Day 25: Authentic and Deep Foods
Eliot Coleman and Four Season Farm; Helen and Scott Nearing; The Future of Food; Authentic, Organic, and Deep Foods; Total Diet Study
“Anything as important to you as your food source should be as close to you as possible.” – Eliot Coleman, Four Season Harvest
Welcome to Day 25!
The information today is huge. As you grow to understand the importance of the integrity of your food, a closer look at the agricultural or agribusiness practices which produce and provide your food become a focus of contemplation and investigation.
In the Summer of 2005 I had the pleasure of spending some evenings with Eliot Coleman, organic farmer at his Four Season Farm on the coast of Maine for over 40 years. Eliot coined the term “Authentic Farming,” in response to the USDA’s agribusiness-controlled attempts to compromise organic standards:
FOUR SEASON FARM
TO OUR CUSTOMERS:
The new USDA “organic” standards will take effect soon. It is obvious to us that they were designed more for the convenience of large scale marketers in faraway states than to satisfy the nutritional quality concerns of the food buying public. The USDA standards define a lowest common denominator. We strive for higher goals. There needs to be a new best-practices label so customers looking for the superior quality of fresh, local produce from committed small scale growers can easily find it. Therefore, we will not become a ‘certified’ organic farm. As of October 2002, we are marketing our FOUR SEASON FARM produce under a new label for the 21st Century – “Authentic.”
“AUTHENTIC” – THE BEYOND-ORGANIC LABEL
“Your guaranteed seal of quality from a farm near you.”
The word authentic derives from the Greek – authentes – “one who does things for him/her self.” The “Authentic” label means:
All fresh vegetables are produced by the growers who sell them and are produced within 50 miles of their place of final sale.
Soils are nourished, as ill the natural world, with farm compost, plant and animal wastes, and mineral particles from ground rock.
Green manures and cover crops are included within broadly based crop rotations to maintain biological diversity.
A ‘plant positive’ rather than ‘pest negative’ philosophy is followed, focusing on correcting the causes of problems rather than treating symptoms.
The growers’ fields, barns, and greenhouses are open for inspection at any line so the customers themselves can be the certifiers of their food.
The goal is vigorous, healthy crops free of chemical contamination and endowed with their inherent powers of vitality and resistance.
The FOUR SEASON FARM label “Authentic” assures you that our food is grown on land farmed organically since 1968 by growers who strive to cultivate, harvest, and deliver the tastiest and most nutritious vegetables.
What does it all boil down to? Truly, it is love. David Wolfe said it very well in a talk I listened to recently:
“You are what you eat. And it cannot be cheated. If we eat food that has no minerals in it, that becomes us. If we eat food that is created without love or prepared without love or grown without love, that becomes us.
That is the big thing, by the way. When we get to the TRUTH. The truth is – the big problem is – that the food today is grown without love, raised without love, prepared without love, delivered without love, and eaten without love. That is the real thing. And everything else is just a side show.”
– David Wolfe, 2005
The Future of Food
Beyond the files attached for you today, there is available online a 2 hour documentary called The Future of Food which is a must-see event:
There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America — a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat. THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade. From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology.
The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply. Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world’s food system.
The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.
See the entire video in the Media & Documentaries Section today!
Please consider the huge impact that you can have by making more loving food choices. It may be the very best vote you ever cast.
See you in The Green Room!
Living the Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing. A portrait of the daily life of America's most famous back-to-the-landers. Filmed in 1976.
Theme Music: John Denver's 'Thank God I'm A Country Boy'
Gabriel Cousens, M.D. on Organic Food
Michael Pollan explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century. He is the author, most recently, of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
The Homegrown Revolution is a short introduction to the homegrown project that has been called a new revolution in urban sustainability. Check us out at: http://www.urbanhomestead.org
Today’s Downloads
authentic foods
by David Rainoshek, M.A.
This file is HUGE in terms of understanding the Organic Imperative for person, community, society, and planet. Authentic Farming is a term Eliot Coleman coined after the USDA and modern agribusiness decided that “Organic” was profitable enough to try and compromise so that more agribusinesses could stick the label on and make money, even though the food was irradiated, GMO, etc. The term Authentic puts a finer point on where we want our food, agriculturally speaking. Enjoy.
