Globalisation of Factory Farming
Soyalism (2018) explores how factory farming has become a giant global business concentrated in the hands of a few Western and Chinese companies.
Across the globe, people are eating more and more meat. Demand has increased sevenfold since 1960 with 70 billion animals currently being killed per year. That number is set to reach 120 billion by 2050.
To meet this demand, corporate giants have taken over farming, creating massive 'factories' for the housing and feeding of livestock and waste disposal.
Using buzz words like 'vertical integraton', Western and Chinese corporations now dominate supply chains and wield great power. At the same time, more and more land is being dedicated to growing the grains and soya needed to support the world's burgeoning demand for meat.
In the process, factory farming has put thousands of small producers out of business and permanently transformed entire landscapes.
Factual America caught up with Soyalism's director Enrico Parenti and producer Susana Trojano at the Global Health Film Festival. Their journey started with a question about how to feed the world’s fast-expanding population. They soon uncovered a tale that starts in America, winds through Brazil and China and finally takes them all the way to Mozambique.
We also talk about what it’s like being a European filmmaker working in the United States, and some of the difficulties Enrico and Susana encountered there.
“It’s even hard to find where the investors inside a company come from.” - Enrico Parenti
Time Stamps:
01:38 - The guests and the topic of today's interview.
04:02 - A clip from the film ‘Soyalism’.
05:25 - Introducing our guests…
06:06 - What the film is about.
07:32 - How the film affected Matthew in a personal way, as an American who’s experienced factory farming.
08:52 - How the overconsumption of meat is unsustainable.
10:48 - How different countries are increasing their meat production and consumption.
12:13 - How Susanna got involved with the documentary and what filming it was like.
14:32 - How the idea for the documentary came about, and how farming is becoming commercialised.
18:26 - Food sovereignty and secrecy in companies.
20:25 - The most challenging part about being a European making documentaries in the US.
23:19 - How the team gained access to US.
24:54 - The different difficulties involved with getting filmmaking grants in the US.
26:37 - The amount of European interest they gained from local people that wanted to share on this topic.
Resources:
Global Health Film Festival
Elliot Films
Elliot Films on Facebook
Soyalism
Soyalism on Facebook
Texas Real Food
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Enrico Parenti:
Connect with Susanna Trojano:
Interesting Reading from Factual America:
What makes a Good Documentary Film?
6 of the Best UK Production Companies
6 Best Film Schools in London
12 World Renowned Documentary Festivals
10 Insightful Documentaries About Farming
Documentaries About Food: Unveiling Culinary Secrets and Stories
Film Investors: Essential Insights for Successful Funding
Oklahoma Film Industry Tax Incentives: Boosting Production and Growth
Best Documentaries about China
6 Best Nature Documentary Series to Binge Watch
Best Documentaries about Italy: Uncovering Hidden Gems and Rich History
10 Best Documentaries Of The 1970s
Best Documentaries About Africa: Unveiling the Continent's Untold Stories
Best Documentaries About Business: Insightful Films for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Best Documentaries About India: Exploring Culture, History, and Beyond
Best Documentaries about Japan and Japanese History: In-depth Exploration and Insights
Best Documentaries About Economics: Top Picks for Financial Insight
Transcript for Factual America Episode 6 - Globalisation of Factory Farming
Intro: You're listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals were attending and how to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk. And now, enjoy Factual America with our host Matthew Sherwood.
