We feed the World is an Austrian documentary by Erwin Wagenhofer about how globalization and industrialization have changed food production. For creating this film, Wagenhofer has visited different persons involved in farming, fishing and managment of food companies. There are only uncommented statements of the interviewees, but the viewer gets additional information through text flashes. Between the chapters Jean Ziegler comments mostly on current problems concerning poverty, starvation and food distribution and sustains his point with several numeric facts.
I like how Wagenhofer deals with this highly explosive topic in a very objective way. All persons involved seem to speak freely and can state whatever they wish without the film being cut in wrong moments. Furthermore, he doesn’t use any dramatizing pictures or video snippets, like it is often done in other documentaries. Due to the fact that he uncovers diverse parts of the food industry, the film delivers quite diversified opinions.
After some time watching this documentary, the viewer will probably develop a very discerning view on what he consumes in every day life and question if the consequences are worth it. In my opinion the main statement of this movie is quite simple and already well known, but still it seems like we can’t totally face it: Social and envoirenmental problems will become worse on a global scale when today’s “developed” societies will continue to demand for such huge quantities of food for low prices, which comes along with an enormous reduction of taste quality. Globalization made it possible for humans on many parts of the world to consume almost every possible piece of food at any given time, whereas a much bigger part of humanity is still starving and irreversible damage is done to nature. The consumers themselves have to take action, as corporations only follow the rules of the globalized “free” market economy and, unlike the individuals of a corporation, will not align their actions with things like morals as long as they don’t benefit from it financially.
Unfortunately the WFW DVD is currently unavailable on amazon.com, but I’m sure you know other ways to get it.
