Filmmaker Robert Golden’s latest film, a powerful statement about the planet on which we live, is scheduled for a world premier in Bridport in January. He spoke to Fergus Byrne.

Documentary filmmaker, Robert Golden, had a powerful motivation for making his latest film: ‘They are killing people’ he told me from his home outside Bridport. ‘These people should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.’ It is Robert’s strong belief that politicians, indeed governments across the world, are in the pockets of large corporations that are ‘perpetuating market places and ways of doing things that are actually going to kill their grandchildren.’ He goes on to say that these corporations are ‘already causing terrible destruction around the world’ and says ‘there is not much difference between them and the SS of the Second World War.’
These potent and damning beliefs are part of the reason he was compelled to make his latest film, This Good Earth, which is to be premiered in Bridport on 21 January at an event that will be live-streamed around the world from the Bridport Arts Centre. Afterwards there will be a discussion with Robert Golden and several of the interviewees from the film about the necessity and power of storytelling to bring change. Tickets will be available in the beginning of January from the film’s website, https://this-good-earth.com.
A ninety-two-minute documentary, This Good Earth paints a picture of global food markets skewed for profit, with farmers strangled by the greed of businesses whose motivation is naked self-interest. It is the story of a food system that causes environmental destruction, obesity, hunger and increasing levels of food-related diseases. A story of how intensive farming—using agrichemicals designed to create efficiencies and higher profits for large corporations—is damaging resources to a point where some may never recover. The film also highlights the enormous amounts of workers poisoned by pesticides, quoting a figure of 40,000 fatalities; a number that doesn’t attempt to include the huge impact of long-term health issues.
The film came about when Robert had been asked to make an update to a locally-based episode from his Savouring Europe documentaries—a series of beautifully filmed profiles of food production from different countries around the world. However, the idea of making an update changed. ‘It became less and less a celebration of what’s around here, although of course in some senses it is’ he explained ‘and more and more a critical look at what’s going on in our world.’ He found himself drawn back to research he did on a project many years before, then titled Toxic Harvest. It had been shelved due to the 2008 economic crash. But the lessons Robert learned from that, along with his need to tell that story, had never left him. ‘I decided to take all the different elements from soil all the way through hunger and bad diet and disease and show them as a whole picture, and pay attention to the fact that we live in a holistic world. The degradation of soil has a direct link to climate change and people accessing food.’
He learned an enormous amount from the farmers, producers, scientists and professors he had interviewed when researching the project. ‘I began to realise that not only was it a much darker story than even I could think of—and I have a pretty dark view of the world—but that the connections were even more sinister. That’s when I began to understand that I had to make different kinds of linkages. The soil question is directly linked to climate change; the question of landscape is directly linked to the disappearance of species, and the long food chain is definitely linked to peoples’ illnesses.’
He hoped that step by step, the story would be clear. ‘But there was an underlying thing I wanted to do which is basically to say, “look at how extraordinarily beautiful this planet is”. Seduced by the beauty of the earth and its stunning landscape, Robert hopes that people will ask who is really causing destruction and why is this happening. ‘We all know the answers’ he says. ‘I realised that all these professors and the farmers know what the answers are. It’s not a question of a lack of knowledge; it’s a question of something else. And the something else, obviously, is a combination of policymakers, politicians and corporations whose vested interests are not to let anything change. So they mendaciously stand in the way just like the tobacco companies did, knowing full well the consequences of what they are doing, and yet still doing it.’
Although discussed in dozens of books, reports, magazine articles and television documentaries over recent years, each view offers fresh eyes and this is a story that, as Robert points out, needs to be told as often as it takes to stop the destruction of the planet and the poisoning of its people.
Set in and around West Dorset, the film is beautifully shot and simply presented without the use of a narrator. It is told using comments from farmers, producers, scientists and academics whose compelling arguments against the tactics and philosophy of large agrichemical, distribution and sales organisations, makes it clear that this message cannot be ignored.
