The Negative Effects Of Rationalization In Food, Inc.

Most people in America have never thought about where their food comes from or even talked to a farmer or rancher. Of that handful who have, even fewer have ever stepped foot onto a farm or ranch.The film “Farmland” takes an interestingly angled look into the lives of six farmers and ranchers in their twenties who are all entirely responsible for their operations. This paper takes a more in-depth look at three; Ryan Veldhuizen, Sutton Morgan, and Margaret Schlass.

I am so ashamed that I had not known most of the information that was shared in Food, Inc. I definitely agree that we need to have a policy change regarding our food, it should be cheaper to buy carrots than chips at the grocery store. I, like many college students, want to eat healthy but it is expensive and most of us are on a “ramen budget”. There also needs to be tighter laws regarding the illnesses that can come from improper handling of the meat and crops. I believe that there needs to be a huge change in the agricultural world, the farmers should not have to be scared of losing money or being sued because of big companies, such as Monsanto. The huge companies are going to be making money no matter what without much work. Whereas a farmer puts in work day in and day out and sadly they do not make much money. I also believe that the film had an extremely negative outlook on how modern farming practices in agriculture are. I believe that Food, Inc. focused on the negative outlook of modern farming but did not mention about the different practices or how they have also positively impacted our

The three contingencies of Patel’s plan include changing the governing laws of agribusiness, improving the conditions of and supporting rural areas, and changing the role of eating in society. Before much progress can be made, the ways in which businesses are required to operate must change. Without any new legislations to stand in their way, nothing will alter the ways in which they operate or the ways they look to further solidify their dominance. Next, rural growers simply need more help. In current conditions, they barely scrape by due to the increasing demands from their purchasers and the decreasing amounts of compensation collected. Contrary to the original perception, crop subsidies, most associated with corn, provide no help to these smaller farmers. They can’t compete with the mass-growers and their enormous swathes of land. It drives the rural farmers out of those particular markets, and it often prevents them from growing crops their land is most suitable for. Finally, Pollan pushes the idea that there must be a revamp of the meaning of food to consumers. As it stands, people view eating as a task rather than an enjoyable experience. This leads the consumer to think little of the food, especially in ways Michael Pollan insist they must think about the food. This anti-cooking architecture of society is, nonetheless, a self-perpetuating cycle of

The documentary Food Inc. is a great example of commercial farming. The purpose of commercial farming is to mass produce food and animals, to feed the community. The concept of commercial farming could also go along food security. The community needs to make sure that there is enough food to feed the growing population at all times. The problem right now isn’t that there isn’t enough food, but rather that there is too much food. The Tyson company produces all kinds of meat to feed people around the country, and when doing so they tend to overproduce. With this overproduction, we are left with expired animals that cannot be produced into food for consumption, and in turn, provide extra parts that aren’t useful or helpful.

Let’s take chicken farming as an example. Chickens are injected with growth hormones to make their breasts bigger for human consumption. The film showed chickens that were abnormally large. These modified chickens can only walk a few steps before having to sit back down because they can’t carry their own weight for too long. Some farmers will recycle the dead carcasses of the animals into the feed for herbivores on the farm. So plant eating animals will be eating the meat of a dead carcass. Animals could get sick or contract a disease from the dead animals. This infection would soon get

I can truly say that I have never been as disgusted researching and writing a paper than I am writing one about the production and growth of food. In a previous course, I had to watch the documentary, King Corn. Watching that film alone was an eye-opener for me because it went into depth about how 80% of Americas antibiotics were used on cows because of being corn fed, but I never knew how drastic the food industry was. Now that I have watched two drastic films and read the chapter on Food, I feel as if I never want to eat food unless it is grown by me. With a growing population, there is a demand for an increase in agriculture.

