Santa Cruz Film Festival 2009

In the middle of the last century, the growth and production of the United States’ food supply was taken over by corporate, industrial and military interests whose motives were not driven by delivering fresh, healthy, sustainably-produced food. Sacrificing taste and nutrition, Americans embraced the convenience and seeming modernity of packaged and frozen foods. Luckily, California’s counter-culture movement of the 1960s and early 1970s led to a new way of thinking about how and what we eat. Led by Alice Waters, a culinary revolution exploded in Berkeley inspired by the notion of creating a food chain outside of the conventional system. The unintended result was the birth of a vital local-sustainable-organic food movement that has brought back taste and variety to our tables.

Food Fight is a fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement has created a counter-revolution against big agribusiness.