Shortly after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, emailed Joel Salatin. The idea was simple, spend a year filming on Polyface Farms and make a film.
In March 2007, about eighteen years ago, slept in the car on the road in front of Polyface to make sure got off to an early start. It was a really cold night. Woke up absolutely freezing and learned my lesson. Check the forecast.
That morning, following Joel around with a camera, got to actually see the legendary eggmobile first-hand as it followed one paddock behind the cows. Each morning the hens are let out, and eagerly peck beetle grubs and fly larvae out of the cow dung. It’s an ancient and sacred system mimicking the ways that oxpeckers follow wildebeests on the Serengeti.
Got to film hogs in bliss in the pigaerator, where they turn through woodchips for kernels of fermented corn, making compost from manure, carbon and a pig’s natural digging ability. It was aesthetically beautiful, and aromatically pleasant. Just the way we all imagine a farm should be.
The challenge came when deciding how to portray the conventional farming systems. PETA mailed a tape of hidden camera footage of animal abuse. We edited it into our sequence. But something didn’t feel right. We didn’t know these farmers, we didn’t listen to their perspectives. So we made a vow: No Hidden Camera Footage ever in Leave It Better films. Spent the next three years traveling America and filming with commodity hog, chicken and cattle producers. Realized that these are wonderful people stuck in a broken system. Made lifelong friendships with farmers like Chuck Wirtz and Johnny Glosson.
When the film was done we never applied to a single film festival. We wanted to take the film directly to the people we’d made it for. In 2011 we premiered the film during Field Day at Polyface Farms and had a number of sold out screenings. From there, thanks to numerous funding partners and outreach partners, with a special thanks to Bill Witherspoon, we took it all around America, renting out arthouse theaters, hosting screenings in FFA classrooms, and high-school gymnasiums.
Against all odds, after two years of grass-roots screenings we were given a theatrical release in NYC, where Joel came out, and along with friends Paul Willis, Chris Ely and Jon McConaughy we rode a tractor into the premiere and walked the grass-carpet my mother had snagged from a distant nursery. Even though we had never applied to a festival, we now were getting mainstream distribution.
We made the film we wanted to make. Completely independent. Making this film was a pure act of passion. A love letter for farmers and for farming. A call to action for a growing movement to buy local food.
This kind of film is not available on Netflix, Amazon, Apple or Hulu. We’ve been able to stay in business for 18 years as an independent documentary company because we sell our films directly to our community. Just like a small farmer. So if you value this kind of independent fair-minded documentary journalism, please become a founding member today. You’ll get access to all three of the feature documentaries we have made so far, including American Meat, and you’ll get access to all of our healthy, short films.
If you would prefer to just make a one-time payment, give us $21 here: buymeacoffee.com/leaveitbetter and we’ll send the link to American Meat.