Adam Rabiner's Page

After several years of reviewing films about the food production system for this paper, I thought there was little left for me to learn from documentaries of this type. Yet FED UP!, a movie that focuses on genetically modified foods and is brought to us by Wholesome Goodness Productions, served up (often amusingly, using old, archival footage) some information that was new to me - unappetizing morsels that are not so easy to digest.

For example, the film…

The Harvest follows three migrant worker families through a summer as they chase the harvests from state to state, with particular focus on the children: Zulema Lopez, age twelve from El Cenizo, Texas, Victor Huapilla, age sixteen, from Quincy, Florida, and Perla Sanchez, age fourteen, from Weslaco, Texas.  Like the split linguistics of the film title, Zulema and Perla speak English, as well as Spanish, because they are American born.  The Harvest addresses their hopes, fears,…

There is more than one scene in Farmageddon of SWAT teams and sheriffs, pistols drawn, searching, seizing, and confiscating goods. But Farmageddon is not an action film, crime drama, or documentary about Mexican drug cartels or American suburbs ravaged by meth labs. The victims of these raids are small scale farmers and processors selling locally produced fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy products in particular, that have run afoul of state and federal food safety…

Park Slope is a beer-lover’s neighborhood.  Establishments like the Beer Table, Bierkraft, The Dram Shop, the Park Slope Food Coop, or even Key Food or bodegas have selections of high-end craft beer that even…