„We need a much broader understanding of how the world works today. Unfortunately, the way we consume information increasingly hinders this. Myths that have been perpetuated for decades about food production, agriculture, the countryside, farming, ecology, nutrition, the possibility of saving the planet with a miracle diet or way of life – all this adds up to a story that serves only one thing: preserving the status quo, which pushes us to the edge of the abyss.

In an idyllic tale shaping the modern societies of the global North, handsome, half-naked shepherds graze sheep and cows in green fields, a stream murmurs in the background, and happy chickens run around. In the background, you can see a cottage where the landlady is carrying out crates of pure carrots from her vegetable garden, then taking them to the local market.

The reality, unfortunately, looks quite different.

The stream is a ditch polluted with manure and pesticides, and chickens overfed with soy and antibiotics topple under their own weight. Forests have been cleared, wetlands and marshes drained to make more room for mass grazing of cows and sheep. Powerful trucks bring feed for them from the other side of the world, where local crops have been replaced by food production for organic cows from Europe. Crates of produce do not go to the market, but to giant refrigerated warehouses, from where they flow or fly thousands of kilometers to the wholesalers of retail chains. 80% of the crops produced on earth are eaten by animals which we then kill.

This has to be stopped. It’s a catastrophe on our plates.

You can start with the amazing film made by the Green REV Institute, Sylwia Spurek which is just being released.”

Review of Dining on despair by Daniel Petryczkiewicz, photographer, activist, climate activist.

Premiering February 17, 2024 (online & in Wroclaw). Also seen in Krakow, Katowice, Kielce and Warsaw.

Credit: Jakub Wosik/ Safe Food Forum 2022