In the opening scene, a local farmer walks through a freshly ploughed field using his feet to kick through and test the dry soil. The ground he walks on is the starting point of the growing cycle and the source that constantly gives up nutrients for the benefit of whatever is harvested from it. The first segment of This Good Earth makes the point that without constant care and respect, the organic material that creates the nutrients that allow plants to thrive will no longer support our needs. Decades of chemical intervention to try to control nature has made and continues to make it harder and harder for the soil to survive.
In the film, interviews with local farmers are interspersed with testament from scientists and officials such as Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy; Erik Millstone, Emeritus Professor of Science Policy at the University of Sussex; Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex and Liz Bowles from the Soil Association. Set against the backdrop of West Dorset small-scale farming, their comments starkly highlight the need to wake up to the damage intensive farming is doing.
Aware of the corporate need to create efficiencies to increase yields and therefore profits, Ellen Simon at Tamarisk Farm points out that, small-scale operations like hers are obviously not the most efficient in terms of output, but they, therefore, do not contribute to global warming in the same way. Relying on local markets, smaller operations, especially organic and those supplying local markets are not so much bound by the rules of forces out of their control.
Philip Colfox from Symondsbury Estate talked about how the lack of contact with the customer left many farmers trapped in a cycle they had no control over; a cycle where an intermediary supplied the raw materials including agrichemicals to help increase yields, and then, through a related intermediary, purchased the harvest. It was a system that tied the farmer to a process which had to be adhered to or they would be quickly dropped as a supplier. ‘He’s stuck in a vice and not able to negotiate his own price’ explained Philip. ‘He’s not able to create his own products to sell to his customers, he’s just growing commodities.’ This made it very difficult for the farmer to do what he could be proud of; ‘to simply create good quality food for the customer. He’s just someone running a sort of factory, almost a captive in the good old-fashioned sense—and he’s sold his soul to the company store.’
Buyers that dictate what is grown have less interest in the long term view that environmentalists or those concerned with health issues share. Profit over a small number of years is their motivation and one that results in land use more likely to destroy nutrients and local ecosystems rather than allowing them to regenerate or thrive.
That loss of nutrition and the residue left by chemical additives also help produce products that lack the same natural health value; products that may indeed feed the many, but with little thought for their long-term health.
Erik Millstone, Emeritus Professor of Science Policy at The University of Sussex points out that ‘after agrochemicals have been sprayed on land and crops, they inevitably contaminate the food that we subsequently eat. And while it’s common for officials and their government advisors to say “Oh the residual levels are safe” I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I think there’s quite a lot of evidence that even the pesticide residues in common foods are problematic.’ Professor Millstone wants to see a proper system of testing and assessment that he says ‘ought not to rely just on evidence from chemical companies but also from independent scientists such as academic scientists or people working in public health institutes.’ He says that all evidence gathered should be registered and pooled so that companies can ‘no longer have the option of concealing unfavourable evidence.’
Diet and our over-reliance on mass-produced meat is a problem that has become a much-debated issue. Talking of the overuse of land for animal feed and the lack of concern for biodiversity, Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy, says ‘the figures don’t add up’. If we only focus on the short-term needs of humans he says: ‘basically the planet stops functioning.’
Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society at The University of Essex points out that we pay four times for the food we eat; first at the till, then for the cost of cleaning up the environment and thirdly in Government subsidies from our taxes. On top of that, he says there’s actually a fourth way that we pay for our food and that is in the result of the choices that we ultimately make about the food that we eat. Those choices are not necessarily free choices; ‘they are constrained by our own resources’ he says, alluding to the food poverty that has seen a huge increase in food banks, ‘or strongly shaped by advertising or other corporate interests to encourage us to eat certain sorts of foods. The result of that is that a large amount of ill health worldwide now is related to the kinds of foods we do eat.’
