Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garland. Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
Speaker 1: the choices we make and where they lead us. My
Speaker 1: guests today are the creative force involved in an incredible
Speaker 1: documentary that impacts us, all about the importance of regenerative
Speaker 1: farming that affects the food we all eat, and the
Speaker 1: health and longevity of our beautiful planet. You have to
Speaker 1: check out their documentaries Kiss the Ground and Common Ground,
Speaker 1: out now on Amazon. Please welcome Ian Summerholder and Rebecca
Speaker 1: Tickle to the podcast. I'm so excited to talk to
Speaker 1: you about this because I'm really also very passionate about
Speaker 1: the earth and nature and sustainability.
Speaker 2: And pushing and pushing and pushing to.
Speaker 1: Try and do better and be better and stay healthy
Speaker 1: and longevity and everything. It's you know, it's all for me.
Speaker 1: So I feel like this is a good connection.
Speaker 3: They're all inextricably linked, right, They're all inextricably linked.
Speaker 4: I think, as you're talking to think, this is like
Speaker 4: the opposite of the circle of profit that we talk about.
Speaker 4: Like the bear like bear makes the poison to kill
Speaker 4: the pests, but then they also make the medicine to
Speaker 4: cure the disease that's caused from exposure to the poison
Speaker 4: that kills the pest. That's like this degenerative loop of
Speaker 4: cycle of profit. But what you're doing is the opposite
Speaker 4: of that. You're spreading the message of regeneration, and then
Speaker 4: you're also spreading the message of like self health. Regeneration's like,
Speaker 4: that's a cycle of profit, that's regenerative, that's a.
Speaker 3: Great within the human body.
Speaker 5: And so it's using the same model but turning in
Speaker 5: on its head for wellness and regeneration.
Speaker 3: And then our families grow as a result.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they grow healthy, which is which is not
Speaker 2: easy to do in this date.
Speaker 3: Healthy families create healthy streets that create healthy neighborhoods, create
Speaker 3: healthy towns, communities. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, on this podcast we talk all about choices, and
Speaker 1: there is one choice that we all make collectively, every
Speaker 1: single one of us, every.
Speaker 2: Single day, several times a day.
Speaker 1: Is the food we eat. And your documentary, Common Ground,
Speaker 1: is an all encompassing documentary and it talks about how
Speaker 1: to get that healthy food and so much more. Can
Speaker 1: you just tell us about Common Ground?
Speaker 3: Tell us, sister.
Speaker 5: Common Ground is environmental documentary that is a hopeful, uplifting,
Speaker 5: inspirational film about how we can save the future of humanity.
Speaker 5: It shows how we can fix our climate. It shows
Speaker 5: how we can create a trillion dollar industry of regeneration
Speaker 5: that's our future, and it shows how each one of
Speaker 5: us can get involved and what that pathway is. It
Speaker 5: really sparks a shift from that paralysis in the climate
Speaker 5: anxiety that we're all feeling. And then suddenly when you
Speaker 5: see that pathway, it spurs you into action because you
Speaker 5: realize that we have a window of time where we
Speaker 5: can course correct and turn this whole thing around. And
Speaker 5: that's what Common Ground shows us. And it's the follow
Speaker 5: up film to the Predecessor Kiss the Ground and Kiss
Speaker 5: the Ground came out in twenty twenty on Netflix. It's
Speaker 5: been a huge global success. It's King Charles's favorite movie.
Speaker 3: We touched a billion people.
Speaker 5: Ian's in the film. He actually started shooting that back
Speaker 5: in twenty eleven, and then we started filming and we
Speaker 5: started in twenty thirteen, and then we synced up after
Speaker 5: the fact, only to discover that we were all working
Speaker 5: on the same stuff, or on the same issue. With
Speaker 5: Alan Savory and regeneration and we were learning like the
Speaker 5: same sort of niche information about soil and the sort
Speaker 5: of magic of soil to sequester all of the carbon
Speaker 5: that we've emitted. I mean, there's more life and healthy
Speaker 5: soil than there are stars in the universe. And so
Speaker 5: when you start to think about the power of life
Speaker 5: that's generated and that soil, you suddenly want to start
Speaker 5: taking care of it because it means the sustainability of
Speaker 5: life for humans and all living things, and it can
Speaker 5: be done in any ecosystem and we.
Speaker 6: All have a role to play.
Speaker 5: So today Earth Day, Happy Earth Day, Verny. These films
Speaker 5: have just been launched. Case the Ground is being relaunched
Speaker 5: to the director's cut with our indigenous people's section. Wonderful
Speaker 5: and and Common Ground are now they're Amazon Originals, which
Speaker 5: is phenomenal, and they're now globally available to stream in
Speaker 5: every country and in most languages. And it's been a
Speaker 5: fourteen year journey for us to get to this point.
Speaker 3: For fourteen years.
Speaker 5: And by the way, I know you're like, oh gosh,
Speaker 5: a soil movie that sounds.
Speaker 6: Dull as dirt dirt, but it's got.
Speaker 5: And it has Jason, his buddy Jason, and has daw.
Speaker 2: Jason.
Speaker 6: They all make the soil so sex And.
Speaker 2: Why did you do work about that?
Speaker 1: Why was it so important to you to be a
Speaker 1: part of this, to jump in and be such a leader.
Speaker 3: I grew up on the very delicate ecosystem in the
Speaker 3: buyers of Louisiana, and we grew up super poor. We
Speaker 3: had nothing, but we had everything because we lived off
Speaker 3: of all the bounty of the lakes, the rivers, the bayous,
Speaker 3: the sky, the land of my grandparents. My mom's side
Speaker 3: were Mississippi redneck farmers and my dad's side was Cajun.
Speaker 3: And so that amazing balance of my dad taught me
Speaker 3: the balance of wetlands and what it means when there's
Speaker 3: an imbalance when you take more than you put back.
Speaker 3: That imbalance throws off the entire ecosystem, and the only
Speaker 3: creatures that lose are us. All of a sudden, you
Speaker 3: can't sustain life anymore. Right, same on the farm, my
Speaker 3: grandparents always taught us. My grandfather was like an agricultural inventor.
Speaker 3: Fortunately never patented any of this shit. I'm so curious,
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. In the forties, he so he built
Speaker 3: a mold and he started drying out bull and calmanure,
Speaker 3: and he was the one that made the first in
Speaker 3: the thirties. Actually the little pots made of manure that
Speaker 3: you german eight seeds in and grow them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're like the biodegrade into their arca.
Speaker 3: He created those.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: He made the mold forward and the whole thing, and
Speaker 3: he made thousands of thousands of thousands of them.
Speaker 2: Those are still being used today.
Speaker 3: I know, I wish, I wish our family had a
Speaker 3: patent on that from years ago. But the idea was
Speaker 3: is that we both grew up and Josh and I
Speaker 3: went to the same high school in Mandeville, Louisiana.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: And Josh is my directing, producing partner, writing partner.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, So it's this powerhouse couple who built these
Speaker 3: films and then these amazing inner circles that came together.
Speaker 3: We've been waiting on this moment for fourteen years. So
Speaker 3: I learned from the farming side of it, how these
Speaker 3: farms regenerate and how all systems work off of one another.
Speaker 3: That's what my grandfather taught me, and then my dad
Speaker 3: taught and my mom and then my dad taught me
Speaker 3: on the other side, which is the delicate balance of nature.
Speaker 3: But from the landscape are the lens I guess you
Speaker 3: could say of wetlands, because that system is extremely delicate
Speaker 3: in its balance. Those types of things inform who we become,
Speaker 3: and that's how we found ourselves here. I met Alan
Speaker 3: Savory when I spoke at Stages and Scientists that I
Speaker 3: want to say it was the end of twenty ten.
Speaker 3: So Alan Savory is this man. You can look him up.
Speaker 3: He's basically like the godfather of soil. He was and
Speaker 3: he was this very famous political figure. He's the one
Speaker 3: that led the Basically he's the one that led the
Speaker 3: revolution and maintained power in what rose Rhodesia into Zimbabwe.
