Videos

Food Chains

/ Ren

THE REVOLUTION IN AMERICA’S FIELDS

FC-Poster-Small[1]Food Chains exposes the abuse of farmworkers within the United States and the complicity of the multibillion dollar supermarket and fast food industries.

There is more interest in food these days than ever, yet there is very little interest in the hands that pick it. Farmworkers, the foundation of our fresh food industry, are routinely abused and robbed of wages. In extreme cases they can be beaten, sexually harassed or even enslaved – all within the borders of the United States.

Food Chains reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food and supermarkets. Fast food is big, but supermarkets are bigger – earning $4 trillion globally. They have tremendous power over the agricultural system. Over the past 3 decades they have drained revenue from their supply chain leaving farmworkers in poverty and forced to work under subhuman conditions. Yet many take no responsibility for this.

Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farm workers and a more humane, transparent food chain.

The narrative of the film focuses on an intrepid and highly lauded group of tomato pickers from Southern Florida – the Coalition of Immokalee Workers or CIW – who are revolutionizing farm labor. Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farm workers and a more humane, transparent food chain.

Food Chains premiered at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival and screened subsequently at the Tribeca Film Festival and Guadalajara Film Festival. Food Chains will be released nationwide November 21st. The film’s Executive Producers include Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser.

Are You Loving It?

/ Ren

Young Oakland artists L.L.D.B., Pamela Arriera, and Taiwo Murray collaborated with AshEL SeaSunZ (of the green hip-hop group Earth Amplified) to write the track, using a beat created for the project by FX at Youth Uprising. Oakland video students at KDOL-TV helped produce the video, which was shot at People’s Grocery in West Oakland.

GMO OMG Film Released Today

/ Ren

“GMO OMG could be the film that bridges the knowledge gap for hundreds of thousands of Americans and allows us to reach that tipping point..” — Yahoo! Voices

GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, which Seifert tests himself: is it even possible to reject the food system currently in place, or have we lost something we can’t gain back? These and other questions take Seifert on a journey from his family’s table to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and the lobby of agra-giant Monsanto, from which he is unceremoniously ejected. Along the way we gain insight into a question that is of growing concern to citizens the world over: what’s on your plate?

Thin Line

/ Ren

“Every ten seconds,
someone dies from diabetes
and in the time it’s taken me to recite this poem
fifteen people have died.”

Watch Ivori Holson outline the harmful effects of a sugary drink diet in “Thin Line” written and performed by Ivori for the Bigger Picture project, a collaboration between Youth Speaks and UCSF’s Center for Vulnerable Populations.

Sugary drinks are the number one source of calorie’s in young people’s diets. Drinking one or two sugary drinks each day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by about 25%. Nearly 1 in 2 children of color born in the year 2000 will get diabetes in their lifetime…unless we do something about it. Raise your voice and join the conversation about diabetes.

Soil Carbon Cowboys

/ Ren

Via Rural Madison

Intensive Grazing in Northern Vermont using tumble wheel electric fence.

Intensive Grazing in using tumble wheel electric fence.

Meet Allen Williams, Gabe Brown and Neil Dennis – heroes and innovators! These ranchers now know how to regenerate their soils while making their animals healthier and their operations more profitable. They are turning ON their soils, enabling rainwater to sink into the earth rather than run off. And these turned ON soils retain that water, so the ranches are much more resilient in drought. It’s an amazing story that has just begun.

 
“Why do I want to go out and spend thousands upon thousands of dollars every year on synthetic fertilizer when I can grow these crops for just the cost of the seed? They’ll make the nitrogen for me and then my livestock will come around and eat these plants, convert it to dollars for me to sell,” said Brown, a rancher from Bismarck, ND, which gets fewer than 17 inches of annual rainfall. “So, I’m getting all my fertilizer, basically for a profit because I’m making money off these crops.”