Farmageddon: Put down the milk, and step away from the cow

An interview with director Kristin Canty

The American farmer is one of the nation’s most iconic figures. Standing above a well-maintained crop, perhaps a setting sun in the background and a dandelion sticking out of his or her mouth, food enthusiasts still relish the image of people living off the land and selling the fruits of their labor to hungry eaters.

But all is not cucumbers and yogurt for independent family farms in the United States. First-time filmmaker Kristin Canty uncovers a frightening dark side to farming in America in her new documentary, Farmageddon.

According to the film, which is rolling into movie theaters throughout the summer, government agents have taken drastic measures to stop the so-called “questionable” practices of some farming families and food co-ops in the United States. Whether it’s the difficulty of selling raw milk or the unending trail of paperwork to claim a product is organic, small farmers have endured their fair share of obstacles over the years.

One saddening example in Farmageddon includes the extermination of seemingly healthy sheep from a Vermont farm; another involves a California family that had its crops raided multiple times by armed officials. The cases featured in the film are what Canty calls the “unseen war on American family farms,” and the director wants consumers across the nation to listen up and take note.

That iconic image of the small farmer living off the land may soon become a myth.

Recently, John Soltes, publisher of Hollywood Soapbox, talked extensively with Canty about her film, focusing on everything from raw milk to misconceptions about the farming industry.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about Farmageddon. How did this project start?

My son Charlie, when he was a pre-schooler, he was sick with bad allergies and asthma. Doctors literally told me that he was allergic to the world. It was inside and outside: grass, dust, every type of animal, every type of pollen, bees. So he was on an asthma inhaler, and I had to follow him around with an EpiPen.

He was just always stuffed up. He had a middle ear hearing impairment because of it, and it was just really hard. He didn’t sleep at night. The medications weren’t working. He just always yelled at me and said that he couldn’t breathe.

I just kept doing research to try and figure out why his immune system was so depressed. The research led me to the fact that many people had claimed that they found relief from their allergies when they started drinking raw milk.

I was scared to death to try raw milk. But I was at my wit’s end, so I got up the courage to try it, which makes me laugh now. I did try it, and started feeding it to my kids.

And Charlie was eventually completely healed from all of his allergies. So ever since then, as much as possible, we as a family try to get as many of our foods as possible, of course that’s not always easy, directly from the farm and we belong to three co-ops. And then I found out that people who belonged to the co-ops that are a lot like the ones that I belong to, were getting raided around the country.

So, this got me pretty upset, and I kept telling people about the fact that there were Amish farmers and co-op owners and people that were trying to get their food directly from farms … getting raided. And basically I found that people weren’t believing me.

I guess the main thought was that we don’t live in a country like this, where farmers would be raided for supplying milk to their customers or meat to their customers. That just wouldn’t happen; that’s not what our country is like. There must have been drugs or guns on the farm in order for our government to react strongly.

I knew that wasn’t the case. So, long story short, I just traveled across the country and interviewed these people that had been raided about their ordeals.

Was it upsetting as an American to come across these stories of raids by government officials?

Yeah, that’s exactly what got me so fired up about this. This isn’t what our country is supposed to be like.

The biggest compliment that I’ve gotten from some people who have seen the movie is when (they) said, ‘I don’t want to drink raw milk, and I don’t think about what I eat ever, and I’m probably never going to, but this is a civil-rights issue for me. Americans should have the freedom to farm. Americans should have the freedom to procure the foods of our choice from farmers that we choose. And farmers should have the freedom to supply food to the consumers that they choose.’

Did you yourself feel any backlash from the United States Department of Agriculture?

No, I didn’t. I feel like it’s a very small amount of people that are causing this (problem). I’m not exactly sure what’s causing this.

In some cases, I think there are some well-intentioned laws in regards to food safety that have unintended consequences. In other cases, I think that it’s just a mindset that there’s disease in milk and that there’s disease in animals and that farms are dirty and that food should be made in the lab and all foods should be radiated.

