265 Josh and Rebecca Tickell - If you like sick people and climate chaos keep investing in chemical agriculture

A conversation with Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, producers, directors, and writers of the movie Common Ground and previously Kiss the Ground. We talk about their two movies, food choices and their impact on the environment and health, the chemical agriculture model going bankrupt and much more.

What do you do after you create the enormous hit Kiss the Ground? More than 10 million people saw the feature-length documentary; 39 million schoolchildren in the US saw the school version; and it counts for 1 billion media visualizations on Netflix. 
What do you do next, how do you choose what to focus on?  What do you double click on and do you dare to take on the large agro chemical complex? 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What do you do after you create the enormous hit Kiss the Ground? More than 10 million people saw the feature length documentary, 39 million school children in the US saw the school version and 1 billion that's to be media visualizations. What do you do next? How do you choose what to focus on? What do you double click on and do you dare to take on the large agrochemical complex? Find out today from the producers, directors and writers of Common Ground.

Speaker 1: 0:38

This is the investing in regenerative agriculture and food podcast investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, where and consume, and it's time that we, as investors big and small and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community and so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. We hope that all of our work created value for you and if you have the means and only if you have the means consider joining us. Find out more on comroadcom slash investing in Regen Ag. That is, comroadcom slash investing in Regen Ag or find the link below Welcome to another episode Today with the producers, directors and writers of Common Ground and previously Kiss the Ground.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Welcome, rebecca and Josh. Thank you, and for those two people in the back of the room that didn't see Kiss the Ground to begin with, how do you introduce yourself normally, let's say, at a dinner party, and people have really haven't seen it or haven't heard about it, what do you say? What you do when somebody asks that, like you turn to your left or your right and somebody said, what do you do and you have a few minutes till the next course or something comes, what's your normal, what's your go to answer?

Speaker 2: 2:25

The first thing is wait, you didn't see. Kiss the Ground. What's wrong?

Speaker 1: 2:29

with you, did you know this is huge? And you go like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:33

I mean, you know the Avengers Spider-Man, come on, kiss the Ground Star.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Wars? Yeah, exactly, do you know how many people saw it? Sorry to hear. Do you get numbers like that or a graph like that?

Speaker 2: 2:43

Netflix doesn't reveal anything. We think the number is somewhere north of 10 million, but 250 million people have seen clips of it. So that's Facebook, instagram, tiktok, like all of that, and then all the sub clips that got made of those clips, and then a billion media impressions globally.

Speaker 3: 3:05

Just within the first month, actually, and then over 39 million American school kids had the Kiss the Ground for schools version, so it's definitely been reaching quite a. The point of the film was to take the concept of regeneration, which largely wasn't in the mainstream or being talked about when we started making the film back in 2014, and bring it to the mainstream. So people have this sense of oh, we can take the carbon that's up in the atmosphere and we can put it down into the soil, and there's a win, win, win as a result of that. So that was really sort of the baseline of the film was to introduce people to the idea that there is a way out of the climate catastrophe that we have been headed into, and it's called regeneration.

Speaker 1: 3:50

And why do you think it hit that kind of a nerve? Because I think there have been movies before, there have been attempts, books, and somehow this hit a nerve that I don't think we've seen anything. Hitting a nerve with a billion visualizations like in sustainability in general, let alone regeneration.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Well, I think two things happened.

Speaker 1: 4:11

One is the consciousness, the voice of Woody. Let's be honest.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Oh yeah, woody, clearly Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 2: 4:18

I think the consciousness of the audience, or people, was right at a tipping point when the movie hit, and part of that tipping point was COVID. You know, everyone was locked inside. People watched Tiger King and they were like now what? But the reality is, folks did start to put together the pieces of why are we, as a global population, sick? Why are we, as a global population, dealing with chronic disease? Certainly, in the West, 60% of grown-ups have some kind of chronic disease that is in some way, shape or form related to the food we eat. So when they saw a movie that had to do with soil, food, health and climate, while they're stuck inside going gosh I hope I don't get COVID it kind of had this moment of connecting the dots for people and all of a sudden, sickness or health was not a consequence of random factors but largely a consequence of soil, and that consciousness spread very quickly, which was amazing to see.

Speaker 3: 5:35

And we kind of joke about oh yeah, it was like Star Wars, you haven't seen it. But the truth was, for the seven years that we were making the film, having two children in the process of that we're married, by the way, so we were partners and husband and wife, and our personal life really motivated us to tell the story. But the truth was we had no idea if this was going to take off or not. We definitely felt the pressure that this message needed to be heard as far and wide as we could possibly have it reach, but we were making a movie about dirt and the expression dull is dirt. It was really a unique time to feel like we had this really important message and not really clear if we were going to be able to get it out there.

Speaker 3: 6:23

And then, right at the moment that we finally had the film and we were all excited about it and we were going to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Earth Day with Giselle Bunchen and Woody Harrelson and all of our people, all of a sudden this little virus started popping up in the news and we thought, well, there's no way that they'll shut down New York, there's no way. And then, sure enough, a few weeks later, everything was shut down and it presented a real problem. You can imagine, after seven years of pouring your life into something and then, suddenly, everything that we had planned went out the window.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Premieres roaches.

Speaker 3: 7:01

No theatrical premiere, no in-person gatherings. So we had to get really innovative, kind of like the regenerative farmers are doing, in order to get this message out, and fortunately the timing of it couldn't have been better at the end of the day, in hindsight so he just never know, sometimes these challenges that seem impossible turn into the most perfect opportunities for something to blossom, and that's what happened with Kiss the Ground.

Speaker 1: 7:30

And let's be honest, how long did it take you to go from oh my God, this is the end of this project to this is an opportunity, or this like like? How did that happen? And then we go back to the dinner question. We didn't answer it yet, but how long did it take from oh my God, New York is closed, there's not going to be a premiere to this is the golden moment to get this message out. We're still getting there?

Speaker 3: 7:58

How long has it been? What year, what day is it yeah?

Speaker 2: 8:02

I mean, I think the reality is, you know, Tribeca was slated for early 2020 and the film went on to Netflix in September of 2020. It took all that time to convince Netflix to take the film.

Speaker 3: 8:14

Which actually included Laura Dern and Leonardo Caprio threatening to cough on the CEO of Netflix if they didn't take it so right at the beginning of COVID. So you know, a little arm twisting helped.

Speaker 2: 8:25

Right, it wasn't due to Netflix's incredible consciousness and willingness to change the world with good messaging.

Speaker 3: 8:35

But I think now they're at that point.

