Research: Food Justice: Find Films, Podcasts and Webinars

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Find Films

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Browse Films

Fertile Ground (streaming, PBS) Fertile Ground takes a look at the extensive impact that industrial food systems currently have on Americans. The film follows advocates in Jackson, Mississippi who are using localized efforts to address food insecurity in under-served communities, shining a light on the potential for a healthier future through efforts to convert to communal, localized food systems.
Food Chains (streaming, Academic Video Online) Food Chains reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food and supermarkets.
Food forward. Season 1, Episode 8, Food (justice) for all (streaming, Academic Video Online) Across the country, the ways and means of America's small farmers are evolving. Young Hispanic farm laborers are moving up the economic ladder, while in Houston, Congolese refugees are creating communities around vacant urban lots.
The Garden: Fighting for an LA Urban Garden (streaming, Kanopy) The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country's most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.
The Banana Verdict (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary tells the story in a visually exciting way of the fascinating world of the international banana trade with all of its moral implications. World trade in bananas is dominated by major companies such as Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte. They have used a shocking level of pesticide, causing serious illness among the workers and depleting the rain forest.
Bananas!* (streaming, Academic Video Online) BANANAS!* is a suspenseful court room drama that examines the intricacies and injustices of the global politics of food. Focusing on a landmark and highly controversial legal case pitting a dozen Nicaraguan banana plantation workers against Dole Food Corporation, BANANAS!* uncovers the alleged usage of a banned pesticide and its probable link to generations of sterilized workers.
In the Land of Plenty (streaming, Academic Video Online) Since Grapes of Wrath there has probably not been a more poignant picture of the migrant farm worker than this documentary. In the Land of Plenty has the added dimension that the workers are Mexican immigrants. Most do not speak English, and are undocumented with no means of protecting themselves from exploitation.
Sugar: The Rules of the Game (streaming, Academic Video Online) Sugar examines the complex world of international commerce by looking at the major players in the sugar industry -- European and African farmers, major sugar production companies on both continents, experts and officials. The report shows how decisions made at distant international meetings affect the lives of individuals
The Harvest/La Cosecha (streaming, Academic Video Online) Every year there are more than 400,000 American children who are torn away from their friends, schools and homes to pick the food we all eat.
Victims of Cheap Coffee (streaming, Academic Video Online) Collapsing prices on the world coffee market have thrown millions of growers around the world into poverty. The price farmers receive for coffee is at its lowest in over thirty years. Coffee plantation owners are bankrupt and the workers are starving.
Dolores (streaming, Academic Video Online) Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century - and she continues the fight to this day, at 87.
A Place at the Table (streaming, Academic Video Online) Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine the issue of hunger in America through the lens of three people struggling with food insecurity.
The Dark Side of Chocolate (streaming, Academic Video Online) he Dark Side of Chocolate conflicts with the pictures painted by large international companies like Nestle, Berry Callebaut and Mars who signed the Cocoa Protocol in 2001 promising to work for a total eradication of child labour in the cocoa sector by 2008. Now, two years later, this film documents that child labour and trafficked children still is a heavy burden to the cocoa industry.
Food, Inc. (streaming, Kanopy) Your steak and chicken may not taste quite the same after you digest all of the information found in this documentary about food production in the United States. Exposing not only the disturbing conditions under which livestock exist prior to their slaughter, the film examines the complex issues surrounding our health and the profits of corporations invested in supplying people with inexpensive (if not exactly nutritious) food.

King Corn (dvd) King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In the film, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil.
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But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.

Podcasts

Citizen Chef with Tom Colicchio Tom Colicchio has issues with food! Citizen Chef is about what we eat, where and who it comes from, and the politics, decisions, policies and people that shape our food system – with the goal of turning curious listeners into more informed, engaged citizens.
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Restaurateur, activist and Top Chef head judge Tom Colicchio delves into policy, labor, hunger, democracy, sustainability, farming, health, social justice, technology and the restaurant business. Of particular concern is a post-coronavirus and covid-19 world. Each episode Tom takes a deep dive into an issue by interviewing experts, journalists, food producers or others to tell an engaging and topical story about an aspect of our food system that the general public may not know, connecting the dots about how our food system really works, really doesn’t, and outlining its impact on our society – all while remaining positive and presenting attainable solutions to some of the biggest food issues out there.
The Children of Smithfield (Latino USA) Maira Mendez's parents work at a massive pork processing plant in Nebraska. Last March, as meatpacking plants across the nation quickly became invisible hotspots for the coronavirus, it became clear to her that the plant, owned by Smithfield Foods, wasn't able to ensure social distancing or provide enough protective equipment.
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Maira was alarmed at the conditions—and that workers found it difficult to speak up. So she became part of a group called the "The Children of Smithfield," joining other family members of meatpacking workers, to begin calling for action from the plant and the state.

Food Justice Webinars

Food Justice Webinars: The People's School of DC People's School of DC recorded food justice webinars on the Roots of Food Apartheid, Food Justice 101: National/International Issues, and Food Justice 201: Local Issues

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