Matthew: Welcome to Factual America podcast that explores the themes that make America unique through the lens of documentary filmmaking. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood and every two weeks it is my pleasure to interview documentary filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Now today we're going to have a slightly different format. We're not coming to you from our usual studios and Spirit Land studios and Kings Cross because I had the opportunity along with our producer, Emmett Glenn to attend the Global Health Film Festival recently at the very end of last year 2019. Now, it was a great festival spread out over two days, lots of great films, including the winner of the BAFTA for Best Documentary, and also nominated for an Oscar and by the time this podcast is released, we'll know whether they've won or not. And we also had the chance, and thanks to the organizers there at the global health Film Festival, to interview two sets of European filmmakers who've made docks about America. Now today we're going to concentrate on factory farming actually a subject that we're going to be revisiting in a couple podcasts hence, but specifically today, it's more about the globalization of factory farming or corporate farming that's been going on Since, well, certainly the 1970s but really has taken off in the last decade or two. Now the name of the film is Soyalism. It came out in 2018. It's directed by Enrico Parenti and Stefano Liberti. And it's Enrico that we actually get an interview with, along with Susanna Trojano, one of the producers and she is from Elliot films. Now, you may have heard, I'm sure you've heard of Enrico, he's probably best known for his feature documentary Standing Army, which came out in 2010. That was aired globally, but included outlets such as Al Jazeera Fox and the History Channel and also was distributed widely, theatres in Japan but also in the US through Amazon and Hulu. He's won numerous awards for his shorts. And we just were very fortunate to be able to basically get an interview with him after we saw the screening of his film and if you want to know how to get more in touch or learn more about Enrico, or certainly Susanna from Elliot films, do check out the show notes here. Now before heading into the interview, we have a short clip which we will be playing and I think it really sets the stage well about this subject. And at the very end you'll see a graphic or those who are more traditional listening to the podcast. It says that the world population will surpass 9 billion and demand for food will increase by 60% by 2050. And I think it's that statistic and the questions that come with that statistic that really drove Enrico and his colleagues and Susanna to make this film. So we're going to show that clip now. And then we're going to go straight into the interview. Meanwhile, I do hope you enjoy the interview and thank you for listening to Factual America.
Clip 1
(from the film Soyalism)
Matthew: Welcome to a special edition of Factual America. We're here at the global health Film Festival in Bloomsbury London, on the sixth and seventh of December 2019. And it's been a great day so far. It's the sixth. Some amazing films that you'll be hearing about if you haven't already heard about them. And it is my privilege, actually, to interview our next two guests. We've just seen a film called Soyalism. And we have the director, Enrico Parente. And we have a producer Susanna Trojano. Without further ado, let me welcome you to Factual America.
Enrico: Hi. Hello, and thanks for having us.
Matthew: Yes. Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you again for that film. When did that come out? What year?
Enrico: At the end of 2018. We presented the movie at IDFA, which is the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival. And from there we started on and it's still going strong. It's still touring the world. We were just last week in Russia. We had two screenings in St. Petersburg and Moscow. We had the other week also Budapest.
Matthew: Maybe you could give us a synopsis of what this film is about.
Enrico: This film is about the meat industry, the growth of the meat industry, and the impact that it has on the environment. Especially now that new countries are coming in factory industrial farm, which uses large amounts of soybeans, grains and corn to feed the animal stock. And so we try to simplify a big system which, especially in our case starts from China. It goes all over the way to us where this factory farm system was invented, and then we go down in the Amazon where in fact the soybeans comes from, most of it, especially from the south of the Amazon forest and the Mato Grosso. So it's just a movie that tries to explain what will happen when other populations, the overpopulation that will come in the near future, what will happen to our environment if we keep on eating meat, every one of us, each and every one of us and the way we do.
Matthew: And I think Enrico undersells the film actually. I think it's about that, but like all great documentaries, it's also about so much more, I think. And as an American, actually, I was personally touched on two levels. I used to live in North Carolina. And I remember when, I was a young student, it's been a while, but I remember when this was all starting - the factory farms, the chicken was made. Started off with chicken mainly I think, and then the pork industrial farms came in, and all kind of knew it was happening, but yet, we didn't really do anything and people were like, well, but the people in eastern North Carolina need jobs, and these sorts of things. And then also, it's a long story, but my father is also American, but he was born in Mato Grosso Brazil. Yes. So this is like... The only connection I don't have is China. I've been to Shanghai, but otherwise... But there's other themes here. There's the disappearing America, the how farming has changed, and as you say it started in the United States. It's starting to take full circle, is it? I think you very pointedly said in the q&a after the film, there are no easy answers, and you weren't trying to give us easy answers. But in the US, at least, there's a little bit of momentum there of trying to recapture that old way of doing things.
