Following the publication of my career jobs came to this interesting film about a small job I did last year, I hope you enjoy.
Original title: "We feed the world"
Nationality: Austria
Genre: Documentary / Society / Ecology
Writer / Director: Erwin Wagenhofer
Producer: Helmut Grasser
Distributor : Karma Films
Year: 2005
"We feed the world" is a documentary that shows a picture Austrian criticism of the increasing industrialization and mass food production. The theme of the documentary is an interview with Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the United Nations the right to food. Question consumer behavior and the responsibility of everyone. The film takes us through France, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, Brazil and back to Austria. In addition to Jean Ziegler, in this documentary interviews the Director of Pioneer production in Romania, the largest seed company in the world, Peter Brabeck, Nestlé Director of International, the largest food company in the world, as well as fishermen, farmers and biologists.
Formally, the documentary has a story line directed by the views Jean Ziegler, around which twisting is the same. Whenever Ziegler proposes a theme, geographic location or even a particular type of company, the director takes us to the place in question and placing the viewer subjective camera lets us see the opinions of experts, workers, fishermen, farmers, managers Multinational ...
is a direct style of documentary that makes you think not overwhelm the viewer with excessive information, without jargon, and showing with eloquent silences parts of the food industry to speak for themselves. All
part documentary by definition, since in 1922 Robert Flaherty made "Nanuk the Eskimo "(Nanook of the north,) the first documentary to be filmed, the basis of the documentary have changed little. The intervention of the director in the assembly, choice of characters, whether real or not, the locations and the frames are placed at the service of telling a story, either of termination in the case at hand, or cut philosophical / anthropological as in the case of Nanuk the Eskimo.
If we compare this way of making documentary films in the USA, we see that in American films is a flood of characters, opinions, stories, documents and experts who can do very biased story, and perhaps bordering high literary saying that we should not give the reader all thought. Must be allowed to draw their own conclusions, as one conclusion of the viewer / reader, it is highly targeted, it is much more powerful than all of that flood of information.
The documentary shows some originality and brevity some of the perverse paradoxes and shortcomings of the globalized food markets, also putting emphasis on quality differences in food produced in these times of transgenic foods in bulk and livestock production industrial-scale fishing.
In Spain, the director shows us the intensive farms in the greenhouse Almería province, while not criticizing the quality or suitability of the product, if chaining sequences of images of workers in these crops, which are crammed in bad bad shape. These workers are those not finding work in his native Africa, emigrate to Europe and end up working as cheap labor in the production of vegetables rich Europe, closing the circle that begins with the inability of African countries to compete with its protected agricultural products in European markets, and not even in domestic markets, European subsidized production cornered.
The logic of trade and economy has transcended the meaning common, the common good, as the world is "globalization." UN or FAO on behalf of it, set goals in which outweighs the desire than reality. In reality the system is fundamentally flawed. The economic and technological imbalance prevails in a world dominated north and south by the interests of multinationals and the countries they are based.
policy and currents, determine its electoral term objectives, setting aside everything that does not have concrete results in a timely manner. And accepting pressures, intrusions and blackmail from the lobbies to protect their interests, ignoring the general common interest which should be the welfare of all mankind.
Economic liberalism is a good idea only in environments in which the forces are balanced, because if there is imbalance, the competition that benefits human beings in general, is diluted in a zero sum game in which winners can discard tons of bread a day, while the losers grow soybeans consumed by animals that are eaten in the developed world.
Wagenhofer shows the conversion of the artisanal fishing fleet Breton, displaced by industrial fishing fleets swept the seas and vast soybean plantations in the Mato Grosso in Brazil, devastating thousands of hectares of virgin Amazon rainforest years and owned by the Maggi Group, the largest producer of soybeans in the world, which controls 22% of world production.
worst of the matter is that this group is owned in turn who was honored in 2005 with the dubious prize of Greenpeace "Golden Chainsaw", and yet was elected governor of their state of Mato Grosso, Blairo Maggi, which is "putting the fox to guard the henhouse." Their greed and destroys operates in a vital for the survival of the planet, the "rainforest" Amazon, and already in 2003 "is depicted" with this comment to the press:
"For me, an increase of 40 percent of the deforestation does not mean nothing at all and I have no guilt about it. We're talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to worry about "(New York Times)
is also chilling to hear how the president of the most important food transnational argues "traditional folk songs, and believes that water, authentic material, should be privatized. Given how it is carried out international food trade, could afford the risk of privatizing the water?
generation Is work sufficient argument for the maintenance of a clear structure unfair?, How much work has shifted towards profit maximization?, Where has gone this production?, Who benefits from this system at all?. Because it is very clear who does not.
All this for not making history and talk about the abuse of that crime, in what were the main engines of growth as a company, cocoa and coffee.
Where is the invisible hand of Adam Smith?, That he did that humans unconsciously reversed part of the wealth generated by their activities to the system. In the current imbalance, or does not exist, or at best take generations become visible for the most disadvantaged. The second force that Adam Smith described as essential to prevent the main drive of man, greed, prevailed. This is the coercive intervention of government and institutions. Trade only protect large areas at the expense of poor countries.
Maybe it's time to return to the philosophers economists since Adam Smith finally became professor of moral philosophy and the true end of the economy in those early days was the progress and development of society as a whole.
has recently been known that as more people live in big cities on the planet field. The transition from agricultural to urban planet Earth is consummated, but in this transition, from the standpoint of food, is not taking into account only the maximization of production, for the sake of adequate capacity at low cost, production food. And we do not stop at nothing, we destroy the environment and agricultural knowledge, traditional fisheries and livestock.
Decisions are made in the decision-making created after World War II, with no thought structures appropriate to new situations. These institutions are not capable of leading changes in economic and social structures, leading to a decrease in pressure on poor countries. Is the World Bank which provides loans for the development of, for example, the Maggi group in planting soybeans in Mato Grosso in Brazil.
The free market is imposed, on par with the third world crushes protectionism in agriculture, it is as if we decided to play a different game for the convenience of "banking", so that always wins "the house" .
We live in an open system and closed in energy materials, and behave as if it were the other way around, neglecting the product and enthrone the amount of work and / or energy required to produce. Ancestral knowledge settled for thousands of years has been destroyed in just five decades, and the old economic structures and policies are resisting a new order based on systems thinking, sustainability and ecology.
I think maybe this example based on the food industry is the tip of the iceberg of the present industrial and commercial behavior and around the world. The next is to be the revolution in economic thinking, which takes into account the amount of materials on the planet and these are made in relation to the number of people, a more equitable distribution of work and resources. We understand that it is a problem of priorities and lifestyles that lead us toward the sustainability of the system or chaos.
But finally, I am not mistaken, in a break from the writing of this paper, I got up and opened the pantry of my house ... I saw a jar of Nescafé, Nesquik other and a box of mashed Maggi potato.
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