Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution

This “rev­o­lu­tion” is not fought lightly—it is fought of neces­sity. There is a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion in the region, and in France in gen­eral: there have been unusu­ally high instances of can­cer and other seri­ous ill­nesses in chil­dren and adults who have been exposed to chem­i­cal pes­ti­cides in the air, the ground water and the food itself.

The film begins with a stark con­trast: chil­dren play­ing hop­scotch in a street of the rus­tic vil­lage, while vital health sta­tis­tics are super­im­posed over them. A ran­dom sam­pling: In Europe, 70 per­cent of can­cers are linked to the environment—30 per­cent to pol­lu­tion and 40 per­cent to food. Every year 100,000 European chil­dren die of dis­eases caused by the envi­ron­ment. In France, the num­ber of can­cers in males has increased by 93 per­cent in 25 years. Sperm counts have dropped by 50 per­cent in 50 years.

“The land­scape around Barjac is already fab­u­lous, and I’ve tried to pay trib­ute to this beauty,” direc­tor Jean-Paul Jaud told Organic Connections. “It’s actu­ally the con­trast between the idyl­lic image of agri­cul­tural France and the real­ity of the poi­son­ing of our lands that I’ve worked with in Food Beware. In a way, I wanted to show that ‘under beauty, there is poison.’”

Additional sta­tis­tics are pro­vided in inter­spersed com­ments from a sym­po­sium of lead­ing med­ical experts at a recent UNESCO con­fer­ence. During the con­fer­ence, it is revealed that France is the num­ber one user of pes­ti­cides in Europe by far, and sec­ond or third in the world. Agriculture accounts for about 90 per­cent of the pes­ti­cides used.

Given the alarm­ing sta­tis­tics of dis­ease and chem­i­cal use in the coun­try­side around him, the mayor of Barjac decides to take a stand: he is going to make the school can­teen organic.

A Town Comes to Life

Inserted into the begin­ning of the film is footage of the chil­dren learn­ing a song that even­tu­ally becomes their own “fight song.” Entitled “Aux Arbres Citoyens,” it was orig­i­nally recorded by French singer Yannick Noah and was a num­ber one hit in France. As ren­dered in raised voices by the chil­dren, it is irre­sistible. Some of the lyrics trans­late as follows:

Cement in the plains flows to the moun­tains,
Poison in our coun­try­sides and in the foun­tains,
Cyclones and storms, our story’s start­ing to sink,
But our ideal remains, pre­tend we’re in the pink.
We have to change things around,
To the trees, cit­i­zens,
It’s time for us to pro­pound
A bet­ter world for tomor­row.
Stop ask­ing whose fault it is,
Counting on blind luck or oth­ers,
Now we fight!

As the mayor’s new organic pro­gram begins, the local farms and sup­pli­ers that can pro­vide organic food begin to deliver it to Barjac’s cen­tral kitchen, where meals are pre­pared for the town’s schools and “meals on wheels” for shut-in senior citizens.

At the first fully organic meal served to the chil­dren, the providers don’t know what to expect. But the kids dig in, and many of them light up with “I love it!” One child com­ments that organic bread is bet­ter; non-organic bread is “all dry.” From the begin­ning, the chil­dren are very excited about the whole project, which for them includes their own gar­den being grown under the super­vi­sion of a teacher. It echoes the work of Alice Waters and her Edible Schoolyard pro­gram (see Organic Connections, September–October 2009).

Several prob­lems are encoun­tered. The chefs dis­cover that cook­ing some of these meals takes longer. At one point, the mayor com­ments at a town meet­ing that the chefs will spend three hours prepar­ing fresh mar­row, won­der­ing if the chil­dren will even like it. But, as the chefs soon report, the kids “eat it all up.”

Shortly the chil­dren are going home, telling sto­ries of the organic food. Mothers begin inves­ti­gat­ing. It is a small town, and soon organic is start­ing to take hold. When asked about the progress of the organic pro­gram, the mayor reports, “It’s not just about eat­ing dif­fer­ently; it’s some­thing that’s had an impact through­out the vil­lage: on the farm­ers, on the shop­keep­ers, on the baker, on the behav­ior of fam­i­lies, and on councilors—an impact everywhere.”

The cam­era fol­lows this impact into homes, where fam­i­lies are brightly enjoy­ing these meals and chil­dren are lap­ping them up. The chil­dren are excit­edly telling sto­ries of the food they ate at school that day and the progress of their school’s organic garden.

The Poisonous Contrast

On the darker side, Jaud does not leave us with sim­ple num­bers on a screen to illus­trate the casu­al­ties of chem­i­cal farm­ing; he takes us out to the farms near Barjac and we see sights and hear indi­vid­ual sto­ries for ourselves.

The first dis­turb­ing vision is that of a trac­tor mov­ing slowly through the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side, spray­ing a fog of pes­ti­cide. The dri­ver is wear­ing a full-body pro­tec­tive suit and an entire head-covering with a gas mask.

A pro­fes­sor of endocrinol­ogy and pedi­atrics, named Charles Sultan, is out among the farms, and he com­ments to the cam­era that there are chil­dren through­out the Gard with seri­ous mal­for­ma­tions because their par­ents live in rice fields over which planes spread chem­i­cal prod­ucts. He talks about the peach farmer he spoke with who uses no less than 22 dif­fer­ent chem­i­cals in rais­ing his crop; that par­tic­u­lar farmer had two chil­dren affected with gen­i­tal mal­for­ma­tions and nei­ther endocrine nor genetic fac­tors were to blame.