Speaker 2: 8:36

Oh yes, they've definitely converted.

Speaker 3: 8:38

They're excited for Common Ground. Definitely we need to talk about that because it's not.

Speaker 1: 8:42

It's not like I haven't seen it, because it's not out beyond the US, but we'll get to that. So that's a lot of months to September. That's a long summer, spring and summer.

Speaker 2: 8:51

And even then, even then, the film you know premiered and it had this sort of big moment and it was a very anticlimactic situation, because you're premiering on a digital platform and you don't know.

Speaker 1: 9:07

That doesn't share numbers. Yeah, no idea.

Speaker 2: 9:09

It's a black box, right. So really, it is in retrospect that we see how the film did, and it's in that retrospect that you know oh wow, this actually had some impact.

Speaker 1: 9:25

And then what made you decide? I mean for sure you've got this question in gazillion times, but to Now. Let's go back to when somebody asked what do you do At the dinner party, and after you say, of course you didn't seek his background. How could you? Et cetera, et cetera. What do you normally say you do besides filmmaker? But I'm imagining in the area of Los Angeles many people say that how do you normally continue that introduction?

Speaker 2: 9:52

Well, I like to distinguish that we make environmental documentaries, I mean right up front, because people are like oh, are you striking, Are you part of shag, Are you part of the actor's guild? And we're like no, we make films in a barn Like we're not striking.

Speaker 1: 10:07

We should be striking for Earth, but that's it.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Our llamas. We're in a farm, our llamas don't strike, the chickens don't strike. Well, sometimes the chickens do strike, they do, but that's a complex ecosystem question. I think the clarity of like oh, environmental documentary filmmaker and then people-.

Speaker 3: 10:29

And then immediately everyone loses respect for us. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 10:32

People rightly assume that you're nuts.

Speaker 3: 10:34

The bottom of the totem pole in the film industry.

Speaker 2: 10:37

So you're just wanna oh God, that's horrible. And then they wanna talk to the person on the other side of them. They turn Because it's like oh, you work in finance or sales, oh wonderful. So I think that if it's young people that we're speaking to, they light up because they understand the planet's boiling and grownups are mostly asleep. And wow, here are some people who actually get it and they're like oh, I wanna see one of your videos. They always call them videos, which is great.

Speaker 2: 11:09

But if it's baby boomers or Gen Xers, they're a little more tepid because it's like there is this hope curve that tends to crash and burn as we age, and I think part of our job is to extend the hope curve, is to kind of make it go longer. So, oh, you're 40, you're 50, you're 60, you're 70. There's still hope. There's still time for you to make a difference. Don't give up now. And so, depending on the dinner conversation, sometimes we do find people who get it and they're interested and they're super cool, and sometimes they won't shut up. They're like, oh my God, yeah, we're in the sixth mass extinction. And yeah, I saw this film about soil with Woody Harrelson and it was like, yeah, that's the one I'm talking about. So there are people who how fun is that?

Speaker 1: 12:02

to reveal that.

Speaker 3: 12:04

It's exciting to finally be at the point where we make these films as a starting point for conversation. So in 90 minutes a person can watch the film and come out with a basic understanding. That's the beginning of a conversation, not the end, and that's where it gets fun. That's where it gets innovative. I saw a meme on social media that it's like I'm the person that you don't want to talk to at the party because I won't stop talking about soil health. That literally, somebody must have talked to me at a party.

Speaker 3: 12:31

That's me because I get really One of our premieres for Common Ground, we always ask, like, what did you get after the first half of the film? I always get out of the film and someone shouted out direction. It was some guy in the audience and I misheard him and I said oh yeah, I get excited about soil health too, Clearly misunderstanding what he was saying about direction.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Inside joke, inside joke.

Speaker 3: 12:57

You know, I think, as a mom, as someone who is learning about the opportunity that the soil health can present for humanity and all living beings on earth, it's hard to talk about anything else. So when I start talking to somebody at a party, Watch out. Watch out, you know, if they haven't seen Kiss the Ground or Common Ground.

Speaker 2: 13:20

I'm sorry, I'm sorry if you want to talk about Taylor Swift, I'm sorry if you want to talk about the news.

Speaker 3: 13:25

A rundown, basically, of like well this is what Kiss the Ground is about and this is what Common Ground is about. And did you know that? This is why we aren't doing it. And, by the way, I come from a legacy farming family in the Midwest. I can trace back to the 1700s and my family's been doing it the wrong way the whole time.

Speaker 3: 13:39

And you know, when I go into sort of my personal story about my dad sort of in his transition into moving away from the use of chemicals and what sort of a miracle that was and where we live in Ojai being a mecca of all of the wrong ways to practice agriculture and what that's like within our little community, to have these conversations it goes a lot easier at a dinner party, not in our town because it's not so personal for people, but here in our town we've really learned how to have a dialogue with somebody that may not agree with us, that may think that Roundup or Glyphosate or Pesticides or Fungicides are okay and they believe the studies that were funded by the chemical companies that were pushed into our regulatory agencies and they don't see a problem with using those chemicals or just having a monocrop.

Speaker 3: 14:26

So it becomes a dialogue about well, we both share our love of the land and we both want to be of service to people and what it means to be a farmer, and we find I mean that's what led us to our film, which is Common Ground. It's where can people not have the same ideology, not have the same background or education, but we can find that little area where we're both passionate and we're both excited and then expand from there together.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Which point in time dessert is served. Which is usually a non-organic sugar Sugar and or a second coffee or third drink.

Speaker 1: 15:08

And so after that not fast, but definitely massive success and impact of Kiss the Ground, why take it to the next level or why go for another one Like, wouldn't have been easier to stick with that and continue Kiss the Ground and all the other work that comes out of that, as it's start of a conversation, and why go back to a documentary and go back through that? Of course you might have a different relationship with Netflix now and of course there are other things possible, but why did you feel like we haven't finished? We need another 90 minute or whatever the number is and a documentary to unpack a lot more.

Speaker 2: 15:56

Yeah, I mean, aside from the personal pain and agony, I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but the climate didn't get fixed after we premiered Kiss the Ground.

Speaker 2: 16:05

In fact, if you look at what happened between the time we premiered the film and now, we have an insane number of records in terms of temperature and climatological issues, species extinction I mean Florida Keys the temperature was an excess of 100 degrees, it's just the list goes on and on and on and on. So I think, for anyone who's paying attention and who is interested in the big picture of humanity and our species and our trajectory and our future, I always ask the opposite question is why do we not see more people making documentaries about this, really getting into the issues, peeling back the sort of protest sign, knee jerk reaction of oh my God, we're all going to hell in a hand basket and going? What is the systemic cause and effect of how we do business? Food in North America is a trillion dollar a year business. So what have you got? You've got guns, oil, pharmaceuticals and food, and food tops them all 1.1.

