Educational Media Reviews Online

With a world population boom looming, this outstanding work provides a global perspective of food supply, shortages, famines, and the plight of the farmer. There is an excellent introductory discussion of poverty and economics, skeptically noting that products alone cannot solve the world’s hunger crisis in the long-term. Most notably, the film reinforces the concept of “food security,” or a sustainable infrastructure to ensure food production independence for regional consumption. It offers a balanced portrayal of corporate interests in developing economies. On one hand, it raises concerns about the “invasion of junk food,” by companies such as Pepsi, offering a cheap form of low-nutrition food. On the other hand, it demonstrates a respectably large movement by companies toward innovations in crops, agricultural practices, products, equipment, and research. The film also looks at various governments’ providing incentives to enable the necessary research, approval, production, and distribution to take place.

Although this work primarily treats India and Africa, it succeeds in painting a complete global picture, by examining corporate motivations, technologies, agricultural models, suppliers, and political interests. It is balanced in both tone and perspective, combining offerings of hope with offerings of despair. Despite the treatment of a saddening topic, this work remains generally upbeat, citing modernizations, countries’ commitments to agricultural reform, research into new vegetable products, and business’ investments in impoverished nations. All of these optimistic components, however, never hide the existing state of this widespread catastrophe.