Starting a food co-op takes a lot of work. But the rewards are many. This book provides an overview of the basic steps and procedures. The manual is not an exhaustive or comprehensive reference document. Groups interested in starting a new co-op are strongly encouraged to...

Patricia Cumbie and Margaret J. Goldstein

Portraits of the Solidarity Economy: Food Cooperatives

In a solidarity economy, our needs are met by exchanging goods, services, resources and knowledge in ways that advance core values of justice, democracy, cooperation, and ecological sustainability. Produced by Caroline Woolard, Cheyenna Weber, and Michael Johnson of...

5 min

Farmageddon (2011)

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent action, by agents of misguided...

86 min

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005)

The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. An outcast in his community, Farmer John bravely stands amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and violence. By melding the traditions of family farming with the power of art and free expression, this powerful story of...

82 min

What's Organic About Organic? (trailer)

WHAT’S ORGANIC ABOUT “ORGANIC?” rings the alarm for the need to develop an ecological consciousness. The film illustrates that the organic food debate extends well beyond personal choice and into the realm of social responsibility.

2 min

Forks Over Knives (trailer)

What has happened to us? Despite the most advanced medical technology in the world, we are sicker than ever by nearly every measure. The film examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the so-called “diseases of affluence” that afflict us can be controlled, or...

2 min

Dumpster diver says: Trader Joe’s must stop wasting food

For many years now, I have fed my family food from the dumpster. It’s not because I can’t afford to shop at grocery stores like other, normal folks. It’s because supermarkets across the nation toss perfectly good meats, cheeses, eggs, and produce into the trash every single day.

Jeremy Seifert

Sweat The Small Stuff

From eating local food to taking shared showers, here are eight ways to reduce your impact on the planet that will make your life better too.

2 min

Genetic engineering: The world's greatest scam?

A short film on GM crops.

4 min

The Dark Side of Chocolate (2010)

A team of journalists investigate how human trafficking and child labor in the Ivory Coast fuels the worldwide chocolate industry. The crew interview both proponents and opponents of these alleged practices, and use hidden camera techniques to delve into the gritty world of...

46 min

Food Matters (2008) (trailer)

"Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food." –Hippocrates With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what's wrong with our malnourished bodies, it's no wonder that modern society...

7 min

A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms (2009)

A heart-stopping new documentary, A RIVER OF WASTE exposes a huge health and environmental scandal in our modern industrial system of meat and poultry production. Some scientists have gone so far as to call the condemned current factory farm practices as mini Chernobyls.

92 min

Vanishing of the Bees (2009) (trailer)

Imagine half a million adults skipping town and leaving their children behind. Picture an opened suitcase filled with bundles of cash at a bus stop and yet no robber wants to snatch it. The apiary science mystery known as Colony Collapse Disorder displays these very symptoms...

3 min

Losing Ground

Bad federal policy and intensifying storms are washing away the rich dark soils in the Midwest that made this country an agricultural powerhouse and that remain the essential foundation of a healthy and sustainable food system in the future. The Environmental Working Group...

5 min

Claiming the Commons: Food for All on Haultain Boulevard

Rainey Hopewell's crazy idea has ended up feeding a neighborhood and creating community. She and Margot Johnston planted vegetables in the parking strip in front of their house. They offer them free for the taking ? to anyone, anytime ? with messages chalked on the sidewalk...

27 min

David versus Monsanto (2009)

Imagine that a storm blows across your garden - and that now, without your knowledge and without your consent, foreign and genetically-manipulated seeds are in your vegetable patch which you have nourished and maintained for many years. A few days later, representatives of a...

65 min

Perma Kultcha (2010)

This 30-minute documentary focuses on Permaculture and Organic Farming in South Africa and what it can do to transform society at a grass roots level, to create sustainable lives for individuals, communities and South Africa as a whole.

30 min

Intro to Permaculture

This is an 18 part 90 minute intro to permaculture webinar with Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture in Illinois. Bill has been teaching permaculture for 6 years. He holds 2 PDC Certificates and has Advanced Training in Permaculture Design and in teaching Permaculture.

90 min

Forget the gloom—new ways of living and organizing our economy are flourishing

The last couple of days have been gloomy ones. I kept checking in with the vague and dire reports from the nuclear-power bleeding edge in Japan. For part of the time I was also immersed in a post about truly awful things going on in the U.S. poultry industry. While digging...

