Filmmaker Harold Weitzberg offers a close-up look at the perils of modern American agriculture in this profile centering on farm families in Missouri during the disastrous year of 2011, a time when Mother Nature scourged the Midwest with drought, tornadoes, and flooding. Much acreage in Missouri was flooded when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew up a levee to save the city of Cairo, IL, while landowners elsewhere stood helplessly by as weeks of hot, dry weather reduced acres of corn to shriveled stocks with stunted, unusable cobs. Against the Grain focuses primarily on the multigenerational Hughes clan—Lincoln and Trinnade, their three young sons, and Lincoln's parents. Following their day-to-day lives and challenges, the film captures the anxiety and frustration that build up when weather simply will not cooperate, threatening the survival of a multimillion-dollar enterprise—which is, in many cases, what the so-called “family farm” is these days. In the end, one family whose equipment was destroyed by a tornado decides to rebuild, while the Hughes—now mired in debt—agree to soldier on. A sobering look at the new face of farming—changed so much in the last several generations that few would recognize it—this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Gardner)
Against the Grain: The Year Mother Nature Struck Back
(2012) 44 min. DVD: $19.95 ($199.99 w/PPR). Against the Grain Productions (dist. by Dreamscape Media). Volume 30, Issue 1
Against the Grain: The Year Mother Nature Struck Back
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