Food writer Ruth Reichl digs into how the pandemic is impacting farmers & chefs revealing a lack of resilience in food production. She connects the dots between post-WWII policies and the centralization and monopolization of Big Agriculture, and she explores innovative solutions for remaining independent, reinvigorating local communities, and being in right relationship with the world around us. We break down FOOD AND COUNTRY by Laura Gabbert in this episode.
Sundance 2023 Section: Premieres
Distribution: Not Available
Food and Country trailer is embedded on this web page here.
From Sundance’s website: Trailblazing food writer Ruth Reichl worries about the fate of small farmers, ranchers, and chefs as they wrestle with both immediate and systemic challenges. As the pandemic takes hold, she reaches across political and social divides to discover innovators who are risking it all to survive on the front lines. The film transcends the health crisis, laying bare how America’s decades-old policy of producing cheap food at all costs hobbles purveyors who are striving to stay independent. What began as a journalistic endeavor blooms into a series of intimate friendships. As Reichl witnesses and follows intrepid characters puzzle through intractable circumstances, she takes stock of the path she’s traveled and the ideals she left behind. Through her eyes, we learn to understand the humanity and struggle behind the food we eat.
Filmmaker Laura Gabbert (City of Gold, 2015 Sundance Film Festival) teams with Reichl to tell an expansive history behind an ever-more consolidating food industry. The film covers a rich cultural spectrum, from fine dining rooms to farmlands, discovering passionate, inspirational changemakers along the way.
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.504] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. And I'm Wonder Bright. And welcome to Story All The Way Down, where we're covering the Sundance 2023 documentaries that we had a chance to see. And today we're focusing on Food and Country by Laura Gabbert. She's previously done City of Gold, and In the wake of the pandemic, there is a food writer who used to be a former New York Times food critic, Ruth Reichel, who starts to do all these Zoom calls with people around the country. She's really concerned around the plight of independent restaurateurs and different farmers and ranchers and chefs as they reckon with what are the implications of the pandemic and everything shutting down. So it ends up being like a lot of these zoom calls where she's doing these remote reporting, but Laura Gabbert and their film crew ends up going out to all these different places around the country to do a on the front lines reporting for how people are adapting to the breakdowns in the food industrial complex. And I guess one way to put it, one thing that I really appreciated about this documentary that structure-wise is doing these series of different reports over the course of the pandemic and actually going out on site and seeing what's happening there, but also contextualizing it with the history of going back to after World War II, that the United States made the decision to be able to fight communism by supporting big agriculture and to show this flourishing of plentiful food and cheap food. And by having cheap food, it was going to enable all these other aspects. But at the same time, by consolidating the food industry into this big agriculture, that is such a huge scale where farmers have to take out all these loans in order to run these combines and use energy to be able to farm at a certain scale. We essentially centralize things so much so that the farmers can barely survive. And we have everything being consolidated into a handful of different big major corporations that are in control of certain sectors like the meat packing industry. So you see the breakdown of some of these things that came about after World War Two. during the pandemic and what are the ways that people are trying to reinvent themselves and find ways that are actually going to be more in right relationship to the earth and more sustainable, but actually pragmatic solutions that are solving how to become more resilient in the way that we produce our food. So I felt like it was an amazing look into the front lines in the wake of the pandemic and see, let's do a deep dive into what's happening in the food industry. And Ruth Reichel does a great job of leading us on this journey and helping contextualize it from her own path of in her journey of becoming a food critic and reckoning with what's it mean to just only report on what rich people are wanting to eat in New York City. and thinking about what are the deeper relationships of this industry that she can start to cover. So it feels like she's taking her own journalism to the next level as she's doing this investigation that's being covered by Laura Gabbert in this film, Food and Country. So yeah, love to hear some of your thoughts on this piece.
