|
“Fixing Food offers a celebration of radical business innovation in our food systems that envisions community and flourishing at its heart.”
—Paul Stock, Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Kansas
| |
|
Fixing Food
Produced and Directed by Sue Williams
5 episodes, TRT 46 minutes | SDH captions
| |
|
To many of us, climate change is remote, abstract—too grim to consider, too far removed from our daily lives. But we now know that one of the biggest triggers for global warming is something all of us do every day: eating.
Growing and processing food, packaging and delivering it to us—all use enormous amounts of energy, water, and chemicals, creating an overwhelming burden on our planet’s resources. And, remarkably, Americans throw out nearly half of the food we produce—more than 62 million tons of food every year ends up rotting in landfills, releasing poisonous methane further fueling the global warming cycle.
Fortunately, intrepid innovators across the U.S. are recognizing and exploring solutions to the problems of growing our nation’s food while responding to climate change and lowering our carbon footprint. The Fixing Food series looks at five important areas where we can make changes—farming in the ocean and the air, developing new food sources, learning from Indigenous agriculture, and rescuing the food we already have.
The Fixing Food series is available on DVD with public performance rights for school and library purchase or rental. Academic streaming can be licensed from Docuseek. Campus and community groups interested in hosting a community screening can book now through Bullfrog Communities.
Continue reading for descriptions of each episode in the series.
|
|
The 3 Cricketeers (9 minutes) | Like many Americans, Claire and Chad Simons worried about climate change but didn’t know what they could do about it. Then one day in 2015, their son came home from school, excited about having eaten a snickerdoodle made with cricket flour. Crickets as food? Why not? they asked. In many countries, insects are a regular part of the diet, even a treat. Recognizing that eating insects can come with a powerful “ick” factor for Americans, Claire and Chad work with Chef Gustavo Romero to create innovative - and delicious - new recipes and put high protein crickets on everyone’s plate. | |
Native Table (12 minutes) | "Native Table" profiles Chef Sean Sherman (Lakota Sioux) and his business partner Dana Thomson (Dakota) as they explore their Native cultural heritages by re-creating pre-colonial menus – meals that use no dairy, no wheat, no sugar. At their James Beard Award-winning Minneapolis restaurant Owamni and at their Natifs Food Lab, they are bringing back to life the food ways of their not-so-distant Sioux ancestors and showing that by combining the past with the best in modern farming practices, we can create more sustainable and ethical food systems. | |
Farming The Sky (8.5 minutes) | Winters in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, are long, and the growing season is short. A head of lettuce travels an average 2,000 miles to get there, often arriving shriveled and tasteless. Architect Nona Yehia knew there had to be a better way to get food to eat. Traditional industrial scale agriculture might never be replaced, but she was sure it could be improved. She designed a new kind of greenhouse: a building that would pack a perfectly controlled growing environment into a space built up vertically on a sliver of town land. | |
Harvesting The Sea (8 minutes) | How can we keep Maine’s fishing communities employed and feeding us, when the oceans they depend on are warming so fast that fish stocks are declining? The answer, says economist and Atlantic Sea Farms CEO Brianna Warner, is seaweed. Nutritious, tasty, and easy to grow, kelp can help revitalize the seas by decreasing CO2 in the water while providing both a new food source and much-needed seasonal work for local lobster fishermen. Working with local fishing partners, Atlantic Sea Farms is now harvesting a million pounds of kelp a year. | |
The Rescue Brigade (8.5 minutes) | More than 38 million people in America are food insecure. Every community in the country has families that are hungry. At the same time, food itself is the number one component in our landfills and one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. When Leah Lizarondo learned that more than 40% of America’s food is wasted every year, she decided to do something about it. Today, she is the founder and CEO of Pittsburgh-based 412 Rescue, built around an app, a real-world kitchen, and a food rescue mission. | |
|
“No single technological fix will do in addressing the land, water, and climate limitations we face in producing and distributing food now and in the future. Fixing Food highlights remarkably innovative entrepreneurs pursuing non-conventional solutions to these challenges. It’s a thoughtful and balanced examination of emerging ideas being put into practice.”
—Sean Clark, Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Clarence M. Clark Chair in Mountain Agriculture, Berea College
“The recent pandemic has pointed out serious problems with our global food system. Fixing Food offers excellent examples of projects and businesses underway around America that highlight potential solutions from production, to improved food distribution, and to eating unusual foods. For students and for those interested in improving the food system, this is a must see documentary!"
—Andrew Smith, Associate Professor of Food Studies, The New School, Author, Why Waste Food?
| |
Bullfrog Films is the oldest and largest publisher of documentary films about the environment in the United States. We define "environment" broadly, and our catalog includes programs on ecology, energy, agriculture, indigenous peoples, women's studies, environmental justice, international relations, sustainable development, anthropology, economics, ethics, and conflict resolution. | | | | | |
