Local First Arizona Continues The Good Food Film Series with Its Fall Collection
Food and farming are more than just growing and selling produce; the fall film series addresses how Arizona farms are helping families and overcoming injustice in the system.
The Good Food Film Series comes to your screen monthly with independent short films documenting and sharing stories from across Arizona’s food producers and exploring the evolving food movements in our community. Produced by Local First Arizona’s Good Food Finder, these stories reveal how the local food industry addresses food sovereignty, healing the earth, and how we can reconnect with the land around us.
“We’re switching gears a bit for this next collection of films,” says Somlynn Rorie, Food and Farms Initiatives manager at Local First Arizona. “Viewers will meet a handful of farmers, ranchers, and growers who, despite the challenges of starting a farm or ranch, are making the radical leap of growing and providing food to create a more sovereign and just food system.”
The fall film series available for purchase now includes:
September 14 - The Trail of Arizona Dairy
Over the last 60 years, Arizona has gone from being home to nearly 400 family dairies to only 80. Join us as we follow the dairy trail to learn about where local milk goes after it leaves the farm, and how we can support our local dairies. Along the way we’ll meet Bill Kerr of Kerr Family Farms, a farmer who has been running a family dairy since the 1980s in Buckeye. Also, get to know Southwest Black Ranchers, a family that is building a small ranch/dairy in Douglas, and learn how they moved off the grid to provide multiple sources of protein to their surrounding neighborhoods that lack access to fresh food.
October 12 - Food as Medicine
If we take a closer look at our natural desert environment, healing food exists all around us. In this Good Food Film, Chef Maria Parra Cano of Sana Sana Foods talks about food that can be naturally found in our neighborhoods and in the desert that possess medicinal and healing qualities which can heal us from ailments caused by the conventional diet. Next, take a walk with Twila Cassadore, a food educator, in the San Carlos area as she shares the healing journey of finding food in the wild. Join us as we go foraging with her to uncover nutrient-dense offerings and the health benefits of Native food.
November 9 - Farming as a Revolutionary Act for Food Sovereignty
Meet several Arizona farmers who have set up farms in urban spaces, neighborhoods, and backyard gardens to grow and provide freshly grown food for their families, neighbors, and communities as a form of protest against unhealthy food systems. They demonstrate how food sovereignty is a people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and how it is the right of people to define their own food and agriculture systems.
Viewers can watch these on-demand films by purchasing an individual film ($7.50) or an annual Good Food Film Series all-access pass ($65) at https://www.goodfoodfinderaz.com/tickets-passes. Proceeds from the films support Local First Arizona’s food programming, which supports a vibrant, equitable food economy here in Arizona.