Looking for a way to kill the quarantine boredom? Look no further than Kiss the Ground, a newly-released Netflix documentary that explores the relationship between climate change and dirt.
If you’ve seen The People vs. Larry Flynt in all of its obscenity, like I did in Constitutional Law last semester, you’ll be a little surprised to hear the voice of actor Woody Harrelson narrating a documentary about social and environmental issues. While Morgan Freeman’s voice might have been a better match for shots of billowing fields of grain, perhaps Harrelson’s raspy tone is an appropriate fit for the seriousness of the climate crisis.
Here are five things I learned from Kiss the Ground.
Erosion is when soil becomes dirt.
The basic premise of Kiss the Ground is that the destruction of soil is contributing to the severity and intensity of climate change.
Tilling, the process of pulling up the soil to plant seeds, is destructive to the soil. Over the years, tilling causes the soil to dirt, leaving it vulnerable to erosion and desertification. This process of soil destruction is detrimental to agriculture.
Our health, and the health of the planet, is directly connected to the state of Earth’s soil
It took a Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady cameo to hit this point home.
If you’ve heard anything about Tom Brady’s lifestyle, you know that it’s… extreme. The NFL quarterback goes to bed earlier than any college student has ever dreamed of, and his diet is impeccably healthy.
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. Scientists and researchers in the documentary back them up. Rich soil, with plenty of microbes, allows healthy plants to grow. When those are plants that we eat, healthy soil is crucial.
Not to mention, I got a chuckle out of Bundchen calling Earth, “Big Mama.”
The government is doing something about soil destruction– but is it enough?
One of the first characters introduced in Kiss the Ground is Ray Archuleta, a conservation agronomist. As an employee of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, he travels around the country educating farmers on more sustainable farming practices.
Archuleta describes the soil conservation problem as an education problem. Farmers need to learn how to regenerate and take care of the soil.
But crop subsidies from the federal government complicate the economics of agriculture. When receiving subsidies for crops like corn and beans, farmers know that they will make a profit. But 99 percent of those crops go to feeding livestock. These animals then emit greenhouse gases.
While the efforts of Archuleta and others are slowly gaining traction, crop subsidies fuel a system that depletes the soil and leaves farmers dependent on the government for aid.
Reducing emissions isn’t enough
Several scientists featured in Kiss the Ground are clear that simply reducing carbon emission won’t be enough to save the planet. Real change requires drawdown: year to year reduction in carbon dioxide levels.
This is because there is a “legacy load” of carbon in the atmosphere– an amount of carbon dioxide that will persist for decades, if not centuries. Simple reducing emission does nothing to decrease the greenhouse gases that are already in our atmosphere.
Kiss the Ground: From desertification to regeneration
Desertification is the process of land turning to desert. Two-thirds of the world’s land is currently desertifying– leading to millions of climate refugees and further environmental destruction.
A covered planet is a healthy planet.
Kiss the Ground
As Ian Somerhalder says in the documentary, “Cows can be good.” While many blame cows for carbon emissions, and rightfully so, they can actually be a part of the solution. 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. So cows can actually be used to reverse desertification.
Other soil-based carbon capture solutions like composting are crucial to regenerative agriculture. Kiss the Ground features successful composting programs in San Francisco, Detroit, and Haiti.
Ultimately, “a covered planet is a healthy planet”– Earth needs to be covered in plants. Regenerative agriculture is an important part of the solution when it comes to climate change.
Kiss the Ground has the perfect documentary mix of celebrity activists and wise elder scientists. It’s not too long, but you’ll learn a lot from it.
One of my favorite elements of the documentary is the perspective that Earth has always been managing and sequestering carbon– we just need to mimic that. This idea reminded me of what I learned from Cradle to Cradle. Often, our best solutions aren’t actually that innovative; they simply mimic natural processes and what the Earth already does.
Kiss the Ground Documentary
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Thank you for the review. I just heard of the movie and wanted to find out a little more about it until I get time to watch it. It’s especially interesting to me as I am working towards a biology degree and hope to become a soil scientist. I’ve been interested in and learning more about the importance of soil health for years. I live in a rural area and have seen first hand the difference in soils farmed using modern, industrial methods and smaller fields farmed in a more traditional way. The difference is immense and plain for anyone to see. It’s sad, really, seeing gray, dead soil devoid of life. I do feel bad for the farmers trapped in the cycle though. They love their land and lifestyle, they are just trying to survive, while being poisoned themselves by the chemicals they must use to keep their fields producing. Hopefully enough of them will see this movie and find enough alternatives to be able to make some real change.