By Adam Rabiner
Sustainable Table is a survey film, laying out in six relatively short parts the major critiques of mainstream agriculture, each of which can sustain its own independent film investigation. This 2006 documentary by Mischa Hedges, which was an official selection and winner in several film festivals, is one of many food-related movies that emerged around this time helping to raise consumer consciousness about the devastating health and environmental consequences of traditional monocrop agriculture.
The first part of the film, Conventional Farming, describes the practice in easy to understand language as an input/output system. Farmers first test their soil to determine its productive capacity, and then purchase various inputs as needed such as fertilizers, and depending on rain conditions, irrigation systems. But nature has its surprises (pests, weeds, draught, etc.) and farmers must purchase new agrichemical inputs (herbicides, pesticides, insecticides) to regulate these field events.
Farmers also went from planting a diversity of fruits and vegetables to focusing on a single variety, mono-cropping. In this manner, beginning in the 20th century, farming gradually transitioned into a factory like system. Nature came to be viewed as difficult, the enemy, something to be fought, to wrest production from, to battle. Farming came to be perceived as a controlled system, not a biological system. This change heralded not only profound scientific breakthroughs but also a major philosophical break from farming as it had been practiced for thousands of years.
Part two, Farmworkers, explores how these changes affects the human health of those tasked with working in the fields, most of whom are immigrant laborers. In 2000 more than 20 million pounds of chemicals were used on American crops and it is poisoning farmworkers who suffer increased rates of cancer, abnormal growth of sex hormones, and other medical anomalies. The film is set in California, which has some of the toughest worker protection rules on the books, but these laws are often lax and/or unenforced. The danger is not limited to those who toll in the fields. Agricultural workers are today’s canaries in a coal mine. What ails them today has a good chance of making us all sick tomorrow.
Humans, of course, are not the only victim of industrialized farming. The environment also pays a heavy price. In part three, Raising Animals, we learn that farms are exempt from the Clean Water Act and spew thousand of tons of raw sewage directly into streams, rivers, and lakes which become subject to algae blooms that deprive the water of oxygen killing off all life. According to the film, the world is losing its topsoil at unprecedented rates and levels and it takes 500 years to produce a single inch of this precious resource. Cattle and other animals burp pure methane, a gas that is worse than carbon dioxide for global warming.
The film argues that 60% of the U.S. ecosystems have been compromised and are no longer sustainable. This part of the film also depicts, in footage that some viewers may find upsetting, the cruel way that cows, chickens, and other livestock are treated when they are viewed narrowly as a food commodity rather than living, breathing, sentient entities in their own right.
Similar to many of the other documentaries on the food system, this one too at some point begins to move from a grim portrait to a more hopeful one. The title is, after all, Sustainable Table: What’s On Your Plate, not Unsustainable Table, and so part four, Plant Based Diet, begins the transition into a more optimistic alternative narrative. This section argues that grain should be produced primarily for human stomachs, not those of cows (which, by the way, nature are programmed to eat grass). By returning to our natural eating habits of the past, cutting back on saturated fats and protein, we would reduce heart attacks, stroke, and other diseases.
This is the diet human beings were meant to eat. Our teeth, jaw, stomach and gastric system - our entire physiology - are geared more towards vegetables than meat. To prove the point, the camera captures vegan champion body-builder Kenneth Williams’s gym workout routine and follows him into his kitchen preparing a healthful vegetarian meal, proving that a plant-based diet does not have to leave you etiolated.
In part five, Sustainable Foods, the film delves deeper into the organic food movement revealing that not all organic products are the same. While all certified organic fruits and vegetables have to be raised free of pesticides and herbicides (Sulphur, however, can still be used in raising grapes), monocrops are permitted and produce can travel thousands of miles to market, doing nothing to restore soil ecology or help the environment. Message here: Caveat Emptor, and Know Your Farmer.
Lastly, What Can You Do? empowers the viewer and consumer to use their dollars wisely to make appropriate dietary choices. Every day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we have three votes to benefit our own health and the environment. There is no downside to this power. Conversely, the fork can be the world’s most dangerous weapon. Sustainable Table leaves us with this wise yet common sense thought: We should go out trying not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Only by doing that, we will indeed change the world.