This Good Earth focuses on three elements; soil, land and food. Within these three broad subjects, the film tackles a myriad of issues that cannot be described in a short article. However, the message is clear and the film asks for our response and action to deal with a system that can easily be interpreted as criminal.
Tim Lang describes a truth that is all too often apparent. He talks of the fantasy world of hour after hour of ‘TV chefs tantalising, and competitions tantalising you with totally unaffordable foods and tastes’ against the reality of very big companies, ‘trying to sell you cheap pap which is tasty, sweet, fatty, lovely instantaneously, but makes you obese and you die early.’ He believes ‘diet is one of, if not the major cause of premature death.’
Patty Rundell from the International Baby Food Action Network cited the addictive nature of sugar: ‘You get hooked on sugar’ she says. ‘It is addictive, all these things are addictive and they know it. And the corporates behind it know exactly what they are doing in the way that they sell it to us.’ She cites how the baby food sector was one of the first to pinpoint something called ‘commerciogenic malnutrition’—a term for something that means you actually cause harm or death by commercial practices.
While many people make the point that social movements are vital to help affect change, it is also clear that the law must play a role in challenging these commercial practises that could be seen as criminal. Human Rights Lawyer, Richard Harvey, makes a point that echoes Robert Golden’s belief that there are criminal activities to be dealt with. ‘Food is big business, very very big business’ Richard says. ‘Just like oil, just like gas, these are substances that really are all about money as far as the big manufacturers are concerned.’ He says that while we know what we should be doing to the land and what we should be eating, ‘the really smart people that run those big businesses’ know that better than anybody, because they’ve been studying their industry and how to manipulate it for years. ‘So when you know that the quality of the food that’s being produced is actually damaging the people that it is destined for, it’s a bit like saying that you are poisoning them. And there are laws against poisoning.’
He says that one can prosecute a CEO or the very highest board members of those companies, but he also knows there are strong forces in play and doesn’t believe the law is the final solution. ‘There are clearly cases where the companies control the courts to the extent that individuals have got very little chance of winning against them’ he says. But he believes we all have a human right to a clean, healthy, safe and nutritious environment, one that is all about human dignity. He asks a hopeful question: ‘isn’t that really what we all want?’
Robert Golden believes that ‘corporations own most of the politicians and the political parties’ and that one way or another, big business is able to put huge pressure on politics. He believes their terror of potential unrest by interfering with existing food systems is part of the reason for political inertia. ‘I think a combination of their terror and their pocketbooks and their paying for elections means they are not servicing us—they are servicing the corporations.’
This Good Earth makes a solid case and although it doesn’t set out to offer all the answers, dissecting the issues is a way of finding a route to a better future. Perhaps there is the chance that a combination of the law, along with social movements for change and individual efforts to live better can alter the future for our grandchildren—but only if everyone cares about their grandchildren.

The most popular New Year’s wish is that 2021 is nothing like 2020. Fergus Byrne has been hearing from some local businesses about how they see the next year unfolding

Looking into a crystal ball at the beginning of a new year we often hear talk of ‘million-dollar questions’ about the future. This year, it’s more likely to be ‘billion-dollar questions’ and it’s also more likely to be about years rather than the next twelve months. What lies ahead for the world economy, the national economy—and more important to most of us in this corner of the South West—what lies ahead for local business and the economy of our wider local community is a popular question.
Although for some, the impact of Brexit will be somewhat hidden by the impact of coronavirus, the double hit on the UK is enormous—especially when many businesses have never fully recovered from the 2008 economic crash. And while debate on the rights and wrongs of decisions made by government over the last few years and months will rage forever, this is where we are. So with hospitality and retail in the spotlight, we asked a few local businesses to tell us a bit about their hopes for the coming year.
Unsurprisingly, views are mixed. There’s is no doubt that for many there is light at the end of the tunnel, it’s more a question of how long that tunnel is—and for some businesses it is likely to be longer than for others.
