Logline

Synopsis

Many of us think we know the basic arguments in favor of eating organic foods, but this illuminating, often disturbing film casts the matter in a broader perspective. It suggests that the alarming ways in which industrial food production, with its reliance on heavy machinery and chemical fertilizers, is destructive and harmful to our bodies and to society as a whole.

Director Coline Serreau argues that the collision between mass agriculture and industry since World War I has constructed an agricultural system which utilizes the tools and methods of war, so that nourishing ourselves has become instead an act of violence that we perpetrate, however unwittingly, against ourselves. As one participant remarks, “When we sit down to a meal, we say, ‘Bon appétit!’ It might be more appropriate to say, ‘Good luck!’”

Explore the very concrete local solutions to the global ecological mess.

What are the common points between the millions of landless workers of the plains of Brazil, a couple of microbiologists in France, the world's biggest organic plantation in Ukraine and Vandana Shina's experimental farms in India? Their struggle: a better soil quality and a wiser access to seeds. Their goals: agricultural self-sufficiency and a better use of limited resources.

Multi-awarded filmmaker Coline Serreau (Saint Jacques - La Meque, Three Men and a Cradle...), who started her career with militant documentaries, returns to her grassroot techniques: she travels the world in search of the ones who respect the soil and she sheds a new light on the multiple initiatives that will allow every one answer the question what can I do to save our planet.