Title: Farmageddon
Directed By: Kristin Canty
Cast: Joel Salatin, Mark McAfee, Linda Faillace, Jackie Stowers, Eric Wagoner
Screened at: Critics’ DVD, NYC, 6/27/11
Opens: July 8, 2011
Got raw milk? If so, you’ve got troubles. You could get sick from those bad bacteria that remain alive and kicking while you’re guzzling the stuff, but that’s not what the talking heads of “Farmageddon” are worried about. The folks that speak about raw milk, beginning with the woman who insists that the liquid cured her son’s asthma and a host of allergies believe that the government should allow consumer to buy and eat whatever foods they want. But in most states in the free USA, raw milk may not be produced or sold because Uncle Sam, under the aegis of the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, is adamant about seizing whatever gallons of raw milk are on your property and pouring the stuff out on the grass. What’s more the US Government has taken healthy sheep and other animals, declared them to have mad cow disease-though there is some evidence that these were all healthy animals-and slaughtered whole lots, endangering farmers’ businesses.
The idea for this agitprop movie occurred when director Kristin Danty felt bad that her four-year-old son Charlie was allergic “to animals, flowers, trees, grass, and dust…had excess fluid in his ears, causing a hearing loss…was full of many drugs, epipens, asthma inhalers, plastic-wrapped beds and Hepa filters.” Solution? Raw milk down the gullet and a full cure! Ms. Canty, furious that the feds are determined to use even SWAT teams to raid farms and destroy the livelihood of the farmers, produced and distributed this film.
While there is no real evidence to the particular charge made by the proponents of small farms, the idea promulgated is that the U.S. government is in the pay of Big Agriculture, the huge conglomerates that contribute to the campaigns of the politicians and then say, in effect, “Now you owe us. Put this little guys out of business.” It’s difficult to believe, however, that Kraft and Iowa Beef and ConAgra and Perdue and others big enough to have their letters on the New York Stock Exchange, would be so concerned about the activities of folks who produce two percent of the nation’s food. Since “Farmageddon” is not balanced by our hearing the government side-not that a documentary has to be balanced as witness the works of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock-we are inundated with one speaker after another repeating words of rebellion. You almost wonder when some guy will come along during this ninety-minute diatribe to accuse Sam of sending jack-booted thugs to their little farms.
Ironically, those complaining about government interference with business are not the Republican conservatives like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman and George Bush and Karl Rove, but people who you might expect to be liberal Democrats, the sorts who generally like the idea of Big Government as guarantor of the freedoms of the little guys.
Aesthetically, the documentary suffers from the usual bane of the genre: too many talking heads gazing into the cameras spouting their philosophies with only the occasional gaze at dramatic events, though toward the conclusion there is some scary scene as a surveillance camera finds a couple of government men with pistols drawn serving a warrant on a small farmers, confiscating their properties. All attempts to change laws and to win cases in the courts have met with defeat. What’s more the talking heads simply repeat over and over the idea that government should not be concerned with the eating habits of us Americans, who should be able to buy junk food (which they can at Mickey D’s, for example, every day), but who are not able to stuff raw milk into their systems. Nobody makes the point that cigarettes and liquor are legal, and that alcohol kills far more people than raw milk every did: that all that’s required is that warning signs be put on labels like “Smoking kills” and “do not drink if you’re pregnant. Why not allow raw milk to be sold with similar caveats?” With the same point being made over and over, with the total absence of humor (a lighter touch would not kill the farmers’ arguments), “Farmageddon” falls way short. There is a difference between propaganda and documentary: this film relies too much on the former.
Unrated. 90 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
Story: B
Acting: C-
Technical: B
Overall: C
