Review: Seed: the Untold Story (2016)

[Mark R. Leeper]

SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY educates the viewer
about the importance of seeds to stave off famine.
It foretells the coming seed crisis with the loss of
biodiversity in our varieties of fruits and vegetables.
There are serious threats to that biodiversity as
mega-corporations genetically modify plants and are
allowed to patent and own plant varieties. They are
getting dangerous control of our food supply. Rating:
low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

The international diversity of seeds almost by itself saves us from
having famine. The Irish potato blight happened because the Irish
depended so much on one variety of potato. When it was hit with
fungus, the fields of potato essential to the local diet became
useless mush. When the famine was over, there were two million
people no longer there. In about even numbers a million had
migrated to elsewhere and a million remained at home and died of
starvation. There was just not another variety of potato to
replace the one they had lost. Plant diversity is extremely
important. Our modern society is also dependent on fewer and fewer
varieties of plants. For each 25 varieties of vegetable seed alive
at the beginning of the last century, only one is left alive. The
multiplicity of vegetable varieties is being lost.

SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY is a report on why the many vegetable seed
varieties are so important to us and an account of the loss of
diversity, who is working to save seed, and what threats are
sweeping down on important crops from climate change, genetic
modification, and the legal recognition of plant genetic
modification and patenting. Mega-corporations like Bayer and
Monsanto control the seed crop and pesticides required to be used
with the genetically modified crops so that the source of seeds
cannot be from the previous year's crop and has to be from the
corporation.

Perhaps the narrative could have used some fine-tuning. The
filmmakers start with lore of the seeds and of seed culture. They
seem overly concerned with creating a pretty film. and they wait
too long to get to the most important message, (My wife was
waiting to hear about the agricultural crisis, but when the on-
screen experts started having people say that the seed is their
grandfather she decided instead to go read.) Anthropomorphizing
the spirit of the corn seems to me to be of less value than
presenting a serious account of the problem. The film should
earlier get to a serious and straightforward account of the danger
to the food supply. The extent of the problem is discussed in
interviews with scientists, farmers, native Americans, and even
Jane Goodall. The film is directed by Jon Betz and Taggart Siegel,
respectively the producer and director of QUEEN OF THE SUN: WHAT
ARE THE BEES TELLING US? That is a beautiful and colorful film
that also takes a while to get to its most important subject
message. Betz and Siegel see a bleak future with no bees to
pollinate plants and without necessary seed varieties.

SEED includes accounts of Monsanto, these days a biotech company
that is frequently in court as defendant or plaintiff against
farmers. The film gives an account of one farmer who was sued by
that company because his crop had been contaminated with a leak of
Monsanto's genetically modified seed that had been made resistant
to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY, once it gets to the point, certainly gives
and effective case that we are losing control of food production
around the world. The filmmakers make a case for how serious the
threat is of corporations like Monsanto getting control of our
crops. I rate SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY a low +2 on the -4 to +4
scale or 7/10. SEED will open in New York on September 23 and Los
Angeles on September 30.

Film Credits:
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5971724/combined>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/seed_the_untold_story>


Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2016 Mark R. Leeper