Eliot Coleman
Eliot Coleman is one of the world’s most knowledgeable organic farmers, with over 40 years experience on the coast of Maine, where he harvests – in unheated greenhouses that anyone can construct – 35-40 varieties of fresh greens YEAR ROUND. He lines it up in his books, listed in this file. Enjoy the photos of his beautiful farm.
the fertile dozen: a booklist by master organic farmer eliot coleman
A very special book list chosen from over 40 years of Organic Farming experience by Eliot Coleman, owner of Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine.
gardening without digging
This little book was presented to me by Alden, Head Gardener at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center 2007-2009. I scanned it in, and returned it. Now you get to read it. This book is placed in the program because Nature Farming is a good illustration of what makes for good health: understanding natural processes and providing for the process without trying to “engineer” it. Another great book on this subject is “The One Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka.
the one straw revolution
By Masonobu Fukuoka
The classic book on Nature Farming by the expert who discovered and cultivated this means of growing food.
Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book,” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book “is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture.”
Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural practice, deciding instead that the best forms of cultivation mirror nature’s own laws. Over the next three decades he perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort.
Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener or a kitchen gardener, dedicated to slow food or simply looking to live a healthier life, you will find something here—you may even be moved to start a revolution of your own.
the natural way of farming
By Masonobu Fukuoka
Doing nothing, being nothing, becoming nothing is the goal of Fukuoka’s farming method, an approach to agriculture which he has pursued for over forty years with resounding success. With no tillage, no fertilizer, no weeding and no pesticides he consistently produces rice, barley, fruit and vegetable crops that equal or exceed the yield per acre of neighboring farmers who embrace modern scientific agriculture. The basis of his philosophy is that nature grows plants just fine without our interference so that the most practical approach is to get out of the way. In the course of explaining his reasoning and methods, this do-nothing farmer delivers a scorching indictment of chemical agriculture and the human assumption that we can improve on nature. He explains the beneficial role of insects and plants usually characterized as pests, the fallacy of artificially boosting fertility with petrochemical concoctions, the logical error implicit in the use of farm machinery or draft animals, and why pollution is an inevitable result of misguided attempts to improve on nature. Calculation of the energy input versus the caloric output of various farms results in the surprising discovery (perhaps it shouldn’t be) that (minimal) human labor is the most efficient way to produce food. Draft animals add more work and more energy input, small scale machines compound the problem and large scale mechanized agriculture proves to be a vast waste of energy. He calls modern American farmers “subcontractors of the oil industry,” and claims that traditional Japanese farmers on 3-5 acres achieve a real net income higher than American farmers on 500-700 acres.
home grown: the case for local food
By Brian Halweil and the World Watch Institute. A beautiful job of laying out the realities of our far-too-well-traveled food supply, with excellent suggestions for what we can begin doing now. From the book: “People everywhere depend increasingly on food from distant sources. In the last 40 years, the value of international trade in food has tripled, and the tonnage of food shipped between nations has grown fourfold, while population has only doubled. In the United States, food typically travels between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometers from farm to plate, up to 25 percent farther than in 1980. In the United Kingdom, food travels 50 percent farther than it did two decades ago.”
total diet study - pesticide levels of foods by the u.s. food and drug administration
88 PAGES of DATA! This is a wonderful file which you can use to see ACTUAL GOVERNMENT DATA showing the types of pesticide residues on nonorganic produce and food products.
Online Articles
Review: The Future of Food, a must-see documentary that exposes the biotech threat to life on our planet by Mike Adams
There is a cabal of power-hungry corporations that are systematically destroying humanity’s future. These companies have taken over the food supply, injected pesticides, viruses and invading genes into staple crops, engineered “terminator” genes that make crop seeds unviable, destroyed the livelihood of farmers and used every tactic they could think of — legal threats, intimidation, bribery, monopolistic market practices and many more — to gain monopolistic control over the global food supply.
The Results Are In: Organic Foods More Nutritious Than Conventional Foods by Katherine East
The biggest and most extensive scientific study and research into the benefits of organic food has found that it is more nutritious than ordinary produce and may in fact lengthen people’s lives. They also contain higher levels of antioxidants and flavo-noids which help ward off heart disease and cancer as well as higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc. (But you could’ve told them that.) Newcastle University have been leading this £12m, four-year project, funded by the European Union and their findings show that organic food contains more antioxidants and less unhealthy fatty acids.
Small Farmer Wins Moral Victory Over Monsanto by Barbara Minton
Percy Schmeiser has a check for $660 and a Right Livelihood Award to prove that sometimes the little guy wins. In a modern version of the David vs. Goliath story, a 77 year-old Saskatchewan farmer and his wife are now considered folk heroes following settlement of their legal battle with agribusiness giant Monsanto Canada Inc., after the company sued them for patent violation of genetically engineered canola seeds in 1997. The Schmeisers were sued after plants from the genetically modified canola seeds were found on their farm near Bruno, Saskatchewan.
