In the early days of the pandemic, I accidentally ordered five chickens and three dozen giant, fragrant Amalfi Coast lemons. I thought I’d ordered one five-pound chicken and three lemons from a local restaurant supplier who’d had to quickly pivot to home cooks like me. But between my frazzled, stressed brain and their usual order quantities, wires got crossed.
It worked out fine — we just roasted a lot of chicken and made delicious limoncello — but I found myself thinking about that blurry, confusing time while watching “Food and Country” (in theaters), a new documentary about all the ways that America’s food systems are broken and all the ways they can be fixed. Directed by Laura Gabbert, the film finds its guide in Ruth Reichl, the eminent food writer (and former New York Times restaurant critic). She is one of the nation’s most curious and well-connected voices on food, and she spends a lot of the movie speaking with growers, farmers, ranchers and restaurateurs in those familiar little Zoom windows.
It turns out the pandemic was the right impetus for this film. For many Americans, used to picking up our groceries at the local supermarket, the disruption of, for example, deliveries and meat processing meant that items were available suddenly, sporadically or not at all. My five-chicken order was a result of realizing that my usual grocery delivery service was booked up for weeks and, as I was avoiding stores, that I needed to find another method of getting food.
This was a very mild inconvenience, and it soon resolved itself. But experiences like this (along with sourdough-baking and scallion-growing fads) reminded many of us of what we take for granted. For those whose livelihoods depend on food production, though, cataclysm is always on the horizon. In this documentary Reichl explores with experts how our systems became broken over the postwar decades and, as several participants say, led to most farmers and ranchers barely breaking even while the big companies that process and distribute their products profited. She and her guests also cover a dizzying array of big issues: historic racism against Black farmers and the present-day ramifications; the plight of restaurant owners trying to stay afloat while treating workers fairly; farmers’ innovative efforts to bring sustainable, healthy crops to their communities.
That sounds like too many things to pack into a movie, but Reichl is a winsome guide who uses some of her own history as an activist, a critic and an avid cook to guide us through the maze of questions. It becomes clear that while leaders have at times sought to politicize food — one farmer speaks of a requirement to put a letter from then-President Donald J. Trump into aid boxes distributed by the Department of Agriculture as a condition of funding — this is the rare issue that is not fundamentally political. Everyone eats.
So protecting and bolstering American growers and farmers is a matter of basic public health as well as national security. Participants in the film speak about the benefits of a food delivery system not dominated by a couple of large corporations, and about the benefits to local economies when family farms become more economically sustainable. Aiding restaurant owners who seek to feed their neighbors and create employment is vital to the health of the nation as well. “Food and Country,” it turns out, is aptly titled: caring about how we get our food and what we do with it isn’t just about culinary creativity. It’s about caring for our neighbors, our country and the world.
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