And that’s a mindset that we really need to change because it’s making us sick. We need to encourage good bacteria and healthy enzymes in our foods and healthy soils in order to keep us healthy and keep our animals healthy. And not just be killing them, killing our guts with anitbiotics in our foods and killing the bacterias in our food. If we don’t stop these practices, it’s going to make us all sick.

From your son’s allergies, how did you make the jump to make a film? Do you have a background in documentary filmmaking?

I’ve made some little films for some nonprofits, and I dabbled in television news in college. But basically I tried very hard to get the mainstream media to cover it. I asked the documentary makers that I knew and approached documentary makers that I didn’t know to try and make this film. And there were a number of farming organizations that I was trying to get to fund another documentary maker to make this film. I was going to oversee the whole thing.

Trying to get that altogether, it just wasn’t working. Working with huge boards like that, it was taking too much time, and I couldn’t find a documentary maker to make it for a reasonable amount of money.

So, finally, one man who made documentaries for CNN took me out to lunch and told me that if I wanted this to get done, I should just do it myself. So the next week I started my film company.

It was basically just because I knew this had to get done. I wanted to show people what was happening, and I couldn’t sleep until I did it.

Were all the farmers open to talking?

Every single farmer that had been raided and all of the consumers were more than willing to talk to me. In fact, most of them, I didn’t even have to make an appointment. I did; I told them when I was coming. But they told me that I could come anytime to their farm with cameras and film because they were always there, they were always working on their farms, it was always camera-ready.

So they were just very, very gracious.

It was very hard for me to get government people to speak in the film. That was the most frustrating. All I really wanted them to say, and I even told them that I would just spoon feed them what I wanted them to say, which was just that they were trying to keep us safe and that if they had any doubts that food was unsafe that they felt they needed to shut down farms. That was pretty much what was happening. And nobody would even say that.

So I was very grateful for David Acheson, who is a former FDA and USDA employee, to discuss the issue a little bit with me, and Laurie Bucher from the Maryland Department of Health was gracious enough to read the FDA and CDC and other agency statements on why they want to crack down on raw milk.

How long did it take to make the film?

The entire process took two-and-a-half years. I kept putting out different versions of it and showing it to people, so they could ask questions.

The first version people just asked, why is milk pasteurized? So I had to put in a history of raw milk. So I just kept trying to answer people’s questions and get more interviews that could make sure everyone’s questions were answered.

In the end, I think that I ended up with the whole story of what’s happening and why these farms are being raided and hopefully people can walk away and try to do something about it.

Would you call this activist cinema? It definitely seems like you want the viewer to do something besides just watch the movie.

I really want the issue to get press. I really want to start having some open dialogue about this. The other night a USDA agent in Chico, Calif., walked up to me and thanked me. (He) said that he thinks that for the most part, and I agree with him, the USDA wants to support the small farms.

The USDA has so many great programs.

They have the ‘Know your Food’ program, which is something that we should all do. We should all know our farmer and know where our food is coming from. They have beginner farmer grants. They have all of these conservation programs that save land for farmers. … But if they don’t stop some of the other practices that they’re doing, there’s not going to be any farmers left to know.

So this particular USDA person said that he is going start researching and figure out where the missing link is and go about (finding) why this is happening.

So many people have written to me, for example butcher shop owners, chefs, small grocery store owners, co-op owners, all telling me that they’re trying so hard to support their local farm, to support the little guy. (But) the government is making it so hard for those people to get their food to market.

How did you come up with the title?

I can’t take any credit for the title. That is my co-producer, Paul Dewey. He is very clever and funny.

We were just kind of blurting out different titles that it could be. I knew that I wanted it to be short and to the point of ending farms. And he blurted that out and I just started laughing.

It sounds like a science-fiction movie. It sounded fake to me, but it’s real. These stories are about real farmers, and for them when their farm is shutting down, it is farmageddon.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Farmageddon

• 2011

• Directed by Kristin Canty

• Running time: 90 minutes

• Click here for more information on Farmageddon.