Kiss The Ground Documentary: Healing and Maintaining Healthy Soil for a Better Food System
Lochtenberg, Maggie Eileen. “title unknown.” 2020.
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’re back for our second look at Kiss the Ground, a phenomenal documentary on the degradation and the healing of our planet’s soils. It’s gained huge traction in the environmentalist crowd and beyond for obvious reasons, and has sparked a new wave of awareness of the connection between how we eat and our rapidly deteriorating environment. We at Farm2People think it's full of such juicy information, it’s worth another watch after it’s explosive release in the summer of 2020.
Last week, we dove into how we got to this spot in the first place - how our soils desertified practicing industrialized agriculture. We now know that the combination of hardcore tilling, the use of synthetic fertilizers and poisonous pesticides, along with our failure to utilize bio-waste has been “almost” irreversibly destructive to our planet. We also know that we have the technology to slow down and even reverse climate change, and it’s been around for millions of years. The secret? It’s all about the microbes!
Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels
We’re talking the microbes in the soil - the seemingly infinite amount of microorganisms living at the roots of plants. Kristine Nichols of the Rodale Institute claims that, “there are more microorganisms in one handful of healthy soil than there are people who have ever lived on planet earth.” We have a hard time even imagining that. When these microorganisms are present and healthy, they feed nutrients right into the roots of plants from what they make out of carbon and water they get from the plants and soil. They also use carbon they get from plants as a glue, locking it in the soil and out of the atmosphere. When practicing regenerative agriculture, healthy soils with loads of microorganisms can retain max amounts of water and carbon, while also maximizing nutrient availability for crops. So, healthy soils mean healthy plants, healthy people, and a healthy environment.
As we have seen in the stories like Gabe Brown’s, the traditional rancher-turned regenerative activist, land that has been chemically fallowed and over-tilled can be saved with soil-centric practices. Or how in the Loess Plateau of China or grasslands of Africa, holistic management including intermittent grazing and terraforming have allowed new life to flourish again in entire regions of desertified land. Against what we previously thought concerning livestock and desertification, cattle grazing actually has a carbon sequestering effect. When paired with increased biodiversity - that is, lots of different plant and wildlife species in one area, grazing patterns that mimic those of ancient migratory herds promotes the natural cycle of plant life. Who would’ve thought? Mimicking nature?
Photo by Sippakorn Yamkasikorn from Pexels
It is mostly agreed upon throughout the scientific community, but Paul Hawken said it best; “we cannot achieve carbon drawdown without biosequestration,” or in other words, reverse climate change. This beautiful, simple technology that plants and microorganisms maintain is what many environmentalists call our only option. However, it is a viable option; and as it turns out, regenerative agriculture that builds back the soil also has benefits for pretty much all of mankind.
The farmers that transitioned to regenerative agriculture now have biodiverse fields that are resilient to drought or storms. The communities that depend on these farms now have nutrient-dense food and food security year round. The wildlife and water cycles that return to once arid regions provide a new life force for the next generation. The carbon that we’ve spent decades releasing into our atmosphere is drawn down back into the soil, eventually leading to climate cooling (yes, a good thing).
Now, we know reversing climate change is a daunting task. Not all of us have access to desertified land we can fix up with regenerative agriculture. Many of us are urban dwellers, pretty far from where our food comes from. But the solutions are simpler than you might think.
Jessica Handy, registered nutritionist and partnership development specialist from Kiss the Ground, gives us a route to changing our food system that anyone can take. It involves getting connected. That is, to our food source, to those that grow our food, and ultimately to our planet. We all have a small way we can support regeneration, starting with awareness. From there, it's about what food system you want to support; one of life and resiliency-one of the future, or stick with the status quo.
Today, share what you found from Kiss the Ground with one person. Follow where your food comes from and connect with someone that grows it. In Los Angeles, support local farms that practice regenerative agriculture. Much like we depend on the community of microorganisms working together to provide us life, we must depend on each other to push real change. Just like John Lui says, “if we restore all of our degraded lands on Earth we could live in eden-we could create a regenerative economy. This is the way forward.”
Learn more: