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Red Door Media and documentary film makers Wendy Hebb and Michael Richard are in production on a new film, Back to the Garden: The Real Food Revolution. About the rise of sustainable agriculture in America, in essence, this is a story of our society acting out in two ways.  Motivated by profits, one force leverages, conquers, and subverts the regenerative synergy between human beings and the natural environment; the other force strives to live and work within the earth’s sustainable limitations for the benefit of all. Reflected in the choices of the latter are concerns about where and how food is raised and, at the end of the day, whether the food we grow nourishes our bodies and the farmers, animals, and biotic community engaged in its production.

The fight, and most of us don’t realize we are engaged in a fight, is for the survival of real food over the growing dominance of impostor food.  What is at stake?  As Michael Abelman, author, comments, “There may be nothing more basic than food and how we secure it.  It is the source of our health and nourishment, it is the gathering point for family and friends, when grown with respect its impacts ripple out into a whole range of ecological, social, and cultural consequences, and it increases the pleasure of our lives….It’s like planting a seed in fertile ground; it grows and multiplies, feeds and nourishes far beyond its tiny humble beginnings.”

Back to the Garden is as much about the “culture” in agriculture as it is about growing wholesome food.  Interviewing farmers, chefs, activists, scientists, and writers around the country has made us aware of the new and important relationships between organic farmers and their land, animals, neighbors, and patrons.  Their work and insights shape the heart and soul of sustainable farming and are increasingly becoming the building blocks of profoundly robust communities.   In this vein, farmers’ markets have been called the new “town squares” because neighbors stop to chat, politics and local issues are traded along with produce and recipes, and a feeling reins that, at least on market day, we are all in this together.

For many, the small scale of a hands-on farm and the rightness of working with the earth activates a deep desire to be part of a good-sense community. It’s as though human beings have come un-moored and real food is a way to navigate forward to living a life that makes sense.

	Shelburne Farm 5 photos