Think you could be a farmer? Do you think you’d like to become one, maybe leave your rat race life and go work the land? It might sound nice, it might even sound relaxing, but it’s still really hard work. Perhaps it’s more rewarding at times, but often it’s a job, or a business even, just the same. And there’s new documentary that illustrates this really well from award-winning director James Moll (a rare documentarian to have an Oscar, Emmy and Grammy — now he just needs to get a Tony somehow for his EGOT honor). Titled Farmland, the film looks at the lives of a new generation of growers and ranchers. These subjects, all in their 20s, are a rarity right now, as a lot of children and grandchildren of the traditional American farmer is moving on to other kinds of work.
In the clip below, which we’re honored to be able to present, you mostly get to meet Margaret Schlass, who farms 18 acres of vegetables for a CSA (community supported agriculture) operation in Pennsylvania. Then there’s 25-year-old David Loberg, who now runs his fifth-generation family farm in Nebraska with his mother, plus he runs two related side operations and has a wife and child to be with, as well. And finally at the end of this clip encouraging the public to ask him anything about farming is Dylan Veldhuizen. He’s fourth generation, taking over his family farm in Minnesota. Outside of Schlass getting dirty and sweaty, you don’t get a full understanding of what their lives and duties entail, but that’s the job of the movie as a whole.
Are you intrigued to find out all that you don’t know? Farmland opens this Friday in Los Angeles and Chicago and screens in major cities nationwide Friday.