Speaker 1: 17:23

I think 2018.

Speaker 2: 17:25

Yeah, so it's literally the highest total area market. As a business, If you look at it through this lens of this, is a business driven by demand. It's a market cornered by quadopolies or multi-opolies. It's not a monopoly, but with respect to the companies that really control grain trade and the power of commodities, it's a handful right.

Speaker 1: 17:57

So, even on the brand side I remember that famous picture, I think it's from Oxfam all the different brands you can find, I think, in the US supermarkets, or many of them, you can trace them back to I think six or seven companies.

Speaker 2: 18:10

So you've got a handful of companies. You've obviously got market manipulation, you've got political manipulation and then you've got a consumer base that is sort of sugarfied, or, according to the Dorito Effect great book by a gentleman we interviewed for the film but did make the cut, we've trained our brains to eat things that are horrible for our bodies and our longevity, give us disease, basically poison us, but that taste good. And that has been a very strategic set of factors that have rocketed these four or five large conglomerates to the top of the food chain literally. And so if you look at that, you could go well, this is an intractable problem. Humanity is on a disaster course. There's nothing you can do. Forget it, just get a corporate job and don't do anything. But then you're like no, this is so simple.

Speaker 2: 19:10

The solution is as elegant as the problem. It's demand-based consumer action, it's top-down change in large corporations and it's moving levers of power, whether that's at a national level, a state level or a civic level, at a town level, and meanwhile enrolling the base of people who actually grow food. And when you look at those numbers, you're broadcasting from the Netherlands. There is no country right now that is not undergoing some kind of farming disaster. We're losing arable land at about 6% a year in every arable nation, and we're losing farmers, but we're expanding population. So you map those two trajectories. We need more calories, not less. Yet we have less land and less people working the land, only a few companies. You know. This is a formula that is not only breakable, it's rebuildable in a very quick period of time. And when you see how quickly land can regenerate, you see how quickly farms can convert, you see the profits that are available for companies playing in this space, whether it's an individual corporation like a farmer and their spouse, you know a two-person company or a multi-billion dollar company, you go, oh my gosh, they're gonna make more money, they're gonna fix the soil, create more and more nutrients, create more and more nutrient-dense food, and we're dealing with climate, we're dealing with health issues. This is a no-brainer. And so, basically, our job is to wedge that Normandy battle.

Speaker 2: 20:50

The first battle of the war in changing, you know, and not to like, you know, not to create everything in a conflict context, but it is. It's a culture war. It's a war for understanding how we feed ourselves and how we interact with the planet, and on the opposing side, there are vested interests that would like to keep poisoning us and poisoning the planet. Because it's profitable. You make a lot of money, but our argument is you're gonna make a lot of more money. You're gonna make a lot more money doing the regenerative thing. So ultimately this is a systems change approach. We're not just making films, we're creating the spearhead of an international movement and the movement can be driven from altruistic reasons or, we know, capitalism it can be driven by greed and to some degree, with boundaries, that's okay. We can use that power to move things forward. So that's kind of the long and short of that.

Speaker 3: 22:01

And to piggyback on what he was saying common ground, really it's the nexus of where climate, food and health meet.

Speaker 1: 22:12

Yeah, because you could take it 10 different directions. After you kiss the ground like you lit sort of the foundation layer. And then there are 10 other I don't know how many you're planning to make, but 10 other documentaries. You can make 90 minutes and you're only scratching the surface on all of those. So how do you pick, how do you choose, how do you focus and the limited time and energy and resources you obviously have.

Speaker 3: 22:35

It was really clear to us that we had to. You know, with Kiss the Ground, we barely touch on chemical agriculture, we're just like, oh, and, by the way, you have to reduce, you know, your use of pesticides.

Speaker 1: 22:46

You've got quite a bit of flag, I think, for some of that. Yeah as well, like okay, but you don't keep it, don't go deep enough here. You go too far there, which, of course you always get a billion visualizations, but okay. So chemical peace is much more present here.

Speaker 3: 22:59

I mean we had a just a free. We were. We were told we could say anything. We had one investor and he said no hold bar, tell whatever story you need to tell.

Speaker 3: 23:10

And having seen firsthand how farmers, especially in the United States, really pay the price for cheap chemical food, you know, because they're locked into these bank loans that force them to spray.

Speaker 3: 23:24

They have subsidies that you know, whether they're selling the food or not, they can get completely wiped out and they're still going to make the same amount each year and they're only making eight cents on the dollar in the US for the food that they're growing and selling, and most of that isn't even edible by humans.

Speaker 3: 23:41

You know the whole system is broken and at the end of the day, the farmers have a five times more likelihood of committing suicide than any other profession in the United States. So here in the US we like to like tout the farmer as this sort of heroic image, but the reality is is that we're killing our farmers and they're the first ones to feel the impact in their families. So we really wanted to just go more deeply into why farmers have been stuck in this system and then show farmers who have broken out of that system and how, within the first year, over 80% of those farmers are making a profit. I mean, that's huge, that's the biggest you know sort of thing that makes farmers so afraid to break free. And so, until our policies catch up and realize that they're subsidizing and supporting the wrong thing.

Speaker 3: 24:32

You know there are farmers that are out there that are proving that this model works and that, through creating biodiversity, their farms are having resiliency and they can create their own small water cycle right there on their farm and they can have, you know, their own little watershed. And you know you can see, even in California, farms that are regenerative right next to farms that aren't, and when fires come through, the farms that are regenerative are completely spared from the fire. And you know, here in Ojai, when we had massive rains this past winter, the farms that had regeneration, biodiversity and soil health, those farms, they had great infiltration and the water was held in their soils like a sponge. The other farms that weren't, they were wiped out, the barns collapsed, the soil ran off.

Speaker 3: 25:20

So I mean, you can't always talk to everybody, especially in the United States, about climate change, but you can talk to farmers about the weather, because they're the ones that are affected the most by the weather and they're seeing changes, and that's something that we can all agree on. So common ground really is it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what your political views are, it doesn't matter if you've been farming the same way for generations and generations. You have access to something new through watching common ground, but again it, you know it's got teeth. It really shows how our policies, our farmers. You know we've been duped by these companies that would like for us to continue to believe that the only way to feed the world is to continue to use their chemicals, and it could not be further from the truth.

