Urban farming is grabbing headlines from Los Angeles to New York and everywhere in between. Everyone from retiring baby boomers to twenty-something hipsters are getting excited about growing their own food. What fewer people realize is that urban agriculture has a history that stretches back thousands of years, and that in many places in the developing world, people are producing a significant portion of their fruits and vegetables inside cities. In some cases they are producing a lot of their milk and even their meat.
Perhaps most importantly, urban agriculture has much more government support in other countries than it does here in the US, from China to such “Third World” countries as Cuba. Michelle Obama’s urban garden on the White House lawn is an important symbol, but we now need to back up this symbol with government-supported projects on a much larger scale. We already know this is possible because of the Victory Gardens which produced more than 40% of the nation’s produce during WWII.
Plant This Movie, then, will highlight the successes of urban farmers around the world and will also serve as a public policy film to ignite the debate around this vital topic. With the new Farm Bill and a national election both coming up in 2012, now is the perfect time for this film to come out.
Although there are a number of excellent documentaries in this same general idea space, including The Garden and Food Inc., none have explored the international scene or tried to capture the big picture of the past and future of urban farming.
About the Director: Karney Hatch
Karney Hatch was raised on a farm in Idaho and has fond memories of his grandparents’ massive garden in the backyard of their home in Moscow. He attended Colby College, the University of Idaho and the Northwest Film Center before moving to Los Angeles in 1999 to pursue screenwriting. Two of his screenplays were optioned by producers there and he also wrote, directed and produced theatre there.
Hatch’s first documentary, “Overdrawn!” was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, on MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles and on Thom Hartmann’s radio program, among others. “Overdrawn!” eventually found distribution (under the title “Rip Off: Banks Exploiting Consumers”) with Filmmakers Library in New York. Since 2008 he has produced and directed independent projects for Al Gore’s Current TV and a number of NGOs in Latin America.
To learn more about this project visit Plant This Movie!