Eva Longoria's Got a New Target

When I think "Eva Longoria," I tend to think Desperate Housewives — opulence and flashy clothes — but as it turns out, the actress's influence extends far beyond Wysteria Lane and into the realms of activism. Her latest project is a documentary on which she serves as executive producer: Longoria will premiere Food Chains at the Berlin Film Festival's Culinary Cinema section.

But from "Eva's Heores," a nonprofit dedicated to organizing programming for special needs children, to PADRES Contra El Cáncer (Parents Against Cancer), for which she served as the first national spokesperson, Longoria is someone who uses her celebrity to call attention to one worthy cause after another.

Food Chains chronicles the plight of American farm workers, from tomato-pickers in Florida to strawberry-pickers in California, who toil through grueling conditions just to stock our supermarket shelves. "There's more interest in food than ever before," Longoria told The Hollywood Reporter. "Everyone is about organic and local and 'I don't eat gluten,' but no thought is put to the people who pick the food that feeds us all."

Food Chains isn't the first time Longoria has taken to documentary to raise awareness for this cause: 2011's The Harvest (La Cosecha) , for which she also served as executive producer, focused on the staggering number of child laborers in the farm industry.

Hopefully, with Longoria's added influence, the powers that be will take notice and reexamine our straining food-production system — or at least, the next time we pick up a tomato at our local grocery store, we'll remember what it took to get it there.

Image: Getty Images