Merchants of Doubt Exposes the Bull | Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

Merchants of Doubt Exposes the Bull

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Mike Callicrate

Not believing doesn’t make it untrue

In last week’s Atlantic article, Farmland Without Farmers, Wendell Berry describes how industrial agriculture has replaced men with machines, depriving the American landscape of its stewards and the culture they built. He discusses the value of living in a place for a long time and observing, in that place, what’s missing.

Over the last 35 years, as Wendell Berry describes, corporations have assumed near total control of agriculture while family farmers have lost their markets, their land, and their livelihoods. When family farmers are replaced with industrial corporate farms, animals, people, communities, and the environment all suffer. Why would any society allow the demise of their farmers and ranchers? They wouldn’t if they knew it was happening. In fact, any good citizen would raise hell at the thought of losing their food supply. So why aren’t more people speaking out about the concentration and consolidation of our agricultural and food system?

Last week I saw the newly released film, Merchants of Doubt. Robert Kenner, producer of Food Inc., once again brilliantly exposes the lie, the deception and message manipulation that keeps normally intelligent people in the dark. The film explains how the lie often gets more light, more consideration, than the truth. I left the theater reminded of the danger in broadly giving others and their stories the benefit of the doubt. The film reveals the sociopaths among us. They operate from very dark places, knowing full well the damage they cause, while taking pleasure in it. MORE