Speaker 3: He was the transition of that. So he was like
Speaker 3: exiled by Mugabe. Like this man was an unbelievable He
Speaker 3: basically built the most famous the first real guerrilla warfare
Speaker 3: outfit was Alan. But he's also the most amazing soil scientist.
Speaker 3: And in nineteen seventy three he ran the numbers. He
Speaker 3: was looking at agricol trual practices globally and thinking, by
Speaker 3: about the turn of the twenty first century, our soils
Speaker 3: globally are going to be so degraded that we're going
Speaker 3: to be basically looking at an extinction event by basically
Speaker 3: causing large scale global desertification, which is exactly what happened.
Speaker 3: I met him at the symposium that Deep Bac Troper
Speaker 3: used to put on called Sagans and Scientists, and I
Speaker 3: spoke at it. It's like a four hundred person ted talk,
Speaker 3: and it was so intimidating because I was there talking
Speaker 3: about the relationship as how the world and our bodies
Speaker 3: are basically the same biological process, taking that concept and
Speaker 3: breaking it down for people. The guy who went up
Speaker 3: before me was one of the guys that won the
Speaker 3: Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI. These are the smartest
Speaker 3: people in the room, and I was thinking, what in
Speaker 3: the hell, And like this poor kid from Louisiana have
Speaker 3: no college education, but I'm here talking about this story.
Speaker 2: And that's where I met Allen Amazing.
Speaker 3: Four months later, we packed up Jeff Schattz and I,
Speaker 3: who was our a camera operator in Vampire Our He
Speaker 3: was our steady caam operator who ended up becoming a
Speaker 3: big producer and now he runs his own show and stuff.
Speaker 3: But we packed up and went to Zimbabwe and we
Speaker 3: went to Allan's ranch and where Mugabe allowed him and
Speaker 3: remind you like this was still Mugabe was in power,
Speaker 3: so like you could not go into Zimbabwe as a
Speaker 3: white journalist with like camera equipment. You still can't, by
Speaker 3: the way, you still can't because we tried with.
Speaker 5: Ground Swell and all of our our gear got confiscated
Speaker 5: by the government and we ended up not being able
Speaker 5: to film out and Safey. It's a result for Grown Sweat.
Speaker 3: So you see, this is really potent, scary stuff where
Speaker 3: we were putting our lives at risk to get this footage.
Speaker 2: I mean, the movie is fascinating, crazy.
Speaker 3: I learned Thank you so much great in the.
Speaker 1: First thirty minutes. I was like, wow, I'm really learning
Speaker 1: a lot from this movie. And I couldn't take my
Speaker 1: eyes off of it. Was really well done. The cast,
Speaker 1: you know, just all the information. It was riveting and important.
Speaker 5: So when you go to Prime Video today on Earth
Speaker 5: Day or whatever it may be, start by watching Kiss
Speaker 5: the Ground, because that's the first film with that ands
Speaker 5: in that film, and it really does a great job
Speaker 5: at explaining the carbon cycle. What is regeneration, what is
Speaker 5: regenerative agriculture, Why is soil so important, and then it
Speaker 5: gives some great examples of some unlikely heroes, like farmers
Speaker 5: who've been conventional farmers for a long time, who have
Speaker 5: made a really sort of crazy and bold risk to
Speaker 5: make a transition away from a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: the industrial farming that they've been doing and then have
Speaker 5: a huge success. And so the film really follows that
Speaker 5: story along with and then.
Speaker 3: But it breaks it down into such simplified entertaining because
Speaker 3: that was the first thing about you know, Just the
Speaker 3: Ground took seven years to make. Yeah, you know, we're
Speaker 3: not playing around anymore. Bezos and that team and Amazon
Speaker 3: and MG, I mean this is these are some of
Speaker 3: the most powerful groups entities in the world. And they
Speaker 3: took all three films, repackaged Kiss the Ground, pulled it
Speaker 3: off of Netflix. Thank you, Netflix, we love you. It's
Speaker 3: an amazing, credible run and relationship. But now Common Ground.
Speaker 3: So Kiss the Ground was like dipping our toe in regeneration.
Speaker 3: Common Ground is really the nuts and bolts and the
Speaker 3: promise of how it actually works, but the big aha moment.
Speaker 3: And if this was ten, twelve, fifteen years ago, we
Speaker 3: would it would be a little scary.
Speaker 5: Stocked, we'd be stocked and I actually have been stocked.
Speaker 3: We've basically uncovered on film the agrichemical companies have been
Speaker 3: secretly micro financing virtually, I can't say all in public,
Speaker 3: but a very large portion, I'll say that of the
Speaker 3: university agricultural curriculum in this country for forty years.
Speaker 2: Incredible.
Speaker 6: So we pulled back the curtain.
Speaker 5: We talked to whistleblowers. So the second film, Common Ground,
Speaker 5: which comes after Kiss the Ground, we filmed it during COVID.
Speaker 5: So instead of going and traveling around the world like
Speaker 5: we did with Kiss the Ground and like you did,
Speaker 5: we weren't able to do that. So we instead packed
Speaker 5: up our sprinter vans and hit the road and traveled
Speaker 5: across North America during that time, and people were like
Speaker 5: wearing masks and it was the first time people were
Speaker 5: like taking their masks off, and we were doing social distancing.
Speaker 5: So the whole film Common Ground was filmed during the pandemic,
Speaker 5: and that's why it focuses so specifically on North America.
Speaker 5: But what was crazy was that we found all these
Speaker 5: whistleblowers that were willing to talk because they believe in
Speaker 5: regenerative agriculture and they had been suppressed, fired.
Speaker 3: Dressed fire bullied like big time.
Speaker 5: And they do a great job breaking down how these
Speaker 5: different entities which are put in place to protect us
Speaker 5: have essentially been bought by the chemical companies. They're the
Speaker 5: products that are then put on these foods that then
Speaker 5: turn these farmers into debt surfs that are pulled into
Speaker 5: bank loans that require them to use those chemicals.
Speaker 3: And then the pharmaceutical companies that participate in this sort
Speaker 3: of closed loop economy where you have a you have
Speaker 3: a an agrochemical company that the pesticide creates a certain disease,
Speaker 3: but then it's also owned by a company non Hodgkins Foma,
Speaker 3: but they also possess pretty much the only treatment for them.
Speaker 5: Yes, they sell the only treatment for the disease that
Speaker 5: their other product.
Speaker 6: Cause of the.
Speaker 2: Movie was like, think about startling.
Speaker 6: And that's not a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: That's disease with the chemicals and then they're providing the
Speaker 1: medications to cure the disease.
Speaker 3: Disease. Isn't that wild? And we allow that the US
Speaker 3: the congressional members of the US Congress have allowed this
Speaker 3: to happen. The universities have allowed that, you know, they've
Speaker 3: the chemical company to basically bought the best science money
Speaker 3: can buy. But then the legislators base legislation on those findings,
Speaker 3: and so they all participate in this unbelievable web of money,
Speaker 3: like enormous amounts of money. Sorry, what were you going
Speaker 3: to say?
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I'm excited about what
Speaker 5: you're saying, because one hundred percent what happens is people
Speaker 5: go to land grant universities thinking that they're going to
Speaker 5: get a great education in agriculture, and instead what they're like,
Speaker 5: like you said, the majority of funding that comes into
Speaker 5: these lang grand universities comes from the companies that are
Speaker 5: selling the chemicals, and so they find all the curriculum
Speaker 5: and they make the science and so. And then if
Speaker 5: you look at where the people who go to these
Speaker 5: land grant universities end up, if they're smart, they don't
Speaker 5: end up a farmer. They end up in policy or
Speaker 5: they end up some place where they can actually make money,
Speaker 5: and then they're dictating the policies. And they had an
Speaker 5: article that came out which showed that there was a
Speaker 5: big party at the at the EPA when they waved
Speaker 5: their ten one thousand study that showed the harms of
Speaker 5: the effects of these chemicals being exposed to people. So
Speaker 5: the government is actively suppressing the science that's coming in
Speaker 5: that's showing the connection between our health and these toxic
Speaker 5: chemicals and the impact that's having. And then they had
Speaker 5: a party to celebrate it where they invited everyone from
Speaker 5: the EPA to come and they served cake to celebrate
Speaker 5: the ten thousand study that they waived that they are
Speaker 5: responsible for making sure that we're protected from incredible.