Alastair Warren, chairman of The Electric Pub Company, a recently launched hospitality business in Dorset, sets a positive tone but echoes a point that many have voiced in recent years. He warns that if we don’t support local businesses we will lose them. Talking about the upsurge in online purchasing and the long term effect that that may have on his local town of Bridport he said: ‘It’s perfectly fine to buy things online, we’re all human beings and all looking for a bargain at the end of the day. But if you do that at the expense of going into RLK Tools or into Cilla & Camilla or the Morrish & Banham Wine Shop or any of the other independent retailers in town, eventually those retailers won’t be there.’
As the owner of the Electric Palace Cinema and a growing stable of pubs as well as a wine business, Alastair is aware of just how difficult trading has been in the last year for customer-facing businesses. ‘The last year has been about survival’ he says. He believes that in the main, government support for the sector has been good. Grants and furloughing have helped offset some of his company’s losses, and post lockdown trading in pubs like the Pymore Inn outside Bridport has also helped. But social distancing makes it very difficult for most pubs to trade. And with limited inside space, he sees a ‘difficult winter’ ahead.
However, looking further ahead he believes valuable and useful lessons have been learned on both sides of the counter from the way the industry has adapted. ‘We got an enormous amount of support’ he says of the way people came out to the pubs that were able to open. ‘And I think we learnt a lot.’ He cites ‘table service’ regulations and food deliveries as bonuses for customers that he describes as ‘much better in terms of the customer experience.’
So, whilst he hopes that by next summer we have ‘something that looks more like normal’ and that people will be able to walk up to the bar to order drinks, he thinks that levels of customer service will have improved. ‘We will continue doing food deliveries in a post-lockdown world because people like it’ he says. ‘We were forced to do exclusively table service; we will continue to do table service in those venues which can justify it, like the Pymore Inn and one of the others, in a post-lockdown world.’ Alastair wants to retain ‘the good bits’ as well as allow customers to ‘do all the things you used to be able to do—hopefully in a post-vaccine, normalised world.’
His business can be broken down into three categories: the cinema, the wine business and the pubs. All sides of the business were negatively impacted by the coronavirus lockdowns in different ways—the cinema perhaps worse than others. ‘I would say that cinemas and theatres are almost the sworn enemy of social distancing’ he says. He explained that when you go to a cinema or a theatre you typically are sitting very close to the person next to you and generally entering in through a crowded foyer, as well as mixing with people while getting drinks at the interval. And of course live music or theatre, involves interaction between lots of people, with the exception perhaps of solo comedy shows and cinema.
‘So, by definition, it’s very difficult to maintain social distancing’ he says. ‘That being said, we did reopen very briefly, to do the first part of BridLit prior to the current lockdown, and actually, it went incredibly well.’ Although only able to facilitate about half the normal audience, he said the event was very well supported. ‘People were incredibly understanding, in terms of how they entered and how they exited the building, how they pre-ordered their drinks, how they just operated responsibly. That has given us great encouragement.’ Encouragement enough to consider running a limited programme of comedy which he says ‘can be done because there’s only one person on the stage and then a spread-out audience.’ He hopes the same can happen with film, with the audience distanced.
‘What remains difficult, until such time as social distancing is removed, is live theatre and live music because you just can’t make the numbers work. You need too many people in the building to make a commercially realistic enterprise. But with the optimistic view that the government will have rolled out a vaccination programme to the most vulnerable by the Spring, and then with a view that the weather will be improving and there will be a more comprehensive roll-out of vaccinations through the summer, we are hopeful that we will be back to normal audience numbers by the summer period’.
Although that may feel like a long way from now, it shows a level of positivity that might give theatre goers hope.