Speaker 1: 26:08

And I've seen images now of buyer actually using posters with, I think it was a fruit conference in Spain saying that Glyphosate, obviously, or groundup, is a crucial part of regenture agriculture. So we came a long way, let's say in, let's say the threat is becoming either more serious or they're really starting to move. I think they've ahead of regenture agriculture as well now, which is very active on LinkedIn, I see. So how do you see that, compared to 2014, when you started this journey, in 2019-20, when the first one came out, how has the world changed, apart from way more records and way more stuff on the bad side? Or how has the, let's say, the regenerative space?

Speaker 1: 26:51

To me, it feels I've been here since 2011, I think, following it and it has exploded. The word soil, like at dinner parties or investors, and now is interesting, and 10 years ago absolutely not. How have you felt that, let's say, outside your bubble of people that have seen a movie and know what you do, et cetera. Have you seen how has the world changed? In that sense, I see, let's say, these large chemical companies, did you get a lot of pushback. Are you being followed sometimes Like what's the pushback? We should? This is a very long question. I know what's the pushback we should expect, let's say, from the large ones, let's start with that, the chemical ones.

Speaker 2: 27:28

Well, ironically, we're screening Common Ground at one of the largest conferences in the US that has to do with the large grain traders and chemical companies and they invited the film and I thought that was a pretty bold move. And so, common Ground, we're trying to find our Common Ground, it's Common Ground.

Speaker 1: 27:50

yeah, it's a title.

Speaker 2: 27:51

We're going and we're going to screen the film and part of the promise of the film. We have an unreasonable promise that goes with the film, and that is that the film will spur 100 million acres in North America to convert to certified regenerative agriculture. And this is a distinction that we're now making. Is what does certified mean? Because, yes, the world has changed. Regenerative agriculture has expanded dramatically millions of acres as opposed to hundreds of thousands, maybe before so many good things happened. Right, the USDA watched the Kiss the Ground in its entirety and we saw these movements. But inside of that, we saw companies going. We're regenerative. Mcdonald's is apparently regenerative, according to their press release. So is PepsiCo, apparently, they're regenerative.

Speaker 2: 28:44

Now, if I pinned down either of the CEOs of those companies and I said give me a definition of regenerative, I guarantee you they couldn't do it. In fact, if I pinned down, if they even had a sustainability officer, they probably do and I said what is your definition of regenerative? They probably couldn't do it. It gets worse. It gets down to the level of like a company like Patagonia, and you go. They've got a sustainability officer, not a regenerative, and you go. What is the definition of regenerative? They can't do it. And so here you've got the greenest company in the world. They've committed their big billion dollars make the world a better place and they can't, to the external world, effectively generate a clear definition of regenerative.

Speaker 2: 29:29

So what we did with common ground is we made a sub-site called 100millionacresorg and we got the three largest certifying agencies to agree to be part of it, and that's regenerative organic alliance or ROC, regenerative organic coalition. There is Regenified, which came from Understanding Ag, which came from Gabe Brown, and there's Land Market, which came from Alan Savry's work around the world, millions of acres already in proof, and for the first time those three organizations said yes, we're going to work together. And there are multiple other certifications that will be included in that 100 million acres soon. But all of them, all the certifications that come through and go up on that site and become part of the promise, they all have one thing in common they track the progress of soil health.

Speaker 2: 30:23

Most of them do carbon testing, most of them do baseline testing. They have a program. They all have educational programs. They're outcomes focused, but they're also practices focused. So it's not just did you achieve an outcome, check a box, it's, let's check, let's see what's happening on the land. Let's see how the farmer or rancher or tree forest manager is doing right. So it's a very holistic approach. They're metrics, they're tests, there's check-in, they're science, there's GIS we know where the acres are. It's not just some yeah, pepsi's growing corn somewhere in Germany they probably are growing corn somewhere.

Speaker 2: 31:03

They don't even know that they're doing that Because the farmer's probably just doing it and not even telling them. So what we have to do now as a movement is say you don't get to use that word unless you're going to be able to prove to me the consumer buying food for my kids or Rebecca buying food for our kids with a logo that's backed by an organization, a certification that those acres are real and that the soil is actually sequestering carbon, and that kind of transparency and value chain. That's what we now have to as a movement. We have to insist. Look, we're not going to buy your regenerative McBurger Like it doesn't exist.

Speaker 2: 31:51

You're selling us hype. That's regen washing, which is the next version of greenwashing, and I think that's something we never saw coming. We never saw that McDonald's would be like yes, we're regenerative. First of all, you're not.

Speaker 3: 32:09

Because they're selling the Beyond Burger or the Impossible Burger.

Speaker 2: 32:12

I mean, they're just not regenerative.

Speaker 3: 32:14

I mean, that's the other another talk about greenwashing. We kind of get some slack for talking about fake meat and how ultra processed foods aren't really regenerative. In fact, they're touted as being better for the environment, they're touted as being better for our health, but the reality is, yeah, maybe they're better than a burger that's grown in a KFO, a concentrated animal feed operation, but it's certainly not better than something that's minimally processed, like I don't know eating a mushroom burger or-.

Speaker 1: 32:45

Did you expect the flag you got for focusing so much, or relatively a lot, on the animal integration piece or the animal and livestock piece? Did you or did you? Get a lot of flag for that actually Sorry probably.

Speaker 3: 32:58

I think, you know, I think but both vegan and the cave like how did that response get?

Speaker 1: 33:02

because Kizugan is a very fundamental piece it is you know we have a lot of and, at the same time, it is fundamental for everyone.

Speaker 3: 33:07

We have a lot of vegan rights activists that are fully on board with Common Ground and we absolutely go into. Well, what's the difference between a burger grown in a concentrated animal feed operation versus an impossible burger, versus a burger that's from regenerative beef or regenerative bison that's grazed, grass-finished and raised and harvested humanely? And at the end of the day, there's actually a quote. We ended up pulling from the film because it was a bit controversial. But Mark Hyman I want to hear it. Dr Mark Hyman, we showed this in the Tribeca cut of the film. He goes.

