New GB Film Premiers: En Nuestras Manos/In Our Hands
Director's Statement from Matt Anderson, Filmmaker

IMAGE CREDITS: En Nuestras Manos/In Our Hands

We are delighted to announce the release of a beautiful new film from Director Matt Anderson and Ecology Action about the Global GROW BIOINTENSIVE Family. "En Nuestras Manos/In Our Hands" is a project of Ecology Action and was made possible by our generous funders, including Patagonia Works, The Warsh Mott Foundation and Cynthia Raiser Jeavons. You can watch it for free at vimeo.com/465494278 and www.earthlodgestudio.com/manos

While living at the Jeavons Center from 2014 to 2016 I had the tremendous opportunity to farm and film with many talented and courageous people from around the world. The incredible stories that these farmers shared inspired me to find a way to visit them after they had returned home. I became intent to discover for myself the amazing Biointensive projects happening all over the planet—and share the findings through a film project.

John Jeavons and I wrote to Yvon Chouinard’s Patagonia Works Foundation for a production grant. At the end of 2015 we received a check, and I was on my way to several Latin American countries with a camera on my back. Speeding up dirt roads in the back of many pick-up trucks, I ran through countless fields and chased after farmers who graciously shared their world with me. It was dizzying and electrifying; I was astounded to find out just how profoundly the Biointensive method was changing people's lives.

Everywhere I went I saw land devastated from decades of petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides and other unsustainable practices. Many communities were now in dire straits, but again and again I was seeing the same pattern: those who had begun adopting the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method were regenerating soil microbiology and growing abundant food. This information was passing swiftly from farmer to farmer, providing a desperately needed path forward for small-scale food growers. When I asked people the difference between the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method and that of their grandparents, I often got the same response: "Not too much, but I use less space and get more food." It became apparent that I was capturing the blossoming of an agricultural revolution, a rejection of destructive and resource-intensive practices and a return to ancestral and indigenous life-ways.

After traveling to Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil I returned to Northern California and began trying to distill these experiences into a film series called "En Nuestras Manos / In Our Hands". Inspired by A GB Farmer's Mini-Handbook by Margo Royer-Miller, I decided to tell these stories while also conveying the central concepts behind each of the eight GROW BIOINTENSIVE principles. While there are many great technical resources for people to begin growing food Biointensively, I feel there is still a need to better understand why these principles are important and how they interconnect. I hope that through these stories and experiences, audiences can better comprehend how this profound method can improve both their garden and their lives.

Having spent nearly four years crafting nine episodes, I hope to honor the amazing, revolutionary work I captured. I am deeply grateful to the many selfless people who helped me along this journey; I can’t wait to share it with you! And while I wish that this series had been ready sooner, I get a sense that this truly is the moment where we all must realize that the answers are under our feet and that the future really is in our hands.

Watch the trailer:

En Nuestras Manos / In Our Hands [TRAILER] from Ecology Action on Vimeo.

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