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. Nicholas Carter and Simon Hill (MSc Nutr). Since chemical agriculture ramped up in the 70s, we have lost 1/3 of the worlds topsoil. 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. There was also no mention of tropical forest restoration which has significantly greater potential at pulling carbon out of the atmosphere compared to grazing cows on land no matter what practice is employed. by Sarah Read | May 18, 2022 | Eat, Eco-friendly eating, Sustainable living tips and advice, Think, Kiss the Ground is another in the line of eco-documentaries that Netflix is putting out there (albeit one of the first and most famous). Because whereKiss the Groundlacks in science, it makes up in celebrity power with the likes of Woody Harrelson, Jason Mraz, Ian Somerhalder, Gisele Bndchen, and Tom Brady all featured. Soil organic matter [SOM] is largely created through microbial necromass. Cited as the worst man made environmental disaster in history, by the end of 1934 about 200 million acres of croplands had been permanently damaged. It carries pleasant stuff. Why? 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. So cows can actually be used to reverse desertification. Awesome! Rumi. Now all debates have two sides and Savory has been confronted with this information before. It took a Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady cameo to hit this point home. Theres nothing Netflix and chillabout that. A Feb. 27, 2023, video of U.S. President Joe Biden purportedly shows him announcing a new national draft, in which 20-year-olds would be conscripted into military service on account of a growing . This idea reminded me of what I learned from Cradle to Cradle. I honestly thought it would stand on its own. Plowing the earth, preparing fields for planting, exposing bare soil. Hopefully enough of them will see this movie and find enough alternatives to be able to make some real change. The rest of our topsoils are projected to be lost within 60 years. 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. Hailing from Newcastle, Australia, she predominantly writes about climate and animal rights issues, alongside her work in psychology. what happens if you get a violation on interlock. Due to its immense scale, and ability to sequester (store) greenhouse gases, it could be the one thing that can balance our climate, clean our water and feed the world! The short clip featured Zelenskyy speaking and the audio was that of a translator. Put simply, there are no healthy humans without a healthy planet. Overlaying it, a swirling heat map of global atmospheric carbon, changing from dark red to cool blue over the course of a year. The lazy author of this review makes the same mistaken claim. I wanted the filmmakers to first understandto let the soil speak and to let nature teach us. Repeatedly using abstractions to sum up complex issues makes people comfortable talking about soil as if there is one entity, soil, that we (who is we, anyway?) GHG Mitigation Potential of Different Grazing Strategies in the United States Southern Great Plains. Tilling loosens the soil, disturbing microorganisms that live within it, drying it out so. I asked Finian Makepeace, the co-founder of the Kiss the Ground organization, to tell me more about how he and the films producers and directors selected our trio of regenerative experts to appear in the movie. One of the first characters introduced in Kiss the Ground is Ray Archuleta, a conservation agronomist. Tilling and chemical agricultural methods have disrupted this cycle and increased the rate of carbon release. Whats very interesting is the ability of grazing animals to regenerate grasslands from desert, and reduce desertification. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 71(2), 156-164. doi:10.2489/jswc.71.2.156 http://www.jswconline.org/content/71/2/156.abstract, Rowntree, J., Ryals, R., Delonge, M., Teague, R. W., Chiavegato, M., Byck, P., . Did you have any reservations about appearing in it? I dont know a single holistic management practitioner that advocates cutting down forests to grow more cattle. A plant-rich dietary pattern that places emphasis on regeneration but really could be chopped in a number of ways to suit the individual Mediterranean, paleo, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, etc can all be done in a plant-predominant manner. Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Practically speaking this looks like the plate below perhaps this could be The Regenerative Plate that Kiss the Ground adopts in their communication going forwards. Ryland is also the producer of The Kiss the Ground documentary and the co-creator of the Ryland Engelhart is a philanthropist. But I also experienced the same misleadingparadigms from the conservative groups like Farm Bureau and other commodities groups. Farm work is unglamorous, underappreciated, and not very well-paid for the most part, but it just so happens to be crucial to the survival of our species. 2021 Plant Based News is a UK-based digital media outlet publishing content about veganism and plant-based living, including news and current events, health, personal transformation stories, features, and recipes. When receiving subsidies for crops like corn and beans, farmers know that they will make a profit. To rotate cows like bison, it means leaving land free from roaming animals for at least six-nine months a figure that Alan Savory states himself in the documentary. