Good Food, Bad Food - Anleitung für eine bessere Landwirtschaft (2010)

Heroic machist industrial agronomy producing heavily contaminated and modified food and arid wastelands is challenged by several world examples of sensitive organic approach to producing food.

Director:

Coline Serreau

Writer:

Coline Serreau

Stars:

Dominique Guillet, Vandana Shiva, Ana Primavesi

1 win.

Cast

Credited cast:
Dominique Guillet	...	Himself
Vandana Shiva	...	Herself
Ana Primavesi	...	Herself
Philippe Desbrosses	...	Himself
Pierre Rabhi	...	Himself
João Pedro Stedile	...	Himself
Serge Latouche	...	Himself
Devinder Sharma	...	Himself
Lydia Bourguignon	...	Herself
Claude Bourguignon	...	Himself
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Antoniets Semen Sviridonovitch	...	Himself

Storyline

Ukraine, South America, India, France - farmers, scientists, producers of organic food present their views as well as successes of their work with earth, which is presented in second plan as a woman. Earth as living ecosystem itself is compared to the soil sterilized and destroyed by pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, machine processing - where new crops grow only thanks to another doses of chemical stimulants. In vicious circle, food becomes dependent on and controlled by oil & industry, food barely edible, while seeds - which should not be owned and marketed as such - are reduced to a few state-allowed modified species and sold. The macho-hero approach of controlling, forcing and raping of the earth is becoming the subject of irony, criticism and appeal - in more layers - social, economic, agronomic.

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Plot Keywords:

rice | planting | soil | organic food | pesticide | 

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Genres:

Documentary

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Details

Country:

France

Language:

French Portuguese English Russian Hindi

Release Date:

20 January 2011 (Germany)

Also Known As:

Good Food, Bad Food - Anleitung für eine bessere Landwirtschaft

Filming Locations:

Delhi, India

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$107,831

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cinémao, Eniloc Films, Studio 37

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

User Reviews

A first-rate documentary about disruptions in the food supply coming soon to farms near you

Do you have sneaking suspicions that all is not well in the food chain?

— Are you puzzled and even disturbed when you see so much malnutrition and famine worldwide? And yet, when you look behind the headlines, you find evidence gathered by international agriculture experts that the planet has more than enough resources to feed everyone, if only we modify a few of our practices.

— Do you keep hearing rumors that agribusiness farming practices have, in a matter of a few decades, been destroying topsoil that took centuries to build up? And that not only are they rendering farmland sterile in the absence of petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides, but that they're also profiting handsomely from it?

— Are you well enough informed to recognize that the Earth has reached peak oil production? And that, from here on out, the petroleum on which today's societies have based their transportation, prosperity, and general well-being will be scarcer and scarcer, and more and more unaffordable, especially for the world's least affluent 95%?

— Does all this talk about the "carrying capacity" of the Earth, and how it has been exceeded, perplex and annoy, or possibly frustrate, you? Do you understand that it would take 1.5 Planet Earths to supply human resource needs at our current rate of consumption? And that, at our present rate of "growth", we could need up to 6 Planet Earths by the end of this century? (Those will be hard to find, let alone build pipelines to.)

— Do you ever wonder whether the multinational corporations that now control (or "own" the "patents" to) 75% of the seed varieties worldwide are improving or worsening the ability of earthlings to feed themselves now and in the immediate future?

— If you're male (as 49% of us are), are you secure enough to consider evidence that in societies where women have central roles in farming, food production is far more efficient, productive, and sustainable?

— Do you gather facts about problems and then act accordingly, or do you prefer reacting to facts based on a conviction that it's all just one more plot to make you feel "bad"?

— Do you count yourself among those who are curious and open-minded enough to listen to what agro-ecology experts and actual farmers (using natural cultivation methods outside North America and Europe) have to teach us — even if it means reading film subtitles?

If so, the news is good: this film is for you.

In fact, this film may be among the most memorable you'll ever see. That's because in the months and years ahead, events now gaining momentum will remind you of its messages more and more frequently.

You may find it all the more memorable because, unlike other documentaries in this vein, it offers more than a little inspiration in the form of flesh-and-blood, hands-on champions who vigorously defy what appears to be a toxic, inexorably rising tide. They embody and exemplify ways for the 95% to restore and, perhaps, maintain sanity, health ... and survival — once the 95% realize that, with the leverage their numbers and moral force confer, however Quixotic it seems today, they can turn back any tide.