Alastair is also investing in the Bridport Arts Centre building with plans for a restaurant, café and wine bar next year. However, although his wine retail business is doing well and he expects it to grow he says ‘I’m actually pretty cautious on retail generally because there has been this marked shift towards online.’ This is why he hopes people will make the effort to support their local independent shops and businesses. ‘You’ve got to be balanced about it’ he says. ‘I’m not saying buy everything in Bridport but I’m saying, spend money in town because otherwise the town that you love won’t be there and I think that’s really my message and that’s what I try to do. Of course, there are some things which I source from suppliers outside of town but the vast majority of things that we buy for our businesses, we buy from the local area and we recognise we have to sometimes pay a little bit more for that. But do you know what, customers, in turn, are also prepared to pay a little bit more for that. It’s a little bit everywhere, and doing a little bit to help everybody sustains these communities.’
Richard Barker from Cilla and Camilla is also upbeat about the future of our local community. Although hit hard by the lockdown, he saw better trading than expected when the first closure ended. ‘We had a wonderful summer’ he said. ‘We put that down to two things; people not going on summer holidays, so we saw an awful lot more visitors who were choosing to camp or come to nice hotels in Dorset rather than go to wherever they went otherwise. But we also saw a lot of people that might have gone and shopped in Exeter or Bournemouth or Bath or Bristol, who simply weren’t going.’
Many retailers and hospitality industry businesses had looked forward to November as a bonus trading period after losing the first months of the summer. But the second lockdown ended that hope. Kathryn Haskins from the Alexandra Hotel in Lyme Regis had seen November as a month when a little of the revenue from lost bookings might be clawed back. But it wasn’t to be. ‘We were looking forward to a really busy November and that all went by the board’ she said. The overheads of running a building like the Alexandra when there is no income is a massive challenge. No easing of business rates can cover those costs. Unlike the retail option of increasing stock and selling more products, the hotel industry sells time. ‘In a hotel, the rooms you’ve lost are the rooms you’ve lost, you can’t make up for it’ she says.
Tier 2 rules have not helped the restaurant trade either. ‘Not many people go out to eat with the people they live with’ explained Kathryn. ‘A lot of people go out to meet with friends and of course, you can’t do that, so all our lunch booking trade is just gone. People come to eat with friends and catch up.’ Alluding to the Government ruling she said, ‘So they’ve killed the business without killing it.’ However, no matter how hard it may be, she is fiercely determined to support her local community. As soon as lockdown lifted she and her daughter were out visiting the local shops. ‘We’ve done a binge in Beaminster and a binge in Lyme’ she says. ‘We’ve been waiting until the shops open to actually spend our money locally and I think a lot of people are doing that.’
That is one of the many positives that we hear from both businesses and customers, and not just locally. When the first lockdown hit, a national spirit of sympathetic support lifted the country. ‘I think it is great how positive people have been locally and how supportive people have been locally’ said Kathryn. ‘The messages we have had from guests and from all over the country and even from abroad have been so lovely. I’m hoping that that will continue into the time we reopen.’
That hope for a better year ahead, as 2021 moves into Spring, is echoed not only by those in business and their customers but also in the way some business owners are looking ahead. Mark Hix, whose restaurant chain went into administration in April 2020 as a result of the pandemic, has already reopened his original restaurant in Lyme Regis and has now taken on the lease at the Fox Inn in Corscombe. The pub had been bought by local residents Eva and the late Ray Harvey in 2012 to save it from being turned into housing and to preserve the hamlet’s history. Family friends of Mark’s for many years he explained, ‘When they offered me the lease, I thought it could be a great opportunity, despite these uncertain times that we are in. It will be my first pub, so it’s an exciting new project for me in the countryside where I’ll be serving local meat and game along with some British pub classics, a contrast to the fish and seafood offering in Lyme.’
Mark has many plans to help build up local trade while at the same time promoting other local producers. In the New Year, he hopes to host a Farmer’s market showcasing the best of the produce from the local area. ‘With all the challenges that we are facing now, it’s great to be able to focus on an exciting new project’ he said. ‘It’s important to me that I keep The Fox as a traditional local pub with great food and drink. Since lockdown in Spring the pub has only been open three days a week, so I am looking forward to opening six days a week for the locals and visitors to the area to enjoy once more.’
