How Do We Manage the Agricultural Turnaround? (2019)

Industrial agriculture ensures our food supply and has made vegetables, fruit and meat cheaper. But we are feeling the consequences more and more clearly: our drinking water is polluted with nitrates, insects are dying, and the soil is leaching. That's why not only environmentalists and consumers, but also the farmers themselves see that things can't go on like this. What alternatives are there to industrial agriculture? Is "organic for all" possible? Or can conventional agriculture also be made more sustainable in crucial respects? Scientists also have high hopes for the new "permaculture" method of cultivation, which is based on ecological principles. Can it make a decisive contribution to an agriculture of the future? For one year, the film accompanies farmers in Germany and France who are looking for alternatives. Sven Wilhelm from Renchtal in the Black Forest has converted his vegetable cultivation to organic. In the conversion phase, he needs staying power to survive. Michael Reber from Schwäbisch-Hall is taking an intermediate route. Instead of spending more and more money on mineral fertilizers and sprays, he is trying to increase soil fertility on his fields with special humus fertilizers. And in Normandy, Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer are pursuing an experiment called "permaculture" that significantly increases productivity despite the absence of chemicals. But it also shows that without a change in the EU's subsidy rules and in consumers' buying behavior, a turnaround in agriculture cannot be achieved.