Speaker 3: 33:41

Well, if you want to offset your KFO burger, you might just have to eat a regenerative burger, because one has, you know, you're emitting 3.5 kilos of carbon into the atmosphere and the other you're drawing down 3.5 kilos of carbon and the impossible burger kind of sits somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 3: 34:00

But it's definitely not going to be better for someone's health if it's being used 50 different unknown chemicals and food sources that are made in a I mean, the only thing that's plant-based, honestly, about an impossible burger is that it's made in a plant. Because, you know, I think that we just have to start really looking at what are we putting in our body and every time we eat, we're voting with our fork and we're voting for either a future where the carbon is in healthy soil and that soil has symbiosis with the food that's being grown in it and it has the capacity to pull up the nutrition and the minerals from the soil that then in turn creates that healthy microbiome in our own bodies. I mean, we really are a reflection of the soil that our food was grown in or we're contributing to putting more carbon in the atmosphere, more ocean acidification, more harm to animals, more harm to the planet, more harm to ourselves. Every time we eat we're making that choice.

Speaker 1: 34:59

Just to throw it back. That's also the playbook, like putting it on private people or people in general to make that choice, and I wouldn't say shaming them, but it's also the playbook I think for so few companies have used with the personal carbon footprint and just putting it out of there, like if you just cycle a bit more then we'll all be fine. And like how do we tackle the systemic peace? Then, of course, if millions of people tomorrow or in a year would fundamentally change, and I think it's partly happening, partly through nutrient density, partly through other levers and levers that, like our food dollars, make a huge contribution. But I also don't want to put it like on everyone as the personal choice and tomorrow in the shop you have to choose left or right, because otherwise, or the middle, otherwise we're doomed. Like how do you respond to that criticism of making it the personal choice and keep like taking it away from the large, the large corporate and systemic issue?

Speaker 2: 35:57

Well, it's not just personal choice, but people do make personal choices. I mean, the interesting thing about food is it has completely inelastic demand. So you can charge a lot for food and people will still need it. You know, and there is something to be said for the Elon Musk Tesla model of selling, you know, a ridiculous two-seater to a bunch of rich people in Silicon Valley to start a multi-billion company and become, you know, arguably the most wealthy tycoon on the planet. At this point, you have to start somewhere right, and in the beginning, for some of the products that will be on the shelves regenerative agriculture you know being what it is there will be a price premium, right, but it's also being marketed to people who have the means to eat that food.

Speaker 2: 36:50

Whole Foods estimates internally that regenerative agriculture will outpace organic by 50% within five years. Now, if it's going to outpace organic by 50% within five years, it's going to go way beyond Whole Foods, and it already is. I mean, the truth is that regenerative agriculture is being practiced by people who don't use a label and they, functionally, are doing the work of restoring the soil without getting any additional credit for it. But I think the movement needs to do is connect the dots and reward those farmers and ranchers to ensure that that idea can spread. So I think people think it's like this niche thing or like you know a few farmers and ranchers. You know we're talking. We're already in the tens of millions of acres in North America and we're easily beyond that globally. So in the March to get a billion acres converted globally, we are likely already at 5% global practicing regenerative agriculture or some derivation, some close derivation. So this isn't niche. So when we talk about consumer demand, connecting consumers with a transparent if you want it to be blockchain, it can people value change.

Speaker 2: 38:10

Yeah back to the food you know, so that you scan the QR code and you know where it comes from.

Speaker 1: 38:16

You know the farmers just do Right yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:22

Transparent food labeling, right, and we don't even need QR codes. I mean, the reality is that almost every piece of food that's sold in a supermarket in an industrialized country has a skew. It has a barcode. Those barcodes are all centrally gathered, they're all. They're all in a database, they're all in multiple databases, otherwise the grocery store couldn't sell them to you, right? So they have databases and there are databases behind those databases. So it's not going to take a genius to put that database together with the practices of that company, where the land bases of the company, and whether or not that product is genuinely regenerative. Once that happens, you're going to be able to take your any smartphone and scan any product and you're going to get a readout of everything that that company is doing and not doing. And yes, that is the kind of transparency that food companies are terrified of, because even since Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle, food has become you know, and yeah, it's become yeah, the less transparent the better for people who make money right.

Speaker 2: 39:32

So what we're trying to do is, you know, this isn't necessarily a regenerative agriculture revolution piece, but it is revolutionary in terms of connecting people who eat with people who grow food using some simple tech. And once those connections get built and they're better, it's going to be very hard to lie and to sort of cheat the system, which is the McDonald's example, right Like, at the same time, we're not anti-McDonald's becoming regenerative. If McDonald's wanted to sign the 100 million acre pledge tomorrow and say we're really going to do it and here's the proof We've taken this certification, we've applied, we've been accepted, they're working on these acres and here they are. It's all transparent, great, you know, we need it Like that's. We're not promising that these companies will shift their morals overnight. What we're trying to do is get them to shift first their practices.

Speaker 2: 40:37

And remember regenerative agriculture is about techniques, not technology. So this is ultimately about education. We're not trying to sell widgets. We're not trying to sell satellite time, you know. We're not trying to sell Tesla batteries. We're trying to educate people with simple techniques that they can teach other people.

Speaker 2: 40:58

And when you look at the scalability of regenerative agriculture. It's proportional to what is being sold. The reason it is scaling and the reason it is moving so quickly and the reason consumers can have a lot of leverage same with companies, same with governments, more so than in other places is, ultimately, the curve of change is directly proportional to the difficulty of that change. And because there's nothing to purchase, a farmer in Rwanda can do this on half an acre. A farmer in Ghana can do this on a quarter of an acre. A kid in Manhattan who's got access to a rooftop can do this right. So all of a sudden you see the scalability of being able to grow food at any scale up to millions of acres in the Chihuahuan Desert and the techniques are making the same right, it's just education.

Speaker 2: 41:57

So, yes, consumer power, absolutely. The amazing thing is you have exponentially more power with this than you do by buying, you know, an electric car Not that that's a bad idea, but you know that one consumer decision is going to put in place certain things in a manufacturing setting. This consumer decision is putting in place exponentially increasing access to fundamental information. Information travels much faster than silver and nickel and lithium for a battery, right? So ultimately this is a game of how fast and how many people can we get to utilize basic information.

Speaker 3: 42:46

And we can do that very quickly and you can go back you know a lot of the farmers say you know, I have to keep growing conventionally, and one of the reasons is because they say there's no demand for regenerative food, and so I like to think of it as like bottom up and top down and middle out. You know, it really does take everyone participating in this movement absolutely personal responsibility as a part of it, whether you're viewing it as someone who's purchasing food, whether you're viewing it as someone who's growing and selling food, whether you're somebody who has an influence in regulating food or making policies around food, that's all personal responsibility. And you know we're talking about an agreement, a new agreement between everyone and each of these different factors. The way we've been viewing food is like it's this linear factory it comes in one way and it goes out the other way, and someone is making a profit from the whole thing, except for the planet that we're slowly desertifying, and so what we're talking about is a win-win-win model. It's a win model for the farmer who's growing the food. It's a win for the regulatory agencies who are finally actually doing their job and protecting people. It's a win for the people who are eating that food, because now suddenly they're going to start to see improvements with their health. What's the value of that? I mean that's priceless. And then you're going to see the people who actually are creating that industry and who are making a business out of regeneration. They're definitely going to win and we're seeing that everywhere.

