The Hunger & Food Security Myth
"Do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world?"
How can we feed the world—today and tomorrow?
The biggest players in the food industry—from pesticide pushers to fertilizer makers to food processors and manufacturers—spend billions of dollars every year not selling food, but selling the idea that we need their products to feed the world. But, do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world? Can sustainably grown food deliver the quantity and quality we need—today and in the future? Our first Food MythBusters movie takes on these questions in under seven minutes. So next time you hear them, you can too.
Take Action
Stop Climate Change. Help farmers feed the world.
It’s never been clearer that we need bold and immediate climate leadership – that’s why this Presidents Day weekend thousands of activists will head to the White House and tell President Obama to shut down the climate-killing Keystone XL pipeline once and for all.
Food Heroes
Food Hero: Kristin Carbone
Our Food Hero of the Chesapeake Bay is Kristin Carbone, the farmer of Radix Farm. After an initial career of community organizing and affordable housing advocacy, a stint with green building construction, a few seasons tending and establishing urban gardens, and four years helping to run a 300 member CSA farm, in 2009, Kristin started Radix [...]
Food Hero: The Nelson Family
The Nelson Family in Minnesota used to raise their cattle conventionally, until illness and financial difficulties made the alternative path obvious. They switched to organic and selling milk though Organic Valley, a cooperative of farmers. Now they run a thriving family farm business. See them reflect on their transition and where it’s led them.
Q & A
Question:
Ever heard - or been asked - any of these questions: How is the playing field tilted to favor industrial agriculture? Why does concentration of control in the food system matter? What’s the pesticide treadmill? What's a "CAFO"? Aren’t there some crops you simply can’t grow with organic methods? How do you define “sustainable farming”?
For an in-depth look at the questions raised by this myth — download the Companion Reading Guide for this film, including answers to these questions and more. In this guide, Anna Lappé builds on the issues raised in the first MythBusting film and walks through some of the most critical questions related to the myth that we need industrial agriculture to feed the world.
Reports and Resources
World Hunger: Twelve Myths
An authoritative book at the intersection of global hunger and the food movement, World Hunger: Twelve Myths draws on and distills the extensive research of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First). Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset examine head-on the policies and politics that have kept hungry people from feeding themselves around the world, and the misconceptions that have obscured our own national, social, and humanitarian interests.
From the Blog
Help us choose movie 3!
We'd love your two cents. Do you have two minutes? Please take this quick survey to help us pick the theme for our third movie. We're giving away prizes to selected survey responders, including a signed copy of Project Director Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet, the Food MythBuster DVD, and our new greeting cards. Drawing will be the week of 3/18/13 after the survey closes.