Speaker 2: I want to just go back. I want to talk
Speaker 2: about and.
Speaker 5: That's common ground, but it's actually a hopeful movie. I
Speaker 5: promise you it's not all bad news.
Speaker 2: It's full of and inspiring at the same time.
Speaker 1: I want to go back and talk about what is
Speaker 1: regenerative farming. How is it different than industrial farming, which
Speaker 1: is what we have always done, big farm.
Speaker 2: I grew up in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the middle of corn and soybean
Speaker 1: fields Iowa, Illinois, Illinois.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was a little girl, I used to walk
Speaker 1: for twenty five cents an hour. I would walk the
Speaker 1: bean fields and weed them with my sisters. And I
Speaker 1: know farmers like I come from farmland, so I'm really
Speaker 1: curious about if you could break down the difference between
Speaker 1: the two systems and then also talk to us about
Speaker 1: how the farmers are feeling about them.
Speaker 3: It's super simple. I'll take that one really quickly. I'll
Speaker 3: break it down because people ask us this all the
Speaker 3: time and saying, what the hell is regenerative agriculture? Why
Speaker 3: should I care? What does it do? Yeah to me?
Speaker 3: For me, regenerative agriculture is just the use of planned
Speaker 3: grazing methods right and using living growing plants like at
Speaker 3: scale to sequester enormous amounts of carbon dioxide out of
Speaker 3: the atmosphere and store safely back in the ground where
Speaker 3: it belongs. Because then when you do that, you pull
Speaker 3: that carbon from the air. It it brings that carbon
Speaker 3: down in the soil. But when you do that, it
Speaker 3: feeds all the vital micro organisms in that.
Speaker 2: Soil, which there are many many there.
Speaker 3: Yes, and so it's really more I think grams. But
Speaker 3: you could just say, for argument's sake, that there are
Speaker 3: more living organisms and a cup of soil than all
Speaker 3: humans who have ever lived in history. What so just
Speaker 3: tells you how a live soil is. Right, So when
Speaker 3: you generate, when you build the health of soil, you
Speaker 3: build the ability for that soil to sequester enormous carbon
Speaker 3: but produce really nutrient dense food. So as your soil
Speaker 3: gets healthier, your plants get healthier. But you can balance
Speaker 3: the climate, build robust economies. We're talking about injecting fifty
Speaker 3: eighty one hundred billion dollars back into Middle America. That's
Speaker 3: the reindustrialization of Middle America. It's exactly, and I love that.
Speaker 3: People say, well, this is a revolution, it said, no, no, no, man,
Speaker 3: it's not a revolution. It's an evolution. So when you start,
Speaker 3: when farmers start making more money, they start paying more taxes,
Speaker 3: which they'll gladly do. And as they do that, school
Speaker 3: districts all of a sudden get better. Water districts get better,
Speaker 3: after school programs get implemented, parks get better, all these
Speaker 3: things that build communities get better and better and better.
Speaker 3: Why because there's more money. And as human health or
Speaker 3: as soil health goes up, human health goes up, which
Speaker 3: means human health care costs come down. They fall precipitously.
Speaker 3: So now you've got even more money in the system.
Speaker 3: Because everyone thinks, you know, insurance is paid by premiums. No, man,
Speaker 3: A lot of it's funded by the US tax payer.
Speaker 3: That's the deal they've cut. So now with food agricultural
Speaker 3: on this say industrial agriculture, So you're injecting one hundred
Speaker 3: billion dollars back in the system. Well, now your healthcare
Speaker 3: costs are way down, so you're injecting an additional two
Speaker 3: hundred billion from that. All of a sudden, you have
Speaker 3: a third of a trillion dollars a year injected back
Speaker 3: into the into the country. This is how you rebuild
Speaker 3: America when you do it from the ground up, from
Speaker 3: Main Street literally, not from Wall Street down. So you're
Speaker 3: building up Main Street, not Wall Street. And that is
Speaker 3: how you build this thing back. And so like you know,
Speaker 3: I also have a vitamin company, but I also make whiskey,
Speaker 3: like really with some of the best whisky in the world.
Speaker 3: We use a lot of things, and you're a tough palette.
Speaker 3: We use a lot of grain. And so there's two
Speaker 3: hundred million acres of grain in this country production acres. Roughly.
Speaker 3: Regenerative agriculture saves up to four hundred dollars an acre.
Speaker 3: Now you multiply four hundred dollars times two hundred million,
Speaker 3: it's eighty billion dollars a year, then we send two
Speaker 3: agrochemical companies and foreign countries. So you have to sit
Speaker 3: and ask yourself, why why are we having farmers like
Speaker 3: your dad going to a bank to borrow money that
Speaker 3: a cruise interest to spend all that money and send
Speaker 3: it overseas to other countries while polluting our water, our land,
Speaker 3: our air, and our bodies. When you put a stop
Speaker 3: to that. We are talking about the regeneration of America
Speaker 3: and obviously beyond too. But what happens here is then
Speaker 3: going to That's what Groundswell is. The third film is
Speaker 3: about the international not just the promise, but the practice
Speaker 3: of regenerations. So these are big, big numbers. You're talking
Speaker 3: hundreds of billions of dollars. So effectively, what we're doing
Speaker 3: is we're building the single largest carbon capture food economy
Speaker 3: in the world from the Carolina coast to the California coast.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is how regenerative farming can change everything everything.
Speaker 5: And I want to add on to one thing, which
Speaker 5: you know, you mentioned that this is the way it's
Speaker 5: always been done, and that's true in terms of our
Speaker 5: kind of ecological memory of how we've been farming. The
Speaker 5: truth is that this is not the way that it's
Speaker 5: always been done. This is what we call modern industrialized agriculture,
Speaker 5: and it's been labeled the green revolution. And the idea
Speaker 5: of the green revolution wasn't that we were going to
Speaker 5: heal the earth and make everything green. The mottle of
Speaker 5: the green revolution was to make lots of money profit
Speaker 5: and heald profit and yald. And the way to do
Speaker 5: that they take get it. At the end of World
Speaker 5: War Two, they had all of these poison chemicals that
Speaker 5: they had used to kill people. They'd started inventing them
Speaker 5: in World War One, and then they got refined in
Speaker 5: World War Two, and then that was a big money
Speaker 5: making Like war is a huge industry and there's a
Speaker 5: lot of money. It's kind of like the pharmaceutical industry
Speaker 5: in a way. And so they took those poisons and
Speaker 5: those war machines after World War Two and they were like,
Speaker 5: what are we going to do with this? How are
Speaker 5: we they manufacture them? How what are we going to do? Oh,
Speaker 5: I have an idea. Let's spray that on our food
Speaker 5: that we eat. Let's spray the poison that we've designed
Speaker 5: to kill people, to kill pests on our food. And
Speaker 5: so that's how the quote unquote green revolution started by
Speaker 5: trying to figure out what to do with all these
Speaker 5: poison and war machines, and we decided to use that
Speaker 5: on our family farms, a green of revelation.
Speaker 6: And so that's why.
Speaker 5: But we think of this and I have to just say, like,
Speaker 5: when we think of this as something that we've always done,
Speaker 5: I have learned coming from a legacy farming family, that
Speaker 5: is actually incredibly offensive to some people. I didn't know that,
Speaker 5: and I've learned a lot through this process. But the
Speaker 5: reality is that regenerative agriculture is a form of indigenous agriculture,
Speaker 5: and so indigenous agriculture was always putting the land first.
Speaker 5: It was about thinking seven generations ahead. It was looking
Speaker 5: at soil like it's in modern terms like your bank account,
Speaker 5: Like the more you feed the soil, the more the
Speaker 5: soil will feed us. And there is this intuitive, natural
Speaker 5: symbiosis between the people and the land who manage the
Speaker 5: land for their future, not for today, although it did
Speaker 5: take care of them today. That's the beauty of it.
