There are no simple solutions to complex problems. Dont get me wrong. 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., . Despite all of this, my fear is that many will be left with a complete misunderstanding of where environmental science truly lies. 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. are needed to help heal the earth. Compost your food scraps. 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. 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. 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. I wanted the filmmakers to first understandto let the soil speak and to let nature teach us. Copyright 2021 Understanding Ag, LLC | Website by RVT Solutions. 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. Potential mitigation of midwest grass-finished beef production emissions with soil carbon sequestration in the United States of America. The solution is right under our feet THE SOIL. 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. If you cant get them into a council waste system, there are a variety of small compost bins you can put in your garden at home. 1 Claims that holistic grazing can reverse climate change. And lets not forget, this is the same man who ordered40,000 African elephants to slaughterbecause he incorrectly thought they were damaging the land. 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. "We should be thriving, the planet booming with life and abundance and the healthiest generation walking the earth. Autor de l'entrada Per ; Data de l'entrada calexico west port of entry hours; 12 month libor rate 2021 a kiss the ground fact checking a kiss the ground fact checking 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. Is it possible that some of the great empires that seemingly vanished, like the Myans and Incas, did so because they over farmed, and could not feed their rising populations? Great news! 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. It was better than most but could have hit that point harder. The sort of solution you might suspect is at the top of all climate scientists lists. Our independent team of journalists 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. Often, our best solutions arent actually that innovative; they simply mimic natural processes and what the Earth already does. However, after spending time with the Kiss the Ground team particularly in Paris, I understood howpassionate the filmmakers are about the soil solution. What do you hope viewers will take away from the movie? Garnett, Poore and their ilk just do key word searches on computer screens and average parsed pre-existing data in their papers. Even though we werent farmers, scientists or experts we knew that together, we could still make a difference! 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. 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. (Source: Kiss the Ground). In other words, a 73 percent reduction in beef available per person in the U.S. For holistic grazing, that figure would be even higher because it requires far more land per cow and thus produces significantly less beef than the traditional more intensive grazing systems. The basic premise of Kiss the Ground is that the destruction of soil is contributing to the severity and intensity of climate change. The trouble is, our farmers are not taught this; our growers know nothing about how the soil works or the basic ecological principles. 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. I enjoyed Woody Harrelson as a narrator; he felt genuine. In fact, in theDrawdown Report,when you factor in the land that would be freed up if the entire world shifted to a plant-rich diet, this becomes the single biggest lever that each of us can pull to lower our individual environmental footprint. As prices go up, pending one spends the same budget they had previously set aside for meat, their consumption naturally falls. It does include grazing planning and management, but also many other things. Science can provide us with some valid assumptions, but it does not provide recipes. Suppose you don't have enough time to read, then watch the KISS the GROUND MOVIE (streaming on Netflix) hosted by Woody Harrelson and directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell. Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Registration confirmation will be emailed to you. 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. Using perennials and trees as protection for the soils. If we adopt regenerative farming practices, we can reverse carbon release into the atmosphere and stabilise the climate, and it wont take long! Ray: Yes, absolutely. There is one hyperlink in error. 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. Thanks for a well-referenced and easily readable article this seems like a great resource to send to people. | Plant Based News Ltd, PO Box 71173, London, SE20 9DQ, United Kingdom. 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. Get our weekly editors newsletter & special offers delivered right to your inbox! 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. Nicholas Carter and Simon Hill (MSc Nutr). Unfortunately not as much as I had hoped. kisstheground. 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. Use this compost for your beds rather than buying in compost or fertilisers. Please read our Comment policy before commenting. 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. He's a lover of people and of life. Unless we save our soils, we have 60 harvests left! Plowing the earth, preparing fields for planting, exposing bare soil. Animals grazing is a part of the carbon cycle, and part of every healthy ecosystem in wild. Eat quality (organic, pasture raised meat, or, even better, that from regenerative farms) meat as a treat not a staple. 