REVIEW: ‘Summoned’ and ‘The Man Who Tried to Feed the World’ on PBS

Photo: In the 1960s, Norman Borlaug looks out at a wheat field that was helped by his revolutionary agricultural methods. Photo courtesy of International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) / Provided by press site with permission.

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PBS continues to pump out interesting, informative programming on American history, enlightening its audience with stories that too often are relegated to the footnotes of a textbook. Thankfully two recent programs have resurrected tales that are worth hearing about and learning from.

Summond: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare, now available on DVD, is a one-hour documentary that has become particularly profound given the country’s current struggles with the coronavirus pandemic and skyrocketing unemployment numbers.

Telling the story of Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member in a presidential administration, the archival film traces her influential career from working with Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in New York and then being tapped to run the Department of Labor under then-President Roosevelt.

There probably has been no other presidential administration in the history of the United States that left a more indelible mark on American labor than FDR’s, and much of his success in this arena was thanks to Perkins, who had original ideas about how to fight poverty and what role the government can play in eradicating its desperate conditions.

Perkins’ journey, which plays out with archival photos and video, was not an easy path forward. She was routinely criticized for being a woman in a man’s game, for being a purported Socialist and for not having a respectable personal life (she mostly lived away from her husband and shared a house with a female acquaintance in Georgetown). These were mere distractions that her critics latched on to because they simply didn’t like her proposed reforms.

And her reforms are legendary and, for the most part, worked to take the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Words and phrases that today’s society take for granted, such as Social Security, collective bargaining and unemployment benefits, had their origins in Perkins’ dedicated work 90 year prior. She looked out over the American landscape, especially immigrant neighborhoods in large metropolitan areas, and she knew change had to come, otherwise the country would fall apart. Thankfully, many of her proposals won the blessings of FDR and eventually the appreciation of the American public, but it wasn’t easy.

Director Mick Caouette couples the historical record with modern-day commentary from a variety of politicians, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, journalist David Brooks and TV host Lawerence O’Donnell. Joe Paolo serves as online editor.

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American Experience: The Man Who Tried to Feed the World is another stirring PBS documentary, this one focusing on Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize winner whose so-called “Green Revolution” helped expand agriculture throughout the world. His story is more of a cautionary tale because although his inventions and innovations helped farming communities, especially in Mexico and India, many of the practices that he proposed, when adopted on a large scale, led to environmental degradation.

No doubt there were many people who thought that Borlaug’s efforts were laudatory, which is perhaps why he won the Nobel Prize and was sought after by foreign countries, but the impact of his work is more controversial and difficult to appreciate.

There are many fascinating angles to this one hour of television, including the careful experimentation and grueling work that he performed in the wheat fields of Mexico to figure out how to develop a crop that would withstand disease and blight. In these early years of his career, he was hands on and connected to his work, living a simple agrarian life on a small farm in warm weather.

Rob Rapley’s film, which is now streaming online, tracks Borlaug’s entire life, from his early days on a farm in Iowa to his time working for the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico to his less-than-successful for in India. The crops in these countries were dying off because of “stem rust,” and he needed to find a solution that would bring back the plants and restore the economic benefits to the local communities — communities that were struggling with hunger and malnutrition.

Borlaug succeeded in Mexico and took his show on the road to India, but the problem was that his new form of wheat required two ingredients: lots of water and fertilizer. This, according to press notes, led to a less-than-stellar environmental legacy because more and more farmers started using the Borlaug method on their fields, and that meant the world’s agricultural industry was starting to divert more water and use more fertilizer on crops.

According to PBS, Borlaug’s methods led to soil degradation, a reduction in the water table, the spread of toxic chemicals and ultimately the destruction of rural society. This makes his life and legacy quite complicated. His practices are vilified, yet he also was credited with addressing human hunger.

The difficulty in understanding the impact of his work can be found in the title of this American Experience episode: Borlag is the man “who tried” to feed the world. He may have succeeded in some respects, but when looking at his work through another lens, the long-term effects proved so detrimental and harmful to the environment. Therein lies the conundrum of this American story.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare, directed by Mick Caouette, is now available on DVD. American Experience: The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, directed by Rob Rapley, is now available to stream.