Thursday, November 6, 2014

Exploration 6 by Nathan N.



     Fresh is an informative documentary about the current food service that deals with farming produce and harvesting livestock. The film points out the problems with mass industrialization of farming and the solutions that can change farming to become healthier and better for the environment. I believe that Fresh was an interesting documentary that had both great ideas and obvious flaws that would not practically work.
     The film does a great job pointing out some great flaws with our current standings on handling livestock as well as mass industrializing crops. As the movie points out the health effects that are influencing us as a society and the environment as well. Farmers talk about how the pesticides and fertilizing of the crops leads to stronger bugs being immune to the pesticides attacking the crops as well as the American people not washing there produce properly and then consuming these pesticides and fertilizers. Fresh does a great job influencing the movie watcher about how bad industrialize farming is to a community and too America.
     The film's solution to this industrialize farming crises is a new wave of organic style of farming that is much healthier for the animals and crops, as well as the people and environment.  Joel Swalthorin , a Virginian farmer decries his way of organic farming as a way that "we have to respect the design of nature, it's our duty."  The style of farming seems like a cool new and environmentally friendly way of farming that could change the current method of farming.
     However this new style of farming does not seem very practical for the whole world as the movie might make you want to believe. Russ Kremer, a hog farmer that moved to a more organic style of farming made the claim "you can feed the world on  organic", however he gave no solid evidence of this claim by providing statics. This is the major flaw of the film, sure you can feed the world on organic, but looking at a practical sense it just isn't very realistic. The average organic farm produces less food than a conventional farm (Fox News). Organic farms also require much more labor as the movie shows. George Naylor an owner of a organic farm has to move his cattle and chickens to new pastors every day in order to maintain his farm. What this film implies is that many many many more Americans have to step up and become more organic style farmers like Will Allen, a urban farmer who grows everything organically and locally in the city. However this isn't a practically thought that Americans are going to drop their current lifestyles in order to become organic farmers. Even as the film points out "we [Americans] need more and more cheap stuff" and unfortantlly that can't happen with organic food.
     Fresh is a great documentary that shows some great styles of farming that can really change the environment and the American people in a better way, but the film is not without its flaws. I recommend people to check out this movie and come to support locally and naturally grown foods as the film suggests. Fresh is a great concept and maybe one day we can move to this style of farming, but unfortunately as of now it just doesn’t seem logical.

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