Speaker 3: 44:20

So, as a mom, as somebody who buys food, I don't shy away, personally, from telling people that this is something that you can do, that's good for your health, that's good for the planet, that's good for your kids. It really is. It's a powerful act each time we eat. It's a powerful act each time we grow food. Hey, and if you don't want to buy food, grow food. That's the other thing too. Become a farmer. Do it in your window box, do it in your backyard.

Speaker 3: 44:45

I mean, we don't have to rely on capitalism to save us. I mean there is the Victory Garden movement once here in the US and I would like to think that we have more power than we realize. I'd like to see cities become giant. Food oasis is where people can walk down the street. Instead of having all these ornamentals, they can pick food that's being grown. I mean that really is. There's something powerful about taking back and reclaiming our food system and having food forests in our cities. That's the way of the future and if we can all agree on that, then we're going to see that shift happen within the time frame that we need to course correct, which is a short time frame we have scientists say just a few years to really make these huge changes, and that means it has to be all in.

Speaker 1: 45:35

And imagine we are in a big city let's say New York or London, a big financial hub as well and we screen the movie and we're on stage. I always like to ask this question in a theater way, and this is very appropriate in this case, because we have a movie and so we screen it and after that we're on stage and I'm asking you, what would be the main message you want people to walk away with that are in the financial, the belly of the beast, either putting their own money to work either put other people's money to work pension funds and things like that. Of course we're not giving investment advice, but if you want them, of course excited after a documentary and all of that, but what would be the main thing to remember? That you want them on the next morning, that they, when they go to work, when they go into their family office, what should they remember? What should they do?

Speaker 2: 46:24

Investment advice. Actually we're advising people.

Speaker 1: 46:28

SEC. We're nuts, we're nuts, let's be right to him.

Speaker 2: 46:31

He's not giving investment advice but we can, we are.

Speaker 2: 46:35

We can tell you to put your money where your mouth is. And to you know, look, there's not a to a person, there is not a screening that happens where somebody doesn't come up to us and tell us how they healed themselves or a loved one through food, using food as medicine. Generally, it is almost 100% of the time because they have converted 100% of their diet to organic right. And we're saying, well, even beyond organic, there's this thing called regenerative agriculture that's coming, that's gonna even have greater nutrient density. In fact, regenerative organic is one of the standards. And so we know that food without chemicals, grown well, heals the body right. And you're talking about investments. You know the first investment you're gonna make is in your own health and your family's health. You know, we know people in these chemical companies who will not feed their family anything that's not organic they're selling.

Speaker 1: 47:40

I've heard of farmers that are super conventional but they grow their own plot, their own vegetable garden obviously is no tail, no spray.

Speaker 2: 47:48

Yeah, there's many examples of people who are involved in the poison food economy but they won't feed themselves or their family that stuff because they know better. You know like they'll make money from it but they're not gonna eat it and so they'll sell you the poison. So the first thing for investment personnel and people who have family offices, people who have access to wealth to understand is the where you're going to invest those dollars is proportional to the health that will come out of it. If you won't feed it to your family, don't put your money into it. That's a true moral break for somebody to do that right. That's a dissonance in consciousness, like why would you invest in something that would poison people but you wouldn't feed it to your family? And the second thing to understand is we do have, as companies, we have a fiduciary duty to understand the impact of our company and to be transparent about that to the investors. And so if your portfolio is vested in companies that are actively poisoning people and poisoning the world, chances are those companies have made missteps in their fiduciary duty. And as an investor, you can request information, you can request transparency, you can pull your money out and you can put it into companies that are transparent with their food chain. And the other thing to understand is that as an economy, as a global economy, we also have a responsibility to everybody participating in that economy.

Speaker 2: 49:25

In the US, we're spending so much money to prop up a medical system that is trying to fix chronic diseases that are caused by food, and so we have this massive tax liability as a nation, and so does most Western nations at this point Due to the fact that we're feeding people garbage. They're getting sick and then we have to feed them pharmaceuticals to correct the garbage that they ate, because they got sick because they didn't eat soil-based food that was actually healthy in the first place. So we can course correct that very simply by moving money, and money is the arbiter of what's important to a population. So if you like sick people and you like climate chaos, by all means continue to invest in chemical agriculture, because that is the direct result. But if you don't and you want to course correct and you have the ability to do that, we can show at this point regenerative portfolios just like in the beginning of renewable energy that are outperforming the chemical portfolios. So, even from a greed-based approach, you're gonna get a better result doing this.

Speaker 3: 50:42

The chemical agriculture model is going bankrupt. So if money is the driving force here, you're gonna wanna take it out of the model that's going bankrupt. The chemical inputs are increasing the cost of trying to prop up food grown in a desert, because that's what's happening in that chemical model. You're desertifying, the soil, you're destroying and this has been happening in Europe longer than it's been happening in the US, because in the US we had this beautiful topsoil that was created by Buffalo roaming the country, and we came in and we plowed it up like carpet, and now we've got dust bowl number two happening in the United States and around the world we're seeing these dust bowls, and so I guess my question is to you, investor what is it that is going to make you happy at the end of your life? Is it your name on a building that sold chemicals that forced farmers to go bankrupt and desertified the earth, with lots of money in your account but no planet for your kids to live on where they can thrive? Or is it truly about creating generations where people can thrive?

Speaker 3: 51:49

I mean right now, just since we've started making this movie, two wars have started and I know, especially in Europe, you're really feeling the cost of people being displaced by desertification. When you have desertification places like in the Middle East, where once was the fertile crescent, where that was the bread basket of the world, that now look like dead dirt. People can't live in that environment. There's no water, there's no ability to grow food. You can't live there. And that's what we're doing on a global scale. We're desertifying everywhere where we're practicing chemical agriculture, that soil is dying and so the good news? And that leads to war, that leads to mass climate migration and, at the end of the day, where are we all going to live if we've desertified the entire planet trying to feed the world?

