Food Chains

I've got many praises to sing about this film. This documentary is full of rich and informative information, and it really makes you think about the supply chain and where your food comes from. Everyone who worked on this movie did a fantastic job! However, I have one thing stopping me from giving this a full score. The film, at least to me, was boring as rocks. I did enjoy the information being given to me, yes, but I got no enjoyment out of watching this. I ended up watching this documentary on 1.5x speed just to get it over with! It is a shame that something with such an interesting topic would be so bland, but hey, such is life. I still recommend this to anyone who is interested about where your food comes from!

Immokalee, Florida is right in my backyard....I live in nearby Naples. This peaceful struggle for fair food has been a mission of the church I belong to since the 1990's. This documentary is very well done and historically accurate. I can only keep hoping and advocating for PUBLIX grocery stores to sign on to the Fair Food Agreement. I've basically quit shopping there. It would cost Publix a minuscule amount of $$ to sign on compared to the millions of dollars they make in profits. So, I will keep marching WITH the Coalition of Immokalee Workers when they peacefully demonstrate in front of Publix. A HUGE march & parade is planned for March 21, 2015 in St. Petersburg, FL.

There is so much interest in food these days yet there is almost no interest in the hands that pick that food. In the US, farm labor has always been one of the most difficult and poorly paid jobs and has relied on some of the nation's most vulnerable people.

When I was about 14, I had a summer job picking raspberries. As I recall, I was paid about 25 cents per pint, and it took a long time to fill one pint. At best, I was bringing in two dollars an hour. Now, this does not mean I understand what it is like to be a farm worker, but the experience is not completely foreign to me. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a living wage.

This film looks at one great aspect of the farm worker: his or her role in the "food chain" and how easy it would be to raise his wage without drastically affecting prices. Many other issues surround this, and a well-rounded picture may take another two or three documentaries. For example, immigration seems to be the elephant in the room.

I'm not a big fan of 'issue' documentaries because they are usually boring and preachy. Why do I like this one so much? Archival footage of Bobby plus participation by two generations of Kennedys was certainly moving, for me. The film covers a lot of ground but it never seems scattershot; on the contrary, a word I'd use to describe it is 'incisive'. I'm a Floridian and I have some doubts about the farmworkers' focus on Publix. But this film takes on very important issues and the way it presents them is vivid and smart. It's never boring and it is well put together. I liked it enough to watch it again. Highly recommended, for everyone.