Shuarian’s Weblog

Do you really need another reason to improve your English? (2.45 MB video file)

…and when speaking German, speak it as the locals do: always make sure to use the approriate local terms, see: Helvetismen, Austriazismen and Teutonismen (note: links are leading to the German wikipedia)

This Saturday, I went to cinema with Patrick and Stefan to see ‘We Feed The World’ (website), a documentary film by Austrian director Erwin Wagenhofer. The movie deals with the globalisation of the food industry and its mass market production

I have mixed feelings about the movie and would like to pin down some of my criticism:

- For one, it leaves Europe only for a short segment in Brazil, thus rendering a movie about the global food industry a tad too eurocentric.

- Second, the different parts of the movie are only loosely connected, hence failing at offering any further insight. More focus on a few exemplary aspects would have allowed for more depth while hardly lessen the presentation of the overall picture.

- Third, the movie lacks a strong narration. Most - if not all - statements made by the interviewed persons and the director himself don’t get challenged. While I can understand the need of documentary films to hold back with conclusions I’d favour a more ‘investigative journalism’ approach nevertheless.

Apart from these points, the movie delivers an interesting study about different branches of the food chain in our global age. Some of the strongest moments are achieved by displaying images of normal day to day processes we usually either don’t see or turn a blind eye to.

The two most memorable shots are from Austria. The first scene starts in Vienna where two days old breed is transported on trucks and ultimately thrown away (picture). Even though it still would be
perfectly fresh and save to eat it’s considered unsellable. The amount of breed wasted every day in Vienna (population of about 1.6 million) roughly equals the daily breed consumption of the second largest city in Austria, Graz (about 350,000 inhabitants).

Another part of the documentary takes the viewer to a poultry farm (picture). Everything from the birth to the mechanical ’slaughtering’ of chickens is shown. These pictures are certainly nothing for the faint hearted! The farmer states his opinion clearly: Mere natural production wouldn’t be enough to serve the huge demand. Plus, the blissful ignorance of consumers leaves him no choice.

An interesting side notes concern the dependency of farmers who are using genetically modified seed on the producers. Since the seeds can be used only for one planting cycle, the farmer has to buy new seeds every year. Additionally, he can only use pesticides from the same company and with every new seed, he has to buy a new, fitting pesticide, too.

Other topics of the movie are dealing with subjects such as the available amount of food and the uneven distribution of it, the plant production in Spain and the fishery in France, as well as the clearing of rain forest in Brazil. A few short interviews from different perspectives completes the documentary.

Final verdict: Most of my criticism probably can be attributed to the fact that this is a low budget, Austria-based documentary. Overall, Erwin Wagenhofer has made an interesting documentary, and can only be applauded for his effort to shed some light on the complex issue of our global food production. It certainly is a topic worth of more attention, and hopefully the viewers will not just put the question the movie raises aside
but dig a bit deeper.

Ha, it’s no longer “it’s all part of a big conspiracy” anymore; it’s “I‘m part of a big conspiracy” now! >> The Donati Conspiracy.

Has anyone seen that flick?

If only my French teacher knew:

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Hurray, this is my first post to my new weblog. There’s not all that much content yet and the design might still need some tweaking but I’m happy to kick off my blog now; I guess I’ll just have to solve any further problems on the fly…

Speaking about content, this blog is no private journal. I want to use it mainly for keeping track of my interests and being able to sort my thoughts out a bit more coherently. If time permits, I’ll update the blog once or twice a week.

While writing in English certainly is a good exercise, I’m not sure if I should switch to German or some sort of bilingual German / English use.

For any further information, please allow me to kindly refer you to the about this blog page.