Up In Smoke
People:
Adam Wakeling (Director, Producer)
Claire Ferguson (Editor, Co-Producer)
Jess Search (Executive Producer), Brian Woods (Executive Producer)
Grants:
$10,000 for outreach and audience engagement in 2011
About the Project
Up in Smoke follows British scientist Mike Hands, who has laboured for 25 years to perfect a sustainable farming technique to replace slash and burn farming in equatorial rainforests. And he's found it. But developing the technique was only the start. Now he needs to persuade governments, agencies and, more importantly than anyone else, the farmers to all adopt it.The film follows three principal characters: Mike Hands, and two Honduran farmers, Faustino and Aladino. One has adopted and embraced Mike's technique, the other is waiting to be convinced and drive the change forward.
This is a film about life and death struggles. About the ceaseless fight of Mike Hands to get a world to have faith in his revolutionary findings. It's about the life and death struggle of farmers who can ill afford to take the risk of adopting a new farming method. It's a film about our driving need to change what's happening to the remaining rainforests of the planet, and about the forces that may prevent that change from happening.
Up in Smoke is a film about a technique that could save more carbon emissions annually than all global aviation combined. Through decades of proven results, Mike’s work in alley-cropping with the inga tree has resulted in the potential transformation of farming in the humid tropics, and potentially further. If widely implemented, it could give hundreds of millions of people the opportunity to achieve sustainable food sovereignty, economic independence and massively reduce deforestation. It could pave the way to future in equitable carbon sequestration projects, owned by farmers themselves.
Real interest has also been shown that could provide global distribution of organic and sustainably grown produce, and give consumers the chance to help drive change forward.