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. HaHa! Hopefully enough of them will see this movie and find enough alternatives to be able to make some real change. Having gone from being a vegetable hating, stressed out and sick corporate mum who felt constant guilt for not feeding her family properly and not doing enough for the planet to a healthy, veggie loving and eco-minded mother with much less stress, she's been where you are and can definitely help you overcome your barriers! Farmers need to learn how to regenerate and take care of the soil. There are also clear spikes in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere during the ploughing/tilling months with the lowest levels coinciding with maximum plant coverage before harvest. Many would argue soil degradation is the most critical environmental threat to humans. By practicing regenerative agriculture, a no-till, chemical-free system designed to bolster and protect soil health, we can grow healthier plants, sequester more carbon, and ultimately reverse climate change., Narrator Woody Harrelson calls regenerative agriculture a simple solutiona way to heal our planet and asks viewers to save our soil in hopes the soil might just save us., The short version: Growing food with regenerative agriculture leads to healthier soil, better food, cleaner skies, and clearer water. There is too much in the air now and too little in the earth (released by tilling and soil degradation and burning fossil fuels and plants/trees) causing global temperatures to rise. This gets the nutrients back into local farmlands, and helps reduce the impacts of droughts and the need for fertilisers, which are polluting your local rivers. Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems. Xu, S. (2016). Its predicted that, if we can scale up some of these farming methods over the next 30 years, we can REVERSE global warming. A Case Study in a Cambodian Orphanage. 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. The movie stars Woody Harrelson, David Arquette, Gisele Bundchen, Jason Mraz (and others) and three newly minted stars you may know personally: Understanding Ags Ray Archuleta, Gabe Brown and Kris Nichols, Ph.D. Those of us who have been in the regenerative ag arena for some time, already know these three as soil health super-stars, but now a wider, world-wide audience will benefit from their experience, insight and wisdom, too. Put simply, there are no healthy humans without a healthy planet. Less meat to go around and significantly higher prices per unit. Ray: Not at the moment, but if Steven Spielberg calls, I WILL answer. I am alive!. 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. 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? Anyway, I can go on and on doing a review of the shortcoming of this review, but the author is obviously more interested in justifying the supposed superiority of his food religion than he is in actual peer reviewed range, soil or atmospheric science by people who actually understand agricultural systems. 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. 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. This is a huge problem. Why? (2015). Its a story about hope and solutions. Industrial agriculture (left) causes desertification through tilling and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Share this article or talk about the importance of soils to your friends. Watch the Film OUR COMMUNITY 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. 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 is where a report written by Dr. Tara Garnett for the University of Oxford becomes very interesting a report titleGrazed and Confusedthat I have written about beforehere. This is why science is so important. 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. With that said, any time a new study, book, documentary, or other media publication is published, I read or watch with great interest. There are a few clues within the documentary that speak to this but they are by no means overtly clear to the viewer. Another issue with our modern methods is that we plough to remove existing plants, and then plant, or even leave the field bare over winter. To achieve this, we have to change the way that we do agriculture, with less synthetic chemicals and GMOs and use the most powerful carbon capture process ever invented photosynthesis. 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. 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. Your email address will not be published. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. To start tiny or full-size victory gardens, turn their lawns into meadows, petition their city councils to zone land for community farms/gardens, or donate to conservation nonprofits or farmland trusts? Gabe: I would have liked the movie to highlight the importance of grazing animals. Despite the documentary not spelling it out, its very clear. That sounds catastrophic. They are both such impactful leaders in this movement because they are called to bring these concepts to farmers and ranchers everywhere. best charter schools in nashville. Which would net off the existing emissions we make, at least stabilising things. Desertification is the process of land turning to desert. The rest is projected to be lost within 60 years. Do you or your families and friends have a special watch party planned when it streams onNetflix? A prime example of this is their claim that there is only 60 years of farming left. To move the conversation forward with the urgency this topic deserves, filmmakers have to use the