Bringing the Culture Back in Agriculture
After the turn of the previous century there was a lot of experimentation with mono cultures. By that is meant growing only one field crop, e.g. corn or wheat. This is a principle that goes against nature, which works with ecosystems based…
Permaculture shows us the path to a backyard revolution by Isaac Harkness
Bananas Are Facing Extinction – And It's All Our Fault by Tom Levitt (HuffPo)
There’s a reason why bananas are the world’s favorite fruit. They are cheap to buy, soft and easy to eat and full of fat-free nutrients. Frequently found in our lunchboxes, breakfast mix and often one of the first foods babies eat, they are a household staple. More than two-thirds of U.S shoppers include them in their regular grocery shopping.
But the much-loved banana is in trouble. Two damaging diseases are destroying our favorite yellow food and threatening to wipe out the bananas eaten by consumers in the U.S. “Banana production as it stands is facing an existential crisis,” said Dan Bebber, a plant and disease specialist at the University of Exeter. “There will have to be a revolution in how bananas are produced for production to continue.”
Great Books
By Wendell Berry
Since its publication by Sierra Club Books in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural development and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land—from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.
Sadly, as Berry notes in his Afterword to this third edition, his arguments and observations are more relevant than ever. We continue to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economic system dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profits. Although “this book has not had the happy fate of being proved wrong,” Berry writes, there are good people working “to make something comely and enduring of our life on this earth.” Wendell Berry is one of those people, writing and working, as ever, with passion, eloquence, and conviction.
By Helen and Scott Nearing
“Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash…Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings’ challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills. This one volume edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings these classics on rural homesteading together. This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.
By Eliot Coleman
If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you. Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine.
This story of sunshine, weather patterns, old limitations and expectations, and new realities is delightfully innovative in the best gardening tradition. Four-Season Harvest will have you feasting on fresh produce from your garden all through the winter.
By Eliot Coleman
Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine.
Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.
Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses. Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous, and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm.
His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders, and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons. A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”
By Eliot Coleman
With more than 45,000 sold since 1988, The New Organic Grower has become a modern classic. In this newly revised and expanded edition, master grower Eliot Coleman continues to present the simplest and most sustainable ways of growing top-quality organic vegetables. Coleman updates practical information on marketing the harvest, on small-scale equipment, and on farming and gardening for the long-term health of the soil. The new book is thoroughly updated, and includes all-new chapters such as: *Farm-Generated Fertility-how to meet your soil-fertility needs from the resources of your own land, even if manure is not available. *The Moveable Feast-how to construct home-garden and commercial-scale greenhouses that can be easily moved to benefit plants and avoid insect and disease build-up. *The Winter Garden-how to plant, harvest, and sell hardy salad crops all winter long from unheated or minimally heated greenhouses. *Pests-how to find “plant-positive” rather than “pest-negative” solutions by growing healthy, naturally resistant plants. *The Information Resource-how and where to learn what you need to know to grow delicious organic vegetables, no matter where you live. Written for the serious gardener or small market farmer, The New Organic Grower proves that, in terms of both efficiency and profitability, smaller can be better.
By Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird
BACK IN PRINT! This is a thoroughly researched book that will astonish you in more ways than one. It is HIGHLY educational, but you won’t find any of this valuable information in a standard textbook on soil science, gardening, or whatever.
Some of it might seem a little far-fetched or at least put a little pressure on preconceived beliefs, but the nice thing is, Tomkins & Bird have found a way to present some rather amazing concepts in a take-it-leave it sort of way, because the most assured thing about this book is that you will be inspired with the DESIRE to do SOMETHING no matter how “small” the beneficial act!
While the factual information about mankind’s stupidity and carelessness over the last few decades will break your heart all over again, this book offers many different ways for each of us as individuals to help heal the soil – the very foundation of life under our own two feet – and to help heal OURSELVES in the process.
Edited by Andrew Kimbrell
In these 370 pages we have all the information we need to convince those sitting on the fence that we must reduce our dependence on industrial agriculture. When confronted with this volume it is difficult to imagine how all those involved in the industrial agricultural chain will be able to put up an effective argument. On the contrary, it should be convincing to the thinking service organization that this is where their future profits lie and they should climb on the band wagon helping rather than hindering. For the farmer who is wavering – and probably for good reasons as his livelihood is affected – he will find in this volume the encouragement he needs; others have forged the trail and he can follow in the knowledge that the forerunners have solved the major problems.
