Civil Eats

Almost two years after its founding in a basement in Berkeley, California, The Greenhorns has matured from an idea for a recruitment film into a widespread national community. We are now happily rooted on my first commercial farm, Smithereen, on rented land in the Hudson Valley of New York. Read More

For months, I’d been planning to see the French television documentary The World According to Monsanto (Le Monde selon Monsanto, also to be released in spring 2009 in book form), made for the French-German network Arte by the journalist Marie-Monique Robin, which premiered in France March 11, 2008.  Having plenty of reasons to despise Monsanto (Agent Orange, PCBs, global food domination) I thought that this film would only confirm what I knew about the giant agribusiness firm, which controls between 70%-100% of the GM market share for various crops.  Well, I was wrong.  There was more to fear, and seeing it all on film made it more concrete. Read More

The Dervaes family seem like they’ve come from another time. Only instead of on the prairie, they’ve settled within the city limits of Pasadena, where Jules Dervaes and his children Justin, Anais and Jordanne grow over 6,000 pounds of food, power their computers with solar panels and make their own biofuel on a fifth of an acre in the front and back of their house. They are the focus of a new film by Robert McFalls called Homegrown, which tells the story of eco-pioneering, showing viewers a picture of what our not-so-distant future could look like if we were to live up to our eco-ideals. Read More

Edible City Trailer 1 from East Bay Pictures on Vimeo.

Edible City is a documentary film focusing on food justice and food security, seen through different urban farming projects in the San Francisco Bay area. It aims to show the grassroots response communities are having to issues like climate change, rising food and gas prices, and health concerns. The film is slated for release in the fall of 2009, but in the meantime, here is a taste of what it is all about. (Enjoy the clips from Food for Thought? Check out the videos) Read More

Water is a vital part of life, but should it be a commodity? This is the question FLOW explores, not just in developing countries where the issue is paramount, but in the United States as well. Water is currently a $400 billion industry, the third largest behind oil and electricity. Because of pollution, scarcity and corporate control, water availability is the largest issue facing humanity in this century. Read More