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. 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. 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. But here too Garnett doesnt understand the science. Gabe: Yes, I am very optimistic about our future if regenerative practices are widely adopted. 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. ), Pollinator garden/market flowers at Copper Cricket Farm. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. "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. Water and carbon escape into the atmosphere in enormous plumes blanketing the entire northern hemisphereshown onscreen as ominous swirls of red. care as a social process). This sounds like something else that he would likely regret in the near future. But its the reality we face. I am alive!. The basic premise of Kiss the Ground is that the destruction of soil is contributing to the severity and intensity of climate change. It turned out to be more involved than I imagined. "We should be thriving, the planet booming with life and abundance and the healthiest generation walking the earth. At Novel Hand, Im specifically interested in learning about topics related to justice and poverty, and how to create equitable, sustainable impact. Clearly this is something that needs our urgent attention and resolution! By However, this was taken from a United Nations speech, which leading soil scientists say isabsolutely not supported by science. Kris: We are facing a catastrophic cascade in Earths ecosystems impacting human health and the global economy which fundamentally rests in pressures stemming from changes in the economic and ecological agricultural landscape due to climate change and escalating worldwide competition for natural resources and commodities, including petroleum, natural gas, grains,oilseeds, and proteins. So its incredibly facile. Kiss the Ground is a 501 (c)(3) Nonprofit Our independent team of journalists They also failed to make it clear why ruminants were required. Your email address will not be published. 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. On one hand, the use of celebrity ambassadors is an unsubtle but effective tactic to draw casual viewers and followers. Its a system of thinking and working that takes knowledge, skill, experience, endurance, affinity, if you've got it, and a lot of hard work, just like any other difficult undertaking. Their technical expertise should be enough to convince us that their message is not only correct but worth listening to. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on our website. how to make a chi ball visible for beginners Keagy's Best Price Plumbing The elephant in the room during the documentary is that they completely failed to mention that a significant amount of the land dedicated to animal agriculture across the world (not all but certainly a lot) needs to be restored to forests (the number one driver of deforestation is animal agriculture) to get anywhere close to meeting our climate goals. A group of activists had gathered to see what could be done about Climate Change. Josh Tickell, the director of the movie, was associated with Kiss the Ground and was making a film on organic farming when I met him. Kiss the Ground. A degenerative system that decimates life in our soil, releases immense amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere, pollutes our waterways, and disrupts the biodiversity and biology on our land and in our oceans. Sounds pretty ambitious to champion this form of animal agriculture as a climate solution without strong empirical evidence? Until then, its going to be hard to truly transform our agricultural system to benefit all life on the planet. Kris: Im always excited by the opportunities to discuss Regenerative Agriculture. I doubt this will require an agent or a move haha! Ganretts white paper doesnt even mention soil microbiology. berger 215 hybrid 300 win mag. Sure, its easy to see with our own eyes that there is more life on land that is managed in a regenerative way, but in order to really know that it is a climate solution, we would need evidence that carbon levels in the soil are not only increasing but increasing by more than the emissions emitted by the animals involved in the system. Get exclusive content in your inbox each Monday. Our mission is to awaken people to the possibilities of regeneration and inspire participation in this movement through media, communications, education, workshops, immersive programming, and advocacy. Impactfull April 2022, What Does Voluntourism Look Like? In fact, if we look at the solutions outlined in theDrawdown Reportand their potential to draw down carbon from our atmosphere, shifting to a diet that favours calories from plants is twice as powerful compared to shifting to silvopasture and four times as powerful compared as shifting to managed grazing two forms of regenerative agriculture that involve livestock. 