After announcing his new film, This Good Earth , we spoke to director Robert Golden about how it came about.

The 92-minute film shot in Dorset and two years in the making, 'exposes how we must urgently change the ways we farm and eat'.

Bridport film-maker set to release new documentary looking at how we farm and eat

What led to this film?

I've done 27 other films around the world about food and culture, the first series was called Savouring The World and the second series was called Savouring Europe.

Between the first and the second series, I did a lot more research – of course I researched for the first series – but it came out of Tina [Robert's wife] and I talking about why was there never any good.

Because I had worked so much in food and I know how much we all love food in one way or the other when we have access to it, that if I did a series of films around food, and food and culture in particular, I think that I could produce a really lovely set of films and also a celebration for people to be relieved from the horrors of our lives.

When I did that, because I did close ups, I began to see in people's faces something that was reminiscent to something else that I had done and I realised after I had finished the last of the series and was editing that what I had seen on their faces was what I have seen in all the photojournalism I did in the 70s, where I essentially documented the beginning of the disintegration of the British industrial working class.

What I had seen in people's faces was deep insecurity and deep unhappiness and I began to wonder, 'what is all that about?' and why did I see people with those looks both in western India and New Orleans and everywhere else.

What happened next?

I did a lot of research.

I discovered neoliberalism, which I knew very little of, it wasn't talked about. Then from neoliberalism I began to learn about globalisation and I began to realise that what had happened to the British industrial working class was globalisation, that people decided they would offshore industry to cheaper areas where they could get lower prices without unions involved and so on.

It began to make sense to me that the things I had seen amongst the farmers and fishermen was the same process of globalisation beginning to occur where their markets were being destroyed in front of their eyes.

Injustice, unfairness, oppression, poverty, hunger, all those things I was beginning to see, so the second series I did, which included Savouring Dorset, had that within it.

The first series sold to 40 countries, the second sold to 11 countries. The reason for the difference was the sponsors, who were mostly food sponsors, didn't want to show the films because they were critical of the world we live in.

Tina and Robert started Screen Bites Festival with two journalists more than 15 years ago as part of Dorset Food Week

At that time, a chap in Broadwindsor invited a lot of the farmers and bakers and other people who were involved in my first film to come along and see the film again and for us all to talk. It was very sweet.

A lot of people said to me, 'It helped us so much, it put us on the map', but also, they said, why don't you do an update.

That's what I started on. All those films were 26 minutes, this film is 90 minutes.

What's the update?

What happened between the first film and now is that I had done a huge amount of research on globalisation and international food trade and learned horrible things, really horrible things, about what was going on in the world of food.

For instance, three companies in America are responsible for creating the foods that cause obesity in America and at the same time, because of their policy of dumping cheap food on foreign markets, are also responsible for continuing starvation in the third world. That's what really motivated me when I realised that was going on.

I started asking myself some questions, how could they live with themselves, I just thought that informed what I was doing.

As I started on this film, which again started out as a 26-minute film, the first thing I thought I would do is instead of concentrating only on Dorset, was to go and talk to academics, scientists and medical people, try and find out what their views are about what's going on in the world today. We know about poverty and food banks; we know about processed food and feeding people things with very few nutrients in them.

What really struck me was these very bright people would discuss from their point of view what they were doing mostly – some in England, some in the UK and some in the southern hemisphere – with great success, really changing the way farmers were farming and dealing with the question of green gas emissions.

As I thought about the film, I thought actually, what's in front of me is that everything we need to know is there, these men and women know what has to be done.

The next question became, what's in the way? Who is standing in the way of change?

I started changing my concept of giving a holistic view of the world of food, the food change from the field to the fork, realising that actually most people know about it intuitively but what they don't know is what's in the way and why it's in the way.

Once I realised these people understood what to do, I began to think I had to deal with this question, 'what should be done?'.

I spoke to a human rights lawyer about what could be done, because obviously what's happening is the giant corporations are standing in the way of change.

What I also realised, which I found very interesting, is there is a tendency to think the farmers are the bad guys, and actually the farmers aren't the bad guys, the farmers are trapped by the marketplace and so I really don't want farmers to think I am getting at them.

I think they will understand if they see it, even though the film says ploughing should stop as soon as possible, as soon as possible does mean that farmers need to learn how to work differently and how to deal with different kind of machinery and so on.

I don't think anybody should be hurt in the transition but I think they should all be committed to the transition.

As we know from statistics, 47-49 per cent of farmers don't believe they have to change, and that is a shame but that doesn't make them bad guys, it simply means that they haven't come to understand what the soil association is trying to teach them, and the AONB.

There are good people around trying to deal with it.

Find out more about The Good Earth at this-good-earth.com

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