Speaker 5: And there were way more ruminants like cows, like buff
Speaker 5: in the form of buffalo and bison on the land.
Speaker 5: And guess what we didn't have a greenhouse gas problem.
Speaker 5: There was no climate change, So how could that be
Speaker 5: that we didn't have climate change, We didn't have a
Speaker 5: greenhouse gas problem. We had way more ruminants on the land.
Speaker 3: Well, the US Army took out about sixty five million
Speaker 3: head of American buffalo bison, So the idea to starve
Speaker 3: out the Native Americans was to kill all the bison. Well,
Speaker 3: those ruminants and those undulates. To remember, they were all
Speaker 3: kept in tight herds from what predators lurking. They have
Speaker 3: safety numbers. Packs of wolves, packs of wolves, large cats,
Speaker 3: all of those kept them moving in tight herds across
Speaker 3: that landscape. And those hoofs till the soil and they'd
Speaker 3: fertilize that soil with their dung and their urine, and
Speaker 3: they would eat all the grass to the growth points.
Speaker 3: And then they.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't move on, never still, they would never stand still.
Speaker 6: There were huge herds.
Speaker 3: And so when you had sixty something million head of
Speaker 3: these bison. So basically you can go back and look
Speaker 3: at fossilized pollen records, which you can see in the movie.
Speaker 3: Where indigenous cultures didn't plant gardens, they planted forests, They
Speaker 3: built systems where it allowed their food to come to them, right,
Speaker 3: their food came to them because they built ecosystems where
Speaker 3: protein models thrived, because that's where they that's where the likenesses.
Speaker 3: And this goes back. You can look at this. This
Speaker 3: is tens of thousands of years this was done, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't until colonists came in, and then it brings
Speaker 3: in this unbelievable story of race and the triumph of
Speaker 3: indigenous people as well. You know, when colonists got here,
Speaker 3: they did not know how to create large scale agricultural systems,
Speaker 3: and they went to western Africa and they stole people
Speaker 3: who did and they brought them here and they subjected
Speaker 3: them to horrible, horrible life, But they brought them here
Speaker 3: for their indigenous understanding of how to build large scale
Speaker 3: food systems.
Speaker 5: They're like a grarian experts from Africa, and that put
Speaker 5: seeds in their hair to bring to the new land
Speaker 5: that they didn't know that they were going, because they
Speaker 5: knew that they would need those seeds to be able
Speaker 5: to live. The problem is, though, when the colonists got
Speaker 5: here and they brought with them slavery and this like
Speaker 5: crazy model, there was no way for them to keep
Speaker 5: that regenerative model alive. And that sort of linear extractive
Speaker 5: system where people are being abused, that's not a regenerative system.
Speaker 5: Regenerative system is a healthy system where everyone is taken
Speaker 5: care of. But what we did do when we came
Speaker 5: to the United States is we plowed up all that
Speaker 5: top soil that had been built up by those herds
Speaker 5: of bison and buffalo, Like we just ripped it up
Speaker 5: like huge, like they'd used these huge like blows and
Speaker 5: they would literally take like eighteen inches of that rich
Speaker 5: top soil the skin of our mother earth, and they
Speaker 5: would just tear it up. And that's how we built
Speaker 5: the foundation of our economy in the United States. And
Speaker 5: what that did, we removed the ruminants from the land
Speaker 5: to control the indigenous people, and then we plowed up
Speaker 5: all that beautiful top soil.
Speaker 3: Prosal networks so that that ability for nutrients to be
Speaker 3: distributed all through because soil is literally alive, like it's
Speaker 3: like a.
Speaker 5: Web of It's like an internet web system, and.
Speaker 3: It moves, it changes shit, I mean, it changes direction.
Speaker 5: And depending on their relatives like trees favor so they
Speaker 5: built through the microhizole fungi and then networks. It's all connected,
Speaker 5: and so there is so family like a tree that's
Speaker 5: related to another tree will prefer its family members to
Speaker 5: another tree and send nutrients through the root system to
Speaker 5: its preferred family relatives.
Speaker 6: So even trees like they have.
Speaker 5: This way of moving gnerals and all trees.
Speaker 3: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 5: So plants communicate with each other. But what happened is
Speaker 5: when we ripped up that top soil and we destroyed
Speaker 5: that network of communication. Guess what happened next in the
Speaker 5: United States, Something very famous happened in the United States.
Speaker 5: The gospel basically, we desertified the United States. Yes and so,
Speaker 5: and that's what we've been doing, and we've been continuing that.
Speaker 5: And then when we add it on top of that
Speaker 5: the synthetic chemicals and fertilized and the huge war machines
Speaker 5: that came in and tilled and plowed, we destroyed our
Speaker 5: natural ability to be able to heal, regenerate, move water
Speaker 5: where it needs to be, and to have these healthy
Speaker 5: ecosystems that reflected what that land looked like before we
Speaker 5: came and ripped it up.
Speaker 3: And so soil that can also take twenty inches of rain.
Speaker 3: You know, go down twenty inches within an hour. So
Speaker 3: we're not having all this erosion and kids now. And
Speaker 3: this is the thing that I learned from Alan Savory.
Speaker 3: Each human is responsible for basically about a pickup truck
Speaker 3: load of erosion a year of soil. It's cent our fault.
Speaker 3: And I'm saying it breaks down, it breaks down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the stat is pretty wild. So there's so much erosion
Speaker 3: happening right now because of land mismanagement and that dust bowl.
Speaker 3: Crazy thing is and because you saw common ground, were
Speaker 3: you so used to talking to people who haven't. It's
Speaker 3: happening again. And so where it becomes really positive, it's
Speaker 3: like what Gabe was saying, this is very serious. We
Speaker 3: have to stop this. But then you cut to a
Speaker 3: guy like, you know, Gay Brown's farm in North Dakota.
Speaker 3: He's sequestering ninety six tons of carbon per acre by
Speaker 3: doing what by drawing through a process called biose questration,
Speaker 3: or just draw down right of that terra ton of
Speaker 3: carbon in the air if we call it the legacy load.
Speaker 3: And we get this all the time. And I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to laugh, I'm not trying to it's just misinformation.
Speaker 3: But people think because they drive an electric car, and
Speaker 3: they use paper straws. They're going to change the planet.
Speaker 3: And it's just simply not the case. Right, that legacy
Speaker 3: load of carbon is not going to go anywhere. And
Speaker 3: my buddy, you know, like Elon and Bill Gates and
Speaker 3: all these guys are talking about all these like elaborate
Speaker 3: ways of scrubbing carbon out of the air. Then you
Speaker 3: have Gay Brown. He goes, I have a novel. I
Speaker 3: have a novel. Idea, let's plan a plant.
Speaker 6: Yeah, plan a seed.
Speaker 3: Plan to see Gabe is sequestering ninety six tons of
Speaker 3: carbon and acre and these sev seventy five acres. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is And he literally says in the movie goes,
Speaker 3: can we mitigate climate change? Absolutely? We have the ability
Speaker 3: right now by deploying and implementing large scale regenerative agriculture,
Speaker 3: where by the way, everyone wins, everyone makes a shitload
Speaker 3: of money. Communities get better, are climate balances, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, we have healthier soil, so we have
Speaker 3: healthier people. We have people who are mentally healthier, physically healthier.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden you have got farmers and rural communities.
Speaker 3: And by the way, some of the people in not
Speaker 3: so rural communities. But now those rural farmers can now
Speaker 3: go to the local Ford or Chevy dealership. They can
Speaker 3: buy new trucks, ones that have heat, where their transmission
Speaker 3: works better, and you know, take their wives and their
Speaker 3: kids to dinner once a week, not once a month
Speaker 3: or once every six months. They can live in thrive.
Speaker 5: I don't think people realize how farmers in America are living. No, No,
Speaker 5: I don't think that people realize that the farmers have
Speaker 5: a five times higher suicide rate than other professions in
Speaker 5: the United States. Their bank loans will require them to
Speaker 5: spray toxic chemicals, and the farmers are on the front
Speaker 5: lines of that. And now we're talking about second and
Speaker 5: third generation farmers. And if you start to look at
Speaker 5: the epigenetics of how that plays out, it's the second
Speaker 5: and third generation farmers that start.
