Occupy the Farm

Occupy the Farm is the compelling narrative of a community’s struggle to preserve public land for urban farming. When 200 people marched to the gates of a publicly owned research farm on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay, they did not carry signs protesting plans by UC Berkeley to turn the land into a shopping mall. Instead, they carried tents, tools and 15,000 seedlings. They cut the padlock off the gate, walked onto this land, and planted it with two acres of crops in order to save a public resource from becoming privatized. Occupy the Farm captures a dramatic showdown, and tracks the quick evolution of tactics and strategy by both farmers and UC Berkeley officials. “Riveting from the start,” says the Village Voice’s Ernest Handy. “It illustrates the staggering extent to which corporate interests dictate policy and shape scientific research.” From tilling the soil to police raids, from lawsuits to overflowing harvests, Occupy the Farm reveals a resourceful, creative, and determined community using direct action to respond to a serious social need: access to healthy food.