Fresh: The Movie

Last night, I fell asleep far too early.. So I woke up in the middle of the night with nothing to do.

Solution: Netflix

I went browsing through the documentaries, and found Fresh in my recommended line-up.

It said it was a documentary about the local, organic, and sustainable food movement.

Sounds good. Play.

Now, what I noticed first, was that this was the first documentary of the sort that didn't focus entirely on the problem.. but actually lended ideas to the solution.

There are dozens of films on why industrial farming is bad, why GMO crops are bad, why feed lots are bad.. but most conclude with, "So, we need to stop doing that."

Which leaves the question, "Then, how do we feed everybody?"

Fresh actually looks into the answer, by interviewing and following farmers that are doing it the right way. They explain how beneficial it is to have animals and crops on the same land, and rotating crops to create biodiversity actually makes many of the pesticides and chemicals unnecessary. But instead of following nature's rules, man has attempted to override it.. by separating farming into sub-groups.. so that neither benefits the other. And so everything that you would get naturally, we now have to synthesize or mechanize.

I also want to point out that this isn't a "Go Vegan" film. In fact, two of the farmers they point to as the "correct way" of doing things, raise livestock. But they don't do it in tiny crates, or cages.. and they don't feed them dead animals or corn.

Now, I get it. People always say, "That's great. But you can't feed the world that way."

But, why?

First, corn is only so plentiful because our government subsidizes it. That's why it's the go-to sweetener in everything on the grocery store shelf. It's cheap. Very little of the corn grown, is actually used as human food.. or even left as corn.

Most of it is used for animal feed (unnatural feed), or in highly processed and cheap food for humans.

Neither of those sound like good uses to me. Aside from the occasional tortilla chip, you know what I eat that has corn in it? Corn.

And that's how it should be.

We currently feed around 60% of our corn and soybeans to animals. So, if we simply reduced the number of animals we raised (aka: reduced the demand for meat), that would leave a LOT of farmland for growing fruits, vegetables, and grains directly for human consumption.

I don't see the downside here. As a vegan, I don't want to eat an animal that had to be killed.. but I completely get that others aren't willing to take that step. So, if you want meat, don't you want it from a place like Polyface, Inc Farms? Where the animals are respected, beloved, and live a 'natural' life?

Yes, it may mean that you only have two or three meals a week that have a chunk of meat in them. But isn't a few, high quality, properly raised cuts of meat better than a mash of  low quality, gray or pink slime, sprayed with chemicals to kill bacteria.. even if you can have it at every meal?

Eventually, quality and safety have to override "cheap." We'll pay hundreds of dollars for a brand name watch, or the latest iPhone. Or $5 a cup for swanky coffee. But if we have to pay more than a dollar for a hamburger, it's just not worth it? Really? Where are our priorities, if not in the food that sustains us?

Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Farms, truly "gets" food. What it is, and what it isn't. And he's also learned to work with mother nature, instead of against her. In fact, he doesn't even say he's in the farming business. He claims, "We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture."

That's a place I want my food to come from.

Fresh clearly points out how humans, in a quest for 'bigger' and 'faster,' never pause and say, "Maybe we should take a step back." We just forge ahead with "new solutions" that only create more problems.

When we start jamming hundreds of one kind of animal into a small space, and they start getting aggressive, we don't say, "Hmm. Maybe they shouldn't be farmed this way." Instead, we cut off their tails, grind down their beaks, or put them in tiny individual crates.

When diseases and infections become rampant, we still don't pause and think we need to go backwards.. giving them more space and natural feed. Instead, we pump in loads of antibiotics.

Basically, common sense goes out the window.. when a profit margin is on the line.

But Fresh doesn't try to villify those that are doing it the 'industrial' way. They acknowledge that many farmers have felt they had no choice. Big companies now run agribusiness, so you play by their rules, or struggle to stay in business.

I think everyone, on some level, understands that every farmer is trying their best. Fresh is just acknowledging that our current system is in no way sustainable. It has to change. It will either be by necessity, when livestock diseases are rampant, or the crop fertilizers aren't strong enough anymore.. or it will be by a movement of people who saw what was coming, and demanded a change.

So, if you're interested in our food system, where it's going, and how sustainable is really the only choice we have for long term survival.. I highly recommend you give this film a gander.