Review of “Sista skörden” (2017)
Seen in 2021.
Soil erosion and other problems of contemporary industrial agriculture.
A summary of some important findings in human ecology from the preceding 50 years, adding nothing that was not already familiar to me. It never goes off the deep end, but nor does it warn you against the related pseudosciences, such as biodynamic agriculture.
The subject is very important and the presentation is good, but the film has the same central weakness as many others on the topic. Most problematically, the narrator does not clearly acknowledge, in her lovely Gotland dialect, that conventional industrial agriculture is more productive than, for example, the superficially demonstrated experiment with a kernza permaculture. Instead, the script concludes that “your choices at the supermarket”—apparently including wine and not mentioning meat—determine the future. This conclusion stems from the aforementioned gap in productivity. The legislation needed to cure all ills, as opposed to a private shift in the details of consumption patterns, would make the gap in productivity quite apparent, but you do have to start somewhere.
References here: “Vermisst – Wo sind die Vögel?” (2020).