Speaker 3: 52:44

I mean, it is a crazy way of thinking about how we're gonna grow food and it's a myth that a fortunately common ground busts that myth and it shows we can build soil. When you build soil, you're building human health, you're building resiliency, not just for the environment and for the people that live in that environment, but you're also building resiliency for your culture and for your country and for your community. I mean, people don't have to fight over the scraps. People can participate in a flourishing environment where everybody wins. The scarcity model it does profit a few, but at the end of the day, if we're going to be a global community, if the high tide raises all ships, so to speak, let's just not let that be our waters. Let's have it be the people and the businesses and the communities that are all participating in regeneration.

Speaker 2: 53:39

I just wanna add to that what we're talking about really is resource constriction versus resource expansion, and if you're looking at two different models of investment and you boiled it down to just like the fundamental, what is the difference between investing in a regenerative economy versus an extractive economy You're talking about?

Speaker 2: 54:09

The extractive economy will constrict your resource base versus the regenerative economy will expand your resource base More soil, more nutrition, more food, more carbon in the soil, better climate management. So all of the fundamental drivers of social and human health will begin with that investment, whether it's the farmer's investment, whether it's a kid's investment that is planting seeds and growing a cover curb, or whether it's actual cash investment on the stock exchange. We're talking about expanding resources and I think what Rebecca said that was really is so important it's worth re-emphasizing about the conflict situation that we're seeing. Expanding Conflict will expand when resources constrict. It is an absolute. So if we continue to invest in resource constriction, which is what we're doing through an extractive model, conflict will expand and these two conflicts that we're seeing right now will continue to blossom.

Speaker 3: 55:23

And they don't just stay far away from your house, I mean, these conflicts are expanding towards you. We like to think of ourselves as isolated from them, but we're not.

Speaker 2: 55:32

And so the reality of that is you can't buy enough guns to combat the deserts, and that really, that's worth letting that sink in for people, because war is profitable, which is why we get involved in war as a society. It's always been profitable. It always profits one side or another. Russia, as the tundra constricts as the ice. As they look forward to the next 20, 30 years, they're gonna lose a tremendous amount of valuable land and a lot of oil and gas resources and, of course, they're looking at a resource constriction in terms of agriculture.

Speaker 2: 56:16

Well, where is some of the richest soils in the world? Or the Ukraine? It is a no-brainer and it is something that they have been looking at for a long time as empire expansion, because they're undergoing resource constriction, because that is what has been driven by an investment. It's very simple when you boil it down, but at the end of the day, we have a choice between expanding toward abundance or constricting toward conflict. Every single investment that you make falls into one of those two categories and I think that's really worth looking at. Look at your investments through that lens.

Speaker 1: 57:04

I think it's such a fundamental point to most of the economy we have. Most of the investments are always on that constrained side, are always on the scarcity side and always will constrain over time, because they're mostly not in living systems and if they are, they're in living systems that slowly degrade. And I've yet to see other places where an investment, very simply in land or something, could, with proper management, increase over time or get more valuable or get more carbon, more biodiversity, more biomass, more watch-holding capacity, more, etc. Etc. Etc. And but the issue is that it doesn't fit in our economic model, which has been boiled down to scarcity and, as we've, over the last 12,000 years or more, slowly degraded and of course a few places we haven't, but it's not like the norm, isn't that? So we're not used to something that I think we're even like, consciously not really used to, something that grows over time or increases in life over time, like we're used to slowly going down and we have to prop it up. And so it's a fundamental point, but such a difficult mindset shift to go through and it almost sounds naive. Going from scarcity to abundance, yeah, that sounds great, but until you see soil restoring, until you see the speed until you see the carrying capacity of places going up, etc. Etc. Etc. Like we have only scratched the surface of what we can produce and in many places we scratch the surface away.

Speaker 1: 58:40

And so what would you do if you would be on the other side, if you would be responsible for? I use like to call it a billion dollars to invest, or 10 billion. But what if resources weren't necessarily the biggest issue, but more? What do you choose? What do you focus on? I'm not looking for dollar amounts, I'm looking for. Would you focus on livestock? Would you focus on knowledge? Would you focus on what would be the main buckets you want to hit if you had a large portfolio To put to work, as investments could be very long return cycles could be 100 years plus but should be put to work and come back at some point.

Speaker 3: 59:13

I mean right now, farmers want to make the transition Overwhelmingly. Farmers are ready to get off of I mean in the US it's the subsidy model and usually they need a small influx of cash to get out of their monocrop conventional model and into a regenerative model.

Speaker 1: 59:35

So that is a huge opportunity.

Speaker 3: 59:37

Yes, I mean that is if you want to take your money and put it where it really is going to make the biggest difference. It's help farmers transition away from conventional chemical agriculture and into one that's biodiverse. So that includes, you know, in a biodiverse model that includes animals, that includes all different types of food, that really the baseline of that is growing soil. So if you can find a way to help farmers grow soil, if you can find a way to help people purchase regenerative food, you know that's where the money is going to have the biggest impact right now is in helping in that transition as we create a new system where there is abundance.

Speaker 2: 1:00:18

And investing in knowledge and education for farmers, because, you know, we in the West we think we, you know, we have this perception that all of the agricultural economy of the world looks like what it does in the West. But if you take the West's agricultural economies and you stack them together, we are by far the smallest portion of arable land globally, and this is interesting. If you think about where could you have the largest impact? Obviously it's on the largest amount of acres. The largest amount of acres, you know India, china, not the US, not the EU, you know.

Speaker 3: 1:01:04

Brazil.

Speaker 2: 1:01:05

South America, of course, brazil, you know, and so you start to expand your vision based on land, based on productivity, and you realize, wow, you could have a tremendous impact through disseminating information, disseminating how to do regenerative agriculture. Now, is that going to rock your portfolio and make you rich? There are ways to make this work. Yes, there are ways to create programs whereby wealth and microloans create wealth At a small, individual level and that wealth can be aggregated. So, yes, there is always a way to make regenerative agriculture work for an economy that has gotten used to extractive agriculture right. It just requires pulling back and rethinking the model a little bit, because remember, at the end of the day, when you create more soil, you create more calories, you create more food, you create more shade, you create more biodiversity, you inherently create more wealth. Now, how we commodify that and how we move it through a transactional supply chain, that's up to the creative.

