The Future Of Food

[The Lawspeaker]

EnD-DiDRIJA

The Future Of Food



The Future of Food, a groundbreaking documentary released in 2004, distills the complex technology and key regulatory, legal, ethical, environmental and consumer issues surrounding the troubling changes happening in the food system today—genetically engineered foods, patenting, and the corporatization of food—into terms the average person can easily understand. It empowers consumers to understand the consequences of their food choices on our future.

In 2010 as we take note of where we stand and look toward the future, the issues raised in The Future of Food are more pressing than ever. The corporate control of agriculture and the seed supply is meeting more and more resistance from the sustainable food movement that has risen up around the world. Food and agriculture have become central in discussions about climate change, sequestering carbon, health and the preservation of biological diversity.

We hope The Future of Food and the resources provided here will continue to help propel us all into a healthier food future.

[ikki]

so a lot of us dont now what it is to grow food....


...yeah, like growing potatoes, ppl at SF were wondering where to buy potato seeds :D

[Tabiti]

I grow seeds but in this. My balcony isn't so big to grow plants in later stage of development :
http://www.miazoo.com/productfiles/2281bio.jpg.jpg

[anonymaus]

...troubling changes happening in the food system today—genetically engineered foods, patenting, and the corporatization of food

Begging the question so hard I feel like throwing some spare change at them.

[Matritensis]

The future of food,hmmm.Quite shitty if you ask me.

[Albion]

so a lot of us dont now what it is to grow food....


...yeah, like growing potatoes, ppl at SF were wondering where to buy potato seeds :D

Well you can use any old potato, but a lot of them will grow and then reach a point where they stop doing so and will fail to create a fully fledged plant with potato in the ground. This is more common with large potatoes and ones that have been treated by the supermarkets.

Farmers usually keep smaller potatoes for "seed" because they're usually more viable, really the complete opposite of what you'd expect when growing them for size.

The best option would be to buy some seed potatoes from a farmer or from a garden centre (although you'll be ripped off, seed potatoes shouldn't cost any more than eating potatoes but they do - gardeners will pay the money).
Then you can save a few and keep growing year after year with them, although after about two years I'd swap varieties and move the potato patch completely to avoid pathogens and diseases building up in the soil too much.

Alternatively you can let a potato plant run to seed, that is actually allow it to develop real seeds. However these will not be true to type meaning they can be completely different from the parent plant so you're taking a gamble.
However it could pay off if you develop disease-resistant varieties, although there's large agricultural research centres which have been doing this for decades.
Potatoes from actual seed could also contain more of the solanine poisons which have been reduced in most cultivated varieties so in my opinion it is better to leave growing from actual seed to research centres.

With some crops it is just better to clone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetative_reproduction). Potatoes, Rhubarb and a few other crops are examples of them.
Growing from seed is necessary to create new varieties and disease resistance only really.

[joe blowe]

By technology of 1970 we would not be able to feed the populations of the World today.

[The Lawspeaker]

By technology of 1970 we would not be able to feed the populations of the World today.
And maybe that should be a sign for us, the human race at large, that we should stop making so many children..

[JamesSteal]

We need to continue sending aid to Africa. We can't let these intellectual giants die out on us.

[Albion]

And maybe that should be a sign for us, the human race at large, that we should stop making so many children..

Those people who believe we can just keep inventing ways to manage food security and utilising more land. Then there's people who recognise that cultivatable land is finite, un-utilised cultivatable land is controlled by few countries and that eventually there has to be a limit to human population growth.

Besides, as the human population grows there will be less for everyone and everything will be of a poorer quality.

It's not as simple as saying that the world needs to stop breeding though. Some countries need less population growth whilst other areas actually need it.
Eastern Europe needs population growth, England and the Netherlands need less people than they have now and South and East Asia and Africa need slower birth rates.