Speaker 3: To express the healthy impact.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you change a farmer's mind? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you teach a farmer?
Speaker 5: So, my dad's a farmer, my dad's an industrial farmer. Okay,
Speaker 5: I've come, like you said, from an industrial farming family
Speaker 5: in the Midwest like you, And you know, I'm making
Speaker 5: these films about regenerative agriculture. And I think my dad,
Speaker 5: I think what he said the first time I told
Speaker 5: them we were making these films. He goes, what do
Speaker 5: you know about farming, little girl? And that was like, well,
Speaker 5: I'm learning a lot. And you can imagine how those
Speaker 5: conversations went. It didn't go well at all. Because my
Speaker 5: dad loved spraying round up. It was so easy. He
Speaker 5: loved the because he grew up, you know, sprain DDT
Speaker 5: and two four D and standing in the bats of
Speaker 5: chemicals and plowing that he had a license of like
Speaker 5: age twelve or something to drive the tractor. Needless to say,
Speaker 5: here we are what fourteen years later, ten years later,
Speaker 5: eleven years later from me? And now my dad never
Speaker 5: said you're right, but he does send me his organic
Speaker 5: and regenerative vegetables that he grows, and so he's doing
Speaker 5: a lot of these farmers you know. And I can
Speaker 5: say this coming from a farming family. There's a kind
Speaker 5: of stubborn gene that runs in farming families and you
Speaker 5: have to be it's so that's a resilient heritage.
Speaker 3: It's a resilience to get through it.
Speaker 5: And it's that you had, like you survived so much
Speaker 5: when you're a farmer, and a lot of these innovations
Speaker 5: I want to give a little credit to, Like, Okay,
Speaker 5: maybe some of these innovations were there to help the
Speaker 5: farmer in theory. In theory, but the reality is is
Speaker 5: that this technology has destroyed the lives of these farmers.
Speaker 5: And as farmers are beginning to wonder what's happened to
Speaker 5: their land and what's happened to their family, and why
Speaker 5: they're struggling so hard and considering whether they even want
Speaker 5: to go on another day.
Speaker 3: The economic models don't add up anymore when they look
Speaker 3: at the economics.
Speaker 5: And then they see their neighbor who has a microclimate
Speaker 5: of in a biodiverse of crops and they can sell
Speaker 5: if one crop fails, they have so many crops that
Speaker 5: they can sell. They're suddenly making a huge profit. Like
Speaker 5: ninety percent of the farmers who transition within year one
Speaker 5: are making a profit. And then all of a sudden, Okay,
Speaker 5: maybe a fire comes through, or a drought or a
Speaker 5: flood or a pest blight. Guess what, your farm is decimated,
Speaker 5: But your neighbor's farm over there, they have steady rain,
Speaker 5: they have green coverage. Maybe it didn't burn down like
Speaker 5: case after case after case, and people witnessing the resiliency
Speaker 5: of these regenerative farms and these microclimates.
Speaker 1: That you guys have in the movie of one industrial
Speaker 1: farm next to a regenerative farm, it's incredible and it's
Speaker 1: so beautiful and so like just.
Speaker 2: Duh, well, this is a no brain.
Speaker 5: And when people would watch Kiss the Ground, like farmers
Speaker 5: are I don't know about this Hollywood movie about farming
Speaker 5: and about Woody Harrelson in it, you know, they don't
Speaker 5: want to watch it because you know, it's some like
Speaker 5: liberal left wing thing, people that don't know what they're
Speaker 5: talking about.
Speaker 6: It's like Hollywood.
Speaker 5: But then people started watching the movie, and then these
Speaker 5: YouTube videos started popping up with farmers giving.
Speaker 6: Reviews, and it was like it was so cool to
Speaker 6: watch there.
Speaker 5: I don't know about Woody Harrelson, but I learned a
Speaker 5: lot about this. And they'll go on for an hour
Speaker 5: about how one of those five or six principles of regeneration.
Speaker 1: Tell us tell our listeners, what are the five ways
Speaker 1: to keep regenerative farming moving forward?
Speaker 5: All right, I'll give my version, then you give your
Speaker 5: version of crush it. So there's like principles and then
Speaker 5: there's practices. So the principles of regeneration is like everyone
Speaker 5: is taking care of you're bringing soil health back to life.
Speaker 5: The practices, however, are really simple. So if you're a farmer,
Speaker 5: it's different depending on who you are. But if you're
Speaker 5: a farmer, you're going to keep a living route at
Speaker 5: all times. Can always have life in the soil, and
Speaker 5: you're going to keep that soil covered at all times.
Speaker 5: Gay Brown likes to say, MoMA Earth likes to be covered.
Speaker 5: She doesn't want to be naked, you know, she wants
Speaker 5: to be covered. She wants to be covered with that
Speaker 5: green greenery because it's what that's what holds in the moisture,
Speaker 5: it's what keeps it cool, it's what keeps the life protected.
Speaker 3: Brings nitrogen in from the air, puts it into the soil.
Speaker 5: Use nitrogen that that photosynthesis to take that carbon and
Speaker 5: then put it into the soil, which is what feeds
Speaker 5: all of the life in the soil. And that's the
Speaker 5: reason soil is the healthy soil is black. That's carbon
Speaker 5: in the soil. When it's dead, it turns almost white
Speaker 5: and denude of life into desert. And so so don't
Speaker 5: cut so keep the ground coverage, no tillage, no past,
Speaker 5: no synthetic pesticides, so herbicized pesticides, undersides like, you don't
Speaker 5: need those when you have nature. Nature takes care of
Speaker 5: all of it.
Speaker 3: Now, listen, I will say, not every and we and
Speaker 3: we know this as well, not every single one hundred
Speaker 3: percent of topographical and not one hundred percent of every
Speaker 3: topography is going to be completely input free. That's we're
Speaker 3: not saying. But you vastly reduce and you can use
Speaker 3: inputs that are regenerated exactly, So you vastly reduce inputs,
Speaker 3: but you don't need to use high use of synthetics.
Speaker 3: And so that's where people really start to go, oh gosh,
Speaker 3: because even on a thousand acre farm, or let's just
Speaker 3: say a two hundred acre farm, if you're saving hundreds
Speaker 3: of dollars an acre, you think about all of that savings,
Speaker 3: all of that money. So you can do it through
Speaker 3: regenerative practices. And like John said, I call him doctor
Speaker 3: John because I'm from New Orleans. But people are saying
Speaker 3: he's one of the Scientist Center movie and he's amazing,
Speaker 3: but he's talks of farmers. He's the question you have
Speaker 3: to ask yourself, is not what it's going to cost
Speaker 3: to transition, it's what it's going to cost you not
Speaker 3: to transition. Well, it's going to cost you your farm,
Speaker 3: it's going to cost you your grandkids. It's going to
Speaker 3: cost you these things that you're not willing to give up.
Speaker 5: Doctor Jonathan Lundren, he's a like a bug expert. He's
Speaker 5: got he was a whistleblower at the USDA, was the
Speaker 5: the EPA, actually was the USDA, and pummeled him because
Speaker 5: he started asking questions about it. So that leads me
Speaker 5: into the last two principles of agriculture. So no synthetic,
Speaker 5: no inputs because you don't need them. You know why,
Speaker 5: because nature has a way of doing that. You have
Speaker 5: ground squirrels like we were talking about earlier, put in
Speaker 5: some owl boxes, you've got some kind of might get
Speaker 5: some lady bugs. Like nature has a solution. And guess
Speaker 5: what the beauty of it is.
Speaker 6: It's usually cheap, yeah, maybe even free.
Speaker 5: All you have to do is stop paying to put
Speaker 5: inputs on there that are killing it. So right, and
Speaker 5: then the other thing is biodiversity. So you never want
Speaker 5: to have a monocrop. You never want to have just
Speaker 5: one thing. Can you imagine if all you ate all
Speaker 5: day long was corn and that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that wouldn't be healthy.
