We already use 3-4 times more fertiliser for each bushel of grain than in the 60s. | Plant Based News Ltd, PO Box 71173, London, SE20 9DQ, United Kingdom. From rehabilitating entire ecosystems to growing home victory gardens, there are plenty of ways to get involved in regenerative agriculture. Eco-friendly eating - better for your health and the planet :). This movie has given soil a voice to say, I am not dirt! This positioning starts with the documentarys focus on theDrawdown Reportby Environmentalist Paul Hawken from Project Drawdown. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. What the writers ignored is that it was SCIENCE that led to that preferred plan of action. If we can only get everyone on board! 2 Creation of a false dichotomy. Kiss the Ground members are the grassroots stakeholders that stand with us in the regenerative movement. I started trying to teach about soil health with my little plastic jars and myco-workers at the tech center would often laugh and make fun of me. The good news is that soils can recover fast if they are allowed to and managed correctly. But the agreement is that all of the richest grasslands in the world have large grazing animals. This is bio sequestration using plants to capture and store carbon. Tilling loosens the soil, disturbing microorganisms that live within it, drying it out so. No big deal. Garnett, Poore and their ilk just do key word searches on computer screens and average parsed pre-existing data in their papers. Kiss the Ground features successful composting programs in San Francisco, Detroit, and Haiti. Kiss the Ground Film | Official Website Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use. While, there were very subtle hints that people would have only caught if paying very close attention, it was not made overtly clear by the documentary that the proposed solutions means transitioning the world to plant-rich diets. Ill summarise the main points for you in this article; what the issues are, why soil is the answer, and how you can help to save you having to invest the time to watching it yourself. Archuleta describes the soil conservation problem as an education problem. Whilst maintaining a large veg bed to feed the whole family takes up a lot of space and requires time, there are many crops that require very little maintenance or space, and actually like growing in your flower beds amongst the flowers! Ray: That a large audience will come away with a basic awareness about the transformative power of our living and life-giving soil. Given soil grows 95 per cent of our food, and sustains human life, this is a huge problem. This means that compared to factory farms, or traditional grazing where cows are overgrazing and destroying the soil, a regenerative farm using holistic grazing would require a lot more land for any given number of roaming cows. Since chemical agriculture ramped up in the 70s, we have lost 1/3 of the worlds topsoil. We need to act. The next thing I want to address, and perhaps the most important take-home message here, is the science underpinning holistic grazing is flaky at best. The basic principles are: minimal tilling/ploughing, using cover crops, involving livestock in managed grazing, organic practices avoiding chemicals, composting, crop diversity and using trees and perennials as protection. Using compelling graphics and visuals, along with striking NASA and NOAA footage, the film artfully illustrates how, by drawing down atmospheric carbon, soil is . . 209 South Oak Ridge Drive 3 Unclear about how the proposed solutions would affect our diets. But I wish people with platforms like documentary films or acting stardom would start framing issues with words that suggest physical work, like "repair" or fix or even "care for/take care of" (i.e. After 14 years, it is lush farmland again. The evidence for this claim is research-based, clearly communicated, and visually supported with animations that illustrate submicroscopic events like carbon cycling and expansive drone shots for grand reveals, like the actual desert plateau that is turned back into rolling green farmland. However, this was taken from a United Nations speech, which leading soil scientists say isabsolutely not supported by science. I dont understand how they didnt emphasize that you still have to eat a plant rich diet if you want everyone in the world to eat pasture raised animals Theres only so much to land and hence animals you can raise. https://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/potential-mitigation-of-midwest-grass-finished-beef-production-em, Machmuller, M. B., Kramer, M. G., Cyle, T. K., Hill, N., Hancock, D., & Thompson, A. To me, it undermines the articulate, informative explanations offered by the professionals with actual working farms and advanced degrees who are given the floor for much of the film. Did you have any reservations about appearing in it? Desertification is the process of land turning to desert. Just consider the thousands of peer reviewed papers advocating this diet or that diet and the people in the US are still among the most malnourished in the developed world. The key points in Kiss the Ground. Industrial agriculture (left) causes desertification through tilling and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. BookstoreBook submissionsNewsNewsletter signupRecipesGardening, Our storyGet involvedJobs/FellowshipPartnersContact usPrivacy Shipping & return policy. Modern agriculture was not designed for the betterment of the soil, instead for the short term maximisation of yield. Kris: I see the soil as the real star of the movie and have said many times I am honored to be able to speak on behalf of the soil. We started ploughing/tilling because it was easier for us to upscale. Its a practice that requires a level of care you have to commit to every time you go into the field. Thank you for the review. I honestly thought it would stand on its own. The rest is projected to be lost within 60 years. As someone who has farmed using diesel tractors and bare hands, I can tell you that