Reflections on Fresh

I was out a bit late tonight watching Fresh, a new documentary on the alternative food movement. It's a worthwhile movie. Currently without a distributor, though, so they're reliant on finding local venues willing to host them. If you've read Michael Pollan, you know the main story: industrial farming encourages monocultures, which breeds disease and is not pleasant (or even that profitable) farmers.It's reliant on a host of inputs--feed, antibiotics, pesticides. The movie argues it's unnatural. Alternative production methods (Joel Salatin and Will Allen are particularly highlighted) emphasize diversity that makes all that purchasing largely unnecessary. It's a great illustration of that.

However, there's a few points the movie could have developed further, again, common issues in the alternative food area:

• There's a heavy emphasis on different production methods, but relatively little on developing distributional networks for these products, which is a major issue in constructing a local food chain.
• Farm owners are the focus, and labor conditions are addressed only briefly. The welfare of animals and consumers is also emphasized. More could have been said about the kind of jobs provided by these enterprises.
• The producers tend to essentialize nature. Salatin, for example, talks about emphasizing the chicken's "chickenness." Yet his farm (and Allen's) are both very much "produced landscapes." That is, it's a humanly crafted agricultural system using livestock with centuries of breeding. The difference is in the kind of landscape produced in each system. Neither is exactly "natural."
• Only a brief mention of how to make this food accessible to low-income consumers
• Local here is unquestionably good--better than industrial. But one might ask about how power and economic inequity affect local farms as well. Who gets to grow and buy this food?
• The film closes with an appeal to consumers to buy local. There's little effort to mobilize efforts toward changing farm policy or food regulation, both major issues in the construction of the current food system. The result is a politics that's a tad anemic.

Overall, though, worth seeing if you're interested in food issues.