FOOD ON EARTH: Project Concept

A documentary film by David Kaplowitz

“We are the flour in your bread, the wheat in your noodles, the salt on your fries. We are the corn in your tortillas, the chocolate in your dessert, the sweetener in your soft drink. We are the oil in your salad dressing and the beef, pork or chicken you eat for dinner. We are the cotton in your clothing, the backing on your carpet and the fertilizer in your field.” —Cargill Corporate Brochure
“The industrial model is a machine model. The first assembly line was not for Ford Motorcars, it was for animals in the slaughterhouses in Chicago. And the whole idea is to treat an animal as if it were a machine. The whole idea behind industrial agriculture is to treat nature as if it were a machine. To try and conquer nature.” —Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director, Center for Food Safety

Humankind’s relationship with food and with the land is one of the most fundamental, important, and indeed primordial relationships in the natural world.

Yet for the majority of us in the North, that bond has been broken.

Until recently, the omnipresence of processed, slickly packaged food in our world existed without widespread questioning and served to create a great distance between us as consumers and our food production.

But the facts that organic food is the single largest growth market in the food industry, that increasingly we are buying “fair trade” food, and that major projects are underway that go “beyond organic,” are all signs of a changing awareness about what we’re eating, how it’s produced, and who’s profiting from its production.

FOOD ON EARTH is a massive project that explores issues of food, land, water, society, culture, diversity, community, technology, environment, transportation, health, nutrition, monoculture, sovereignty, spirituality, dependence, trade, globalization, local economy, and sustainability.

The 90-minute documentary film by David Kaplowitz explores humankind’s relationship with food and the Earth through a look at two starkly opposed views of agriculture: the industrial and the agrarian.

The differences between the approaches are stark:
• Industrial agriculture says that it will feed the world.
Opponents say it increases hunger.

• Industrial agriculture says its food is safe, healthy, and nutritious.
Opponents say that industrial-produced food is a major reason cancer, food-borne illness, and obesity are at all-time high levels.

• Industrial agriculture says its food is cheap.
Opponents say that when the environmental and social costs are added, the costs skyrocket.

• Industrial agriculture says that it is efficient.
Opponents say that small farms produce more agricultural output per unit than large farms.

• Industrial food says that it offers more choices.
Opponents point out that in fact, crop diversity has dropped dramatically, essentially limiting our choices.

• Industrial agriculture says that it benefits the environment and the wildlife.
Opponents say it is actually the greatest threat to the earth’s biodiversity.

• Industrial agriculture says that biotechnology will solve the problems of industrial agriculture.
Opponents say that such “solutions” will actually compound the problems, which were in fact created by industrial methods in the first place.

Where does the truth lie?

At a time when organic food is the fastest growing segment of the food market in the US and UK, at a time when food safety is in people’s consciousness, at a time when humankind is on the brink of new technologies never before used, tested very little, and opposed by most people—FOOD ON EARTH seeks to accessibly delve deeper into these issues and explore WHY they’re on people’s minds—and why they matter.

Inspired in part by the collection of essays FATAL HARVEST: THE TRAGEDY OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE and by the writings of Wendell Berry and Rachel Carson, the film will be a comprehensive survey of the dominant system currently in place—industrial agriculture—and its intimate relationship with the forces of globalization, taking a journey around that globalized world to look at industrial agriculture’s effects. The film will show why a system that is discordant with nature exists in perfect harmony with economic globalization. In a parallel journey, the film explores and explains the various methods of ecological agriculture that exist in harmony with nature, yet in discord with the system of globalization.

Being careful not to simply attack the current paradigm, FOOD ON EARTH will lead the viewer on a journey to understand how our current agricultural system works, how we’ve gotten there, why we need to question it, what the alternatives are, and the different views on how alternatives can be applied. In the end, the viewer will think about his or her eating habits, food, consumption, and buying decisions in ways they never had before.

Through a rich visual tapestry of land and food, people and culture, stories and analysis, the viewer comes to understand one of humankind’s most fundamental, important, and indeed primordial relationships in the natural world—our relationship with food and land—and how that relationship has been and is being eroded.

FILMMAKER
FOOD ON EARTH will be written, produced, and directed by David Kaplowitz. David’s film, IN WHOSE INTEREST? is a journey through the past 50 years of U.S. foreign policy. The film has been screened in dozens of locations in the United States, Canada, and the UK, and is distributed worldwide by two major distributors. It also aired on Free Speech TV in the U.S. and was selected for the 2004 World Social Forum Film Festival, the 2003 Amnesty International Film Festival, the 2003 Vermont International Film Festival, the 2003 Images du Nouveau Monde International Film Festival and the 2002 United Nations Association Film Festival.

Previous projects include HIP HOP CUBANO, a look at race, gender, and censorship within the world of hip hop in Havana, and camera work and editing on Merry-Go-Round, a 20-minute ethnographic film focusing on race relations on a housing project in North London.

In addition, David has produced several television news pieces on a variety of subjects, including U.S.-Navy produced toxic waste at the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco and its effects on the outlying community, Alameda's publicly owned power system, and a profile of a group of Black Muslims in Oakland.

David also has significant experience in radio, having worked at the BBC in London in international news, producing mostly American stories on the death penalty debate, U.S.-military toxic waste around the globe, U.S. media critiques, missile defense, genetic engineering, and many other topics. David has done audio editing on several CDs of essays by Death Row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a 50-minute radio documentary on Earth First! Activist Judi Bari. He has also done audio engineering and editing on dozens of San Francisco Bay Area music acts, and sound design and composition for film and theater.

I'm looking for funding for this project. If you are able to contribute or have ideas, please email me.