Bravo to all those concerned with the preparation of this volume. You have done mankind a great service. It is a long tunnel down which we are travelling, but I for one can now see the light in the distance. Because of your initiative the rest of us will travel our own path with more confidence and with greater speed. At last we can hope for some sanity in our food production. If we can get this volume into the hands of enough people – people who care – then we really can change the world. If Silent Spring was the book that woke the world to the evils of indiscriminate chemical use, then this volume will go down as the one that banged home the last nail in the coffin of industrial agriculture.
Edited by Andrew Kimbrell
Fatal Harvest takes an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system and offers a compelling vision for an organic and environmentally safer way of producing the food we eat.
It includes more than 250 profound and startling photographs and gathers together more than 40 essays by leading ecological thinkers including Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, David Ehrenfeld, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, and Gary Nabhan. Its scope and photo-driven approach provide a unique and invaluable antidote to the efforts by agribusiness to obscure and disconnect us from the truth about industrialized foods.
By Edward Goldsmith
First published in 1992, The Way is Edward Goldsmith’s magnum opus. In it, he proposes that the stability and integrity of humans depend on the preservation of the balance of natural systems surrounding the individual–family, community, society, ecosystem, and the ecosphere itself. Portraying life processes and ecological thinking as holistic, Goldsmith calls for a paradigm shift away from the reductionist approach of modern science.
The basic belief in the whole was at the heart of the worldview of primal, earth-oriented societies, as manifested by the Tao of the ancient Chinese, the R’ta of Vedic India, the Asha of the Avestas, and the Sedaq of the tribal Hebrews. The Way was the path taken to maintain the critical order of the cosmos. Echoing the way of traditional cultures, Goldsmith presents an all-embracing, coherent worldview that promotes more harmonious and sustainable practices capable of satisfying real biological, social, ecological, and spiritual needs.
By Barbara Kingsolver
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
By Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society’s response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist’s diatribe. He begins by setting the book’s main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
Because he’s addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it’s exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling.
By Bill Mollison
Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order. Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.
Food, Inc. is guaranteed to shake up our perceptions of what we eat. This powerful documentary deconstructing the corporate food industry in America was hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “more than a terrific movie—it’s an important movie.” Aided by expert commentators such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, the film poses questions such as: Where has my food come from, and who has processed it? What are the giant agribusinesses and what stake do they have in maintaining the status quo of food production and consumption? How can I feed my family healthy foods affordably.
Expanding on the film’s themes, the book Food, Inc. will answer those questions through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers. This book will encourage those inspired by the film to learn more about the issues, and act to change the world.
By Maria Rodale
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment. She traces the genesis of chemical farming and the rise of the immense companies that profit from it, bringing to light the government’s role in allowing such practices to flourish. She further explains that modern organic farming would not only help reverse climate change by reducing harmful carbon emissions and soil depletion, but would also improve the quality of the food we eat, reduce diseases from asthma to cancer, and ensure a better quality of life in farming communities nationwide.
For every parent wondering how best to safeguard the health and safety of her children; for every environmentalist in search of a solution to the worsening crisis that afflicts our land, air, and waters; for every shopper who questions whether it is worth it to pay more for organic, Maria Rodale offers straightforward answers and a single, definitive course of action: We must demand organic now.
By Gene Logsdon
In All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, Gene Logsdon explains that well-managed pastures are nutritious and palatable—virtual salads for livestock. Leafy pastures also hold the soil, increase biodiversity, and create lovely landscapes. Grass farming may be the solution for a stressed agricultural system based on an industrial model and propped up by federal subsidies. The pasture farming that Gene Logsdon practices can also produce grains, fruits, herbs, mushrooms, and salad greens for human consumption.
The book explains historically effective practices and new techniques that have blossomed in recent years for the care and sustenance of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry on pasture. Logsdon’s warm profiles of successful grass farmers offer inspiration and ideas. His narrative is enriched by his experience as a “contrary farmer” on his own artisan-scale farm.The culmination of a lifetime’s experience, this book is vital for owners of small acreages, home food producers, horse enthusiasts, and sustainable commercial farmers.
Media, Films, & Documentaries
[Audio Talk] Deep Foods with David Rainoshek, M.A.
This is a reading of “Deep Foods,” a chapter I wrote for the book Raw Food Works with the International Living Foods Summit and editor Diana Store.
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Michael Pollan Interview | PBS
Part 1
Part 2
Bill Moyers sits down with Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley, to discuss what direction the U.S. should pursue in the often-overlooked question of food policy. Pollan is author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.
