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. 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. I promise its way easier to mail one ballot than to cut meat out of your diet or petition your city to collect compost! It's a tool. Theres no sense in wasting a precious resource like attention by skirting the truth that transitioning to regenerative agriculture, or changing any entrenched industrial-economic system, is a lot of work. We told him that you need to leave the audience with hope, which I believe he did. Ultimately, a covered planet is a healthy planet Earth needs to be covered in plants. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 141(34), 310-322. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.03.009, Plus a recent LCA funded by General Mills: No, Zelenskyy Did Not Say US Will Have To Send Their Young To Fight For Kiss The Ground - YouTube I was in California at a meeting and met Finnian Makepeace, who is the groups co-founder. (PLEASE VOTE November 3rd or earlier!! And as the documentary states, shifting us from climate warming to climate cooling. This is why science is so important. Our mission stands strong: to awaken people to the possibilities of regeneration and inspire participation in the regenerative movement. 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. For people who have an hour and a half to watch something like this, For people who are time strapped or not sure that this is their kind of thing, The way we are feeding ourselves is undermining the very ecology were dependent upon. After the country decided to increase yields and started intensively farming and tilling the fertile midwestern plains, leaving the soil bare for large periods of time. Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Here are five things I learned from Kiss the Ground. 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. can scoop up and heroically rescue. Emerging land use practices rapidly increase soil organic matter. berger 215 hybrid 300 win mag. 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. 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. Whats glaringly clear from Hawkens report is that when it comes to our food and greenhouse gas emissions, thetwo areas we can make the biggest impactare reducing food waste (number one solution)and moving to a plant-rich diet (number three solution). Check out Kiss the Ground website, where you will find other ways to be involved and even learn how to Become a Soil Advocate! This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Its not just about more trees, the carbon that can be stored in healthy, organic material rich soils is much greater. Consumers need to do their part by supporting pastured proteins. 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. At Novel Hand, Im specifically interested in learning about topics related to justice and poverty, and how to create equitable, sustainable impact. There are a few clues within the documentary that speak to this but they are by no means overtly clear to the viewer. "We should be thriving, the planet booming with life and abundance and the healthiest generation walking the earth. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Firstly, just so we are clear, the majority of the worlds mono-crops are fed to livestock. Hopefully, this movie will help open many more. The trouble is, our farmers are not taught this; our growers know nothing about how the soil works or the basic ecological principles. 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! San Francisco have an amazing system, and are the most sustainable city in the US! Regenerative agriculture combines 4 practices. Check out this map for farms local to you Regenerative Farm Map Regeneration International. He also heard about the NRCS soil health effort and my role in encouraging the agency to bring more resources to support the regenerative ag movement. Sign up for the latest courses, learning resources, news and events. We can all make some simple changes for massive benefits to our health and footprint. And when it comes to the Savory Institute and Savorys claims Dr Garnett states that they are generally anecdotal, based on surveys and testimonies rather than on-site measurements. . After looking at all of the available evidence on holistic grazing, and claims made by the likes of Savory, the report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. The Lhos plateau in China is where settled agriculture first began. Several scientists featured in Kiss the Ground are clear that simply reducing carbon emission wont be enough to save the planet. If we adopt regenerative farming practices, we can reverse carbon release into the atmosphere and stabilise the climate, and it wont take long! 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). And Norborgs paper rehashed papers by Briske and Holechek that looked at short duration rotational grazing systems rather than holistically planned grazing systems [HPG] known in the peer reviewed scientific literature as adaptive multi-paddock or AMP managed grazing systems. Why? Focussing on this review was a clever move by Kiss the Ground Paul Hawken and the Project Drawdown are incredibly well respected. The good news is that soils can recover fast if they are allowed to and managed correctly. Finally, the elephant / cow in the room (not sure which is more fitting) duringKiss the Ground is how are we going to produce enough meat using holistic grazing to meet current demands? Kiss the Ground brings together a diverse coalition of scientists, farmers, and advocates to share this story, showcase the benefits of adopting regenerative agriculture, and build a movement aimed at renewing the planet's ecosystems. I dont know a single holistic management practitioner that advocates cutting down forests to grow more cattle. 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. Often, our best solutions arent actually that innovative; they simply mimic natural processes and what the Earth already does. As a side note, the documentary routinely employed uses numerous fear-mongering tactics to scare the viewer into grasping for whatever solution comes next. Minimising the amount of mechanical disturbance, with no tilling/ploughing. (Source: Kiss the Ground). These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. 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. 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. Since chemical agriculture ramped up in the 70s, we have lost 1/3 of the worlds topsoil. We recently caught up with @mcgrathfamilyfarm. BOOM found that the viral video has been cropped from a longer conversation during a press conference where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned a hypothetical scenario of Ukraine losing the war and Russia invading other NATO countries including the Baltic states in Eastern Europe which would force the US to get involved and send troops. You can reach me at novelhandco@gmail.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. 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. Two-thirds of the worlds land is currently desertifying leading to millions of climate refugees and further environmental destruction. 