Agribusiness: Problems and Solutions Series

Agribusiness has taken the principles of the assembly line and applied them to what was traditional animal husbandry. The result: the extinction of many family farms, alarming pollution rates, and increased health maladies in farming communities.

This cogent two-part series challenges assumptions about the efficiency of corporate farming in the U.S. and Canada. Environmental activists, lawyers, scholars, and community members passionately confront this destructive form of agriculture and make known their ideas for fixing the problem.

Vdeo 2: Alternative Agriculture: Food for Life
This program asserts that ecological, organic, and ethical farming is a viable alternative to industrial agriculture and offers a tremendous benefit to the environment while helping to preserve traditional rural life. Interviews with these modern farmers focus on the process and effects of raising animals and growing grains, fruits, and vegetables in a natural environment.

In addition, scholars criticize what they call academic and government support of large-scale agriculture, arguing that the only true sustainable method of farming is nature-based and that more consumers are demanding food produced without the use of chemicals, pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics.

Grade: 6-8, 9-12

Agribusiness: Problems and Solutions Series (DVD)
46 Minutes Each Video
© 2004
Time: 92 Minutes