Eating Alabama—A New Food Film

In addi­tion to “plan­ta­tion crops” like cot­ton and peanuts, Alabama is a major meat pro­ducer. The state has the third-largest broiler (chicken) indus­try in the nation, with over 1 bil­lion birds and 2 bil­lion eggs sold annu­ally and live­stock and poul­try com­bined account­ing for four-fifths of the com­modi­ties sold in the state. Many of the small farm­ers shown in the film are diver­si­fy­ing, and mov­ing away from this model — rais­ing live­stock with alter­na­tive meth­ods, but also grow­ing greens and cul­ti­vat­ing orchards.

We caught up with Grace to dis­cuss the film, the story it sheds light on, and the way Alabama fits into the larger pic­ture of today’s agriculture.

Q. How long did you spend film­ing Eating Alabama?

A. We started April 1, 2008 with the inten­tion to film this story about a year of local eat­ing. The prob­lem was that about halfway through the year I real­ized that the story was a lot more com­pli­cated than just young folks look­ing for local food. The inter­est­ing story was all these related issues about how much we’ve changed, how far away from the land we’ve got­ten, and how lit­tle we actu­ally know about where the food comes from.

Q. Over the past four years, many areas have seen a rise in community-supported agri­cul­ture pro­grams and farm­ers mar­kets. Were you see­ing any of those changes while you were filming?

A. We’re see­ing that local food economies are start­ing to hap­pen and make sense for larger cities. But it’s ironic because the rural areas that used to pro­duce so much food are now the slow­est to adopt these local food pur­suits. I think a lot of it has to do with money and a lot of it has to do with peo­ple want­ing to get off the land. Having had con­ver­sa­tions with rural folks, I found that if you grew up on a farm then your ambi­tion is to go off and make money, not to come back to the farm.

A lot of the growth in farm­ing and sus­tain­able grow­ers around the coun­try comes from college-educated peo­ple who have been off the land for a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions and want to come back to the place, to try to start some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the world they grew up in.

Q. What has trig­gered this wave of col­lege grad­u­ates return­ing to the land?

A. We have this sig­nif­i­cant dis­con­nect from actual process, from mak­ing things and hav­ing tac­tile inter­ac­tions with the stuff of our lives. So I think that partly it’s peo­ple look­ing to find a more mean­ing­ful life through hard work.

Q. You’ve described your­self as a “Southerner with reser­va­tions” and in the movie you strug­gle against a nos­tal­gic vision of Alabama’s his­tory. How do you see Alabama and the South fit­ting into the larger agri­cul­tural con­text of the U.S.?

A. The form of agri­cul­ture that existed in the South for most of our his­tory has been one of exploita­tion — exploita­tion of the land and exploita­tion of the peo­ple. That’s noth­ing to glo­rify, that’s noth­ing to long for or to want to go back to. As a film­maker I had to rec­on­cile the parts of an agrar­ian life that I do think were mean­ing­ful and valu­able with the real­i­ties of the way that sys­tem and econ­omy worked.

I see in the work [Alabama small farm­ers] are doing now a real har­mony between the land and the peo­ple who work it, one that has really never existed in Alabama agri­cul­ture until recently. And I really am hope­ful that … a more equi­table sit­u­a­tion for farm­ers will be the end result of a grow­ing move­ment towards local food economies.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at Grist.org.