Enrico: Yeah, sure there is. I mean, we say at the end of the documentary that China for example, the government said they will start to reduce the consumption of meat because they know their dependence is too strong. But yes, we also talked about in fact the small farmers what is the role there? The momentum as you say it's really strong now in Europe and in US because we are finally realizing that this super consumption of luxury food as we should call them, because meat is a luxury food is something that usually starts when you get out of poverty. And it's actually something that started in the 50s. Because before that, we used to eat something like a third of the meat that we used to eat. And so now we have all these companies. Luckily, they're trying to find solutions, plant based solutions to meet or in vitro meat, especially in the US. And I think it's a good thing.
Matthew: I agree. We have a sister company that also does things. It's called Texas Real Food. It's a network of organic farmers, and also restaurants that source. So you can go on there and you can find out where does it source its food. And you can find out which farmer is providing the beef and which one is fighting the produce, and these sorts of things. I mean, you make an interesting point. When I was growing up, my father used to always make the comment - they only had a chicken on Sundays, and they didn't eat meat the rest of the week. You know, we've gotten so used to this, my own children think that you have to have meat every day practically. You were mentioning organic farming. Do you see this? You said in Western Europe, certainly the US. Do you see anything like this happening? Well, I guess what we have is the other countries haven't even gone through the whole agricultural development that the West and the US have gone through and so, this is I think the point of the film, that it's not just about China. It's about all these other countries that are up and coming.
Enrico: Yeah, certainly each one of us has a different level of consciousness nowadays, but I was pretty surprised in China because we found many organic farms which are trying also to do pork in a better way. But obviously their scale was very, very, very small and there wasn't like in the US where you had already a chain that was integrating this new farming system. And yeah, then we have all the other countries. Some people told us even that India now it's one of the main exporters of cow meat, even though cows are sacred, but apparently the Muslim population... It's, their own business in India.
Matthew: A business school professor of mine said a few years ago, the answer to every question is China, China, India. I think that's sort of gets to that point. I mean, Suzanna, as a producer, how did you get involved with the project and what were maybe some of the experiences you would like to share
Susanna: This documentary is documented as a long story because it started more or less six years ago as an idea, just an idea, and a meeting with another author and Enrico and Stefano started filming but actually we didn't have fund. We had just a little fund just to go in different countries actually, only two, and then as Enrico said before, the project stopped for one year, maybe, maybe one year and a half, because we needed other funds just to close the documentary. Because we wanted to show another example, a positive example, or a kind of hope in this research and so we got small fund from foundations and Pulitzer for example, help us to go to Mozambique and so this project is started as a small project and then now we have a documentary that we shot in four countries, continents, sorry. And we have three organizations and private so it's not a normal production for documentary. Because you know the topics is hard to support. For example, from Italy, we had just small fund for distribution, not for producing the film. It's really often the Italian support the distribution and not the producing process. Because I think they want to, to see if the documentary has success, and then Ok, we can distribute it otherwise not.
Matthew: You say it is kind of a hard story to sell, I think to some people. But who came up? I mean, because it's such a gripping film. How did you come up with this? Where did the idea come from? Did you just read an article one day?