Sustainable Table is a survey film, laying out in six relatively short parts the major critiques of mainstream agriculture, each of which can sustain its own independent film investigation. This 2006 documentary by Mischa Hedges, which was an official selection and winner in several film festivals, is one of many food-related movies that emerged around this time helping to raise consumer consciousness about the devastating health and environmental consequences of traditional monocrop agriculture.
The first part of the film, Conventional Farming, describes the practice in easy to understand language as an input/output system. Farmers first test their soil to determine its productive capacity, and then purchase various inputs as needed such as fertilizers, and depending on rain conditions, irrigation systems. But nature has its surprises (pests, weeds, draught, etc.) and farmers must purchase new agrichemical inputs (herbicides, pesticides, insecticides) to regulate these field events.
Farmers also went from planting a diversity of fruits and vegetables to focusing on a single variety, mono-cropping. In this manner, beginning in the 20th century, farming gradually transitioned into a factory like system. Nature came to be viewed as difficult, the enemy, something to be fought, to wrest production from, to battle. Farming came to be perceived as a controlled system, not a biological system. This change heralded not only profound scientific breakthroughs but also a major philosophical break from farming as it had been practiced for thousands of years.
Part two, Farmworkers, explores how these changes affects the human health of those tasked with working in the fields, most of whom are immigrant laborers. In 2000 more than 20 million pounds of chemicals were used on American crops and it is poisoning farmworkers who suffer increased rates of cancer, abnormal growth of sex hormones, and other medical anomalies. The film is set in California, which has some of the toughest worker protection rules on the books, but these laws are often lax and/or unenforced. The danger is not limited to those who toll in the fields. Agricultural workers are today’s canaries in a coal mine. What ails them today has a good chance of making us all sick tomorrow.
Humans, of course, are not the only victim of industrialized farming. The environment also pays a heavy price. In part three, Raising Animals, we learn that farms are exempt from the Clean Water Act and spew thousand of tons of raw sewage directly into streams, rivers, and lakes which become subject to algae blooms that deprive the water of oxygen killing off all life. According to the film, the world is losing its topsoil at unprecedented rates and levels and it takes 500 years to produce a single inch of this precious resource. Cattle and other animals burp pure methane, a gas that is worse than carbon dioxide for global warming.
The film argues that 60% of the U.S. ecosystems have been compromised and are no longer sustainable. This part of the film also depicts, in footage that some viewers may find upsetting, the cruel way that cows, chickens, and other livestock are treated when they are viewed narrowly as a food commodity rather than living, breathing, sentient entities in their own right.
Similar to many of the other documentaries on the food system, this one too at some point begins to move from a grim portrait to a more hopeful one. The title is, after all, Sustainable Table: What’s On Your Plate, not Unsustainable Table, and so part four, Plant Based Diet, begins the transition into a more optimistic alternative narrative. This section argues that grain should be produced primarily for human stomachs, not those of cows (which, by the way, nature are programmed to eat grass). By returning to our natural eating habits of the past, cutting back on saturated fats and protein, we would reduce heart attacks, stroke, and other diseases.
This is the diet human beings were meant to eat. Our teeth, jaw, stomach and gastric system - our entire physiology - are geared more towards vegetables than meat. To prove the point, the camera captures vegan champion body-builder Kenneth Williams’s gym workout routine and follows him into his kitchen preparing a healthful vegetarian meal, proving that a plant-based diet does not have to leave you etiolated.
In part five, Sustainable Foods, the film delves deeper into the organic food movement revealing that not all organic products are the same. While all certified organic fruits and vegetables have to be raised free of pesticides and herbicides (Sulphur, however, can still be used in raising grapes), monocrops are permitted and produce can travel thousands of miles to market, doing nothing to restore soil ecology or help the environment. Message here: Caveat Emptor, and Know Your Farmer.
Lastly, What Can You Do? empowers the viewer and consumer to use their dollars wisely to make appropriate dietary choices. Every day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we have three votes to benefit our own health and the environment. There is no downside to this power. Conversely, the fork can be the world’s most dangerous weapon. Sustainable Table leaves us with this wise yet common sense thought: We should go out trying not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Only by doing that, we will indeed change the world.