Speaker 1: 1:02:30

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:02:32

And you can. You know, use the web 3.0 and the blockchain and stocks and bonds, and you know, you can create new financial instruments and people are doing all that stuff. But fundamentally, the cornerstone of a regenerative economy is expansion, right? So everyone's always wanted to expand wealth since the beginning of Western civilization, but meanwhile, they've been constructing the resource base, constricting the resource base upon which the wealth was based. Essentially, they were using the wrong operating system to try to achieve the result, and what we're saying is switch the operating system and that thing that you've wanted to do, ie expanding wealth, will follow. And then, if you want to go to Mars, great, go to Mars and you'll use all of the techniques that we have developed for regenerative agriculture as a society for 10,000 years. Guess where you're going to use them? You're going to use them on Mars and you're going to use them in the domes and the moon and all that wonderful, you know. Expansion of humanity throughout the galaxy.

Speaker 3: 1:03:38

I mean, I personally like Earth. I'd like to stay here. But you know literally this is actually something we have a conversation about.

Speaker 2: 1:03:48

Let's take it all the way out, right, let's take it. Let's financialize the model, and let's take, because that's what we do. We financialize things. We're human beings, you know. And so if you financialize the model, what you do is you take the 30 to 60% of the landmass on Earth that has been desertified, that's turned into deserts, and you green the desert. So you're going to green the Sahara, you're going to green Death Valley, you're going to green Nairobi, you know Middle Africa, the entire sort of desertified portion of the planet. You will green. And now you don't have a billion acres of arable land, you've got two or three billion acres of arable land. So, boom, we just increased the carrying capacity. 10 billion humans feed, no problem, right? Okay, great, now we've got economic abundance, we've got water. Water scarcity has gone away. What do we do? Oh, we're already on Mars yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:04:38

Yeah, we're going to get bored and we're going to do the same thing again, right? So now we want to green Mars. How do we do that? Oh well, guess what? You need microbes, you need resilient microbes, you need fungus, right? You're going to have to use mushrooms, are going to be the base, and so you're going to have to grow soil where there's no soil. You know, yeah, there'll be a bunch of other technology used too, but at the end of the day, no one wants to live on Mars and eat impossible burgers. They want to eat real food.

Speaker 2: 1:05:06

And all of this technology that is fundamental, that is inherent to natural abundance on Earth, will allow us to do the same thing. We have to learn to terraform Earth first, and the amazing thing is we already know how to do that. We know how to do it at scale like millions of acres at a time. It's already happening. It's happening in places like the Chihuahuan Desert. We're seeing. We've got big programs happening in the Middle East with this, in Egypt, we're seeing this happen, and so this is the sort of work of the near term is creating a new financial model based on radical abundance, based on creating so much fresh water, so much food, so much biodiversity that the planet begins to resemble something akin to what it once was, and that that's a financial model that I think people can invest in multiple ways.

Speaker 1: 1:06:08

It's just difficult to fix it and to fit it Sorry in an Excel sheet. I want to be conscious of your time and ask a few final questions, or at least one, and let's see where we get to. If you had a magic wand, you could change one thing overnight. I want to ask it to both of you what would that be?

Speaker 2: 1:06:31

I thought you were going to take this on. What would it be? I was just took a deep breath yeah, go ahead. You want me to go first?

Speaker 3: 1:06:37

You go first.

Speaker 2: 1:06:41

I mean for me. I would say, if we could change one thing, I would change the knowledge inside each farmer or ranchers head in their brain.

Speaker 1: 1:06:55

right now, as Gabriel likes to say, the most difficult real estate is between their ears, right, exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:07:01

The gray matter and I would give them the fundamentals, the fundamental principles and practices of regenerative agriculture globally. Just so that they just have that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:17

They use it as a second but they have.

Speaker 2: 1:07:18

That's a different thing. That's it. Get the information in there. That would be the one thing that I would change.

Speaker 1: 1:07:26

And you, Rebecca.

Speaker 3: 1:07:27

I think there's just been so much fear around the future, around the climate, and I think you know I, the sort of greed model is a bankrupt model, and so for all of the people who are looking at what can, where, can I make the biggest impact with my resources? The question would be how many people can this benefit? How many people can I touch with this in a way that is going to benefit everyone involved? Because this idea that we're doomed, I think, keeps us locked into. I'm going to take as many resources for myself and my family so that, when doomsday comes, we're set and forget the rest of you, my family, my DNA will live on, but is that really the world that we want to live on in?

Speaker 3: 1:08:20

I think we have to start thinking about. We're all in this together. We are all interconnected. We're like that micro-risal fungi in the earth that connects us. We're a part of that, and if we can start seeing each other not as individuals that are separate from one another, but that we are connected, we are one species on this earth and our money is like our veins, you know, and it's a great way for us to take these resources and start connecting them together and as we scale up.

Speaker 3: 1:08:53

We're not just talking about one company scaling up, we're talking about over 85% of our food is grown on small farms, so I think that's part of it. It's not one farm, it's hundreds of farms altogether. And the Chua'an Desert, where Josh is talking about, where they've regenerated 2 million acres in the middle of the desert and seeing it rain every single day. That wasn't one family, that wasn't one company. There was over 200 families that took down their fences and decided to start mob grazing together and they increased their carrying capacity and now they're seeing it rain in the desert with six foot tall grasses. So you know, I think that's let's take down our fences and let's figure out how we can work together to heal our planet and to heal our bodies and to have a much longer time here on this earth.

Speaker 1: 1:09:44

She's a perfect end to this interview. I want to thank you but also do some housekeeping. Where can people see? What are the plans? I've seen LinkedIn announcements. You're doing a lot of screening of common ground. What are, if you can say something about it, what are plans to bring it nationally, internationally, globally, to Mars and all those things? What's in?

Speaker 2: 1:10:03

it. What's in it?

Speaker 1: 1:10:03

works.

Speaker 2: 1:10:05

We'll be broadcasting on Mars Blade Runner. I think that folks can definitely get more information right now Commongroundfilmorg Certainly join the social movement Common Ground Film on Instagram, tiktok, all of that LinkedIn, and we can sort of start to announce and leak that there will be a huge online Common Ground event on Earth Day of next year. So if you're outside of the US and you can't see it in the theater, you can get on our social, get on our newsletter and we're going to give you information for how to get into that global broadcast next year.

Speaker 1: 1:10:44

Amazing. And why is there a Superman on the poster? I have to ask.

Speaker 3: 1:10:49

That's Gabe Brown, I know so. On Common the Common Ground poster, you see a farmer. He's standing in between two fields His field that's lush and green and biodiverse, and then his neighbor's field that's dead, dry, desert, and he's got a cape on because, truly, it's the farmers that are the heroes that are going to save our future.

Speaker 1: 1:11:26

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