Kickstarter

The Toxic Profits teams has been busy filming since our last update in December. In January, we joined the International Indian Treaty Council and went to Sonora, Mexico, where we met with members of the Yaqui community who have been exposed to dangerous pesticides. We visited a Yaqui village called Potam that has the highest level of agro-chemical saturation in the state of Sonora. [1] We heard shocking testimonials on individual cases of cancer, witnessed severe birth defects in children, and learned about other health maladies resulting from exposure to agricultural chemicals. We also obtained some disturbing footage of the unmonitored and uncontrolled spraying of pesticides over Yaqui homes, schools, and communities.

Just last week the Toxic Profits teams returned from Boston, Massachusetts, where we interviewed Professor Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, historian, political critic, and activist who shared extensive insight into the history of corporate power and control over U.S. policies like the one we are focusing on in our film.

Finally, at the end of this month, the Toxic Profits team will be heading out on our final international trip to Bhutan, which recently announced that it plans to be the first country in the world to phase out pesticide usage completely and be 100% organic.

We have a beautiful website in the works and will send the link as soon as it is ready.

As always, we will continue to keep you updated on our progress and thanks again for helping us tell this important story.

Best,

Evan, Nick & Shannon

[1] http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id113.html

The Toxic Profits team has been busy filming since we received all of our pledges from Kickstarter in September. On our first trip, we visited Plains, Georgia, where we had the honor of interviewing former United States President Jimmy Carter. President Carter is the only president to have tried to end the practice of exporting banned chemicals from the United States to foreign countries.

In October, we had the honor of meeting with Dr. Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmental activist, author, ecofeminist, and philosopher. Dr. Shiva has written extensively on the use of toxic pesticides in modern agriculture.

Then, just last week, the Toxic Profits team returned from filming in Argentina. In the most recent report from the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education's Pesticide Project, it was discovered that the United States exported more pesticides associated with cancer to Argentina than any other country in the world. For example, between 2001-2003, over 88 million pounds of pesticides associated with cancer were exported from the United States to Argentina. [1] We met with numerous people whose health, families, and communities have been adversely affected by this practice. In one town that we visited, residents reported cancer rates that were 41 times the national average in Argentina (doctors suspect that many other cases go unreported), as well as high rates of neurological and respiratory diseases, birth defects, and infant mortality. [2]

We are very pleased with our footage thus far and are currently planning on our next trip in January to visit with Yaqui communities in Sonora Mexico who have been exposed to dangerous banned pesticides exported from the US. Additionally, we have discovered the names and locations of US biochemical companies that are producing and exporting these extremely toxic pesticides, and we plan to visit them and urge them to immediately cease this practice. We will also visit our representatives in DC and share the stories we have documented and urge them to take action as well. Finally, as we begin to put together a rough cut of our film, we are going to attempt to raise additional funding to secure a trip to Bhutan, which recently announced that it plans to be the first country in the world to phase out pesticide usage completely and be 100% organic.

We will keep you updated on our progress and thanks again for making this journey possible.

Best,

Evan, Nick & Shannon

[1] http://fasenet.org/pesticide.html

[2] http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/sofia-gatica

...and it's all thanks to you! 

We can't express how grateful we are to all of you for help making this dream become a reality.  We are overwhelmed with the amount of support for this important project.

We will continue to keep you updated using these Kickstarter Updates as we begin making the film.

Have a great weekend knowing that you have made ours!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! 

Evan, Nick & Shannon

In about 72 hours, our Kickstarter campaign will be coming to an end.  We are 90% there and only need to raise about $1,900 more to reach our goal by the deadline of this Friday, August 24 at 1:15 pm EDT.

As we mentioned in our last update, Kickstarter is "all or nothing" - meaning that if we fail to reach our goal by this Friday, we don't get anything!  We've come too far to not reach our goal now, and we're still working hard to spread the word these last few days.  Please help us if you can!

We can't thank you enough for supporting this project.  This has been an incredible campaign for us, and we hope that this is just the beginning.

Thanks again,

Evan, Nick & Shannon

We've now entered the final week of our Kickstarter campaign! We still need to raise a little over $5000, and if we fail to do so, we don't get anything!

We're working hard to spread the word this last week and have put together a video to show how this issue affects everyone, as national borders mean nothing to pesticides. Although the use of certain pesticides within U.S. borders is banned, these toxins may be coming back to us, in what is called the "circle of poison".

Check out our new video below to learn more and please help us spread it far and wide!

Thanks,

Evan, Nick & Shannon