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Food, Inc. Documentary Analysis

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The film Food, Inc. provides viewers with an examination of the corporate farming world, the dynamics of agribusiness, and the political impact it can have on our culture within the realm of the United States. However, in some instances it alludes to the impact that American agriculture has on the global economy. This can be noted when discussing commodity crops and the utilization of labor provided by undocumented workers. These two things are often interdependent as a result of varying forms of the economic globalization that Strayer mentions on page 696 of his book, Ways of the World. It becomes much easier to see the impact that American agriculture has on the world once we start to analyze it, starting with a commodity crop. A commodity …show more content…

This has allowed for Monsanto to establish a monopoly over genetically modified corn and soy based food, ultimately controlling nearly half the global production of genetically modified food. Subsidies in turn impose net costs on the global economy, allowing us to see that what appears to be sovereign economic choices affects economic globalization and monopoly within the global market. This also impacts the informal economy, given that agribusiness in the United States of America often depends on the labor of undocumented workers. Kenner tells us in his documentary that due to America’s globalization of the commodity crop, Mexican farmers started to find themselves out of work and essentially displaced due to the monopoly and cheap mass production of crops such as corn. Corporations such as the meat packing industry utilized this new source of labor to exploit and commodify workers, often perceiving them as temporary, disposable beings, in order to maximize profit and minimize cost of production. This becomes most obvious when discussing the fruit and nut

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