Speaker 5: It would not be So we have to make sure
Speaker 5: that we're using biodiversity to our advantage because that's resiliency.
Speaker 5: And then, lastly and probably most important, is animal integration, right,
Speaker 5: because that's the part that people are really confused about.
Speaker 5: People think that cows are bad. They think that the
Speaker 5: way to save the planet is to eat an impossible burger.
Speaker 5: And the fact is that the only way to bring
Speaker 5: a desert back to life, there's only one way, and
Speaker 5: that's their animal integration. You need cows, they're hoofs, right.
Speaker 5: You need ruminants. You don't need to pay for fertilizer
Speaker 5: when you can put a ruminant that's poop's symbiotic and
Speaker 5: co evolved with that land, and it has fertilizer, It
Speaker 5: has urine which actss water. It has hooves that breaks
Speaker 5: up that hard pack that was there to protect the
Speaker 5: indigenous seeds so that when the right conditions came along,
Speaker 5: those seeds could come back and it could go back
Speaker 5: to the way that it was before we destroyed that land.
Speaker 1: But you guys, what if I'm not a farmer can
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 5: So what you can do, I'm sure you have a
Speaker 5: great answer to what you can do is first watch
Speaker 5: Kiss the Ground and Common Ground on Prime Video literally today, yes,
Speaker 5: because in three hours, or just watch one of them,
Speaker 5: but if you can watch them both, because it tells
Speaker 5: a really interesting story and there's a real surprise at
Speaker 5: the end of Common Ground that you will not expect.
Speaker 5: So watch both films because you're going to Ian and
Speaker 5: I could sit here and talk for probably four days
Speaker 5: about this and you'll learn more watching one of these films,
Speaker 5: and you'll do will listening to us talk about this
Speaker 5: for you.
Speaker 3: Because we really put it together structures.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like not as mean, and it's such a
Speaker 2: visual too. Yeah, so you.
Speaker 6: Really get it.
Speaker 5: And then as you watch it and you look at
Speaker 5: your own life and what this means to you to
Speaker 5: be able to say I was a part looking back
Speaker 5: on today, when we had a moment, during this critical
Speaker 5: moment in time to course correct to make sure that
Speaker 5: we are regenerating and not degenerating our planet, that I
Speaker 5: was a part of that movement. I was on the
Speaker 5: front lines of that movement of regeneration. I found my
Speaker 5: role in that by learning about it, which you can
Speaker 5: do by watching Kiss Ground and Common Ground, and so
Speaker 5: whoever you are, whether you're a teacher, you can share
Speaker 5: the free cuts of the film. There's free educational versions
Speaker 5: of the film.
Speaker 3: We gave Kiss the Ground away to forty five million students.
Speaker 5: Amazing and common fifty thousand classrooms, and Common Ground also
Speaker 5: has an education cut fits coming from.
Speaker 3: We'll end up giving Common Ground away to probably one
Speaker 3: hundred million students globally and.
Speaker 5: In free educational curriculum. So if you're a teacher, you
Speaker 5: can teach young people. Guess what, it's not all bad news.
Speaker 5: You have a future and here's how. And those young
Speaker 5: people will do they'll take this on because this is
Speaker 5: their future. But we have a responsibility to make sure
Speaker 5: that this information gets out there. That's number one.
Speaker 6: Number two.
Speaker 5: Participate in the food system. So if you live in
Speaker 5: an apartment, grow a tomato plant in your window box.
Speaker 5: If you have a backyard, grow pollinators to attract grow
Speaker 5: go pollinating flowers to attract pollinators.
Speaker 3: And bets and then starts to connect with your local
Speaker 3: you know, those farmers market environments are really really important
Speaker 3: because once you start again, even like a microzil network
Speaker 3: under the soil. Once you start connecting with other people,
Speaker 3: you start feeding one another. You feed each other in,
Speaker 3: you feed each other passion, you feed each other inspiration,
Speaker 3: and that transpires into something that where you're purchasing, you're
Speaker 3: buying from local farmers, you're talking to them, you're propping
Speaker 3: up their businesses, and so they're actually able to start
Speaker 3: transitioning and practicing these things that are going to sustain
Speaker 3: everyone while regenerating.
Speaker 1: Sold people find out about the farmer's markets in their area.
Speaker 1: Do you have a resource where because for me, I
Speaker 1: understand why people just go to the grocery store and
Speaker 1: buy stuff because it's easy finding that farmer's market and
Speaker 1: getting there between the hours of two.
Speaker 2: To five or whatever it is. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, for sure, it takes effort.
Speaker 3: It does take effort, But also too, I think once
Speaker 3: you get in, when there is a little bit of effort, yep,
Speaker 3: it means so much more. But then you start to
Speaker 3: find community and it reminds you slow down. How is
Speaker 3: it that I've built a life for myself that I
Speaker 3: can't even take my kids to a farmer's market at
Speaker 3: nine o'clock on a Saturday morning after a soccer game.
Speaker 3: How did I get in to that system?
Speaker 2: You got to re priority where I.
Speaker 3: Can't even just go and pick up some food from
Speaker 3: people who are growing it from their farm to our hands.
Speaker 3: How did I get to that point? So, if you
Speaker 3: have an acre or you've got a front yard, you
Speaker 3: can turn it into a magical regenerative system. And we
Speaker 3: have toolkits actually kiss the ground if you just go
Speaker 3: on the website we have if you go on the
Speaker 3: Kiss the Ground website, we have toolkits to do all this.
Speaker 3: And that's what's been so incredible as well. And one
Speaker 3: of the things we're really once we get out of
Speaker 3: production and post production is we're just so in. But
Speaker 3: one of the things that we really I'm excited to
Speaker 3: do and we're going to do it with Absorb as well.
Speaker 3: You start going into some of these food desert communities
Speaker 3: that are disproportionately black and brown, where all of this
Speaker 3: really unhealthy snap food is pumped subsidized by the US
Speaker 3: government and taxpayer money to create such unhealth, both physical
Speaker 3: unhealth and mental on health in these minority communities, which
Speaker 3: is such a such a waste of these humans are
Speaker 3: they're starving for something great and once you start building
Speaker 3: this resilience within these communities, they thrive. All does is
Speaker 3: taking to just go back in history and look at
Speaker 3: what doctor George Washington Carver got to do. I mean,
Speaker 3: you had a man who was born into indentured no
Speaker 3: he was born in slav who ended up becoming one
Speaker 3: of the most famous soil scientists in the world, celebrated
Speaker 3: by presidents and a.
Speaker 5: Professor at Tuskegee University. He was the one that invented
Speaker 5: nitrogen fixing exactly.
Speaker 3: And he also helped build a very very very robust
Speaker 3: black economic agricultural economic system. Well that wasn't good for business,
Speaker 3: and so that was squashed.
Speaker 2: I learned about this in the movie.
Speaker 3: So oh yeah, that's train keep forgetting you've seen the film.
Speaker 3: But so in the nineteen twenties there are a million
Speaker 3: black farmers in this country. There's less than fifty thousand now,
Speaker 3: but that is numbers about to change. And the indigenous,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, these these native indigenous reservations are about
Speaker 3: to become these unbelievable, regenerative, giant, agricultural, robust systems. So
Speaker 3: you know, we hear like some of our like coastal
Speaker 3: elite friends always talking about the flyover States and you're like, no, man,
Speaker 3: these are not the flyover states. These are about to
Speaker 3: become the rock stars. I do not like that phrase.
Speaker 3: I typically don't use the word hate. Hates a very
Speaker 3: strong word. I hate that phrase.
Speaker 5: It's so disrespectful to the people that like built our
Speaker 5: country and feed.
Speaker 3: Us exactly so. But this is like these farmers. You
Speaker 3: know when you look at when you look at these guys,
Speaker 3: whether it's Gay Brown or our dear brother and my
Speaker 3: mentor and just brother of mine, Rick Clark as well.
Speaker 3: Gabe and Rick have become like these amazing mentors. Rick
Speaker 3: Clark is actually growing all of our regenerative organic rye
Speaker 3: for Brothers Bond and Regenerative Grains and gabiz To. These
Speaker 3: guys are about to become the most famous farmers in
Speaker 3: the world. And he's in Western Indiana.
