La planète lait

This is great educative documentary that covers everything from how milk is made these days (from small to big-scale production but with a focus on the major industries) to the impact the industry has on farmers, invironment and people's perception of milk. It makes you think twice of your own consumption and shows a face of milk production rather covered up from the everyday consumer. Take the chance and educate yourself if you're a milk-drinker!

The twisted, unnnatural reality of the dairy industry is an important topic. It's also deserving of a better film than this.

On the surface, Das System Milch looks like a movie. But despite of nice color grading, professional editing and all around sleekness, the movie lacks cinematic soul. Instead Andreas Pichler offers a pamphlet, a text with some images. He doesn't connect with any of the people he interviews. Never mind the cows.

In the international cut, Pichler makes a grave mistake by serving as narrator. His heavy accent makes him sound like a humourless Werner Herzog. This is further accentuated by Pichler's own presence in the movie. Which lacks Herzog's originality.

Das Milch System is a frustrating experience, to the point where I decided to leave the theater about half an hour early. Even though I agreed with Pichler's view, the movie felt like propaganda. And although it's at times hard to watch, Pichler's prettified pictures and constant use of illustrative music belie the harsh reality.

I'd rather read a book.

This is a nice progressive march through the dairy industry in Europe and beyond. It lays out a balance between the traditional, organic farmers and the industrial automated farms both large and small. Sometimes funny and sometimes appalling, it sheds light on all types of farmers through ongoing dialog with some very open and willing farmers. I was impressed with the candor with which the farmers shared how they do what they do. We got an intimate look at their operations--again, several very different ones--and got to know how they feel about their operations and the industry as a whole.

It wends its way back and forth through the dairy product, the feed, the distribution, the politics, and the economics of importing feed and exporting milk products and technology.

Bringing in Africa and China as emerging consumer economies impresses us that there are forces in this industry that are unique and really big (although not all understood this) and how that choice affects the local ecology, our personal health and even something as intangible yet critically important as climate change.

I found it quite interesting and well done.

Hear views from big dairy to small organic farms, even from a local Senegalese farmer who has to compete with yogurt made from cheap imported milk powder.

Livestock amounts from 14.5% (UN FAO 2016) to 51% (Anhang and Goodland 2009) of global yearly GHG emissions, the vast majority of which is driven by cattle which emit methane.