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! HaHa! There is one hyperlink in error. Potential mitigation of midwest grass-finished beef production emissions with soil carbon sequestration in the United States of America. Its not a bad thing per se. On-the-ground agricultural practices carried out by millions of individual farmers directly affect the health of the soil, and by extension, global atmospheric carbon levels and the pace of climate change. The documentary tiptoed around this, failing to make it explicitly clear that the food on our plate has to change, while seemingly wanting us to believe that holistic grazing on its own can reverse climate change. Kiss the Ground members are the grassroots stakeholders that stand with us in the regenerative movement. Livestock and Land Use: How Are We Feeding The Planet? View and change your settings here, Regenerative Farm Map Regeneration International, Donate Regeneration International | Organic Consumers (netdonor.net), Compost Toilets in Africa: Human Feces as Fertilizer | Thrive4Good (thriveforgood.org). Data from almost40,000 farms, and 119 countries, clearly shows us that a plant-based diet results in less greenhouse gas emissions, less pollution, less ocean acidification, and uses less water and land land which we can therefore free up and convert to forests to rapidly sequester carbon from our atmosphere. Often, our best solutions arent actually that innovative; they simply mimic natural processes and what the Earth already does. Instagram @maggie.eileen.art). The long term prognosis for our survival with business as usual is very, very poor . Work your way down the list until you find the things that youre willing to do. Look no further than Kiss the Ground, a newly-released Netflix documentary that explores the relationship between climate change and dirt. Despite the documentary not spelling it out, its very clear. Bare soils are at great risk of erosion by heavy rain, and its also been shown that bare soils vary in temperature much more, so the microclimate is changed. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Hopefully, this movie will help open many more. Either way, shifting the typical diet in such a way is a certain win for humanity and all life on Earth, and thus something that not only should have been made clearer in Kiss the ground, but something that everyone reading should strongly consider. Copyright 2021 Understanding Ag, LLC | Website by RVT Solutions. 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 . There are a few clues within the documentary that speak to this but they are by no means overtly clear to the viewer. Id be willing to donate it to them. Support regenerative farming movements like Regeneration International Donate Regeneration International | Organic Consumers (netdonor.net) and Kiss the Ground Kiss the Ground (ktgcommunity.com) which are spreading the word. 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. A revolutionary group of activists, scientists, farmers, and politicians band together in a global movement of "Regenerative Agriculture" that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world. Nature Communications, 6, 6995. doi:10.1038/ncomms7995 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms7995, Wang, T., Teague, W., Park, S., & Bevers, S. (2015). Everything in natural systems is a cycle and aimed at maintaining balance. 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). Celebrity activists, including Ian Somerhalder and Patricia Arquette, drop by to promote a suite of carbon-capture climate change solutions theyre personally involved in, from diversified permaculture to compost toilets. In many ways, this stands to do more harm than good. Having dedicated many years to researching and communicating the science behind an optimal diet for humans, I understand first hand how our health isinextricably tied to the planets(as detailed inmy upcoming book). Lots of problems with Poores paper as well which didnt account for soil carbon or regenerative systems in any of its meta-analysis of averaged LCAs. Check out her story here or take a look at HOW she can help you on the Services page. 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). They thought I had lost my mind, but through hard work and perseverance weve been able to open many eyes through the years. From rehabilitating entire ecosystems to growing home victory gardens, there are plenty of ways to get involved in regenerative agriculture. Farmers need to make profits but we need to be transparent here and lay down all solutions on the table to have an open discussion. And so, with these words, Harrelson immediately draws us into "Kiss the Ground," a documentary focusing on growing our food in a way that builds and protects our precious soil and also draws back into the ground the carbon dioxide that is causing climate change. All whilst minimising our 'footprint'. Let me show you how , Get my FREE guide, and receive eco-friendly eating tips, recipes and motivation. Enterprise, AL 36330. kisstheground. Above all, its great to see this conversation growing from what has very much been a fringe movement to now entering the mainstream. Hi there to all, for the reason that I am genuinely keen of reading this websites post to be updated on a regular basis. After 14 years, it is lush farmland again. Eco-friendly eating - better for your health and the planet :). Bare ground is hotter in the day, and cooler at night; threatening the microorganism populations within, and increases water evaporation, as the ground temperatures rise, the soils become dryer, again, impairing the ecosystem the microorganisms exist within. This carbon is then absorbed by plants, which use it in their cells and leak into the soils in the form of sugars. Industrial agriculture (left) causes desertification through tilling and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Those sharing the video said that Zelenskyy sought young Americans to help fight on the ground war. . It also doesnt spend most of its time talking about whos to blame, and its actually mostly about looking for solutions for our futures, and did include suggestions about what we, as ordinary people, can do. San Francisco have an amazing system, and are the most sustainable city in the US! The Lhos plateau in China, an area larger than Belgium, had become a dusty wasteland after over farming. Thank you for this article! And as the documentary states, shifting us from climate warming to climate cooling. One thing with ruminant livestock is that when they are use as solar powered mobile composters in brittle environments, their manure, urine and saliva act as inoculates that increase soil microbiology. 