[00:03:22.719] Wonder Bright: Well, first of all, I feel like I just watched the film again listening to you talk about it. That was a very comprehensive synopsis of it. I was really also struck by Ruth Reichel's journey into it and the fact that she started with restaurants because as a food critic, she was critiquing meals that she had at restaurants that she had gone to and loved. And part of the way into talking about farming was through this awareness of, you know, the whole farm-to-table movement where one of the ways that smaller farmers have been able to make a living was because they were sourcing directly to these independent restaurants that really valued the produce that they were getting because they relied on these smaller independent farmers for fresh produce. organic produce that was seasonal and wasn't necessarily going to be distributed by a big ag complex farm. And so this is how the whole food industrial system starts to unravel from Reichel's perspective as we follow through with her. And, of course, Laura Gabbert, as you mentioned, also directed City of Gold, which is an extremely beloved film about the Los Angeles food critic Jonathan Gold. And, you know, as a former Los Angeles resident, I was aware of Jonathan Gold. He reviewed a restaurant that I worked at and afterwards we became very popular because Gold's word was gold. So, you know, I'm a fan of Gabbard's work already. And this was just a much greater illumination than I was prepared for. And it's personal for me because I did work in the service industry and I did work for an independent restaurant. We weren't farm to table. And in fact, we definitely got shipments from Cisco, which is a big ag distribution company for food for restaurants. But it was really interesting to me to watch this interplay between these food systems and who gets them on the other end. And to me, restaurant workers in the United States are real heroes. Like, I just, I think it's a... There's something really unique about the dining out experience and there's a very particular way in which Americans approach it that is directly under threat now. There's a way in which the eating out experience in the United States, at least, you know, in the larger cities, is a really vibrant location for storytelling of all kind. I mean, you can see it in the proliferation of cookbooks and food shows and food television, full stop. But this is the first documentary I've seen that really breaks down what's behind the curtain. And what is happening now that all of those systems are imperiled. It's fantastic. You know, I mean, in the number of like big chefs that are out there, I'm sure we'll promote this film. Does it have distribution? I'm sure it will, because it's Gabbard and the content is such that it's going to be out there, but.
[00:06:34.942] Kent Bye: No distribution has been announced as far as I've seen so far. So it's still an independent film that is still yet to be known for sure how it's going to get out there. But one thing that I wanted to say is that you mentioned the food servers being heroes. I think for me, the heroes that I see are the farmers who are putting so much at risk and the risks that they have to take in order to continue to be in a system that's really working against them in the sense of – in the way that big ag is currently structured, the amount of loans they have to take in order to do the crop and then have to pay it back and the amount of profit they get is so low and yet at the same time, the service that they're providing, the food is so vital to everything that we have. I mean, they're certainly essential workers for us to survive. And the thing that I'm appreciating and what this film is elaborating on are people who are really fed up with that system and trying to recreate something different. And a phrase that came up a couple of times was not to be able to scale up any one silver bullet so that one entity can basically control everything. And instead it's to do something that is scalable through replication. So finding ways that are able to be sustainable in its own micro way, but that individual people are not going to be able to do that all around the country. And so finding ways to support many different farmers with these new innovative techniques, whether it's seaweed farming, what they covered or different movements into organic farming or novel modes of how they're going to think about farming animals and meat and having their own meat packing within the same context of where they're growing the food. So yeah, I felt like there was a lot of like, by necessity, innovation that needs to happen to continue to support and sustain these regional farmers. And also just practices that as an example, they have solar powered fields that would need to have people that they were paying to go cut the grass. But rather than having people cut the grass, why not have a bunch of goats go out and eat the grass and that they would still pay back to the goat owners the same fee that they'd be paying to the people that were using power and electricity to go and to mow it, but not have it feed and sustain this larger ecosystem. So I think again and again, a theme that came up in this film is how can we be in right relationship to the earth and start to sustain these micro ecosystems that are regenerative and sustaining of both producing food for the community, but in a way that is going to be a scalable model for other people to start to pick up. I feel like in some ways this film is trying to capture the solutions. They exist, they're out there, they're at small scale, and the future is already here. It's just not widely distributed as William Gibson has said. So there's a lot of ways in which these people that are being covered in this film have the antidote to a lot of these larger issues that if they were only adopted and spread and replicated at scale, then you would start to see these real shifts for some of these underlying dynamics that in the onset of the pandemic and the different threats that we have to our food system that is really more fragile than we'd like to admit with different meatpacking lines, people getting COVID and going offline and basically having food shortages. the amount of food that we were throwing away during that, that could feed entire nations who were going hungry. So just to find out new ways that we can analyze the way that the big ag has created this monolith and how can either the government or people at the grassroots level start to create antidotes or different ways of operating that doesn't have to live by the system that's driven by big banks and loans and this real oil-driven approach of what is commonly referred to as Big Ag.
