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. Find farms local to you that are farming in a regenerative way and support them by buying your produce from there. Unfortunately, there are still very few about, especially in the UK. Even though we werent farmers, scientists or experts we knew that together, we could still make a difference! Plus FCRNs paper simply ignored the existing peer reviewed science with its claim that no such science exists. Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie. It was better than most but could have hit that point harder. 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. 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. Shop organic where you can. The claim: Video shows cracks in the ground that formed after earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. 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! There are a number of others as well as many more in the pipeline. Look no further than Kiss the Ground, a newly-released Netflix documentary that explores the relationship between climate change and dirt. 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. Enterprise, AL 36330. kisstheground. Personally, I think its a must watch for people to truly understand the situation we are in with the soils, why its important to save our soils, and how we can help. 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. Kiss the Ground members are the grassroots stakeholders that stand with us in the regenerative movement. As Hannah Ritchie, Phd (Geosciences) puts it: Whether you buy it from the farmer next door or from far away, it is not the location that makes the carbon footprint of your dinner large, but the fact that it is beef.. Ray: I met the Kiss the Ground group in 2015. 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. It took a Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady cameo to hit this point home. I thought it would be just another news release or another interview. When those are plants that we eat, healthy soil is crucial. 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. Ground News is unable to assign a bias rating and does not have ratings available from Ad Fontes Media, All Sides, and Media Bias/Fact Check. Two-thirds of the worlds land is currently desertifying leading to millions of climate refugees and further environmental destruction. The problem is, the lay viewer who is not across the science, and blinded by the message of hope, is likely to confuse the role of cows in holistic grazing with instruction that we should continue eating meat at current rates (as long as its grass-fed) and perhaps even double down on our meat consumption. The first clue is when the documentary makes mention of the natural history of Bison roaming the United States. | Plant Based News Ltd, PO Box 71173, London, SE20 9DQ, United Kingdom. The animal point here is controversial I know. But efforts have been made to restore the soils since 1994. 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 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. 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 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. We can all make some simple changes for massive benefits to our health and footprint. Check out this map for farms local to you Regenerative Farm Map Regeneration International. You can reach me at novelhandco@gmail.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. Hosted by Robbie Lockie, Plant Based News delivers pioneering vegan news and ethical views weekly. Firstly, just so we are clear, the majority of the worlds mono-crops are fed to livestock. The difference is immense and plain for anyone to see. Local water cycles produce 40% of our rainfall. And this isnt just my own speculation. Bundchen and Brady point to the health of the soil as directly influencing the health of the plants we eat and our health as well. Consumers need to do their part by supporting pastured proteins. I am alive!. Farming like nature has also been shown to reduce inputs (costs) and improve yields. Modern agriculture was not designed for the betterment of the soil, instead for the short term maximisation of yield. 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. But I also experienced the same misleadingparadigms from the conservative groups like Farm Bureau and other commodities groups. The central tenant is that its a diet that places enormous emphasis on calories from plants and de-emphasizes calories from animal products. From rehabilitating entire ecosystems to growing home victory gardens, there are plenty of ways to get involved in regenerative agriculture. 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). Kris: Im always excited by the opportunities to discuss Regenerative Agriculture. (Source: Kiss the Ground). The natural carbon cycle involves carbon release by animals consuming plant and other organic materials and releasing the carbon as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Harvard research has shown that these chemicals can build up in breast fed babies this use of chemicals has to stop! Ray: Yes, absolutely. Juries have now even started to pay out to people who have developed cancer after using glyphosate!! Unfortunately not as much as I had hoped. 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. 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? 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., . Suggestions for viewers to compost and eat a plant-based diet come off as both insignificant and off the mark after the grand scheme of carbon cycling via production agriculture the whole film had been setting up. Livestock and Land Use: How Are We Feeding The Planet? The review is plain evidence that we see what we believe and the reviewers beliefs greatly clouded their vision. Fund charities that are helping people to compost their poo in toilets in the third world. This website uses third party cookies to improve your experience with your consent. Check out Kiss the Ground website, where you will find other ways to be involved and even learn how to Become a Soil Advocate! (Source: Kiss the Ground). With this in mind, I feel obliged to point out the uncomfortable contrast between the two main types of interviewees in the film. My hubby is from Alberta, the beef province of Canada and he was telling me about how land intensive pasture raised animals are. It turned out to be more involved than I imagined. Your email address will not be published. Gabe: That each and every person needs to step up and make a differencethat they can make a difference by purchasing from farmers and ranchers who practice regenerative ag. Try: Compost Toilets in Africa: Human Feces as Fertilizer | Thrive4Good (thriveforgood.org) or GiveLove. 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. Instagram @maggie.eileen.art). 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. Several scientists featured in Kiss the Ground are clear that simply reducing carbon emission wont be enough to save the planet. 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. As an employee of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, he travels around the country educating farmers on more sustainable farming practices. Kiss the Ground features successful composting programs in San Francisco, Detroit, and Haiti. Jeff Creque, Rangeland Director, Carbon Cycle Institute. Commercial meat farming has one of the highest negative impacts. So the white papers cited dont even really know what HPG/AMP is or how it works. Rich soil, with plenty of microbes, allows healthy plants to grow. (Though theyre still good ideas.). These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. 