Speaker 5: And Summer Holder and Jason Momoa.
Speaker 6: We got Gay Brown.
Speaker 3: These guys are the coolest dudes. And then we have
Speaker 3: Alejandro Corrio down in the Chiuahuan Desert. It's about to
Speaker 3: regenerate two million acres of this unbelievable desert land in
Speaker 3: Mexico that is so magnificent, where they see the microclimate
Speaker 3: change within months of these regenerative systems starting to take place.
Speaker 3: And so you have these systems where you're going to
Speaker 3: see indigenous in white and black and brown, all of
Speaker 3: this this information coming together common common ground, the soil.
Speaker 3: You know, we are so divided that are the soil
Speaker 3: is our only common ground. That's why they name the
Speaker 3: film common Ground.
Speaker 5: And we actually had Gay Brown our star. You know,
Speaker 5: he says the very much a typical farmer, very conservative
Speaker 5: in his views. He's a very religious man, which is
Speaker 5: why he did this with us, because he believed that
Speaker 5: that was his calling from God to tell his story
Speaker 5: with us, which was a huge privilege.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you guys, I this movie. Everybody means to see
Speaker 1: both of these movies.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's the Ground and common ground.
Speaker 5: You you know, Malcolm Gladwell has the site this theory
Speaker 5: that when you get ten percent, that that's the tipping
Speaker 5: point that then shifts everything that direction. So if we
Speaker 5: could get ten percent of our actually.
Speaker 3: One hundred million, it's about a temper, you know, it
Speaker 3: was about a billion acres farmed here at that ten percent,
Speaker 3: when we're looking at that is the tipping point. It
Speaker 3: will never go back because at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: and I'm not trying to sound crass, money talks, bullshit walks,
Speaker 3: and they're gonna be rich. You tell these people that
Speaker 3: they can make money and their kids can go to
Speaker 3: great schools and they don't have to be sick, and
Speaker 3: they can drive a new car that actually has set
Speaker 3: in Iowa where it's freezing cold. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: how you change America. And it's so powerful that I
Speaker 3: left a very very successful, pretty damn lucrative, you know,
Speaker 3: career in television. Didn't have much luck in film, but hey,
Speaker 3: your film, well, no, in this film exactly, but really
Speaker 3: did well in televisions, and left that business to raise
Speaker 3: my kids, build my family, and build my companies, raise
Speaker 3: my kids, and then launched these films. And that was that.
Speaker 3: I don't know any other way to spend time. And
Speaker 3: people say, are you you know, why don't you go
Speaker 3: back to acting? And I'm like, I don't know when
Speaker 3: I would have the time to sit on a set
Speaker 3: and tell someone else's story. Yeah, when we are writing
Speaker 3: in our own stories. All of a sudden it just
Speaker 3: came together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how it works.
Speaker 1: When you you sound it sounds like you really prioritized
Speaker 1: what you want in your life and what you want
Speaker 1: for your kids and your family, and you have done
Speaker 1: is the same thing coming from your background. It's so
Speaker 1: inspiring what you are both doing in individual ways, and
Speaker 1: I love your passion about it. It's so necessary to
Speaker 1: get this very very important message out there and heard.
Speaker 3: Thanks for sharing it with your incredible people love your
Speaker 3: show and I see why. But this is the watershed
Speaker 3: moment and the Gregstone, doctor Gregstone, one of the most
Speaker 3: famous marine scientists literally walking the planet, is also a
Speaker 3: very dear mentor of mine. I mean this, guys, you
Speaker 3: know of the caliber of like a Sylvia Earl right
Speaker 3: before Oceans and he saw remember we were at the
Speaker 3: Common Ground, I mean at the Kiss the Ground premiere
Speaker 3: which we had to do a drive in a drive in.
Speaker 3: Everyone was wearing masks, but he literally he was literally
Speaker 3: in tears and he said, he's like, I am a
Speaker 3: scientist and he's been a scientist for thirty something years.
Speaker 3: This is a watershed moment for the planet. This is
Speaker 3: where science, economy family. This is where everything comes together
Speaker 3: in one neat package and you can turn it on
Speaker 3: the flip of a switch. Whether you have a backyard
Speaker 3: that's one hundred feet ten feet or one hundred acres.
Speaker 3: You can transform your life by building soil.
Speaker 2: It's a choice, it's your best part. It's a choice.
Speaker 2: It's a choice.
Speaker 1: It's making a different choice, a choice that might seem
Speaker 1: a little bit more difficult. But if you get the
Speaker 1: knowledge and you get the you know, do your research.
Speaker 1: With this information that you're providing with you your platforms, people.
Speaker 2: Can do it. And that's exciting.
Speaker 1: And I think you know everybody is going to be
Speaker 1: really excited about this conversation. Before I let you go, though,
Speaker 1: I have to ask what was your last I choose
Speaker 1: me moment.
Speaker 5: I'm a mom. I feel like I'm more of a
Speaker 5: servant than I choose me.
Speaker 2: That's the thing.
Speaker 5: Let's see, I choose me. Let's see. I went swimming
Speaker 5: naked the other day.
Speaker 6: That's all I'm going to say about that.
Speaker 3: I like that choice.
Speaker 5: And I drank and I drank a little of the
Speaker 5: water I was swimming in.
Speaker 3: I mean house, you and Josh like you, we've all
Speaker 3: found ourselves in very much a servants. I live in
Speaker 3: a very a life of service, and I mean I
Speaker 3: just had this conversation with my own mom, and she goes,
Speaker 3: I see you, guys, you're traveling around the world. You're
Speaker 3: just talking about regenerating, regenerating, regenerating, but you are really
Speaker 3: you're you're degenerating yourself doing it. My I Choose Me
Speaker 3: moment really was the big, big, big one, really was
Speaker 3: building absorption, you know, because I needed something to actually
Speaker 3: make sure I could do all this. And so every
Speaker 3: week or every month that we're building into these innovation pipelines,
Speaker 3: some stop is a lot of it's for women, and
Speaker 3: Nikki and our team really drives a lot of that innovation,
Speaker 3: and then some of it is for men, and I
Speaker 3: get to help drive that innovation. And that I Choose
Speaker 3: Me it was driving some I can't say what it
Speaker 3: is right now, but very male driven nanometric liposomal technology,
Speaker 3: like this thing that I've been always wanting and hoping
Speaker 3: would be in the market. No one's ever been able
Speaker 3: to crack it because I didn't have the science to
Speaker 3: do it. And I just said, I'm going to push
Speaker 3: this through this innovation pipeline. And this is a very
Speaker 3: male is something that's really good for men because you know,
Speaker 3: we see this a lot, because we talked to all
Speaker 3: the scientists, and we talked to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Healthy happy people build healthy happy societies by making healthy,
Speaker 3: happy choices. But one of the things I got to
Speaker 3: I realize is is that healthy happy guys and my age,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm in my mid forties now, mid to
Speaker 3: late Now, I can say it happen, it happens fast.
Speaker 3: But you know what, you realize that there is in
Speaker 3: a salt on people of our age into middle age,
Speaker 3: into late middle age. Healthy people in middle age is
Speaker 3: not good for the system. It's better when we're all sick, right,
Speaker 3: It's just better for the economy that they want. And
Speaker 3: I choose that, my choose me moment is that is
Speaker 3: going to stop. And I am tired of that assault
Speaker 3: on middle aged humans, both men and women. Doesn't matter
Speaker 3: whether you're middle class, it doesn't matter what you are.
Speaker 3: It is no longer acceptable to me for us to
Speaker 3: be sick. I'm done with it. And so we're building
Speaker 3: a couple of really robust, super disruptive supplement SKUs that
Speaker 3: are going to really rock the rock the whole market.
Speaker 2: So tell us it's Absorption.
Speaker 3: The Absorption Company. Literally, it's why we you know, because
Speaker 3: I told you, you know, I set offline that we
Speaker 3: have this proprietary piece of technology that allows us to
Speaker 3: take lipophilic material, a liposoma material, and turn it into
Speaker 3: a water soluble material that's a nanometric particle, so it's
Speaker 3: five hundred percent more absorbable.