[00:10:34.400] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I want to just clarify that I didn't say restaurant servers are heroes. I said I think restaurant workers are heroes. And by that, I didn't mean that farmers weren't heroes. I think there's room for lots of heroes. And this film is really good at depicting what that might look like. It's really good at depicting where the breakdowns are happening and where the cracks are and that the light gets in. And the overarching theme is not just the food production and not just the farmers, but which farmers and how are they operating and who works for those farmers. And it's the same thing once we get to the table and it's the restaurant workers. Because when we actually think about how this story is told, we actually enter into the conversation about food production in this country through restaurants. We're being led through the story by a food critic, so the first people she starts to approach are the people who own restaurants. And then it opens up to this larger consideration of food production overall. And one of the things that shows up for me around that, speaking as somebody who spent many years working as a server in the restaurant industry, is that the restaurant industry in the United States is actually pretty unique in the world. And a lot of it is based on the way that the American consumer is uniquely thinking about food service as an act of convenience. So, there are all kinds of things associated with restaurant work in the United States that is completely about convenience. And we have that obviously with fast food restaurants, but even when you don't work in fast food, any server in the United States can tell you that this is an experience where you are there to provide a service for people. literally servers are called servers. They're there to serve. And it has a very unique place in American culture. So even though in this film, we're really looking at these independent foodie restaurants that are in the upper echelon, you know, as Rachel Reichel herself points out, this is food for rich people. And it's not necessarily entirely about convenience. It can't help but subsist underneath this whole umbrella of the way that the restaurant industry and the food industry, as we then go on to unpack in the film, is experienced in this country. And so this is kind of why I'm talking about restaurant workers as being heroes. You know, speaking as someone who worked as a server in Los Angeles, there were a lot of Spanish-speaking Latinx co-workers that I worked alongside of. And I think that's fairly common in restaurant work, that you will get these very diverse crews. It can be mostly majority white front of house, and at least in Los Angeles, it's Latinx back of house. And what I really loved in watching this film is how many of the restauranteurs that Gabbert and Reichel follow are trying to integrate those social ecosystems and create real equity to the point where they follow one restauranteur in San Francisco, I believe, who has created a co-op out of her restaurant in the wake of COVID because she wants the people who are her former employees to have a literal stake in the restaurant. And she deduces that the only way to actually make that happen is to give them a financial stake in the restaurant so that all of the future decisions end up being this community-driven conversation. So to me, that's a large part of what this film is about. It's about the ecosystems of food and it's also about the ecosystems that are created when people begin interacting with the food production. And what kinds of choices do we want to make? And so they're showcasing discrete farming communities or discrete restaurant communities. But really, the overarching narrative is this collective experience of these are roadmaps that these people are doing. And then these are roadmaps that these people are doing. And there's a like a sense of choose your own adventure about it that I found really enlivening and exciting.
[00:15:13.178] Kent Bye: Yeah, I feel like it was the type of film that we both found ourselves wanting to share it with friends and family because there's so many deep questions that are being brought up about the history of farming in America and the influences of, you know, after the World War II, the decisions that were made at a policy level. And I think it's kind of a reckoning with seeing the type of centralization and consolidation within the industry that Rachel Reichel expresses some regret that she was so focused in the 70s where they could see it coming over the horizon that there was this type of economic consolidation that was happening in the food industry, but yet they were so distracted in some ways as she recalls it by all the tastes and the flavors and the experimentations that were happening at that time. at the level of the food that they're eating. But yet the larger structural issues I think is something that is really brought about from the pandemic. And we see an outer planet transit echoing of Pluto and Saturn that were conjunct after the World War II that kind of started this new Cold War and a new world order after World War II. Then we get into the pandemic, which is another Saturn-Pluto conjunction. After the one that happened in the early 80s, we see the more conservative Reagan era that was deregulating a lot of things and emphasizing this consolidation into these big businesses. We have this, what are the influences of these big, major monopolistic entities that are driving so many different aspects of the food industry. And in the wake of the pandemic, seeing what those impacts of that are and reflecting on that and what are ways to make it more resilient. And just one final note about the Saturn Pluto is, you know, some of the farmers are really banking on support from the government to be able to do this box food, but to see then a lot of these different small farms get shut out. And then this big major corporation, Cisco, the one I mentioned before, Yeah, Cisco is getting these food contracts by the government, which they're probably the last people that actually need that. They're probably going to be fine, but yet it's insult on top of injury that these small farmers were missing out on some of these contracts from the government that would really be make or break.
[00:17:32.299] Wonder Bright: So again, it kind of... Well, and that were literally designed to prevent exactly that problem.
[00:17:37.428] Kent Bye: Yeah. So, we're kind of like getting back into that Saturn-Pluto consolidation constriction, but also consolidation of that power. So, these big monopoly companies pushing out these small regional farmers in a way. So, that's another iteration of how that plays out in this film, where we'd see that unfortunate aspect of the administration that was in power at a time, choosing to give handouts to their buddies and these big corporations that don't actually need it. and the intent behind these to help sustain these small farmers, not actually living into that promise because it's another level of corporate handout supporting this kind of big ag perspective that this film is trying to articulate. So again, I think this film is trying to show some antidotes to that, but also draw up some of these deeper policy level issues of like, what are the decisions that were made by the lawmakers that are now driving these deeper dynamics for how resilient of a food system that we have?