emotion they elicit to generate willpower and give the public the conceptual framework they need to act, not just to feel. Ray: Initially, when I first met the Kiss the Ground group, I told them that I was really concerned about how they should approach the landowners. Id be willing to donate it to them. My hubby is from Alberta, the beef province of Canada and he was telling me about how land intensive pasture raised animals are. We recently caught up with @mcgrathfamilyfarm. Find farms local to you that are farming in a regenerative way and support them by buying your produce from there. Savorys claims dont stand up when you put them under the microscope. As the plants struggle to grow following the removal of organic material year on year, and in the absence of their supporting microbial populations, our farmers resort to chemical fertilisers. It's a nonprofit organization that he leads today as executive director. Since chemical agriculture ramped up in the 70s, we have lost 1/3 of the worlds topsoil. Two-thirds of the worlds land is currently desertifying leading to millions of climate refugees and further environmental destruction. Hosted by Robbie Lockie, Plant Based News delivers pioneering vegan news and ethical views weekly. When receiving subsidies for crops like corn and beans, farmers know that they will make a profit. 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). 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 carries pleasant stuff. It's a tool. As a side note, the documentary routinely employed uses numerous fear-mongering tactics to scare the viewer into grasping for whatever solution comes next. Heres the big picture: a wide-screen projection of the surface of the Earth. star wars fanfiction terran alliance; when a girl says i'll keep that in mind; hillsborough disaster who was to blame; how to get into stanford with a low gpa 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. Whats very interesting is the ability of grazing animals to regenerate grasslands from desert, and reduce desertification. Regenerative agriculture combines 4 practices. We already use 3-4 times more fertiliser for each bushel of grain than in the 60s. 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. Kiss the Ground. Hopefully, this movie will help open many more. Work your way down the list until you find the things that youre willing to do. I was in California at a meeting and met Finnian Makepeace, who is the groups co-founder. 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. As someone who has spent the past 25-plus years working to educate anyone who will listen as to the benefits of regenerative ag, I can say with certainty that the snowball is finally rolling downhill! 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. In COP21 in Paris, 2015. 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. This is a review Im very familiar with having read through it front to back a handful of times. There are over 200 peer reviewed papers that tie/correlate the increase of these chemicals with increases in ADD, child cancers and birth defects. Rousing speeches have their place in communicating the gravity of the situation to the public, funders, and policymakers, but its not a framing that suggests concrete action, or even a plan. Until recently, however, the roles of soil and grazing animals have been missing pieces of the climate puzzle. 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. Water and carbon escape into the atmosphere in enormous plumes blanketing the entire northern hemisphereshown onscreen as ominous swirls of red. Consumers need to do their part by supporting pastured proteins. Biodiverse cover crops to feed the soil biology and protect the soils. If we pull the pin on that, it means one thing and one thing only. Use your local food waste recycling system, and if they dont have one, write to your local council to ask for a food waste collection system. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Proof that this works if given the chance. In turn, this means shifting to more plant-based diets. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Kiss the Ground is a full-length documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson that sheds light on an, Awakening people to the possibilities of regeneration. Watching attentively, a classroom full of farmers. The other 60% are the large sea-driven cycles. The message gets across, but the film downplays a meaningful call to action. Regenerative farming restores soils; storing carbon and reducing the need for chemical help to improve yields by harnessing natural processes. Every version got better, and the last version was the best one. They are told that the chemicals will make things better by the companies selling these chemicals, and not helped to learn how to work with nature, rather than against it. Regenerate America is an unprecedented coalition of farmers, businesses, nonprofits, and individuals from every corner of our country and all political stripes, convened by the national soil health 501 (c)3 nonprofit organization, Kiss the Ground. The NFL quarterback goes to bed earlier than any college student has ever dreamed of, and his diet is impeccably healthy. Using compelling graphics and visuals, along with striking NASA and NOAA footage, the film artfully illustrates how, by drawing down atmospheric carbon, soil is . Their technical expertise should be enough to convince us that their message is not only correct but worth listening to. Modern agriculture was not designed for the betterment of the soil, instead for the short term maximisation of yield. Links to some of the recent research supporting HM, Teague, W. R. (2018).