Farmageddon

= documentary about harassment of small-scale farmers

Description

JEANNETTE CATSOULIS:

"There is a lot going on in “Farmageddon,” Kristin Canty’s anxiety-laden documentary about government oversight of our farming and food production. Part consumer-rights advocacy, part abuse-of-power exposé, the film dances between the two as if uncertain where to settle. But though neither thread is as fully developed as we might want, Ms. Canty’s main concern — that agribusiness is employing government agencies to harass small, independent farmers — comes through loud and clear.

...

“Regulators are barking up the wrong tree,” the farmer Joel Salatin insists, while other interviewees see a “revolving door” between agribusiness and the United States Department of Agriculture. Surveillance film of armed raids on seemingly innocuous businesses — an Ohio food co-op and a Mennonite farm in Pennsylvania — pumps up a paranoia that more searching interviews with government representatives might have diluted.

Nonetheless, the film’s homespun quality (Ms. Canty, whose childlike voice provides intermittent narration, simply describes herself in the publicity notes as “the mom of four kids”) works in its favor, as does its maker’s agitated sincerity. Not content to cry over spilled raw milk, she has made a movie whose claims, if accurate, should give us all food for thought." (http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/movies/farmageddon-kristin-cantys-documentary-review.html)