McDonaldization of society- the process by which ordinary aspects of life are rationalized and efficiency comes to rule them, including such things as food preparation p. 173

Within the essay Pleasures of Eating a Kentucky farmer and author, Wendell Berry, recalls several instances where after a lecture on the decline of American farming he’s asked questioned about how to take action. His answer is, “Eat responsibly” (1). He goes on the say, “Of course, I have tried to explain what I meant by that, but afterwards I have invariably felt that there was more to be said than I had been able to say” (1). Cooked suffers in a similar way, it fails to dedicate enough time to present a solution to the questions it asks; while also falling to ask all the questions necessary to form a comprehensive argument and give viewers the knowledge to make a positive change. Instead, they choose to use their time to babble off cherry picked statistics, without properly stating sources i.e, most Americans spend 27 minutes a day

The Mc Donald brother’s created a revolutionary idea of how to run a restaurant. They brought the factory system to the back of their restaurant, training employees to do just one thing. Kenner is effective in engaging his audience when he shows viewers an animation of animals coming into a farm house from an assembly line. Kenner was hoping that people would be alarmed with how our food is now be raised and produced. Take the Tyson Company who is the biggest meat packing company in the world. The food industry because of mass production has changed how a chicken is raised. Kenner provides a logical visual example showing his viewers that birds are being raised and slaughtered at half the time they were 50 years ago. The visual demonstration of redesigning the chicken to make the breast larger was meant to draw on his viewer’s emotions as well as bringing a sense of urgency to the cause. Kenner went on to explain how “farmers today don’t own their birds, a company like Tyson owns them from the day they are dropped off until they are slaughtered”. Kenner wants to come off authoritative and interviews Richard Lobb, from the National Chicken Council. Lobb provides sufficient information on how big companies like Tyson have taken over the industry. Lobb says, “in a way we are not producing chickens, we are producing food” (Food Inc.). He goes on to tell us, how the system is highly mechanized and all of the

Additionally, many innovations such as green sense farm are practical only in the developed world, especially the United States. Other undeveloped countries cannot afford most technologies that are mentioned in the film. In fact, undeveloped countries were barely touched on the film. I felt this was particularly a problem in the presentation of the challenge of feeding the world's skyrocketing population growth. I believe there is tremendous potential in undeveloped countries in particular to increase food production through agricultural development.

George Ritzer, in his book The McDonaldization of Society, has given a good understanding of the kind of world we live in. He describes the concept of McDonaldization, which is the process in which the principles that form the basis of McDonalds are greatly influencing the rest of society. McDonalds runs its business on the following key elements: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control by non-human technologies. A fifth element, which Ritzer perceives as a disadvantage of McDonaldization, is the irrationality of rationality. This is the idea that a society which is based entirely on rationality is not a normal human society because humans are not

The imaginative setting helps set a scene for the book to be based on. In different perspectives, the future is a strange and wonderful place with many differences from person to person. Since the book takes place in the future, this book provides a new insight into what might be what the universe might experience. This imaginative property keeps the reader thinking about his own futuristic thoughts. While reading the book, one might imagine the Food Factory as a rusty spaceship that has many interesting tools for helping anyone. The setting isn’t described thoroughly, which leaves a lot of room for imagination and creativity in different people. Other possible pictures of the factory might include a glowing, shiny

It has been claimed in class that this treatment results from the nature of capitalism as an economic system, not merely from the doings of “bad people”. Maltreatment of workers, animals, and the environment are depicted in the film “FOOD, INC”. Capitalism also known as “The Free Enterprise System” and “The Market Economy” is a mode of production under which social classes are determined by ownership or control of the means of production. A mode of production is a system by which material production in society is organized. Under capitalism individual rights are emphasized, everything used except human labor is privately owned, and income is based on marketplace competition. In regards to food, food has

After the visit to "Wayne Bradley's" farm, Peter Singer and Jim Mason share some very important information on the experience with farming. Singer and Mason together examine negative impacts that individual Americans food choices have upon farmers, they believe should be the basis of dietary basics. The negative effects of much agriculture on animals, human health, and our environment as they have little faith that the American government will actually take the initiative to force the food industry to change without a lot of pressure, with this being said consumers, such as Mr. Bradley, force for reformed market behavior through demand for the food product, animals. Singer and Mason spend considerable time at Mr. Bradley farm to expose the

Ritzer closes his contrast of rationalization and McDonaldization by telling how he feels that rationalization has accelerated and increased since Weber's period. The issue of rationalization is much more dominating in our society’s institutions