regenerative agriculture isn't a key or secret or the single solution to a greener future. In the 1930s the Dust Bowl was created. Hi there to all, for the reason that I am genuinely keen of reading this websites post to be updated on a regular basis. Plus FCRNs paper simply ignored the existing peer reviewed science with its claim that no such science exists. Ryland co-founded Kiss the Ground in his living room with a friend ten years ago. "Kiss the Ground" has a bevy of information to impart, however, and its plucky resistance to politicizing any of it while also acknowledging that so much of this is indeed at the mercy of. Heal the planet is a phrase that implies not only the existence of some kind of natural balance to which we can return, but the existence of a cure that human benevolence can deliver. But as crops grow month by month, drawing down atmospheric carbon, the red is gradually replaced by greens and then by blues, until the map is recognizable once again as the pale blue dot we call home. Please read our Comment policy before commenting. The bonus being that plant-rich dietary patterns just so happen to also be whatmajor health institutionsand progressive Government departments likeHealth Canadaare advocating for to tackle rising rates of obesity and chronic disease, and improve quality of life. The documentary is well-produced and in the eyes of a layperson an extremely compelling case for changing the way we grow food. Tying the message of Kiss the Ground to voting for policymakers who will systemically change the way the country incentivizes regenerative agriculture and reversing climate change would have been an obvious and easy leap to make. Kiss the Ground is a nonprofit on a mission to awaken people to the possibilities of regeneration and inspire participation in this movement by educating and engaging through media, communications . Did you know that we can save the world with soil? Here are five things I learned from Kiss the Ground. Check out this map for farms local to you Regenerative Farm Map Regeneration International. That sounds catastrophic. This review revealed some all to common perceptions about holistic management, a decision making framework, which can be applied to grazing as well as other management situations. Gabe: HaHa! Chemical fertilisers mask the problem of degraded soils by providing the basics for plant growth, but also exacerbate the soil microorganism damage. If not, heres what you can do to join the regenerative farming movement, or at least help make things better . Its absolutely good to love the earth and want to save the soil. Byck, P. (2016). A major strategy deployed in the documentary is offering two distinct choices for where consumers should source their food: conventional chemical-filled monocrops, or lush open fields of regenerative agriculture. There seems to be an incredibly fine line between grazing just enough and overgrazing, which speaks to potentially whycrediblepeer-reviewed science has to date, failed to produce results that come close to what Alan Savory claims. Our independent team of journalists Half are experts working in their respective fields, and the rest are celebrity activists for whom regenerative agriculture and climate change is more or less a cause. These are more expensive, so if you can only afford to go organic with some, choose the Dirty dozen so that you get the health benefits of avoiding all the chemicals too The Dirty Dozen organic.org. Our farming systems have moved too far out of alignment with mother nature. berger 215 hybrid 300 win mag. Gabe: I would have liked the movie to highlight the importance of grazing animals. Unless we save our soils, we have 60 harvests left! "All farmable soil could be gone in 60 years. This dirt then cannot store water, and heats up massively under the sun with no protection, baking the soils and exacerbating the problem. Nature strives for balance, and has a system for reversing the carbon released into the atmosphere using the growth of plants and their relationship with soil microbes. The long term prognosis for our survival with business as usual is very, very poor , Topsoils are disappearing and the land is desertifying, Regenerative farming principles explained, Examples of regenerative farming restoring land. Its clear to see that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere above the main agricultural areas increase significantly in the main tilling/ploughing months, and then as plant cover increases in the fields, it drops! I would simply build on the work of Michael Pollan, a well-known science writer: Where possible eat regenerative food, not too much, mostly plants.. A group of activists had gathered to see what could be done about Climate Change. Put simply, there are no healthy humans without a healthy planet. . We have now decoupled these so farmers are either crop or livestock, and each are done on an intensive scale, with no natural cycles in place. It is possible that this is coincidence, but the correlation is striking! Rumi. kiss the ground fact checking We need to talk about agriculture in a way thats meaningful to people with boots on the ground and enumerate specific steps that lead to material change. Kris: No, but I am working on creating a virtual party with friends and family as we are scattered throughout the U.S. Ray: I will have a few people over. However, given the notable absence of well qualified environmental scientists discussing evidence to support their ambitious claims, in favor of anecdotal experience from ranchers, just how much of the information in this documentary can we trust and reliably use to shape our food system and inform our food choices? As prices go up, pending one spends the same budget they had previously set aside for meat, their consumption naturally falls. kiss the ground fact checking This is a great way to help poor communities to reduce their disease from poor sanitation AND grow their own foods to lift them out of starvation and malnutrition! And of course, havinginterviewedthe co-founders ofKiss the Ground, Ryland Engelhart and Finian Makepeace, in early 2020, I was particularly excited to watch theKiss the Grounddocumentary(and I recommend you watch it too if you havent already). For a climate change documentary its actually vey upbeat, because this is the way we can not only slow, but reverse global warming, sucking CO2 out of the air to stabilise our climate again. Agricultural Systems, 162, 249-258. