The Gift chronicles Canadian farmer and seed pioneer Dan Janson. Poetically filmed and directed by Jean-Marc Abela, this short film is a poignant reminder of beauty hidden in the smallest places.

With Valentine’s Day nipping at our heels, surrounded by temptations of far-flung diamonds or flowers, this film is a Zen-like prompt to slow down and focus on the gifts all around us. The diminutive nature of seeds masks their power: As Janson recounts with awe, one Amaranth plant can house a quarter of a million seeds.

Janson asks viewers to pause and think of the humble seed grower, the individuals quietly keeping biodiversity alive. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, just twelve seed varieties supply three quarters of the food that nourishes the planet—a scary sign of biodiversity loss. Janson and his comrades around the world—these heroic seed savers—are trying to reverse this troubling trend.

Instead of that box of chocolate or a dangly delight, we advocate for giving the gift of seeds to your loved ones this February, and passing on the gift of life. For some great ideas, visit Janson’s website saltspringseeds.com.

This piece is part of a series in partnership with Food & Wine Magazine.

Photo by Jean Marc-Abela

The Gift | 2014 Real Food Media Contest Winner from Real Food Media on Vimeo. 

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by Fiona Ruddy

On September 28, 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules to protect farmworkers from on-the-job exposure to hazardous pesticides. These long overdue rules help protect the workers most at risk from these toxic chemicals in our fields. The new regulations, adding essential protections for farm workers, are a small win in the larger efforts to value and protect the 2 million Americans who grow the food we eat—the food that makes us thrive.

In Our Work Is Life, the Real Food Media Contest’s 2015 winner for best underreported issue, viewers meet some of these workers at the heart of our food system. As one worker says: “The work we’re doing is life—the life of the entire country.” The film tells the story of farm workers in the Northwest who pick berries that can be found throughout our food chain, from Häagen-Dazs ice cream to Driscoll’s distribution to big box grocery chains.

Coming together to voice their concerns for better working conditions, these farm workers created Familias Unidas Por La Justicia (Families United for Justice). To take action, Familias Unidas launched a boycott against Sakumas Brothers Berry, a company they charge is paying poverty wages and perpetuating substandard, openly hostile working conditions. The film is ultimately a rallying cry for all of us—whether we’re digging into a pint of delicious ice cream or devouring berries by the handful—to think about the workers who helped bring those berries to us and find out what we can do to speak up for their dignity.

For more information about the hands that feed us and ways to support farmworkers, please visit voicesofthefoodchain.com.

This piece is part of a series in partnership with Food & Wine Magazine.

Our Work Is Life | 2015 Real Food Media Contest Winner from Real Food Media on Vimeo. 

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How often do you think about the actual hands that feed you, those belonging to the people who make your meals? If you were the typical American eater, even a few years ago the answer was probably not at all. But that is changing. There is a movement afoot to connect eaters with workers all along the food chain, from celebrity chefs to restaurant workers behind the kitchen door to farmers and farm workers in the field. The Department of Agriculture now even has a Know Your Farmer Know Your Food program.

In Hands in the Orchestra, Kevin Longa chronicles the multicultural kitchens of the San Francisco Bay Area. Longa connects us with the passionate immigrant chefs and food entrepreneurs who serve as community anchors. These are the hands that feed us. Unfortunately, these workers are often exploited and paid poverty wages.

Longa’s short film serves as a rhythmic call to celebrate and honor the food workers nourishing our communities, a call for us eaters to look behind the kitchen doors and get to know the people who make our food.

For more information about the hands that feed us and ways to celebrate these workers, please visit voicesofthefoodchain.com.

This piece is part of a series in partnership with Food & Wine Magazine.

Hands in the Orchestra | Real Food Media Contest Film Library from Real Food Media on Vimeo.

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Since its independence in 1960 the Republic of Congo—-not to be confused with its larger neighbor to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo — has suffered decades of violence and uneven development. The country broke into a full-scale civil war in 1993 and again in 1997. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that over 200,000 internally displaced people were able return home and rebuild their lives that had been upended by conflict.

Filmmaker Austin Haeberle chronicles this ongoing transition to peace and the rejuvenation of civil society in the 2015 Real Food Media Contest’s People’s Choice winner, Mama Adrienne. In this film, we see the heart of this post-conflict healing—not in large-scale development but in something much smaller: seeds. Haeberle tells the story of Louhounou Adrienne, the charismatic force behind a community garden project established with support from the United Nations.

Click though for the film or view it below.

This piece is part of a series in partnership with Food & Wine Magazine.

Mama Adrienne | 2015 Real Food Media Contest Winner from Real Food Media on Vimeo.

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Perhaps no two sectors are more spiritually at odds than global technology and small-scale farming. But this didn’t deter Andreas Gugumuck, an Austrian who left a high-paying IBM job to revive the forgotten snail farming tradition of Vienna.

Even though friends and colleagues thought he was a little verrückt—“crazy” in German—their opinions were no match for Andreas’s single-minded focus: to bring this long lost regional agricultural tradition back to life.

While digging into the archives of his country’s culinary traditions, Andreas discovered that Vienna was once the snail capital of Europe. But after World War I, the taste for snails—and the production of them—was extinguished. It wouldn’t be until the 1960s that escargot came back into fashion in Austria, but as one of Vienna’s Michelin-starred chef’s admits, even he was sourcing them canned until Andreas came along.

While Andreas’s enterprise—lovingly shot in this short video—may be part homage to the past, it also represents a radical vision of a more sustainable future: Snails convert plants into protein much more efficiently than livestock, affirming recent calls to eat more alternative proteins to reduce our ecological footprint.

A snail is the emblem of the international Slow Food movement, and director Kevin Longa’s film Verrückt: The Snail Farmer of Vienna is an apt reminder that even the tiniest (and slimiest) creatures can lead big changes in our food system.

Click through for the film.

This piece is part of a series in partnership with Food & Wine Magazine.

Verrückt: The Snail Farmer of Vienna | 2015 Real Food Media Contest Winner from Real Food Media on Vimeo.

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by Fiona Ruddy

In Soft Slaughter, director Allison Milligan takes viewers behind the scenes into the world of humane slaughter. Butcher Mary Lake, of Vermont’s The Royal Butcher, narrates a literal and philosophical tour of the slaughterhouse floor and the growing movement to produce “ethical meat.”

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, over 88% of hogs in the United States are slaughtered in industrial-scale operations with livestock raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). These factory farms house animals in inhumanely tight quarters, causing stress and disease among herds and flocks. Their overuse of antibiotics breeds dangerous resistance; they cause water and air pollution; the list goes on.

But all around the country, bucking incentives from the USDA, farmers and butchers are embracing more humane and ecologically sound methods of animal husbandry, even slaughter.

Read (and watch) the full story here.

This piece is part of a series in partnership with Food & Wine Magazine.

Soft Slaughter | 2015 Real Food Media Contest Winner from Real Food Media on Vimeo.

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Over the course of the fall we will feature several of the 2015 Real Food Media Contest winners on the FWx blog. We are excited to shed new light and provide additional resources for action related to some important topics – farmworkers’ rights, sustainable agriculture, and humane slaughter – just to name a few.

We also hope seeing these shorts in a new context will get you inspired to create and submit your own film for the 2016 contest!

For up to the second alerts, make sure to follow FWx on Facebook.

And check out our post about the film Soft Slaughter by Allison Milligan!

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