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. 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. 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. However, there is a slight problem with the way they presented the information from the Drawdown report. 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). 2020 | Maturity Rating: TV-G | 1h 24m | Nature & Ecology Documentaries. Hopefully enough of them will see this movie and find enough alternatives to be able to make some real change. Despite the documentary not spelling it out, its very clear. If youve seen The People vs. Larry Flynt in all of its obscenity, like I did in Constitutional Law last semester, youll be a little surprised to hear the voice of actor Woody Harrelson narrating a documentary about social and environmental issues. 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. 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. If we want to lower our environmental footprint the single most important thing we can do iseat more plants. 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. 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 film begins by examining . This is how the natural carbon cycle should work. I am very optimistic. 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). Eat quality (organic, pasture raised meat, or, even better, that from regenerative farms) meat as a treat not a staple. Im not saying the filmmakers should have gotten a token Black person, but they couldnt have gone wrong centering the voices of people for whom the stakes of not reversing climate change are much higher than their own. berger 215 hybrid 300 win mag. Learn how your comment data is processed. 2 Creation of a false dichotomy. Their mob grazing action and the impact of their hooves is important. 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. Hopefully, this movie will help open many more. My greatest hope is for me to continue to do this and any chances I have to do so, I will take. 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. Given soil grows 95 per cent of our food, and sustains human life, this is a huge problem. Theres also a lot of new recent PEER REVIEWED soil science that demonstrates this. 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. 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. The message gets across, but the film downplays a meaningful call to action. There are many things you can do, all varying in difficulty. I graduated from Vanderbilt University with degrees in Political Science, Economics and Spanish, and I currently study law in Texas. By 2050, it is estimated that 1bn people will be refugees of soil desertification. 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. I also thoroughly enjoyed Pauls episode onRich Rolls podcastwhere he speaks at length about Project Drawdown. 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! The movie didn't even include an indictment of current US politics or President Trump, which is notable by its absence considering the film was released so close to election time. This isnt the only literature review that has found a lack of science to support Savorys claims about holistic grazing with another detailedreviewof the literature out of Sweden by Maria Nordborg, coming to the same conclusion. The movie is preaching to the choir here, which I think is why I found it disappointing that the filmmakers felt the need to wrap perfectly good explanations of the mechanisms of carbon sequestration and climate change in more evocative but nebulous language like "heal the planet" or "save the soil. The evidence in favor of regenerative agriculture is irrefutable. 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? Required fields are marked *. Its within this context, that it becomes so vividly apparent, that in this conversation we are not just talking about planetary health, but at its core, human health. Awesome! 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. 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. Watch the Film OUR COMMUNITY Above all, its great to see this conversation growing from what has very much been a fringe movement to now entering the mainstream. What the writers ignored is that it was SCIENCE that led to that preferred plan of action. 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). Healthy soils can store more carbon than all the trees combined! It's a nonprofit organization that he leads today as executive director. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. After 14 years, it is lush farmland again. The Lhos plateau in China is where settled agriculture first began. 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. The basic premise of Kiss the Ground is that the destruction of soil is contributing to the severity and intensity of climate change. Clearly this is something that needs our urgent attention and resolution! worlds leading climate scientists have to say about diet? However, this was taken from a United Nations speech, which leading soil scientists say isabsolutely not supported by science. As long as its grass-fed. We should harness the regenerative power of the earth and its processes. So really, the idea of conservation and restoration, needed to be absolutely front and center ifKiss the Groundtruly wanted to educate the masses about how agriculture can help tackle climate change. Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture & Society, 4(3), 8. Also, I must confess that I did not fully understand the implications of a film crew following me all over the country. Grow your own veg using your home compost! As a last comment, it was brought into the discussion that we shouldnt believe Savory because his decision led to the death of thousands of elephants. Real change requires drawdown: year to year reduction in carbon dioxide levels. As prices go up, pending one spends the same budget they had previously set aside for meat, their consumption naturally falls. Kiss the Ground was created in 2013 from a meeting in Venice Beach. Monocropping further exacerbates the issue, as the same crop is grown year on year, for miles in the case of US farms, microbial diversity cannot increase. Jemima is the Head of Editorial of Plant Based News. Kris: Yes. Less meat to go around and significantly higher prices per unit. I honestly thought it would stand on its own. In fact, based upon the outcome of that decision, Savory greatly modified his opinion as to what science can and cannot do when it comes to solutions of complex problems. Please read our Comment policy before commenting. Holistic management is a decision making framework which has been developed over the years to deal with complex situations. Heres my critique of that paper: https://lachefnet.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/its-the-soil-biology-stupid/ This paper includes a number of these soil science papers. Kiss the Ground Directed by Joshua Tickell, Rebecca Harrell Tickell Documentary 1h 24m Find Tickets When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an. . The Lhos plateau in China, an area larger than Belgium, had become a dusty wasteland after over farming. Check out her story here or take a look at HOW she can help you on the Services page. This movie has given soil a voice to say, I am not dirt! 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.