Exploration 4: Brian Hageman

Brian Hageman Exploration 4: "Fresh" response.

1. The most important thing that I took out from this film is that large scale industrial farms are not always as efficient as smaller farms, even though industrial farms are almost solely based on optimal output and efficiency. I was shocked to hear this because prior to this film, I believed that small farms were the ones losing and tracking behind because of conventional methods, but I was wrong. If I were to review this film, I would focus on the main theme, "New thinking about what we're eating". The film explains why fresh food is become increasingly hard to obtain, and stresses viewers to buy and consume locally grown fresh food from smaller markets. I think the film did a great job of persuading viewers to change what they eat and buy. It made me want to only consume fresh foods. I think a weakness was that it did not go into detail about what processed food does to your body. It mentioned that it was bad, but I think that showing concrete evidence proving that consuming processed foods has a negative impact your body would have been appropriate in this film. I relate to this film because my uncle and great uncle both run small farms, just like the ones shown in "Fresh".

2. I wanted to see how and why smaller farms are more efficient than large, industrial farms. John Ikerd says that "Medium sized, organic farming" is the most efficient way to grow. The reason for this is because large, industrial farms tend to monoculture, which is planting a single crop in a field. Smaller farms plants crop mixers, which is an array of crop and animals in a field. In monocultures, there are rows of just one crop with bare dirt in between them. Weeds occupy this empty space, and farmers must use machines and herbicides in order to exterminate the weeds. Small farmers use the empty space to plant different types of crops, which benefits them in many ways. They do not have to use machines to spray herbicides on their crops. Small farmers save money, time, and labor by doing this. According to Peter Rosset, the executive director of the Oakland, California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy, "...smaller farms in the U.S. produce more than 10 times more value of output per unit area than large farms." This is fascinating to me as I previously believed that the opposite was true.

Sources:
https://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/john-ikerd-the-industrialization-of-agriculture-has-been-an-absolute-failure-i-believe-in-the-future-of-sustainable-farming/

https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/Organic/smallfarmsbetter.php