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.02.003, Teague, W. R., Apfelbaum, S., Lal, R., Kreuter, U. P., Rowntree, J., Davies, C. A., . All of us make critical decisions every day as we manage our lives and we dont consult the literature when making those decisions. 'Kiss the Ground' Review: Celeb-Studded Doc on Fixing - IndieWire So ifKiss the Groundhad taken a more evidence-based approach and included dietary recommendations what would it have looked like? Unfortunately, these incredibly superior solutions are less sexy because they are not tying livestock, and more specifically the consumption of beef, to the solution. Livestock and Land Use: How Are We Feeding The Planet? Every year 40m people are displaced as their farmlands become desert. As Ian Somerhalder says in the documentary, Cows can be good. While many blame cows for carbon emissions, and rightfully so, they can actually be a part of the solution. I graduated from Vanderbilt University with degrees in Political Science, Economics and Spanish, and I currently study law in Texas. I doubt this will require an agent or a move haha! 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Unfortunately, overtly telling people they need to cut down on their meat consumption for this change in agriculture to work isnt going to help with the documentarys popularity. . Filmmakers Josh Tickell and Rebecca Tickell wound up spending seven years making their latest doc, "Kiss the Ground," and all along the way they worried that by the end of the process there . Regardless of the labelthat we choose to adopt, eating this way will nourish the soil, reduce emissions from agriculture, and at the same timereduce the burden of chronic disease in our communities. My hope is that this film will give consumers, farmers, and ranchers all of us the hope, courage and knowledge to choose biologically-based practices and tools to regenerate soil. The trouble is, our farmers are not taught this; our growers know nothing about how the soil works or the basic ecological principles. Im Alexa, the Founder and Editor of Novel Hand. Check out Kiss the Ground website, where you will find other ways to be involved and even learn how to Become a Soil Advocate! If we restore all the degraded land, we can return the earth to paradise, making room for biodiversity and feeding the worlds population (with lowered animal protein consumption). 2023 Farm Bill | What is it and Why it matters? - Kiss The Ground I promise not to sell your information, and if you don't like what I send, you can easily unsubscribe at any point. Why? Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie. I am optimistic because the major issues we are currently facing economic stress, climate change, and food quality are all addressed by the same solution regenerating soil. In fact, it was the single most important thing that lead Savory to question the science regarding overgrazing. However, after spending time with the Kiss the Ground team particularly in Paris, I understood howpassionate the filmmakers are about the soil solution. Overlaying it, a swirling heat map of global atmospheric carbon, changing from dark red to cool blue over the course of a year. Makes sense why the documentary didnt go there! Other soil-based carbon capture solutions like composting are crucial to regenerative agriculture. If you are wondering whether its worth your time to watch, or want to know the gist but dont have an hour and a half to spare, read on and Ill cover the key points simply and factually for you. Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Gabe: An increased awareness as to how and why all society should come together to work on the 80% of the things we can agree on such as loss of biodiversity, water quality and quantity issues, poor farm profitability, the decline of rural America, climate change and human health. Kiss the Ground (2020) - IMDb Ive been interested in and learning more about the importance of soil health for years. But tilling is incredibly intrusive to the soil structures, destroying the balance of microbial life which create organic matter and help the plants get the nutrients to grow. In the past, I did not like how certain environmental groups portrayed farmers. Tilling, the process of pulling up the soil to plant seeds, is destructive to the soil. Kiss the Groundgave the microphone to Ranchers Alan Savory and Gabe Brown, but we didnt hear about any legitimate science testing out whether the claims they were making truly hold up? For millions of years the world has self-healed and self-balanced. A soil without organic matter becomes dirt, a mix of rock materials and cannot support life. Remember that the decision to depopulate the elephants when Savory was with the game department was a result of the current science among wildlife researchers. Xu, S. (2016). Local water cycles produce 40% of our rainfall. Kiss the Ground Film Breaking News Headlines Today | Ground News If cattle are allowed to roam and graze, they contribute to carbon sequestration the process by which plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil. Using livestock is thought to make this process 7 times faster! kiss the ground fact checking - cnatrainingnyc.com Ray: Hope. Watch the film trailer here and the full movie on Netflix. There is one hyperlink in error. Personally, I thought this was one of the better Netflix documentaries, mainly because, whilst theres a lot of negatives about where the world is heading, the overall message is one of hope. Skip on down to the final thoughts if you dont have time to get more into the facts! There are three main points I want to make about holistic