A Trip to the Theater- American Meat

I sat in the Missouri Theater Thursday night surrounded by several of my ag friends. We were curious, and perhaps a little nervous, about what was about to take place.

American Meat, the documentary billed as a pro-farmer look at chicken, cattle, and hog production in the U.S., came to town.

Several of us felt it was important to go to the screening. Personally, I wanted to see how agriculture was portrayed to the public this time. I hoped it wouldn’t be another Food Inc.

I shiver at the thought of the biased Food Inc. film, and get frustrated when people watch it and think that’s the whole story. It hurts me, and I have hoped for a food production film with more complexity.

I had my doubts about this being it, but I was hopeful.

My doubts increased when I discovered the restaurant Chipotle was involved. Remember their commercial last spring? That was an automatic bias in my mind. Plus, a look at their other sponsors, partners and production crew will also show their bias.

I went in skeptical but tried very hard to keep my mind open. And, I must say—I was pleasantly surprised.

Now, I still have my qualms about the film, but I’ll get to those later.

First, I appreciated the filmmakers. I believe they were genuine, and I feel they did their best to put together what they saw as a complete picture. Was it a complete picture? I'd argue not, but I see this as a genuine attempt rather than complete propaganda (though there was a definite bias and a message being pushed). 

Before the film, the director expressed his appreciation for all of America’s farmers and recognized them for their hard work. The crowd gave a round of applause, which was very meaningful. At the end, the director made a point to say working on the film he learned a lot about agriculture and realized there is no "evil" agriculture. It's not a black and white situation. All farmers work hard and are often taken for granted. Now that's a message I believe in!

The director also related the story of how the documentary came to be, and when they began to look into commercial agriculture realized they knew nothing and sought out information from PETA. Now I'm sure you can imagine PETA was more than happy to help, and sent their undercover video footage. When the director started editing that footage into the original film, he got a funny feeling and stopped because he had never talked to those producers and was seeing all this secondhand. From there, he decided not to include any undercover footage and instead talk to all producers. I definitely appreciate that. 

   

The filmmakers did a good job of capturing the hard-working, family-animal-and-land-loving personalities of the traditional producers. I find it important to show the people behind the food, and American Meat did that to an extent. 

A conventional chicken farmer and hog farmer were interviewed, and their personalities, joys and struggles shone through. The importance of family and tradition was presented, and the producers got to explain why they do what they do.

The hog farmer recently added an organic sector to his production facilities, which was especially interesting and revealing look at the organic industry. We got a look into what an organic hog operation looks like, and the challenges of this particular production method.

My biggest complaint of the conventional section was that it wasn’t long enough. There was no conventional beef producer spotlighted, and more time was spent on the negative than the positive. I’m not saying the negative shouldn’t have been shown, I’m just saying more time should have spent on them and other conventional producers to give the public a better idea of what it’s really like.

Most of the movie focused on “grass-based systems,” and featured Joel Salatin. Salatin’s got some really interesting ideas and systems in place. His chicken processing system looks very similar to what we do, and he also produces pork, eggs and beef, along with a few other products not really mentioned in the film.

Salatin’s operation is very successful, and people from all over buy their meat/animal products. Salatin’s Polyface also supplies all the pork for a local Chipotle.

Salatin is very passionate about what he does, and he goes around speaking about his ideas (he has 20 full-time employees to take care of the farm while he’s gone).

At one point in the movie, Salatin said there shouldn't have to be any confinement operations. The crew put some statistics together to decide we have enough pasture land to produce enough food for the U.S. The problem, they said, was a lot more people would need to farm, so they continued on to show people (mostly from the cities) who want to get involved.

So here is where my biggest critiques come in.

• The inference that all farms in the U.S. could realistically be like Salatin’s can definitely be argued, but none of those arguments were acknowledged or even hinted at.

• Exports were mentioned, but they were downplayed. They were discussed only in the context of exports decreasing, which may be true (this year especially because of the drought), but I don’t think $137.4 billion (total U.S. ag exports last year) is an insignificant amount.

• People employed in agriculture but not directly farmers were not included at all. I think it’s a mistake to view agriculture, including meat production, as just farming. Yes, farming is the cornerstone and production is what everything goes back to, but what about those in service, medical, business management and economic roles? Along those same lines, what about the many people employed by larger companies? Premium Standard Farms is the large pork producer in our area, they employ a lot of people in our area and the taxes they pay greatly support the county’s school district. That’s something never mentioned in the movies.

• And still, small and medium sized conventional farms (not connected to larger companies) were not included. 

No, this was not a perfect portrayal (though I admit, "perfect" is a pretty high standard). It had its obvious bias and used "facts" which could easily be disputed and the "other side" was completely ignored. But overall the complexity of this film was at a much higher level than Food Inc.

After the movie was a panel discussion. An economist, rural sociologist, president of the Pork Producers, president of Niman Ranch and the director answered a series of questions. I felt like this is where more layers of information could be found, which would balance out any bias found in the film. Unfortunately by the time the movie was over it was 9 p.m. and a lot of kids needed to leave (including myself). So, they left with the information the film presented and didn't hear the information from the experts. 

So, American Meat was a lot better than I'd expected. It was not offensive like Food Inc., and I think it could be a great starting point for conversation. 

I'm still hoping for an ag production film showing the conventional side of things more complexly, but I'm afraid I may have to wait a long time for that one.