Slow Food Film Series begins Feb. 9 at Theodore Parker Church

January 25, 9:16 PMBoston Vegan ExaminerRyan Weaver

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Boston Vegan Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Next month, Slow Food Boston will be reprising their film series for a second year with a round of three films, starting with "One Man, One Cow, One Planet" on Sunday, February 9th at 3:30pm at Theodore Parker Church, located at 1859 Centre Street in West Roxbury. (See directions here.) The cost is $5.

This film centers on a common problem found in developing countries: poor farmers are given industrialized products to grow crops in ways that defy thousands of years of local tradition and even basic common sense. The result is that the farmers and their soil grow poorer each year.  In India, an 80-year-old farmer from New Zealand named Peter Proctor is attempting to help a community of Indian farmers adopt biodynamic farming methods, which involve a radical consideration of the soil as well as the overall character of the land. There's quite a bit of focus on cow dung on the website, so we can only imagine that natural fertilizer plays a starring role in Proctor's methods. The film also connects Proctor's efforts to Gandhi's nonviolent protests and to India's history as a colonized country, as well as to the global impact of India's agriculture on the world's food supply.

The Slow Food screening will be followed by a meet and greet with three area farmers who will discuss organic, biodynamic and sustainable farming. Slow Food Boston writes that the farmers will "help us understand the differences between [these farming methods], and more importantly lay out one more time why it is that large scale agriculture is not the path to take if we value our land and our health."

Photo courtesy of Cloud South Films.