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• Hog Wash

  • Bill
  • 2/24/13

  This film is Liberal pabulum or good old fashion hogwash from start to finish. The farm project worked so well that over 14 million Mexicans left their birthplace and came to America.

• Wow'd

  • Kyle
  • 2/24/12

  I was just sitting for a moment when I was captured by the short "give us the earth". I would love to know if there is a way to share this with people. It was a very intriguing and simple way to educate about simple back to the earth basics and the importance of sharing, fun, and the true value in good work. TCM, I'd buy this if it were available!

• I Should Have Recorded This Treasure Trove

  • Paula Jo
  • 12/29/09

  Please show this again, TCM! It's 20 minutes jam packed full of info. A lovely home constructed in an amazingly short period of time that I guarantee, even today, wouldn't cost a half a million dollars (our going rate for a home here!). I wish I had recorded this gem.

• Still timely over 50 years later and ironic!

  • midori
  • 2/29/08

  Just had a late night viewing of this 1947 short about a Nobel prize winner who worked with Mexicans to improve the soil, the true wealth of a nation, as well as improving traditional techniques in other areas of life with ways that were basic but time saving. The main thrust of the story is that if the land is poor, the people will be poor as well. With soil in the USA being depleted, lost and turned into desert due to generations of bad farming and animal grazing practices, to no rebuilding of the soil, we too are on our way to becoming impoverished and unable to feed ourselves or of having food with little nourishment value. It's ironic that an American should be teaching this to Mexican farmers back in 1947 even as our own farmers and ranchers, (even city dwellers dumping waste into the ocean) have depleted our own soil. It's amazing that the information in this movie can still be applied today in the USA. They were even talking about composting back then in order to replenish the topsoil. The condescending attitude of the white Nobel prize winner and wife was very much part of the time - notice the wink the wife makes as the good doctor gives a certificate to a Mexican boy, as if saying 'we know this is worth nothing, but we'll pretend it is'. Notice also the attitude toward 'witch doctors' (shamans) which nowadays are regarded with interest, understanding and respect, something inconceivable when this film was made. And of course it's a white man teaching those ignorant Mexicans, so it's ironic to see this attitude while we are still destroying our own soil in the USA. The film is made in the overly enthusiastic narrator style of the time. In spite of the movie's flaws, it is still relevant. Well worth watching. Hope to see it again.

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