My Father's Garden

In Joni Mitchell's eco-groovy paean "Pave Paradise (Put Up a Parking Lot)," there's a line which chirps "give me spots on the apples, or leave ‘em to the birds and bees..." My Father's Garden is essentially about the tragic costs of farmers trying to give us more abundant, spotless apples over the last fifty years through the wonders of chemistry. The video primarily focuses on the work of Fred Kirschenmann, who left a career in academia to return to the family's North Dakota homestead and revolutionize it with organic, sustainable farming techniques. Kirschenmann is unequivocal in his view of the agricultural world: either you approach a farm as a machine, assuming nature is flawed and in need of a bio-agricultural shot in the arm (a losing battle in the long run), or you approach a farm as a garden and nature as a partner. Interspersed between segments dealing with Fred's work and with the precipitous decline of small conventional (i.e. non-organic) farms, are home movie clips and voice-over narration concerning another farmer--Herbert Smith, the filmmaker's father. Smith, a visionary of sorts for his time, was a champion of chemically arm wrestling nature into submission. His early death (most likely from the toxics he favored) is used as a metaphor of sorts for conventional farming in general. While My Father's Garden is certainly a heartfelt work on a timely topic, it has a tendency in some instances to make tenuous or undeveloped arguments and connections, and to raise more questions than it answers about the fate of the American farmer. Despite these shortcomings, it would be a useful addition to larger video collections. (G. Handman)