The food itself is getting more processed. They're adding sweeteners, or changing textures chemically, or using shit like hfco, etc. I don't think it's the actual crops per se, but the way the food is being made and delivered to the consumers.
You do realize that these herbicides, etc., have been used for a long time right? Two of the most common ones - 2,4-D was first commercialized and used in 1946, and Roundup has been used since 1970.
Behind the scenes in my kitchen, I add more unhealthy shit to my food during the cooking process and after it (if it's even cooked at all) than was ever added to it or created within it during the growing and harvesting process. Food, Inc., produced by Magnolia Pictures, Inc.
This. And to add to it, we're eating a fuck ton more sugar that we were 20-30 years ago. HFCS is one of the reasons, because food companies are trying to find more efficient ways to make shitty food, and HFCS is cheap to produce. I support corn production because it's a very efficient way to feed an ever growing world population with an ever shrinking land base. However, I'm against using HFCS and sugar as the main ingredient in every god damned form of junk food on the planet.
Not sure if this really counts of "behind the scenes" but, for my 16th birthday, my aunt brought my cousin and I to be in the audience for an episode of TRL. The two things that stick out in my mind about the experience are that Jessica Simpson and Carmen Electra are a lot shorter than they look and some girl sitting behind us was obsessed with Carson Daly. During one of the commercial breaks, she got to talk to him and she asked about his mother's stuffing recipe. The one thing my cousin remembers the most is that Nick Lachey held her hand and serenaded her for an entire 3 seconds. We were both being really sarcastic about the whole experience before that, but she almost had a heart attack when he sang to her.
My husband makes movies - he works in the Locations department and has been part of such blockbuster hits as Pacific Rim, Pompeii and The Tuxedo. In that capacity, he's met a bunch of celebrities and seen all the nitty gritty of how a movie goes together. Speaking as the woman who does the laundry, I'll say that the "nitty gritty" of Pompeii translated into four fucking months of fake volcanic ash being tracked through my living room when he came home at the end of the day. My "behind the scenes" job as a regulatory consultant means I know the chemistry of a considerable amount of up-and-coming technology in the industrial chemical, food (including food additives) and pharmaceuticals industries. I also know the toxicity (acute and chronic, mammalian and aquatic, oral, dermal and inhalation) of these substances, the risk assessments that were done to indicate safety, and the studies which were done showing aspects such as efficacy, stability, biodegradation and exposure safety to workers and the general public. As a consultant, I've signed one of the strictest NDAs on the planet, so I can't tell you who I work for or what I know about their practices... but I *can* say that it is ASTONISHING what people believe just because it was published online somewhere. And it HORRIFYING how much people are willing to condemn entire companies because lobby groups have polluted mass media with incorrect information. That's not to say that multi-million-dollar corporations are all sunshine and roses, but they're not out there knowingly poisoning the general population.
I'm a radio tech at a smaller ATC facility. We still use the placards, although it's more automated now; controllers will put flight plans into a computer, and a specialized printer will print all of the information onto flight strips that are put onto the board. When they leave our airspace, the computer will then send the flight plan to the next control facility. Depending on how modern it is, they will either have a screen that basically fulfills the role of the placard board, or they'll print the information onto their own flight strips. Most of my job is testing those connections, as the software is buggy as shit and is constantly dropping connections or being unresponsive. It runs off of Windows 98, and I have to put in floppy disks when running diagnostics.