Director’s Statement
June 2008
Agriculture may truly be at a unique point in history. In the last year and a half, prices for commodities such as wheat, corn, and soy beans have reached record highs as the world faces a potential food shortage. Contributing factors to the shortage included major crop failures, population growth, and an increase in the amount of land being devoted to growing “fuel” rather than food. As my brother Mike recently commented, “a few years ago we couldn’t give our crops away even though there were people starving. Now that we can turn it into fuel, it’s suddenly worth something again.”
There is still a debate about whether the situation for farmers has actually improved. Some argue that the current jump in prices is temporary and that costs have also increased dramatically, and point out that the structure of the industry as a whole has not changed. Agricultural production in Canada is still dominated by the top 3% of the largest farms, and most farms are completely dependent on petroleum-based chemicals and fertilizers (as was ours). Additionally, agricultural inputs as well as processing and marketing capacities are controlled by a small number of highly consolidated companies. The result, as my dad puts it in the film, is that the farmer gets squeezed in between. These companies use the motto “field to table,” or in other words, taking control of every step, from growing a crop to processing it and selling it on store shelves. In fact, a model becoming ever more popular is “contract farming,” in which a corporation such as Maple Leaf controls hundreds of farms (hog farms in this case), and simply hires farmers to manage local operations. In this way, Maple Leaf controls every aspect of growing, processing, distributing and marketing hogs. This is the model alluded to by my dad at the end of the film when he warns that we will “eventually lose control of [agriculture] and we’ll just be the labourers, the local people.”
My personal feeling is that the current increases in demand for agricultural products will only hasten the corporate takeover of the industry under the guise of needing to produce more through the use of more and more biochemical technology. This has generally been the line used to sell GMO technology thus far, and the message seems to be intensifying.
Of course, it is impossible to separate farming from society in general, and that makes any prediction difficult. Three years ago when I started filming Over Land, it seemed like there was no hope of seeing a spike in commodity prices for farmers. The US and Canadian economies were still both strong and most industries were growing. Talking about an ongoing farm crisis just sounded ridiculous. Yet farmers were almost completely reliant on government subsidies and bailouts – both of which were distributed erratically and in inadequate sums. At that time, farmers were sometimes better off letting their crops rot in the field rather than paying the freight costs to take them to market. The situation was so bad between 2003 and 2005 that many farmers actually did start to unite to try to create awareness and to effect change. Farmer rallies took place in almost every capital city across Canada. Of course, these sorts of actions had already been going on in developing countries around the world where farmers are being forced off the land in far greater numbers.
My goal with Over Land was always to find a balance between acknowledging some of these larger social/economic forces while maintaining a focus on the day-to-day experiences of my family. Not to use their lives as an “example,” but to look out from that experience at the world around, and to look inside to find the individual person. I think this is how we generally interpret and respond to the world around us. Of course this was quite a grand goal for a first film, but I hope it was at least partially realized.
I was often surprised at how willing my family was to have me follow them around with a camera, though I suspected that they really just wanted to spend time with me and so they tolerated the camera. The four or five weeks of harvest is always extra stressful with one long day after another, and while spending that time with my brothers was bittersweet, there were moments that it truly felt more like a celebration than anything else. It was a wonderful experience that I will always cherish. Of course there were also difficult moments over the two years of filming, and a couple of times when I simply had to put the camera down. It was these times when I felt most torn between being a part of the family, and being a documentarian. I don’t think I was ever able to reconcile the two roles.
When I first started working on Over Land, I did so because I felt that what was happening to farmers and agriculture in general was a form of social injustice, not to mention a bit scary. I wondered why farmers had so little market power, and I worried about how democratic our system of food production would be when completely controlled by a small number of corporations. But I was also worried that I might be exploiting my family in making the film, and I felt too close to the situation to answer the question objectively. I depended a great deal on my loving partner Jessica Boyachek for help with these sorts of questions, and I am extremely grateful to her. And even though my family didn’t see a single piece of the film until it was finished, they also encouraged me to see it through to the end. Upon finally seeing the finished film, their responses were completely and overwhelmingly positive, which was, of course, a huge weight off my heart.
In the end, I believe that Over Land is an honest documentary, and I hope it is both moving and informative. I especially hope that it can be in some way meaningful to the many other families who have had to leave their farms.
Steve Suderman
June 2008, Regina