Faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper: They’re the watchwords of the modern American consumer as he peruses the grocery store aisles. And industry’s response to his demands can be seen on every shelf.

The country’s appetite has changed drastically in the last 50 years with the proliferation of easily accessible processed foods — and inevitably, so has the industry that feeds it. The documentary “Food, Inc.,” which is showing tonight at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union, explores the often unappetizing production process of food. It also raises many questions for local farmers about their farming practices.

“Food, Inc.” investigates large, national companies that comprise the modern agricultural industry, and is directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner.

Greg Beverlin, Paola junior and co-coordinator for the student environmental activist group Environs, said seeing “Food, Inc.” motivated him to buy locally grown food whenever possible, but he recognized the choice between cost and quality for college students.

“This movie raises a lot of questions,” Beverlin said.

Factory farming

“Food, Inc.” explains how the nation’s systemic dependency on factory farming, which produces the greatest amount of food at the lowest cost, has drastically changed the agricultural landscape. Chickens are no longer raised — they are grown with hormones. Cattle is kept in crowded, unsanitary feed lots and fed an unnatural diet of corn. Then they are pumped full of antibiotics in an effort to kill the bacteria growing in their stomachs as a result of their diet.

In the United States, livestock consume 70 percent of all antimicrobial drugs, according to the most recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2001.

Farmer Joel Salatin, who owns Polyface Inc. farms in Swoope, Va., was featured in “Food, Inc.” He said in an e-mail he adamantly opposed this practice because it compromised the original integrity of farming.

The documentary asserts big industry uses a “pastoral fantasy” to sell products like beef and poultry. Although the bagged chicken breasts in the freezer aisle have undergone a very unglamorous process prior to arriving in the grocery store, the idyllic agrarian imagery on its packaging suggests otherwise. But local farm owner Karen Pendleton said the documentary didn’t surprise her a bit.

“Nothing in those movies is anything new,” she said. “I agree with a lot of what the movies are saying, I’m just surprised that people didn’t know animals were raised that way. Where did they think their chicken came from?”

Pendleton said it was easy to get upset with big business, but the country needed large industry production because it was difficult to feed that many people on a small scale. For instance, if each person in a town of 100,000 — slightly larger than Lawrence — ate chicken for one meal every day, it would require about 20,000 chickens a day.

“I’m a big proponent of local, but I’m not a proponent of smashing large industry,” she said. “I do this because I love it. I hate for what I do to become so political for people that they have to take a stand on whether I’m a good person or a bad person for the way I grow it.”

Change on the horizon

“Food, Inc.” proposes a return to a more localized style of life in which consumers depend on local growers.

Diana Endicott and her husband Gary founded the Good Natured Family Farms Alliance, a co-op of farms in the Kansas City metro area that provides local farmers with a market to sell their products. Endicott also sells products to Sysco, the company that supplies the University with produce and grains for many of its salad bars. Endicott, who was a runner-up to be the White House farmer earlier this year, said many large corporations operated on an outdated belief system that more fertilizer equals more production.

“Change will come from students taking knowledge of new food agriculture and transcending the ways people farm because consumers will demand to eat differently,” she said.

Salatin agreed that consumers held the power to change the industry without a single regulation, agency or bureaucrat. He said fast food chains like McDonald’s drove the potato, lettuce, chicken, beef, onion and tomato markets worldwide.

“If we boycotted industrial hamburger joints for just three days, it would bring the entire industrial food system to its knees,” he said. “Couldn’t everybody do without a Big Mac for three days?”

Stephanie Thomas, owner of Spring Creek Farms in Baldwin City, said the decision to eat healthy would cost more than eating less nutritious foods, but would increase quality of life in the long run.

“It’s whether you spend your money on preventative health or on prescriptions later,” she said.

Real change, Salatin said, wouldn’t come from watching movies or buying organic clothes.

“We all tend to get excited about telling other people what they need to do,” he said. “The only way you earn that right is by doing the right things yourself. So turn off the TV, rediscover your hot plate or stove, buy only raw and unprocessed food and enjoy.”

“Food, Inc.” starts at 7 p.m. in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union, level 5, and is sponsored by CCO EARTH, Environs and Student Union Activities.

— Edited by Sarah Kelly