Another farmer, with a hel­met that looks as if it should be worn by an astro­naut, talks about the fact that the hel­met has not pro­tected him; he’s had seri­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal prob­lems that could not be diag­nosed. He was even given anti­de­pres­sants to com­bat them, to absolutely no avail.

In a nearby vil­lage called Orgnac, a woman remarks that there are a num­ber of can­cers in the vil­lage and says she has lost sev­eral rel­a­tives to them. Her aunt had died the pre­vi­ous year of gen­er­al­ized can­cer. Her uncle died of lung can­cer, and both her mother and mother-in-law had had breast cancer.

Click on any image above to see a larger version.

A woman farmer recounts her con­ver­sa­tion with an agri­cul­tural advi­sor, who told her she should have treat­ments for can­cer. When she asked him what was caus­ing such a high rate of the dis­ease, he replied that he didn’t know. Her son has leukemia, and she says that local hos­pi­tals are filled with chil­dren with the same and sim­i­lar diseases.

In an espe­cially poignant moment, a baby is born in the vil­lage, at home. No com­men­tary is given dur­ing this scene; we sim­ply expe­ri­ence, through the dark­ness of night, the won­drous cry of the child as it comes into the world and the excited shouts of “It’s a girl!” Afterwards, a sta­tis­tic is dis­cussed that some 300 dif­fer­ent chem­i­cals are rou­tinely dis­cov­ered in the umbil­i­cal cords of babies.

“I was deeply affected by lots of things in the mak­ing of the film,” Jaud said. “I was greatly touched by learn­ing that the umbil­i­cal cord of a baby may con­tain up to 300 chem­i­cals, and I was very moved by the dif­fer­ent tes­ti­monies of mothers.”

The Movement Takes Hold

Back in the vil­lage, the organic move­ment is gath­er­ing steam. A consciousness-raising event is held, called a “day of taste,” in which many peo­ple cook and bring dishes to share. The meats and veg­eta­bles are a huge hit, and as a viewer you can almost smell their deli­cious aro­mas. The cit­i­zens of the town, in shar­ing with oth­ers who haven’t caught on yet, talk about the fact that, yes, it’s more expen­sive and they have to buy a bit less because of it, but they don’t care; they pre­fer qual­ity over quantity.

As Christmas approaches, a cel­e­bra­tory organic meal is served at a Barjac pri­vate school. The menu is announced proudly by the school prin­ci­pal, and fully nutri­tious food is hun­grily con­sumed as the chil­dren sing French Christmas car­ols. Outside, the rus­tic town is dec­o­rated with fes­tive lights.

The mayor of Barjac is shown at a regional meet­ing with other may­ors, and they are ques­tion­ing him about plac­ing organic can­teens in their towns. The mayor tells them that the mat­ter was not put to a pop­u­lar vote; the town coun­cil sim­ply voted among them­selves and took con­trol. He says that it was too costly for them to con­tinue eat­ing “con­t­a­m­i­nated food,” so they decided not to. He poses the ques­tion, “What were the costs of not doing it? In money and human tragedy—how much? Don’t lis­ten to the accoun­tant first; lis­ten first to your con­science.” For this, he gets a round of applause.

On another occa­sion the mayor is medi­at­ing between organic and con­ven­tional farm­ers. The mayor points out that Barjac, in need­ing to pro­vide 200 to 400 meals per day, has cre­ated a good-sized mar­ket for local organic farms. He indi­cates that there is still a need for cer­tain prod­ucts. One farmer argues that he doesn’t want to “gam­ble” on organic, that he only wants to pur­sue “rea­son­able” farm­ing. Another, who has ceased using chem­i­cals, says that despite the lack of pes­ti­cides, his farm is pro­duc­ing just fine. A third farmer asks how he can fight mildew on grapes if he can’t use chem­i­cals; another one com­ments that the answer is to not make the plants frag­ile but to feed the soil rather than the plants.

The life of healthy soil is illus­trated in a dif­fer­ent scene, where an organic farmer is stand­ing on the bor­der between his prop­erty and that of his neigh­bor, a con­ven­tional farmer. The con­ven­tional farm looks bleak and almost dead, while the organic farm looks very much alive. The farmer demon­strates the dif­fer­ence in soils. The con­ven­tional farmer’s soil is packed and strat­i­fied, and the rain doesn’t pen­e­trate it because there are no worm­holes. The water sim­ply car­ries off the top layer, year after year, and chem­i­cals along with it. Then, cross­ing to his own prop­erty, he points out that the soil is clumped—a com­plex and healthy humus-rich clay. His soil also con­tains worms, which help to form the soil struc­ture. The clumps allow oxy­gen and rain to penetrate.

Winning the Fight

The mayor of Barjac real­ized at the begin­ning he was tak­ing a chance with his own polit­i­cal future. He com­ments toward the end of the film that he knew telling con­ven­tional farm­ers that they were “feed­ing their chil­dren rub­bish” and that they must prac­tice healthy farm­ing wouldn’t win him votes, but he felt he had to do it, albeit in a friendly way.

As it turned out, though, his future was not in dan­ger. The end of the film shows the entire vil­lage assem­bled, singing the same fight song that the chil­dren were singing at the begin­ning. The mayor’s pro­gram has been a resound­ing success.

And how has the pro­gram done since the doc­u­men­tary was released? “Barjac is still mov­ing for­ward with their organic meals pro­gram, more than ever,” Jaud related. “The mayor has been reelected and he’s become a dear friend of mine, and I have been given the title of ‘hon­orary cit­i­zen’ in Barjac.”

Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution is now avail­able on DVD. It is more than a film; it is a mov­ing exam­i­na­tion of a micro­cosm and what truly can be done.