In the latest episode, we had the privilege of speaking with Rebecca Harrell Tickell, an influential documentary filmmaker whose work has significantly impacted environmental activism. We discuss her latest project, “Groundswell,” now out on Prime Video, which focuses on regenerative agriculture and the importance of healing the soil ecology, our communities, and most importantly our relationship with the land and its wild inhabitants.
It is the final chapter of a groundbreaking documentary trilogy following Kiss the Ground and Common Ground, a cinematic exploration across five continents narrated by Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson.
So, what is regenerative agriculture, you ask? Rebecca defines it in many different ways and from alternative perspectives. Yes, it is an overused buzzword, but we agree it still has meaning.
To me, regenerative agriculture practices combine Indigenous knowledge with western science and technology to enhance life/ecosystem/soil while producing food and products. It is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems. It should eschew the use of petroleum fertilizers, noxious/poisonous herbicides and insecticides, unsafe genetically modified organisms and expensive single-use seeds. I wanted to give these details first because some entities push for a fake regenerative farming using all the same industrial monocrop, till-spray-feed-cut-spray-more-harvest model that results in depleted (dead, eroded) soils, contaminated (or absent) water, accelerated greenhouse gas emissions (and reflected heat in a bare-soil world), viral and bacterial outbreaks, farm bankruptcies, enormous wealth disparities, and increasing hunger.
This model focuses on topsoil regeneration and oh so much more. Biodiversity in organisms proliferate, leading to plant florescence, insect buzzing, and wildlife roaming. We want more rain. We want rain to soak into the soil, erosion to be limited, and whatever water runs off to be cleaned through the soil. We want the rain-soaked soil to hold onto that water, in collaboration with the hydrological cycle, which calls for more rain and cloud.
Anyone for ecosystem services? To make it simple, consider the two main types of climate disruption factors: 1) burning so much carbon it becomes the wet blanket over the atmosphere leading to a hot hot hot world, superstorms, ice melting, you know. And 2) then there’s the heat created/reflected/radiated from and rain-not-falling on the denuded bare soil we call fallow industrial agricultural fields, hard-packed, dry, unable to absorb or hold moisture.
Regeneration supports carbon biosequestration, increasing resilience to this thing they call climate change. Regeneration operates with the small water cycle to strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil, farm plants, farm animals, farm workers, people who eat from farms, you know.
Stay tuned for multiple new posts. I am a little behind updating all of my work spread across the platforms.
