In the grainy video of his deposition with the Monsanto lawyers, the farmer hunches over the desk in front of him and intermittently reaches a weathered hand to rub his downcast forehead. His posture emulates defeat and heartbreak. In the documentary, Food Inc., Monsanto is suing Moe Parr for cleaning his own soybean seed and “inducing farmers to break the patent law.”
“This essentially puts me out of business. I am finished,” Parr says.
This anecdote illustrates the control that multinational corporations, like Monsanto, maintain over the farming industry. Their clout and reach is so pervasive and powerful that they can destroy a farmer’s life with a litany of charges completely detached from reality. Parr was forced to settle out of court because he could not afford his legal bills.
“I can remember when the first prohibitions against seed saving came into being. Most farmers were just absolutely disgusted with the whole concept. It’s been interesting over the course of 11 years to watch us go from utter contempt for the notion that we can’t save our own seed to acceptance,” says Troy Roush, Vice President of American Corn Growers Association, in an interview in the documentary.
For years, debates over food production and regulation in America have drifted into the national conversation. Arguments defending or condemning conventional farming processes and organic alternatives have been presented in documentaries, op-eds, studies, articles and books. Repeatedly, critics of conventional farming have deconstructed the process while highlighting the safety oversights and the environments created, which appear conducive to food contamination and systemic spread of food-related illnesses. Outbreaks of E. coli, semolina and listeria have claimed headlines and stolen lives. But parallel to discussions over the nutritional value and health risks of mass-produced food, the exploitation of the farmers and laborers involved in the farming industry is another jarring facet of this issue.
The corporations that form the industrial food system exploit theirs workers, as is evident in the working conditions, wages and bullying of farmers and laborers. These corporations are in positions of great power in determining the structure of farming and they repeatedly prove irresponsible with health and safety measures while solely perseverating on their own profit. They can introduce new methods or products that may risk the safety of people and animals, but have the influence to silence pushback from farmers and even government agencies. Corruption between food corporations and government agencies (specifically the personal overlap between those two realms) may be the reason why government agencies, like the FDA, are often willing to bend to the will of corporations.
Large corporations often employ illegal immigrants, a demographic unlikely to vie for better working conditions or wages. Marion Nestle mention in her book that the industry strategically employs larger numbers of immigrants and teenagers, forming an employee demographic less likely to know their rights and more willing to endure minimum wages with no benefits or chances for pay raises. And as is clearly evident in multiple narratives presented Food Inc., large corporations also monitor and control farmers and farm owners. These corporations, with money and connections, are able to change the culture of farming and determine the direction of farmers’ livelihoods.
The documentary Food Inc. emphasizes the ways in which conventional farming exploits both people and animals. The interviews in the documentary with farmers who are buried under debt to large corporations, such as Perdue and Tyson, reveal how the wealth being amassed from food production in the States does not trickle down to the farmers or labors but merely feeds into a larger divide between the rich and poor in America. One chicken farmer in the film, Vince Edwards was told by Tyson that he was not allowed to show his own chicken coup to the documentarians. A jolly and portly Edwards shrugs and grins sheepishly. He doesn’t know why he can’t show the camera crew. But that’s what he has been told. Moments like this illustrate the reach and of these corporations’ power and influence.
However, in his article, “Organics Illusions,” Blake Hurst argued from a stance framing conventional farming practices as almost liberating for participants in its workforce, as opposed to repressive or dangerous. As an actual farmer, he believes modern farming methods actually present many benefits to farm owners and laborers and make their livelihoods and jobs easier and more efficient. Hurst says, “Those of us who grew up with a hoe in our hand have absolutely no nostalgia for days gone by. People love to talk about traditional agriculture, but I’ve noticed that their willingness to embrace the land is often mostly metaphorical.” Hurst harkens back to the olden days emphasizing that conditions today are less physically draining and demand less labor.
Hurst also states in his article that since conventional farming requires fewer workers, the people who would be slaving away in fields, if the world was without pesticides and slaughterhouses, now have more time and space to become playwrights and philosophers and doctors. But in her book, “Resisting Food Safety,” the aforementioned author, Marion Nestle, presents information that dulls the romanticism Hurst paints. Nestle touches on the socioeconomics of the food industry and discussed how corporations hire mostly immigrants and teenagers at meager wages and often in unsafe conditions. And while unemployment has almost returned to pre-Great Recession rates, jobs are always welcomed in the States. But instead of providing jobs and bettering the American economy, some corporations are employing illegal immigrants. Food Inc. showed a corporation that had a constructed a deal with local authorities to only arrest a handful of their illegal immigrants every week so as not to disrupt the flow of production at their factories. Conditions in slaughterhouses are also reported as some of the most dangerous working condition and can be emotionally disruptive. So although fewer people may be hoeing potato fields right now, many are being exploited and abused by corporations.
Food Inc. also reveals the conditions that animals are kept in. Conditions that some argue are cruel and heinous. Scenes in that documentary shows bloated chickens pumped up on drugs to fatten them and increase the corporation’s profit. Their bulging bodies cannot be supported by their spindly legs so their short lives are mostly sedentary. Some corporations require that the chickens be kept in huts that are completely enclosed. Although Edwards refused to show the camera crew the conditions of his chickens, another chicken farmer, Carole Morison, said she felt compelled to speak on the topic despite the repercussions. She told the documentarians she thought current conditions for chickens were inhuman. Further, she refused to enclose her own coup. The film reported that her contract with Perdue was later voided for her actions.
In a Consumer Reports article analyzing conventional farming methods and how there is contamination and oversight in that process, some of the potential sicknesses animals can contract were listed. The article read, “Regulatory loopholes could allow mad cow infection, if present, to make its way into cattle feed; drugs used in chickens could raise human exposure to arsenic or antibiotic-resistant bacteria; farmed fish could harbor PCBs and dioxins.” This litany of health risks present to animals (and humans that consume them) points to these procedures not being the healthiest and most humane means to farm these animals. These diseases paint a picture of the conditions these animals are kept in as clearly insufficient. Instead of healthy animals being raised and slaughtered in humane and clean ways, they appear to be produced in conditions that are instead conducive to them harboring diseases.