Tom Philpott

Numen: The Nature of Plants (Action Guide)

There is a tremendous amount of information available on the Internet and in books exploring different aspects of issues raised in the film.

Films For Action

Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008) (trailer)

In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water...

3 min

Maine Town Becomes First to Declare Food Sovereignty

The town of Sedgwick, Maine, currently leads the pack as far as food sovereignty is concerned. Local residents recently voted unanimously at a town hall meeting to pass an ordinance that reinforces its citizens' God-given rights to "produce, process, sell, purchase, and...

Ethan A. Huff

Urban Farming Guys: Farmin' In the Hood!

This is a story of about 20 families who have purposefully uprooted from out of their comfortable suburban homes and moved into one of the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City. They bought homes within a 5 block radius of each other and put down a stake for the sake of the...

5 min

Win7 Economics: Restoring Natural Order as If People Mattered | Gary Hirshberg

If we can make radical changes in how we think about our relationship to nature and economic growth, we will see restored, vibrant ecosystems and healthy, prosperous farmers, cows, consumers, employees, investors and future children. So says the iconic food entrepreneur Gary...

33 min

Numen: The Nature of Plants (2009) (trailer)

Numen is about the healing power of plants and the natural world. Featuring stunning footage of medicinal plants and moving interviews with leading herbalists, doctors, ecologists and others, Numen provides a vision of healthcare rooted in the traditions of herbal medicine...

5 min

Big Sugar (2005)

From its early days with ties to slavery, to modern times with its political ties, "Big Sugar" explores the dark history and modern power of the world’s reigning sugar cartels.

90 min

This Amazing Music Video Wants Us to Kick Our Plastic Bag Addiction

Not only have these two artists solved the greatest existential question facing modern society (paper or plastic?), they did it while singing a mind-blowing parody of Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind." My hat is off to them. - Tim Hjersted

3 min

What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire (2007)

A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the American Lifestyle.

123 min

Tapped (2009)

Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig's debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.

75 min

Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days (2009)

"One thing you are going to learn about live food is that that's the diet that works the best. And what's the reason? When you cook the food, you lose 50% of the protein, 70% to 80% of the vitamins and minerals, and close to 100% of the phytonutrients." –Gabriel Cousens...

91 min

Dirt! The Movie (2009) (trailer)

DIRT! The Movie takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.

2 min

Bad Food Makes Kids Dumber, Study Says

A new study says 3-year-olds who mostly eat processed foods have lower IQs five years later. (So Pop-Tarts and Sunny-D are why we're "falling behind" China in math and science?) The study, cited in The Guardian, examined the diets of 14,000 wee Britlets, based on what their...

Holly Richmond

Four Things You Can Do to Defend Organic Against the GMO Alfalfa Threat

Members of the sustainable food movement are furious and, frankly, we have a right to be. Last month's decision by the USDA to fully deregulate GE alfalfa isn't just a minor skirmish in a long and exhausting battle. It threatens the existence of organic farming and...

Films For Action

Become a Farmer

The last 30 years have seen a protracted crisis in American agriculture. We have fewer farmers, less land, a degraded soil base and intensifying corporate control over production, processing and technology. With 58 being the average age of farmers in America, there is a...

Tim Hjersted

The End of the Line - A World Without Fish (2009) (trailer)

Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048. Oceans without fish. Imagine your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This is the future if we do not stop, think and act. The End of the...

2 min

Farmer-Scientist Group Wants to ‘Hack Society’ through Open-Source Technology

One of the most frequent criticisms leveled against the sustainable agriculture movement is that its proponents want to send farmers back to 19th-century hard labor, with hand weeding and harvesting. Here's an incredibly cool group of eco-minded "farmer-scientists" who aren't...

Bonnie Azab Powell

Do Synthetic Food Colors Cause Hyperactivity in Children?

Food coloring is the reason glace cherries are red rather than beige and that children's tongues sometimes appear freakishly blue. But man-made dyes may do more than make processed food look vibrant and whimsical. Some blame the additives for triggering behavioral problems...

Julie Deardorff

The Secret Life of Beef

How does eating beef contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions that are hastening climate change? Why does meat production have serious impacts on our soil, air, and water?

