For #WorldSoilDay, let us look at a movement revolving around soil health and issues on diversity and inclusion it faces.
Kiss The Ground has been described as groundbreaking, but I find that it only manages to scratch the surface. I don’t have indigenous roots as a Filipino-American woman and my family does not have experience working or owning farms. Regardless of my background, I was left feeling very jaded on behalf of indigenous peoples and farmers of color internationally after watching this film on Netflix. My grievance is about the missed opportunity to showcase Traditional Ecological Knowledge and diversity in agriculture to a wide audience.
Kiss The Ground is a 2020 full-length documentary. Their website describes it as a film “that sheds light on an new, old approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that has the potential to balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world”. I went into watching the film blind; I didn’t know about the directors or producers (besides assuming, correctly, that they were white) and I haven’t even watched a lot of movies of the narrator either. Nonetheless, I thought that the film might teach me more about regenerative agriculture. By the end of the film, I was left feeling fed-up at the hollow hope it offered.
Continue reading “Exclusion in the Environmental Movement, a Kiss The Ground Film Critique”
The Evergreen Guide 