Listening to the thoughts of some of those in business locally, it’s no surprise that there are mixed feelings about the future of the local economy. Rebecca Hansford from the award-winning wine producer Furleigh Estate outside Salway Ash, saw an increase in trade as soon as the first lockdown ended. ‘However, there is no escaping from the fact that we lost our Easter and early summer 2020 trading period—a quarter of the year’ she explained. She also had to cut prices to keep cash coming in to pay vineyard staff.
Rebecca is also keenly aware of the impact that Brexit will have on her business. Most of her equipment comes from the EU which means servicing and parts will be a headache, as well as sourcing products such as corks and wirehoods which currently come from Portugal and France. Her company produces some of the best wine in England, but as she points out, cost increases are inevitable. ‘The issue for us is whether the wine drinkers of the world will pay the increased price this will mean for our wine. Still, C’est la vie!’
Alastair Warren has said that he believes customers will be prepared to pay a little bit extra to support their local community, and with reports of a likely hike in the cost of imported foods after December 31st—and this could apply to many products—his ability to look at a national or global view may be helpful. As a former senior executive at Deutsche Bank as well as at Goldman Sachs, Alastair is in the unique position to be able to look at the bigger picture, as well as the area he grew up in. ‘There will, I think inevitably be some economic cost to Brexit’ he says. Although he hopes it will be mitigated to a large extent by whatever deal is agreed with Brussels. But he believes it will also be mitigated by an increase in taxes. Regardless of whatever government is in power, he says ‘That’s the only way you can pay for it.’
But he also believes that the government will need to make people feel better, so hopes to see them ‘providing some kind of support or price guarantees for domestic producers which will be important around milk and other produce.’ He also suggests that the housing market will need to be assisted with an extension of stamp duty relief and other measures ‘because the housing market, in the south-east of England is still totally dead, pretty much, and that has a knock-on effect through the whole thing.’ He expects interest rates to remain low for a very long time and hopes also to see increased levels of support for ‘small and medium-sized businesses and the rural community.’
Unlike many who share dire predictions of a post COVID world, Alastair doesn’t expect a global meltdown. ‘I’m actually pretty optimistic about the global outlook’ he says. ‘I don’t see global recession, I actually see continued stimulus coming from a wide variety of governments.’ However, he believes much depends on the success of a vaccine. Speaking about the other businesses he runs he says ‘we are seeing pretty encouraging signs, albeit critically dependent on the vaccine becoming a reality.’
With his “investor confidence” hat on, Alastair offers fascinating insights into what we may expect from the impact of Brexit and the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on our future, but his keen business eye is also heavily focused on his local town and the wider community around it. ‘One of the great strengths of Bridport is the fact that there are very few chain stores in the town’ he says. ‘And we’ve got a small number of quite large private landlords who have actively encouraged independent retail for many years, and my understanding is that through this difficult trading period, they’ve actually been pretty flexible on rents and the like. So, I’m actually quite optimistic for Bridport because I think the landlords have acted responsibly. But I’m quite cautious about the market towns and larger retail centres where they don’t have that same feel and understanding. Bridport is quite unique in that sense.’
The retail market may look worrying after the collapse of efforts to keep Arcadia and consequently Debenhams alive, but both Alastair Warren and Richard Barker see that as something that was going to happen despite the impact of COVID-19. Arcadia ‘was over-levered and they hadn’t moved with the times’ says Alastair and ‘It’s not the pandemic that’s caused the problem. There was a problem already and this has just exacerbated it and brought the issue forward’ says Richard.
On balance, we may be fortunate within the Marshwood Vale Magazine’s wider local community to be somewhat shielded and less prone to the devastation that this last year has wrought on some parts of the country. But there is little doubt that challenges remain. And the one thing that can help to temper these potential difficulties is ensuring that we spend as much of our money in nearby towns and villages as we can, and support locally-owned businesses as a priority.