We Feed the World: Documentary as Veiled Nostalgia Part 1

As rhetorical and talking head documentary, We Feed the World provides abundant information about industrialized farming, this time from multiple expert perspectives, a point placed in a positive light by many reviewers. Its distributor, Bullfrog Films, asserts that the film “vividly reveals the dysfunctionality of the industrialized world food system and shows what world hunger has to do with us.” As Dalia Perelman, a nutrition professor from San Jose State University, explains, “the film effectively reveals the paradoxical disparity between the prevalence of hunger and the overproduction of food, sometimes within the same country.” The Lumiere Reader calls the film “visually striking,” even though “drawn out montages of agricultural production often slows the documentary’s pace to a crawl.” According to The Lumiere Reader review, the film “does…make its case convincingly—if somewhat bleakly,” but he also notes some problems with the film, suggesting that the documentary is a “series of talking head interviews” that “might occasionally feel like a sermon to the converted.”

For us, however, both the drawn-out montages and series of talking heads slow down the pace of We Feed the World. In fact, we assert that the interviews do more than slow down the film; they also counter the film’s point of view by attempting to take an evenhanded approach to a controversial issue—industrialized food production. We agree in part with Joe Leydon’s assertion in a Variety review: “We Feed the World is sincere but monotonous as it decries the excesses of globalized food industry,” so much so that “even sympathetic viewers may find themselves casting eager glances at their watches during the ponderous progression of talking-head interviews, statistic-crammed titles and globe-hopping reportage.” More importantly for us, however, the message the film is asserting is diluted by the multiple points of view the film foregrounds. The film’s attempt to provide an evenhanded overview of the food industry and its consequences veils the case the film seems to be making, a case that harks back to the pastoral paradise of a pre-industrial food production world.

Divided into sections introduced by titles, We Feed the World seems to draw on nostalgia as a rhetorical strategy, similar to the individual and communal nostalgia Al Gore employs in An Inconvenient Truth. The first segment introduces factory farming and its consequences by contrasting it with a farmer’s nostalgia for his father’s twelve hectares of land. Now it takes six times that to sustain his father’s standard of living, the farmer explains. That same strategy is in place when the film explores the consequences of turning the fishing industry into factory farming. According to Dominique, a fisherman in Brittany, the EU has turned farming of all types into an industry that is mechanized and scientifically controlled. Dominique laments the EU’s requirement that he replace his more natural approach with the EU’s dictates. He observes nature and notices how it follows the sun, from foxes to fish in the sea, Dominique explains. Nets must be cast at the same time, “like nature herself.” He counts the number of waves in the sea to determine the right sea height. By observing, he decides when and where to fish. It is still dark, but he and his crew prepare the nets at sea and record their catch in the EU logbook. Investors and financiers have made fishing an industry, he says. The EU brings in scientists to steal the fishermen’s knowledge, Dominique believes. They keep track of what they catch and what they earn. According to Dominique, the sea is divided into zones, and the EU allows certain amounts of fishing and profits from each. All is controlled.

That control is amplified when the fish make it to shore. First an inspector makes sure all the fish are fresh when they return. According to the inspector, some of the fish are too fresh and need aging; some are of good quality; others do not meet standards. He shows the difference between a small boat’s catches and those of an industrial boat’s who go so deep the fish’s eyes pop when brought to the surface. Industrial fish, he says, have no flavor—“Ratfish only for selling, not for eating.” Commercial fishing is moving toward complete industrialization, even though small ship’s catches are so much better, the inspector asserts. The EU’s rules are making it too difficult for smaller fishermen. This inspector declares that Dominique and the small boats could save the fish and conserve better than industrial fishermen, who are only out for a profit without considering nature’s flow and food quality, but the EU disagrees, supporting "controlled" industrial fishing decimating the oceans and fish over conservation.