[00:18:35.112] Wonder Bright: Yeah, so one of the ways that astrologers make sense of cycles of time is through following the conjunctions of planets to one another. So the Saturn-Pluto conjunction is a pretty heavy hitter when it comes to that. And it sort of looks at larger swaths of time. So there's an exact Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 1947, just after World War II. So the new laws that are enacted in 1948, we can identify with that. And so then the next conjunction is in 82, and then the most recent one happened in 2020. And so we can look to those periods of time to see events that sort of spark new changes in the realm of whatever cycle gets kicked up in that period of time. And so to see that big ag law started in 1948 just post that Saturn-Pluto conjunction and that this is what's getting kicked up now that in the wake of the most recent Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 2020 is really interesting to consider because one of the things that Saturn and Pluto denote is systems of power and oppression, especially when they occur in the sign of Capricorn, which is where it occurred in the most recent conjunction. So it's all about this destabilization of systems of power, but also, especially with it being in Capricorn, what other alternatives might be possible. And so for me, it was really heartening watching Food and Country because it was one of those places where you're like, okay, but these are the cracks where the light gets in. They're providing us some roadmaps for future ways of thinking about these things if we have the collective will to enact them.
[00:20:23.425] Kent Bye: Yeah. When I think about this film, I'm going to really just bear witness to the main protagonist of Ruth Reichel, who ends up being the contextualizer and instigator for going and talking to these people. And she hears from people, oh, you should talk to this person, or you really need to cover this. You should really do a whole documentary of what this person is doing here. And seeing how there are these farmers from around the country that are finding a new way to revitalize farming in a way that is making it exciting for the next generation of farmers to be involved. Because I think there's a threat that the average age of a farmer was in his mid-60s or so, they said in this film. And so what is the legacy for the next generation if those family farms are either going out of business or there's no continuity there, then how are we going to continue to provide foods for ourselves? And so just to see those places that have that hope of inspiration, but also those innovations to both become these economic drivers that then bring in more people and then revitalize the local community. And so I think so much about that Saturn-Pluto is about that constriction and limitations of Saturn and then the Pluto with the power. It points to this monopolization through a small handful of monopolies that enact these different anti-competitive behaviors. So you have this decimation of so many of the different farmers that they're tracking. And I also want to just give a shout out to some of the black farmers that they're highlighting and the different types of ways in which that these black farmers need money and resources and land and the opportunity, like they're more than willing to do it, but they have through the structures of capitalism and racism and oppression through many generations, they don't have the opportunity to own the land, to have the opportunity and to actually go out there and be a small successful farmers that are black owned farms. So that was another angle that I just also want to shout out. But yeah, just Ruth Reichel, who is like the moral center of this piece of trying to navigate both the places where she's seen a lot of optimism, but also naming these deeper structures for what is happening within this larger ecosystem of food production. The title of this film is Food and Country, so really getting back into those rural areas where the farmers are able to really sustain themselves and really crossing political lines and political allegiances and just finding what are the things that are going to tie together how to make these small farmers successful and not have them put so much on the line for each season, but how to diversify what they're doing to be able to have year round crops and to be able to have other ways that they can start to sell what they're doing. And I think the pandemic was catalyzing a lot of these different farms to do that.
[00:23:19.812] Wonder Bright: Yeah. And I think the thing that I really want to bear witness to and take away from this film is the experience of hope and activism in the face of these massive injustices. and huge sea change and the ideas that are explored in this film and the possibilities that emerge. It's really important for us to tap ourselves into what might be possible and to tap ourselves into optimistic future possibilities. We're living in a period of time where there's a lot of despair and there's a lot of sense of it's too much, it's too big, it's beyond us. And this film really stands as a testament to that's not true. There are options and they give us plenty of them.
[00:24:21.143] Kent Bye: Yeah. So that was food and country by Laura Gabbert that we're talking about here today. It was one of the doc premieres at Sundance 2023. At this point, there's no information as to whether or not it's been picked up for distribution yet, but keep an eye on the show notes. We'll try to keep it updated the best we can. And yeah. Thanks for joining us here on story all the way down. And if you'd like more information for how you can support the podcast, check out story all the way down.com. Get more information about what we're up to. And yeah. Thanks for joining us here on the podcast.
