New Documentary ‘Food Chains’ Creates Links to the Disenfranchised

A Lawrence Dreyfuss

Between multiple television stations about food, a slough of documentaries on the subject and more foodie blogs than anyone would care to read, it seems like the topic has been picked bare.  There is one aspect that has not been thoroughly explored. It is the issue of who picks our food. No, not the farmers that plant the seeds nor the pesticides that help it grow, but the seasonal workers who labor in the fields all day plucking ripe fruits and vegetables so that they may be sorted, packaged, shipped to the local grocery.  It may come as a surprise that in the age of automation, where tractors are self-driving and delivery men rely on onboard computers, that plucking fruit from the vine is still an entirely manual process. In a country where we scream over the divide between the rich and the poor, it is often easy to forget that there is also an extreme bottom of the rung. These are the people that toil in the fields long hours for small reward.

“Food Chains,” a new documentary from director Sanjay Rawal, explores the world of these disenfranchised workers.  It begins as an intimate portrait of their lives. Bright and early one morning, a man awakes.  His house is tiny and bare.  The man needs to support his wife and children so he awakes before the sun and arrives back long after sundown. During that time he will make well below minimum wage in return for doing vigorous physical labor. Finally returning home exhausted, his has no time to see his kids.  It is a vicious cycle that, despite his consistently hard work ethic, keeps him well below the poverty line with little opportunity for change.

From there, the movie pulls back to explore how these workers are attempting to change their situations.  An organization called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is working to create awareness and get better wages for workers. Based out of Florida, they work to slightly raise the price of tomatoes at wholesale that would make a huge impact for the workers.  The grocery corporations make huge profit margins and, by reducing these margins very slightly, it could mean a world of difference for farm workers around the country.  This lends to the narrative spine of the film, a hunger strike against the corporation Publix Super Markets. The film paints the strikers as heroes and Publix as its enemy.  Surprisingly, the film uses a lot of restraint here, perhaps too much. It lets the facts point to Publix as the corporate bad guy but does not play up the emotion of the situation, perhaps missing out on an opportunity for greater pathos.

As the strike wears on, the film takes a look at an issue that pervades the entire country. Using archival footage, the story of Cesar Chavez is explored. This is not the first case of farmer workers demanding higher pay. What worked before and why is that not working today?  To understand that, the film also explores the other traumas associated with field work.  Reported cases of rape and even large slavery rings are not uncommon. The people involved are so much on the fringe of society that reports of mistreated workers are often overlooked or flat-out ignored.

Coming away from the film, it is clear that there is an issue that needs to be addressed.  What the film lacks though, is analysis of how the problem became this way.  In an interview about the film, Rawal pointed out that our mistreatment of farm workers in America is most attributable to America’s history of slavery but this insight is lacking from the film. Chavez clearly made positive strides through large scale strikes, but why these large scale walkouts are not happening today is never explored.  Workers often do not take a stand against unfair and illegal labor practices, but how this system of passive allowance came to be is never even questioned, neither on a personal level and on a policy one.  Perhaps leaving the viewer with so many questions is a testament to the power of the film, but at times these questions seem more like holes rather than supplements.

“Food Chains” brings to light the issue of mistreated farm workers. It is an important film for everyone who eats.

‘Food Chains’ is debut in select theaters Nov. 21 and is streaming on iTunes.