Enrico: Well, no, I started all when I did a documentary on US military bases around the world. And I met up with Stephen which is the CO director and he just wrote a book on land grabbing. So at the beginning, we wanted to do something about land grabbing, but it was very difficult to find places where the land grabbing actually happened. Because there were a lot of projects in 2013, 2014. A lot of people were talking about land grabbing in Africa, but then we didn't see much of it with our eyes. We just saw a small project starting that were very much exaggerated in the European press. So we started to think that maybe the best thing to do would be like who will produce the food for the 3 billion people that will come in the next 30 years? That was the main question at the beginning. In fact, the title of the beginning was the overpopulation business in the sense of who are the big profits. who's going to profit from this overpopulation that will come in 30 years. That was the title, that title stuck with us for a long time. That's what made me and Stefano get together because we didn't know each other. And he saw my documentary on a military base and this book on land grabbing, but we had this title that we thought it was cool idea to develop. And we thought a lot about it for a long time, we actually did another documentary while waiting for some funds to produce this movie. And at the end, when we discovered that most of the all grains come from South American go to Asia in general and especially to China, we were pretty shocked because through China, we saw this new wave of investments that were going into you, the US the especially this midfield acquisition, which was at the time, the largest acquisition of a Chinese company into the US, which had a Senate hearing because they were even saying now we're going to have a Chinese communist campaign in the US. So they had to think about it for a long while. I didn't have the green light straight away. So that thing god is very interested in China, this midfield acquisition, because we were saying but why should a Chinese company pay that much money to buy a company? And then, we try to expand the movie that we show that if you allow a company like Smithfield to grow as it grows and by all the others, more companies in the past 20 years, then it becomes a target for somebody else, which just gets in the last moment and buys it all. So the whole agribusiness system is becoming more and more, how do you say, conformed, I mean, it's homogenized and fewer and fewer companies are investing in. And China was just so interesting because China really did a lot of buyouts in the US. I don't remember if Syngenta is a US based it's not US based totally. But it has a big part of it in the US because it was developing.
Matthew: We'll have our researchers look into this. But no, I think sometimes these ownership structures are becoming more and more complicated. And so it's an interesting, that's much nationalism, but this idea of sovereignty and food sovereignty and how the Brazilians are complaining about the Americans and the Chinese and the Americans are complaining about the Chinese and everyone's complaining about someone. Mozambique's complaining about the Brazilians. It's becoming such a globalized world, things are never black and white anymore.
Enrico: Yeah, it's even hard to find where the investors inside the company come from. And now every company has stock holders, big stockholders, from other companies that we don't know until they try to buy it out or just the CEO changes.
Matthew: So I think that's a very good point to take a break.
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures to keep up to date with new releases and upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. And now back to Factual America.
Matthew: Welcome back to Factual America where we are coming to you from the Global Health Film Festival. We've been here with Enrico and Susanna talking about Soyaism, the film that they've screened here at the festival. And I think we discussed earlier, this podcast is sponsored by Alamo Pictures, which is a new company that's looking to do documentaries about the US from a European perspective, when we have two Europeans here. Do you find any challenges? You mentioned a documentary you've done before about the US military bases. But going to the US going to places like eastern North Carolina, Iowa... Is there a benefit to being a European? And what are some of the challenges you face?
Enrico: I think the most challenging part for us, it's specially distribution in the US. It looks like I'm starting to think that the US doesn't like a lot when other people from other countries talk about the US because in fact, we had a very wide distribution world. I mean, a lot of televisions bought our movie. We had screening everywhere, but we really had a hard time making an impact in the US. That's very strange because at the end, as you saw in the movie, we have almost 25 minutes of the film based in North Carolina and it's a very big problem there. So that was the hardest part. I mean, shooting wise, no, it wasn't that difficult. I have to say that I am half, even if I don't speak a perfect English, I am half American. And my mother was from New York, I have grown up in Italy all my life, just lived in the US for one year when I was about 20 years old. So I mean, I'm usually not scared to go into... Much scared of the police usually when they stopped me on the road, because we hear all those horror stories...
Matthew: Especially in eastern North Carolina.
Enrico: The only thing that I'm scared to do is to be stopped by a policeman, especially while we were shooting and they say what are you doing here, why you're not doing this... I even get a third grade interview every time I go through the Immigration Service and they're like oh, what are you doing? I'm doing here I have an American passport just going in and they say Yeah, but why are you coming in? I'm coming in because I want to go and see my relatives. But it is difficult to shoot in the US. It's difficult I think to get into the film society, it's made in a way that it's very easy to see for an American person. It talks about the things about meat, it's also a good movie for vegetarians or people who lean towards eating less meat. But we also put this into a context of a world context systems.
