FILM REVIEW: GMO OMG

A scene from GMO OMG.

Corn-you-and-dystopia

By Miranda Inganni

From the director of DIVE!, Living Off of America’s Waste, Jeremy Seifert’s latest documentary, GMO OMG, delves into the subject of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, and how they are affecting our planet, our bodies and our culture.

Available science has made “conventional” farmers (i.e. non-organic farmers) in the US comfortable in their choice to use pesticides and herbicides to make a “safe and abundant” food supply. (Safe and abundant in this context means a food supply that would reduce hunger around the world, but that is obviously not the case.) The companies producing the pesticides and herbicides are the same companies that are producing the GMO seeds: Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, DuPont, etc.  The corn or soy that grows from these seeds becomes, in and of itself, a pesticide. Subsequently, lack of regulation allows these pesticides to be food, or get into our food. 85 percent of all US grown corn is GMO corn, which means that consumers are ingesting a lot of these chemicals.

The impact of GMO farming on small farmers cannot be overlooked, either. If an organic farmer is growing corn, for example, next to a GMO corn field and some of the pollen or seeds from the GMO farm cross-pollinates, or seeds itself, the organic farmer can be sued by the GMO farm due to the fact that the GMO plant had a patent. Sadly this happens far too often. Yet another way that huge corporations can keep independent businesses down.

Additionally, much like how antibiotics have helped to create the superbugs that now exist as a threat to humans and animals, GMOs are assisting in the creation and/or production of super weeds and super insects that are resistant to herbicides and pesticides. To combat these problems, farmers have to use these chemicals in greater abundance. And so the cycle continues ad infinitum.

While the physical effects of GMO products have not been definitively proven to be harmful or not (the companies supporting the research stating that GMOs are not harmful just so happen to be the companies making the GMOs and will not release the raw data for peer review), we do know that these chemicals are in our bodies, our food source and our water system.

Seifert clearly believes strongly that GMOs need to be brought to the public’s attention, but the way he goes about it in GMO OMG feels a bit off. While his family is very photogenic (even if I really did want to reach through the screen and brush the hair out of those boys’ eyes!), they are too much of the focus of the film. The scare tactics he uses – like making his kids don hazmat suits and breathing masks before running through a corn field -- feels like exploitation. And while he may care what cattle on a farm are being fed, he does not seem to care about the condition the cattle are in. When Seifert learns that his beloved mountain fishing ponds are being stocked with fish from fisheries that were being fed pellets made with GMOs, his concern seems to be more about the loss of his pastime than the fish’s health. If Seifert is going to get up in arms about his family eating healthfully and being concerned about the future of the worlds’ agriculture, he might start thinking about sustainable farming, among other things. (And, hey, try vegetarianism!)

Nonetheless, there is a lot of frightening information about GMOs in Seifert’s film and this is an important subject demanding discussion.

FILM REVIEW: QUEEN OF THE SUN

A scene from Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?

The buzz on the world bee:

By Don Simpson

"Have you ever been stung by a dead bee?" Well, sometime in the near future you may never have to worry about beestings, dead or alive. Some people probably think that the possibility of a bee-less world is not a bad thing, but they obviously do not eat their fruit, as honey bees are responsible for pollination of approximately one third of the United States’ agricultural crops, including almonds, soybeans, peaches, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, and cucumbers.

Why are honey bees disappearing? Well, the phenomenon -- which has been blandly dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) -- has technically occurred throughout the history of beekeeping, but there has been a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of worker bee colonies recently. (Since 2007, the USDA has estimated a 34 percent loss of honey bees per year.) The exact cause(s) has yet to be determined, but the current list of suspects includes: varroa mites and other insect diseases, climate change-related stresses, agricultural pesticides, migratory beekeeping, inbreeding and artificial insemination of queen bees, the industrialization of beekeeping, as well as malnutrition associated with monoculture (specifically California's almond crop), genetically modified crops, and the practice of feeding high-fructose corn syrup to honey bees.

Taggart Siegel’s (The Real Dirt on Farmer John) documentary Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? presents an international array of guests -- including Michael Pollan, Gunther Hauk, Vandana Shiva, Hugh Wilson, Michael Thiele, May Berenbaum, Yvon Achard, Carlo Petrini, and Raj Patel -- who reveal a variety of perspectives on beekeeping and colony collapse disorder. Throughout Siegel’s film, beekeeping is represented not as a hobby or a career, but as an art form, an ethical responsibility and even as a form of monasticism. Siegel also humorously fetishes the gooey goodness fingered from the dark recesses of the honeycomb -- which also happens to serve as a womb for baby honey bees. Backyard and rooftop beekeepers, migratory beekeepers, and biodynamic beekeepers all seem to share an obsessive reverence to their work. As it turns out, these beekeepers are trying to save humankind from the agricultural apocalypse that could occur in the wake of a bee-less Earth.

Organic farming and the discontinuance of the practice of monoculture are both cited as crucial parts of the solution -- as is the need for changes in commercial beekeeping techniques (which would result in near-certain bankruptcy for commercial beekeepers) -- but no solution will be guaranteed until a definite cause(s) is discovered. If a workable solution is not unearthed soon, humankind’s knack for playing god with nature may come back to sting us sooner than most of us anticipated. I, for one, cannot even fathom living in a world without almonds, soybeans, peaches, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, and cucumbers.

Not only does Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? provide us with profound and colorful discussions on beekeeping and colony collapse disorder, Siegel’s masterful cinematography is also raw and unfiltered eye candy (sweetened by honey, of course). How Siegel captured such magnificent images is almost as mindboggling as how some beekeepers are able to have their bodies completely blanketed by bees without a single flinch.