7 min

The Story of Bottled Water

The Story of Bottled Water, released on March 22, 2010 (World Water Day) employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over five...

8 min

Leaked EPA Memo Links Pesticide to Mysterious Bee Deaths

An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which the German agrichemical giant, Bayer racked up about $262 million in...

Tom Philpott

McLibel (2005) (trailer)

Two activists take on McDonald's in the longest trial in English history. McLibel is the inside story of how a single father and a part-time bar worker took on the McDonald's Corporation. Filmed over three years, the documentary follows Helen Steel and Dave Morris as they are...

2 min

FLOW: For Love of Water (2008)

Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.

80 min

Eat Locally!

Supporting local farms is one of the best and easiest ways to eat healthy, reduce your carbon footprint, and strengthen your community.

Matthew Toplikar

Processed People (2009) (trailer)

The statistics are terrifying. Two hundred million Americans are overweight and 100 million are obese. More than 75 million Americans have high blood pressure. 24 million people are diabetic. Heart disease remains the No. 1 cause of death for men and women, followed by stroke...

3 min

Food Fascism in the Land of the Free

The food industry is no longer a free market. In fact, I'd go as far as saying it's becoming the most glaring example of corporate-government fascism in America. Actual monopolies fully control the basic building blocks of the food that makes up the majority of the...

Eric Blair

Watch Your Foodometer!

Interested in eating less oil? In this VideoNation/Hidden Driver report, animator Molly Schwartz keeps track of how many miles your food travels from field to fork.

3 min

The Vanishing of The Bees (trailer)

The Vanishing of the Bees, a feature-length documentary, takes a piercing look at the economic, political and spiritual implications of the world wide disappearance of the honeybee, a keystone species vital to sustaining our ecosystem. Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, this...

7 min

A Farm For The Future (2008)

More than 96 per cent of all the food grown in Britain is reliant on synthetic fertiliser. Without it there would be serious trouble. But without artificial fertiliser there's not enough nutrients for the crops to grow, and without ploughing there is nothing to aerate the...

48 min

Meet Your Meat

A short film showing the torturous lives and deaths of the animals in factory farms.

12 min

A Thousand Suns

A Thousand Suns tells the story of the Gamo Highlands of the African Rift Valley and the unique worldview held by the people of the region. This isolated area has remained remarkably intact both biologically and culturally. It is one of the most densely populated rural...

27 min

Food Fight (trailer)

When we walk into a supermarket, we assume that we have the widest possible choice of healthy foods. But in fact, over the course of the 20th century, our food system was co-opted by corporate forces whose interests do not lie in providing the public with fresh, healthy...

2 min

Food Inc. (2008)

For most Americans, the ideal meal is fast, cheap, and tasty. Food, Inc. examines the costs of putting value and convenience over nutrition and environmental impact.

93 min

The Future of Food (2004) (trailer)

There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America — a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat. The Future of Food offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented...

2 min

How to Save the World (trailer)

The film, narrated by Peter and produced and directed by Tom and Barbara Burstyn, features Peter Proctor of New Zealand, the father of bio-dynamic agriculture. The documentary highlights his journey throughout India helping farmers revive their poisoned soil. Various...

2 min

Oil and Gas - The Next Meltdown?

Drawing parallels with the current financial meltdown, Matthew Simmons expresses his alarm about gasoline stocks being the lowest in several decades and refinery production down following recent hurricanes. He warns that if there were a run on the "energy bank" by everyone...

27 min

Oil Addiction

If we're addicted to oil, our twelve-step program should begin with admitting that we have a problem. As the price of oil creeps higher, finding new energy sources is more important than ever. But the search for alternatives, combined with environmental disruptions, is...

4 min

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (trailer)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people...

1 min

In Defense of Food

Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but "edible foodlike substances." His previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named one of 2006's ten best books by the New York...

11 min

Whistle Blowers Try to Expose Health Concerns & Get Fired

A perfect example of both, why you can't trust big news organizations to tell you the truth, and why you should stick to organic food whenever possible. This clip is taken from the film "The Corporation". An excellent piece showing the systematic problems with corporations in...

10 min

The World According to Monsanto (2008)

A documentary that Americans won't ever see. The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.

109 min

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