[Documentary] The Future of Food
[Documentary] The Botany of Desire
[Short Documentary] Living the Good Life with Helen and Scott Nearing. A film by John Hoskyns-Abrahall and Bullfrog Films
A much-loved film about a remarkable couple. During the Great Depression Helen and Scott Nearing quit city life and moved to Vermont. He was a brilliant economist, she a concert violinist. Together they made Forest Farm synonymous with the ideal homestead. In the noble tradition of Thoreau, Scott was an influential figure in American life for nearly 70 years. Scott died in 1983 shortly after his 100th birthday, Helen lived into her 90’s.
Filmed in 1976 when Helen was 74 and Scott 93, the Nearings are seen still growing their own food, cutting firewood for fuel, and putting the finishing touches on a large stone home built by hand.
Through their books, public appearances, and by the example of their lives, the Nearings remain an inspiration.
[Documentary] Food, Inc.
For most Americans, the ideal meal is fast, cheap, and tasty. Food, Inc. examines the costs of putting value and convenience over nutrition and environmental impact. Director Robert Kenner explores the subject from all angles, talking to authors, advocates, farmers, and CEOs, like co-producer Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Gary Hirschberg (Stonyfield Farms), and Barbara Kowalcyk, who’s been lobbying for more rigorous standards since E. coli claimed the life of her two-year-old son.
The filmmaker takes his camera into slaughterhouses and factory farms where chickens grow too fast to walk properly, cows eat feed pumped with toxic chemicals, and illegal immigrants risk life and limb to bring these products to market at an affordable cost. If eco-docs tends to preach to the converted, Kenner presents his findings in such an engaging fashion that Food, Inc. may well reach the very viewers who could benefit from it the most: harried workers who don’t have the time or income to read every book and eat non-genetically modified produce every day.
Though he covers some of the same ground as Super-Size Me and King Corn, Food Inc. presents a broader picture of the problem, and if Kenner takes an understandably tough stance on particular politicians and corporations, he’s just as quick to praise those who are trying to be responsible–even Wal-Mart, which now carries organic products.
[Documentary] King Corn
KING CORN is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naivete, college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America.
With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.
A graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors (Salon), KING CORN shows how and why whenever you eat a hamburger or drink a soda, you re really consuming … corn.
[Documentary] The Future of Food
Review from Amazon user Fracois-Hughes: A MUST-SEE! Thank you to Ms Garcia! This is the VERY BEST, most informative and well-done documentary on the matter. The essential is summarized in one place: a DVD that is real easy to follow. It is quite comprehensive. Some very strong reports/interviews from well-known scientists, and testimonials from genuine farmers. Also all the animations are excellent. And the photography is in many places beautiful (especially the part filmed in Mexico).
On the top of that, it is also the best documentary I’ve ever seen, flowing along an amazingly informative path. I highly recommend it for a) those who know about this matter, and b) those who don’t know yet about it :~]
[Documentary] Farmageddon
Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasonably burdensome regulations.
The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.
[Audio Interview] The Organic Manifesto with Maria Rodale on Underground Wellness
Maria Rodale, author of The Organic Manifesto, and guest Leah Zerbe, stop by to discuss the importance of local and organic farming. Topics will include the dangers of chemical-saturated farming and genetically modified seeds, how organic farming mitigates global warming, and why chemicals aren’t necessary to produce an abundance of healthy foods.
[Audio Interview] Farmageddon Documentary with Kristin Canty on Underground Wellness
Kristin Canty, director of the documentary Farmageddon, stops by UW Radio to discuss how our access to safe, healthy food is at risk. Topics will include the urgency of food freedom, the dangers of the industrial food chain, and what we can do to help the dwindling number of small family farms struggling to survive. Watch the movie trailer at www.farmageddonmovie.com.
[Audio Interview] The Origin of Organic Farming: A Revolutionary Philosophy with Eliot Coleman
In this interview, Eliot Coleman of The Four Season Harvest talks about:
The history of organic farming over the last 100-150 years
How Industrial Agriculture is focused on treating the symptoms with “miracle products” that are only quick fixes simply for profit
How organic farming is revolutionary as is strives to correct the causes
How the power of advertising has influenced farmers and resulted in lower food quality and poorer yields
How Helen and Scott Nearing “walked their talk”
How Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was so influential in the organic movement
I Am Active
Yoga Camp - Day 25! This 28 min practice is fierce and fun and strengthening! Though we continue to tone muscles this yoga sequence also asks you to be strong in your foundation and strong in your breath. You have everything you need. Let's hop on the mat! I Am STRONG.