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. For Schools & Educators | Kiss the Ground Film Unfortunately not as much as I had hoped. 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., . Kiss the Ground - Understanding Ag Your email address will not be published. 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. 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. How 'Kiss the Ground' Directors Avoided Making Soil - Yahoo Ray: Yes, absolutely. I just heard of the movie and wanted to find out a little more about it until I get time to watch it. Put simply, there are no healthy humans without a healthy planet. 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?) 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. I am very optimistic. 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. 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. 2020 | Maturity Rating: TV-G | 1h 24m | Nature & Ecology Documentaries. It is possible that this is coincidence, but the correlation is striking! Neither does the author. So sadly neither does the author of this review. Its avoidable if we take better care of our soils and pay more attention to where and how our foods are grown! No spam, we promise just our best articles. We are made of carbon (16%) and its the element that life is based upon! They correctly state that Bison would pass through land and not be seen for around a year. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Kiss the Ground | Successful Farming No big deal. The farmers are now starving or have moved on as the soils wont grow anything anymore, they have become dirt. This dirt then cannot store water, and heats up massively under the sun with no protection, baking the soils and exacerbating the problem. Unfortunately, there are still very few about, especially in the UK. Watch the film trailer here and the full movie on Netflix. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. The long term prognosis for our survival with business as usual is very, very poor . Kiss the Ground is a full-length documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson that sheds light on an "new, old approach" to farming called " regenerative agriculture " that has the potential to balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world. Its a story about hope and solutions. It carries pleasant stuff. Gabe: HaHa! I am alive!. 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? Our independent team of journalists Im sure we can all agree that factory farming is a blight on humanity, and there is far too much mono-cropping, but assuming that its either this intensive form of animal agriculture or holistic grazing, is not accurate. Despite all of this, my fear is that many will be left with a complete misunderstanding of where environmental science truly lies. 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. Registration confirmation will be emailed to you. However, I was slightly apprehensive that the documentary may be too focused on California and Hollywood and not be relevant to farmers and ranchers across the U.S. and the globe. Regenerative agriculture describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity - resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle. Forages and Pastures Symposium: Cover Crops in Livestock Production: Whole-System Approach: Managing Grazing to Restore Soil Health And farm livelihoods. The filmmakers additionally say "Kiss the Ground" has earned the attention of scientists, farmers and activists alike, crossing boundaries in terms of a highly politicized issue and even being . 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. 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. 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. 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. The basic premise of Kiss the Ground is that the destruction of soil is contributing to the severity and intensity of climate change. Theyre disconnected form the real world. Op-ed: 'Kiss the Ground' Misses the Complexity of Climate Solutions in It is a strategic use of fame and visibility, and the filmmakers and stars are clearly aware of the cultural impact of their appearances in the film. 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. "All farmable soil could be gone in 60 years. 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. ), Pollinator garden/market flowers at Copper Cricket Farm. Fund charities that are helping people to compost their poo in toilets in the third world. Hotter soils during the day create hot rising air, which pushes any of these clouds away, and is how deserts are formed and grow. kiss the ground fact checking - cnatrainingnyc.com However, there is a slight problem with the way they presented the information from the Drawdown report. Im not suggesting we should only be changing our diet but given it has greater potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions you would think it would have been given more emphasis than putting cows on pasture. Ray: I met the Kiss the Ground group in 2015. Why? This is the central statement of Kiss the Ground, an eco-educational Netflix documentary directed and produced by Josh and Rebecca Tickell.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. 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. Her main aim is to help people to start making some small (but significant) changes to the way they eat so they can enjoy all the benefits, like more energy, less sickness, reduced risks of future disease and less guilt - because we all need less stress and guilt in our lives! Find farms local to you that are farming in a regenerative way and support them by buying your produce from there. 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. 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. Kiss the Ground - YouTube Take the Inflammation quiz - what's your level? Any plans to hire an agent or move to L.A? Kiss the Ground gave the microphone to Ranchers Alan Savory and Gabe Brown, but we didn't hear about any legitimate science testing out whether the claims they were making truly hold up? There is extraordinary potential in the layers beneath our feet our Earths soil. Let me show you how , Get my FREE guide, and receive eco-friendly eating tips, recipes and motivation. 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., . 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. Its predicted that, if we can scale up some of these farming methods over the next 30 years, we can REVERSE global warming. This will not only better their own wellbeing because they will be consuming foods higher in nutrient density, but they will also support those who are making a positive impact on the environment. best charter schools in nashville. Its not a bad thing per se. The filmmakers were able to discuss organic and regenerative agriculture, livestock production and veganism, and climate change in a manner that made no individuals or groups either heroes or villains but rather made the soil the hero which is the appropriate focus in my opinion.