W10- Synthesis

The article entitled "Engineering Food for All" written by Nina Fedoroff was interesting and covered many of the same topics discussed in Food Inc. and The Omnivore's Dilemma. Obviously, all three were about the food industry, but they all focused in on the topic of genetically modified food and how farmers and companies were growing and producing food.

However, the article differed a little from the documentary and the book in that it pointed out positive about the food industry now, whereas the other two, especially Food Inc., did not shine any sort of positive light on the way companies went about getting corn. The article explained why food production is done the way it is, the cheaper the better and the higher crop per acre the better. She also debunked the theory that the modified crops are in any way worse for us than natural crops, in fact, she said that there are 90% less harmful modified crops than natural crops. Food Inc. never mentioned that at all, it just focused in on Monsanto as the bad guy and acted as if nothing that company did was a good thing. However, The Omnivore's Dilemma  did mention a lot of the same type of stuff as this article, especially when Pollan was at the corn farm in Iowa. He mentioned that most of the farmer's neighbors were using modified seed and getting more crops, but less quality. The problem with that is the food industry isn't necessarily looking for quality, rather they are looking for quantity over quality.

All three of these mention that farming is not a lucrative business. Food Inc. has many testimonials about the way farmers are struggling to survive, the corn farmer is Pollan's book talks about his neighbors all being in debt and that his wife actually keeps the family afloat. In this article it says that 90% of farmers are poor. All three think this is a problem because if people can't make money and survive by farming and do something else we'll have to find other ways to produce enough food for what is a growing population.

Overall, all three are very similar in the subject matter and the focal points. However, they do differ in some of the views of what we are doing, why we are doing it, if we need to change and if so what changes we need to make.