.  In my judgment, the propaganda spread by groups such as the American Family Association who claimed that the movie would have patrons vomiting in the aisles also contributed to their fear.  Brokeback Mountain had two masculine characters that married women, had children and did all the activities associated with marriage. They also exhibited the masculine behavior of internalizing their emotions. For myself, I thought it strange that both gay and heterosexual men would not identify those behaviors as being masculine. It was obvious that some of the men believed the propaganda.

            With the concept of infidelity in the movie, Benshoff’s article mentions the response from Dale Carpenter. He is a former official in the Texas Log Cabin Republicans (a group of self-proclaimed gay Republicans). Carpenter spread the propaganda that the gay community had not considered the moral message of the film, but Benshoff found in his surveys that both homosexual and heterosexual filmgoers thought about the complexities of adultery and betrayal of family values. In my opinion, the film dealt with the emotional tragedy of infidelity on several levels. There was the emotional tragedy between the two main characters, their families, and near the end of the movie when Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) had died; Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) has the emotional visit with Jack’s parents. In contrast to the propaganda, the film dealt with dishonest, betrayal and infidelity in a very stern manner.

            Benshoff’s surveys reflected how different groups of people reacted to the film. There was the assumption that the entire Christian community was hostile toward homosexuals, that heterosexual men would become gay if they watched male intimacy, and that homosexuals have no concept of fidelity or family values. All the propaganda was wrong. Brokeback Mountain was a fictional film, but it made people think about their attitudes regarding homosexuality and moral issues. When one fails to evaluate their own attitudes and listens exclusively to propaganda, they are walking through life with their eyes closed.

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry M. “Brokering Brokeback Mountain- a local reception study”. 2008. Fri. 31. Aug 2012.  http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/BrokbkMtn/index.html.