Speaker 2: That's the key it works.
Speaker 5: It saved me so many times his product through this.
Speaker 5: As you know, it's a bit degenerative. As you're talking about,
Speaker 5: it's pretty hard to We've we've made ourselves responsible, like
Speaker 5: on the hook for spreading the message of how we
Speaker 5: actually can fix the climate, and there's a lot of
Speaker 5: pressure there and it puts us into this endless loop
Speaker 5: of constantly, constantly, constantly advocating for that. But what happens
Speaker 5: is that it actually is kind of degenerative towards our
Speaker 5: own bodies. And so that's actually one of the things
Speaker 5: we're talking about in our next film, Groundswell. We've got
Speaker 5: Demi Moore also one of our narrators along with Ian
Speaker 5: and Jason Lemon and Jayden Smith. But Demi wants to
Speaker 5: really talk about that inner microclimate of what regeneration is
Speaker 5: for our bodies because it starts within, that starts each
Speaker 5: one of us.
Speaker 3: And getting to hear some from like some of these conversations,
Speaker 3: like you know, people like you know, the King of
Speaker 3: England and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: You know, we got to go film the King, which
Speaker 6: is crazy.
Speaker 3: I mean just the people we get to interface with.
Speaker 5: The King was like your movie is my favorite movie.
Speaker 5: He like came out with his hands stretched outs. You're
Speaker 5: not supposed to touch them.
Speaker 6: You're supposed to like Curtsey.
Speaker 3: And all this stuff.
Speaker 5: So like I like, I'm like going to Curtsey and
Speaker 5: then he reaches out. I actually fell on it. Actually,
Speaker 5: the whole night with him was kind of a train wreck,
Speaker 5: but he found it charming, fortunately.
Speaker 3: But it's just this, these are the people that that
Speaker 3: are that we get to bring into our orbit and
Speaker 3: get to experiences and hear from them. And again it's
Speaker 3: this pooling of knowledge. And I'm not saying power from
Speaker 3: a self standpoint, knowledge and power coming together because and
Speaker 3: I mentioned this to one of the single most powerful
Speaker 3: legislators in the country who will go unnamed, but I said,
Speaker 3: I I said. He basically said, like, so you're saying
Speaker 3: soil is are common ground, but you're splitting you know,
Speaker 3: you're telling conventional farmers are doing stuff that's wrong. And
Speaker 3: I said no, no, no, sir, we're not. We're bringing them
Speaker 3: into the conversation, just telling them they can actually prosper
Speaker 3: and make money. And I said, one of the things
Speaker 3: that that we've realized it's going to happen is once
Speaker 3: that kicks into high gear, incumbents or candidates. And I
Speaker 3: don't mean we stay so far out of politics. I've
Speaker 3: been offered to run for office so many time. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't do it, No way, I would never. I would
Speaker 3: never run for office because we can do so much
Speaker 3: more out here. But I said to him, I said, sir,
Speaker 3: with all due respect, I said, listen, these elections are
Speaker 3: going to change because it's the small communities. If you
Speaker 3: look at a gubernatorial election, look at how presidential elections
Speaker 3: are one, they're won by tiny little communities. They're dots
Speaker 3: on maps, right. And I said, you're no longer going
Speaker 3: to be able to come into these go back to
Speaker 3: your districts, whether you're an incumbent or candidate as a hero,
Speaker 3: if you're taking agriculture and pharmaceutical money, it's just not
Speaker 3: going to happen anymore. Voters are they're too hip to
Speaker 3: it now. And I said, one of the things he
Speaker 3: asked me. He goes, well, what have you learned most
Speaker 3: about being in DC? Because I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time in DC. I said, well, sir, to be honest
Speaker 3: with you, I've learned that the Republican Party is owned
Speaker 3: by agrochemical industries and the Democratic Party is basically owned
Speaker 3: by pharmaceutical companies. And I said, neither one of those
Speaker 3: is good for America, and it's time to change that.
Speaker 3: And so this is the sea change, and so kiss
Speaker 3: the ground, common ground, and then ground swell. This is
Speaker 3: the promise of a regenerative, bright future, not just here
Speaker 3: in America but around the entire globe. And we're going
Speaker 3: to build a trillion dollar carbon capture food economy. And
Speaker 3: it starts literally today.
Speaker 6: Today it does heavy earthdayath.
Speaker 5: Two tiny thoughts I want to share this concluding from
Speaker 5: our whole conversation that I want to just say, one,
Speaker 5: it's important to do things like drive electric cars and
Speaker 5: use plat paper straws like all of those things. Like
Speaker 5: energy efficiency, which was the message that Josh and I
Speaker 5: came out with in the very beginning back in two
Speaker 5: thousand and eight, is a huge part of this. And
Speaker 5: we're not saying don't do those things, right, that dies like,
Speaker 5: we do need to reduce the amount of carbon that
Speaker 5: we're putting into the atmosphere, right, there's no question about that.
Speaker 5: But what he was saying that I really want to
Speaker 5: put a point on is that's not going to do
Speaker 5: anything about that thousand gigatons of carbon that we've put
Speaker 5: into the atmosphere that the absorb, oceans have absorbed as
Speaker 5: much as they can and acidifying as a result of
Speaker 5: and can't absorb anymore. So, yes, we need to reduce
Speaker 5: what we're admitting, but the only way, And this is
Speaker 5: what's been missing from the conversation for the last twenty years,
Speaker 5: forty years. This is what's been missing. This is why
Speaker 5: this is so important.
Speaker 6: This is why this is.
Speaker 5: Such a huge moment for us. It's because when we
Speaker 5: add to the conversation the power that soil has to
Speaker 5: pull all of that carbon out of our oceans and
Speaker 5: out of our atmosphere and to put it in the soil.
Speaker 5: And we have not been talking about that for twenty years.
Speaker 5: We've been talking about climate change, and we haven't been
Speaker 5: talking about this simple, easy, elegant, natural solution that nature
Speaker 5: has to this problem that we're all freaking out about
Speaker 5: that's crazy. That's why this is so important, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then the other thing that I want to mention
Speaker 5: is that as the daughter of a farmer and a
Speaker 5: farming family, I know that it can be very hard
Speaker 5: for people to talk to farmers about this when they're
Speaker 5: passionate about it. You may not be able to talk
Speaker 5: to your farming neighbor about climate change. They may not
Speaker 5: want to hear about climate change. It could actually cause
Speaker 5: them to stop listening to you altogether. And I know this. However,
Speaker 5: when you talk to your neighbors about the climate and
Speaker 5: the weather, suddenly you have their attention because that's what
Speaker 5: they live and die.
Speaker 3: By weather and money is the weather.
Speaker 5: And so when you start talking about the weather and
Speaker 5: they're looking at their neighbors' farms and they have enough water,
Speaker 5: they're not having a dry they're not having a pest problem.
Speaker 5: Their weather next door on the other side of the
Speaker 5: fence actually looks pretty stable, resilient and great growing conditions.
Speaker 5: How come my farm is running off into the river
Speaker 5: and drifting away and blowing away in the wind. So
Speaker 5: when you talk to farmers about the weather, you know
Speaker 5: you want to meet people where they're at in this conversation.
Speaker 5: You don't want to come out righteous like, oh, you
Speaker 5: spray chemicals and oh you're the problem and you're the
Speaker 5: reason that we're having climate change and you have to
Speaker 5: fix it. Can you imagine how well that conversation is.
Speaker 3: Going to go.
Speaker 5: I can tell you because I've had them. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: doesn't go well. All you do is polarize people and
Speaker 5: become part of the problem when you talk to people
Speaker 5: about the magic and power of regeneration to restore ecosystems,
Speaker 5: your farm, your family, your community, your own body on
Speaker 5: a region by region level, that is regeneration.
Speaker 2: Thank you, guys, Thank you so much, really really happy.
Speaker 3: Then we're super grateful we got to do this. Congratulations
Speaker 3: on the show.
Speaker 5: Happy Earth Day everyone, Thank you for having us.