Kiss the Ground

In 1934 a black cloud began to roll across the plains of the United States. From Texas to New York City, America was blanketed in a wall of dirt. “The Dust Bowl” as it became called, decimated agricultural productivity and hurled the American economy into the Great Depression. The single catalyst for these events was a lack of care for something that most of us take for granted – our soil.

KISS THE GROUND is new feature length documentary lm that brings to light the past, present and future of the largely unexplored power of our soil. Unbeknownst to even many experts, the soil – and the microbial universe that it houses – is the foundation for all life above ground. Every plant and animal directly depends on the biological and chemical exchanges between the trillions of organisms that live underground.

Despite soil’s central role in sustaining humanity, our modern industrial farming practices are waging a war against soil life. From basic tillage and leaving elds bare/uncovered, to the ever increasing use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, we continue to wage exponential war on our soil. According to the USDA we loose 5 tons of soil per acre per year on our cultivated lands and could potentially run out of topsoil in less then 60 years. In fact, America is losing more topsoil today than we did leading up to the Dust Bowl. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Every civilization that destroys its soils destroys itself.” Indeed, the evidence to support this stretches from the ancient Maya who collapsed their society by overcropping to the precarious position of we nd ourselves in today.

As if the problems with soil were not enough – we face an even bigger threat. One third of the excess carbon dioxide that is now in our atmosphere was once stored inside soils as stable humus (the layer of inorganic and organic compounds inside soil that supports microbial life). Through tillage and other post-WWII agricultural practices, we have released “gigatons” of soil-based CO2 into the atmosphere. As more science comes out on the role of reduced topsoil in climate change, many scientist are pointing to loss of topsoil as a leading contributor to atmospheric CO2.

The KISS THE GROUND movie will include all of the critical aspects of a powerful documentary including expert interviews, 3-d animations, archival footage, and “in the eld” footage.

But the movie will go far beyond that by delving into the lives of some of the most passionate and compelling people on earth – a selected handful of scientists, farmers, ranchers, activists and policy makers who are on the front lines of the battle to save the world’s soils – and to thereby save our species. It’s through their daily struggles and through eyes that the audience will experience the passion, the commitment and the hope generated by a solution that is at once so complex and so simple – a solution that has eluded us because it is in a place nobody thought to look – right under our feet.