Matthew: Ok. But with the local, they were very open to you to coming in and filming... I noticed most of the people you were talking to, certainly in North Carolina were more activists
Enrico: In fact we were helped a lot by the water keepers that really supported us, they made us available plane to fly above the factory farms, that guy that was going around with us with the beard who was just driving us all over North Carolina to see the people that you saw in the movie. And so with them was pretty easy. Then in the US we always find these intellectuals that we try to interview and it's luckily if they're passionate about it, they they're always very willing to speak and get into a documentary
Matthew: That's interesting what you say about distribution? Because one thing we've been doing is, as part of this, we've been researching documentaries, a lot of people are saying this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. And when looking at ones that some of the best, at least what we think are the best ones about the US, they're all always American made. But yet there's this long history, in human history, of outsiders being able to come in and maybe seeing something with a different eye, which is great about coming to this festival, because we've got at least two films, if not more, that some people with a European perspective, have made films that have something to do with the US. Obviously, it's not just strictly a US picture. But I think maybe that is something we'll have to work on changing.
Enrico: There's no agreement between the US and European countries for example, for co-production So yeah, you can apply for the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting. But in the other cases, she said, you need a fiscal sponsor. It's always a bit more difficult. I was in Amsterdam last week, and I was talking with all these filmmakers, and everybody said the same thing - that it seems that grants in the US for filmmaking go or to developing countries, or to US based filmmakers. And so yeah, we actually do have an academic distribution in the US because it's been showed in university, the film. We also showed it before the UN Climate Summit in New York, Stefano went there and we showed pieces or parts of the movie and the excerpts and he talked about it. But it seems more like the festival filmmaking community does not except it.
Matthew: So no luck with Sundance or South by Southwest or any of these typical ones?
Enrico: Not even the festival in North Carolina. We were pretty impressed that they didn't take us at that Festival. Because it's a very good festival and the movie also screened for the first time in IDFA, which only for documentaries probably is the best festival there is in the world so that also makes it easier sometimes for other festival to accept it
Susanna: I wanted to add that we received a lot of requests from a bottom up, I would say requests from organizations from Italy, but also in other countries, European countries. For example, in Holland, we did like 10 screenings but not from festivals, related maybe from IDFA, but maybe small, I would say citizen organization. So people or farmers, small farmers organization, they wanted to show the documentary to the neighbours I would say. That's nice, because we know that this topic is mainly... People are concerned, so we got requests from people like universities, some festivals, but we thought, okay, we can get also from America the same kind of requests.
Matthew: Well hopefully that will change, I guess. Obviously, you want as many people to see this as possible, but I think it must be at least a good sign or make you feel better that at least if you've got a lot of grassroots organizations wanting to see it and that is part of what you're trying to achieve. Well, it's hard for me to believe, I think we've already been chatting for almost 30 minutes here. So I would like to thank you again. But before we sign off, what projects are you working on now or anything else in the pipeline?
Enrico: It's a secret
Matthew: It's a secret? Oh well,
Susanna: wonderful secret
Enrico: It's just, it gets difficult and difficult to do movies like impact movies, because now people search. You saw as soon as you ask for an interview that people search you on the internet an see what you do, how you think usually, what kind of the point of view you have and it gets more difficult to do a new documentary.
Matthew: Well, Enrico and Susanna, I just want to thank you again, the film is Soyalism. If someone's sitting at home, how can they see this film? Is it available online or...?
Enrico: It's going to be online on Amazon in the US I think pretty soon. I think it's still not online, but it's going to be I think, from January on Amazon Prime.
Matthew: Okay. Well, we don't usually make plugs for particular places, but I think it's important for people to see this film. So again, thank you, Enrico Parente and Susanna Trojano.
Susanna: Thank you very much.
Matthew: And this is factual America signing off.
Outro
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, specializing in documentaries, TV and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guest and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures, to be the first to hear about new productions festivals we're attending and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk