Public Broadcasting Services has done a service for food history

I love the U.S.’s Public Broadcasting Services. It is a bit under-appreciated, as compared to BBC, but they produce quality series like the iconic Ken Burns documentaries as one example. One of my favorite shows is American Experience. They have done some fantastic documentaries on individuals relevant to the Food Archive. Let’s take the environment. They had a wonderful series on Rachel Carson, who wrote the seminal book Silent Spring in 1962 that sparked the environmental movement. The documentary gives a fair portrait of her complexity and how her writings revolutionized our relationship to the natural world. There was also a thoughtful documentary on chef, advocate, and restaurant owner, Alice Waters. While her vision of the global food system may be out of reach for many, she has been highly influential on the local and organic food movement originating in the groovy hippie days of yesteryears. The scene where she intimately discusses a small garden tomato in her hand is priceless. And last, and just released, is the Norman Borlaug doc on “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World.” It highlights the positive and negative consequences of one man’s single-minded vision to start the Green Revolution and conquer hunger once and for all. I wish I would have had this documentary last year when I taught my class on rural development. And if you have any bandwidth left in you, I highly recommend this great documentary “A Full Bowl” (not PBS) on Alan Berg, World Banker, who influenced the international undernutrition agenda. He was not only a great thinker and writer, but shaped the nutrition agenda in the 1970s and 80s, and his work and issues are still relevant today. He sort of reminds me, at least in his motivation, of Borlaug. Now, you might say, I can’t access the PBS series unless I support my local station. They need your support, particularly with the lack of finances from our current, shitty US government. So go out and support PBS and be entertained for hours…