The Grange Fair: An American Tradition

Les influenceurs sont dans le pré

Nearly 2, 00, 000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects this. Nero´s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper, P Sainath. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

How did it come about that we no longer see living beings in farm animals, but objects? Every year, 70 billion farm animals are slaughtered for consumption around the world. 80 percent are kept on large farms. They live crammed together in overcrowded stables, are fattened and finally slaughtered without ever having been in nature. In less than two generations, intensive husbandry has become established worldwide. Researches in Poland, the USA, Germany and Vietnam gets to the bottom of the system and those responsible. The meat industry is subsidized by the state. Corporations, governments and consumers tacitly support a deregulated and dehumanized economic system that makes unlimited consumption of animal products the norm - and with it, animal cruelty. The documentary film describes the triumph of industrial agriculture, in which the animal has to endure unimaginable suffering, becomes a commodity, a raw material that is always available and can be slaughtered and processed at will.

"If it Won’t Hold Water, it Surely Won’t Hold a Goat" is an intimate meditation on the subversive nature of goats and their effect on the people who spend time with them. Centered on the story of the legendary Goat Man - a nomadic figure who spent most of his life walking the roads of Georgia with a wagon pulled by a herd of goats - this experimental documentary weaves together an interview with a goat farmer, footage of the daily rituals Johnson enacted with her own herd, and a poem about the Goat Man’s experimental and spectacular life.

This documentary film asks whether a citizens' experiment, the CSA (Community-supported Agriculture), developing new partnership models between consumers and farmers, has the power to change society.

Moi, agricultrice

Documentary on water usage, money, politics, the transformation of nature, and the growth of the American west, shown on PBS as a four-part miniseries.

In California’s Central Valley, tucked between the county jail and the shooting range, 100 Mexican-American farmworking families live, love and strive at the Artesi II Migrant Family Housing Center. Until every December, that is, when they’re asked to leave.

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 naiveté, two college buddies 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 look at the destruction that follows the breaking of long-neglected dikes and the measures being taken to prevent future problems.

Γάζωρος Σερρών

A film about the importance of heirloom seeds to the agriculture of the world, focusing on seed keepers and activists from around the world.

Intensif

A group of citizens lobbied to save the landmark Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevator, one of the defining features of Mayerthorpe’s landscape, from being torn down in 2003 - as thousands of others had been. This film documents those efforts while exploring the broader history and significance of the grain elevator.

Permaculture expert Geoff Lawton describes how he and a team of volunteers grew an oasis in arid, salty lowland, despite extremely high temperatures and minimal irrigation. The site is the lowest dryland expanse on Earth: a plain in Jordan, two kilometres northeast of the Dead Sea, and 400 metres below sea level.

Du béton sur nos courgettes

Farm families in Lestock, Saskatchewan, have pooled their resources so that rising operating costs will not drive them off their land. By pooling their land, their equipment, their livestock, and farming as a cooperative, they are able to live as they choose, to maintain their standard of living, and even to have some spare time left over to enjoy. An engaging look at a novel approach to big-scale farming.

Documentary about Lule Bib Luka a sheep farmer and one of Albania's last Burneshas, women who swear chastity for life in order to be given the rights and privileges of men.

In search of a more sustainable food system, three organic farming pioneers discuss their hopes and doubts with a spectrum of experts and stakeholders.

Farming practices in America's heartland, including excess fertilizers and poor soil conservation, have wrought unintended yet severe consequences on the Mississippi River. Fortunately, farmers, scientists, and citizens are pursuing more sustainable land-use practices that meet ambitious food production goals while ensuring the long-term health of precious natural resources.