Farm Progress

A wide selection of anti-agriculture movies can be found on YouTube, Netflix, and other web-based services.

Hembree Brandon, Editorial director

November 7, 2017

2 Min Read
There’s quite a lineup of movies that put agriculture and food production in the crosshairs — most, predictably, anti-GMO, anti-pesticides, anti-commercial farming flicks.SCOTT OLSON/Getty Images

You probably won’t run across them at the local cineplex, amidst the vampire/aliens/comic book heroes/animated features that seem to constitute most of the movie fare these days, but there’s quite a lineup of flicks that put agriculture and food production in the crosshairs — most, predictably, anti-GMO, anti-pesticides, anti-commercial farming.

Some are on YouTube for free, others are on Netflix or other subscription streaming services. Almost all the trailers can be watched on the web.  Among them:

• GMO OMG, subtitled “Is This the End of Real Food?” Director and “concerned father” Jeremy Seifert is “in search of answers,” the promo blurb tells us. “How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice?”

So, he sets out on a journey to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and Monsanto headquarters, and “along the way we gain insight into a question that is of growing concern to citizens the world over: What's on your plate?”

The trailer includes an ominous shot of a guy in corn field in a white hazmat suit, complete with gas mask. Unidentified people speak: “80 percent of all processed foods contain GMOs, and most of the meat and dairy in this country start with GMO crops.” “What is a GMO? Nobody knows, and I think the biotech industry would like to keep it that way.” “We don’t know what the health risks are, what the environmental risks are.”

Another says: “These foods can create new allergies; they can make a non-toxic food toxic; they can lower immune response…” Others advise: “It’s become very difficult to avoid genetically modified foods.” “We’re trading short term production for long term sustainability.” “We do not know the effects of this grand experiment that’s being visited upon humanity.”

• What’s With Wheat? Focuses on “the growing epidemic of wheat intolerance, and why after eating wheat for thousands of years, it has been linked to so many health problems.” Among quotes by on-camera people: “The wheat that’s available now was developed for commercial reasons, and of course it’s laced with chemicals.” “You can’t continue to douse your food with neurotoxins and not expect it to show up in the human population.” Basically an anti-glyphosate, anti-commercial crops “documentary.”

There are several others, including:

• Cowspiracy: A Courageous Eye-Opener to the #1 Environmental Problem: Animal Agriculture. “90 minutes about a young man's quest to uncover what scientists, environmentalists and the government don't want you to know … that animal agriculture produces more [greenhouse gases] than the combined exhaust of all the world's vehicles.”

• Food Matters: In the trailer an on-camera person advises, ““We…have decided we’re going to spray everything with every kind of pesticide, herbicide, larvacide, fungicide — [that] we’re going to genetically modify things we don’t know anything about.”

So, pop up a batch of non-GMO popcorn, turn on the telly, and be enlightened…

About the Author(s)

Hembree Brandon

Editorial director, Farm Press

Hembree Brandon, editorial director, grew up in Mississippi and worked in public relations and edited weekly newspapers before joining Farm Press in 1973. He has served in various editorial positions with the Farm Press publications, in addition to writing about political, legislative, environmental, and regulatory issues.

Subscribe to receive top agriculture news
Be informed daily with these free e-newsletters

You May Also Like