Exploration 8 Mason Metcalf

This film reminded me very much of Food Inc. It too talked about how we need to go away from conventional farming not only for the health of nature but for the health of humans. This film is very powerful and makes many think about this world, there health, and where food comes from. This is hard to do in today's world, many people want to be told what to do and that everything that there not directly responsible for is not there problem, this changes with this movie. It makes you realize that you really should worry about where your food comes from and that we need to take care of this world. My subject I choose to research about is why monoculture are so bad. A monoculture is where farmers in this case plant the same crop over and over again in the same fields. It creates only one or two plants (Corn and Soybean in Ohio) that takes up almost all of the farming land. This is awful for many reasons. One problem that I have personally experienced is with insects. I have raised honey bees for the last few years and I can tell the impact of only having one or two crops. Corn especially does not create the pollen that bees need to survive. Bees need wildflowers and parries to really prosper. Wildflowers create more the 15% more pollen and heather pollen. I am planning on starting a parry this coming year to help give some diversity to the land. Like john Ikerd said "its time to shift the world view" Monoculture have never and will never be the way to productive and safe farming.      

http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Why-Are-Monocultures-Bad

I enjoyed listening to many of the classes research and ideas. I especially enjoyed talking about the Chicken farms and also the GMO's. GMO's have many connection with Monocultures. GMO's truly help make monocultures possible. Also the chicken farms and how the companies would sue you if you were a farmer and talked to anyone about the farm. This is wrong to me in so many levels. We as consumers of the food should have the right to be able to know not only where they come from but how they are raised and what they consume in food. This movie and our discussion really made me think about my lifestyle choices and I think it made most of our class think the same.