On Wednesday 27 May, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Food Chains, a documentary which gives a revealing insight into the working conditions of farm labourers in the US. The film also follows a campaign against a powerful supermarket chain led by a workers’ movement in Immokalee, Florida. The screening was followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Sanjay Rawal, and producer Smriti Keshari.

Rawal began by telling the audience that his father was a tomato farmer in California, and that as they began their research into the treatment of farmworkers they began to hear more and more about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). The CIW, a workers’ movement in Florida, eventually had a significant impact on the direction of the project.

“When we met the Coalition and saw that they had been able to make some sort of structural change, our whole outlook changed, and we realised… We had an opportunity with the CIW to do something that had a positive message, and make a film that focused on impact.”

Food Chains largely focuses on the CIW movement, which has been successful in pressuring numerous large companies into ensuring fair wages and treatment for their tomato farmers. The movement has consequently seen its profile grow significantly in recent years.

The majority of farm workers in Florida are migrant workers, mostly from Mexico. A number of audience members asked the filmmakers questions related to immigration, particularly concerning the safety of the workers on film. Rawal and Smriti responded that the majority of abuse that occurs on farms goes unreported; many of the workers are so dependent on their wages that they are forced to remain silent, in fear of losing their jobs.

Rawal commented that, while movements like the CIW are managing to make positive developments, it is still often the case all over the world that “beautiful legislation… is not enforced amongst the lowest paid workers, because they are the ones that have the most to lose.”

Q&A with Food Chain director @MrSanjayR Can’t recommend the movie enough. #socialjustice #accountability #responsibility @frontlineclub

— Deepa Mirchandani (@d_mirch) May 27, 2015

Rawal and Smriti went on to discuss the reasons why farm workers originally choose to move to the US, and why low standards of treatment persist. Poverty, persecution and violence drives people to move to the US, and farmers and big companies are then able to keep their production prices down. Consumer desire for cheap food created a condition where the only people willing to work for those low wages are people who are desperately poor.

Rawal commented: “Every European country and the US became economic juggernauts and global powers because they were reliant on the labour of someone who didn’t look like them… The agricultural economies from all over the developed world relied on labour that was next-to free.”

Smriti explained that one of the primary goals for the film was to have an effective ‘impact strategy’ to reach consumers. The film has thus far been effective in “creating activists” – those who have watched the film tend to spread the world and begin actively supporting the movement and causes.

In response to an audience question about the absence of social media used by the characters in the film to bring attention to their plight, Rawal explained that workers are often lacking the most fundamental resources. He described many workers as “living in the 1950s” in terms of the lack of technology they have access to, and which is often “withheld from them.”

On the subject of the resources that farm labourers currently lack, Rawal commented: “The things that will really change their lives are air-conditioners in the summer, childcare… not having to line up for the bus at 5am… It’s like they’re in a different century.”

Visit the Food Chains website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

Food Chains examines the relationship between the policies of corporate supermarket chains and the working conditions of American farm labourers who pick the produce that is distributed across the nation. Featuring Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and actress and advocate Eva Longoria, this award winning documentary exposes the horrific abuses farmworkers face and reveals the forces behind that exploitation: the $4 trillion global supermarket industry.

The film tracks the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an intrepid and highly lauded group of tomato pickers from Southern Florida, as they battle the giant Floridian grocery chain, Publix. Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farmworkers and a more humane and transparent food chain.

Food Chains was nominated for a 2015 James Beard Foundation award for food journalism.

Directed by Sanjay Rawal
Producer: Eric Schlosser
Executive Producer: Eva Longoria
Duration: 86′
Year: 2014

By Antje Bormann

Environmental problems are often spoken of in rather sweeping terms, perhaps none more so than issues related to the rainforests.

‘Up in Smoke’, a documentary screened at the Frontline Club last night clears up some of the confusion about the issue. 

Adam Wakeling’s film  accompanies British tropical ecologist Mike Hands, who developed an alternative cultivation method to the slash-and-burn system historically used by rainforest subsistence farmers.

Hands found a way of keeping nutrients in the soil, which meant that farmers no longer had to burn hectares of forest to get a good crop and move on when the soil is depleted –  requiring yet more forest burning.

His ‘alley-cropping’ consists of planting rows of inga trees and leaving the leaves to mulch, thus fertilising the ground and keeping weed growth down. After about three years the trees are ready for pruning, which provides firewood for the farmers and light for the crops cultivated between the rows. Within a year the trees have regrown to be pruned again for the next season.

The system seems to work for those farmers who tried it. Hands’ approach is to have farmers try out his method and pass on their experience to other subsistence farmers.

There were lots of questions for Hands (in the left of the picture) during the Q and A session after the screening, which in itself attests to the achievement of Wakeling (pictured on the right) in captivating the audience  with the subject.

Hands explained that his method was based on the way the rainforest operates as an efficient ecosystem in poor soils. The method could be used to reclaim ‘sterile’ land in rainforest regions all over the world with the inga tree substituted by another suitable plant, he said.

The facts are astounding: 1 hectare of land cultivated this way could sustain the farmer’s family, with any further land used for cash crops. Weed control would go down from 60 man days per year to next to zero. An average holding using slash-and-burn releases around nine tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Such a holding after using alley-cropping for three years would be carbon neutral, whereas after 10 years it would sequester 40 tons of carbon.

‘Up in Smoke’ is a film that offers a promising solution to a serious issue. To find out more, go to www.upinsmoke.tv or www.ingafoundation.org.