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. Scientists work hard to do science, yet despite thousand of papers produced by human nutrition scientists, the diet health of US occupants is at its worst level ever. Our farming systems have moved too far out of alignment with mother nature. Humans have created such a massive disturbance in our topsoil and atmosphere that the only way out is forward. Hosted by Robbie Lockie, Plant Based News delivers pioneering vegan news and ethical views weekly. This is actually seen using satellites which monitor the CO2 levels. Jemima is the Head of Editorial of Plant Based News. And as we all know, this creates a slippery slope. Kiss the Ground has been active in this space for a while and is a California-based 501(c)(3) environmental non-profit telling a new story about our ability to regenerate land and reverse climate change by building back healthy soil. No topsoils; no food! If we choose healthy foods, there is a reciprocation. We recently caught up with @mcgrathfamilyfarm. Although I would have liked more with real life farmers and ranchers, it is hard to put together a documentary that will appeal across the spectrum from rural to urban communities, young and old, and everyday people to activists. Unless we save our soils, we have 60 harvests left before global starvation. If you have found your way to this article, I can only assume that we have something in common: both of us want to see a better world where humans and all life on earth is thriving. We need to spread the word to drive this important movement forwards! They correctly state that Bison would pass through land and not be seen for around a year. 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. The solution is right under our feet - THE SOIL. We are healthier, as is the earth. One can only presume that the slaughtering of the animal is not about soil quality, but about profits. Registration confirmation will be emailed to you. Savorys claims dont stand up when you put them under the microscope. Despite all of this, my fear is that many will be left with a complete misunderstanding of where environmental science truly lies. Carrie's ranch is comprised of 6,500 acres, Thank you to the @apnews for sharing an art. In turn, this means shifting to more plant-based diets. Copyright EAT THINK EXPLORE 2020 Powered by WordPress Theme Divi Hosted sustainably by Ecohosting, Join my mailing list to receive the latest news, tips and scientific advice to help you move to a more eco-friendly way of eating and get your FREE guide to get you started on your journey today! Kiss the Ground is a new, feature-length movie that explores key soil health and regenerative agricultural principles, and features interviews with a wide range of authors, experts, farmers, researchers and scientists. This seems like pretty important information that was left off the table. Required fields are marked *. There are sites where this has been done, and what was desert is now lush grassland with grasses growing taller than people. you can help by supporting our work today. Compost your food scraps. We already use 3-4 times more fertiliser for each bushel of grain than in the 60s. Commercial meat farming has one of the highest negative impacts. Heres below are just a handful of recent PEER REVIEWED papers supporting HPG. Garnett, Poore and their ilk just do key word searches on computer screens and average parsed pre-existing data in their papers. They are both such impactful leaders in this movement because they are called to bring these concepts to farmers and ranchers everywhere. The fix is simple: Mimic nature, cover the soil andunderstand how soil is intended to function. 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. 2020 | Maturity Rating: TV-G | 1h 24m | Nature & Ecology Documentaries. Gabe: I agreed to become involved because when Josh explained to me that the purpose of the documentary was to highlight how farming organically could improve our planet, I knew I needed to help bring his understanding of soil health and ecosystem function to a higher level. The NFL quarterback goes to bed earlier than any college student has ever dreamed of, and his diet is impeccably healthy. I approached this film with professional interest, not just as a News Fellow with Stone Pier Press, but as someone trained in biology at college, regenerative farming at the Rodale Institute (three of the films agricultural experts work/ed here), and food systems at graduate school. But the #1 US crop is GMO corn, sprayed with Glyphosate, which is now found in their drinking water and kills the microbes in our guts. Regenerative agriculture is a more resilient system based on principles of soil health and biodiversity that integrates multiple crops, cover crops, and livestock animals. Watch the film trailer here and the full movie on Netflix. 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.