grazing that are important for you to understand. Without them we will starve. Many of them are based on anecdotal evidence and experience. Fund charities that are helping people to compost their poo in toilets in the third world. . Ryland is also the producer of The Kiss the Ground documentary and the co-creator of the Get our weekly editors newsletter & special offers delivered right to your inbox! They agreed and heres what they told me, How and why did you become involved the movie, Kiss the Ground?. By taking carbon dioxide from the air, and sending it down to soil microbes in exchange for nutrients, plants can not only remove carbon from the atmosphere, but store carbon in the soils. What do you hope will be an outcome from the movie? Sustainability, 7(10), 13500. http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/10/13500, Teague, W. R., Dowhower, S. L., Baker, S. A., Haile, N., DeLaune, P. B., & Conover, D. M. (2011). Thank you for this article! It carries pleasant stuff. The first point that I think deserves our attention, before getting into the science on the reversal claim, is the way the producers wanted you to see holistic grazing. For me, its a plant-exclusive diet and for you it might be eating plant-based before dinner often the perfect place for people to start. After all, this method of grazing, which Gabe Brown and Alan Savory speak about at length, is being positioned in the documentary as the solution we have all been waiting for to reverse climate change. The solution is right under our feet THE SOIL. Healthy soils can store more carbon than all the trees combined! Kiss the Ground - Jefferson Center After all, its communities of color, low-income communities, and immigrant communities who do the majority of the essential work of growing food and yet are most exploited and harmed by the agroindustrial complex. Over the years, tilling causes the soil to dirt, leaving it vulnerable to erosion and desertification. And as the documentary states, shifting us from climate warming to climate cooling. Soil is the solution and we have numerous options and opportunities to actualize this solution as consumers, farmers, ranchers, and environmentalists by focusing on the integration of biological processes. Understanding Ag is an equal opportunity provider and employer. The first clue is when the documentary makes mention of the natural history of Bison roaming the United States. Its avoidable if we take better care of our soils and pay more attention to where and how our foods are grown! https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019.pdf. forests are typically far better at doing this than grasslands, when you factor in the land that would be freed up if the entire world shifted to a plant-rich diet, there are many types of regenerative agriculture that do not involve animals, available grasslands would only be able to produce 27 percent of the countries current beef supply. If we choose healthy foods, there is a reciprocation. These carbon rich sugars are used by microorganisms in the soil and (in return for providing minerals and other soil nutrients to the plant roots) secrete a carbon rich glue to hold effectively build their mini environments under the surface. Your email address will not be published. kiss the ground fact checking - xarxacatala.cat I was also pleased the documentary shone a light on food waste and composting these are two things that many of us can introduce into our daily lives with minimal barriers to entry. Let me show you how , Get my FREE guide, and receive eco-friendly eating tips, recipes and motivation. While I was attending the COP21 conference in Paris in 2015, I was again contacted by Josh Tickell and participated in a follow-up interview regarding the 4per1000 Initiative. Unfortunately not as much as I had hoped. This is how the natural carbon cycle should work. Ive listed these below in short, and then we will go through each together looking at the claims made and where the science lies: (These have also been covered in detail with Environmental Researcher Nicholas Carter (co-author of this article) in episode 104 and 111 on thePlant Proof podcast). you can help by supporting our work today. Factory farms are good at one thing producing a lot of meat in a short period of time to feed a growing appetite for meat. Every version got better, and the last version was the best one. By partnering with Kiss the Ground, youre making a difference in the world and demonstrating that you are committed to supporting a regenerative future. The film uses creative graphics and visuals, along with striking NASA and NOAA footage, and illustrates how, by drawing down atmospheric carbon many of humankinds most pressing climate and environmental problems can be solved. This sounds like something else that he would likely regret in the near future. Ground News rates Kiss the Ground Film's media bias as unknown. Healthy soils can store more carbon than all the trees and plants combined, so is more important than saving the rainforests or the ocean phytoplankton in reversing climate change! I am alive!. I dont know a single holistic management practitioner that advocates eating more beef. Eating less meat, of all types, is. The claim: Video shows cracks in the ground that formed after earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Ray: Not at the moment, but if Steven Spielberg calls, I WILL answer. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. If he is the only one that can achieve the carbon sequestration that he claims, I fail to see how thats a hopeful solution. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. Its a story about hope and solutions. Parents need to know that Kiss the Ground is a 2020 documentary that addresses our current soil erosion crisis throughout the planet and the benefits of practicing "regenerative agriculture." Narrated by Woody Harrelson, the documentary features extensive interviews with farmers, scientists, activists, celebrities, and regular people as they help to create awareness of regenerative .