User Reviews

Exploring the damage caused to the earth through farming with a conservation agronomist et al. and how a regenerative approach can reverse the catastrophic climate crisis that casts such a bleak shadow over our planet. Unsurprisingly the message, as is so often the case in all walks of life: let things do what they're good at and the problem can be resolved. In this case, let nature heal the damage, torture and torment our misguided agricultural practices have cursed the planets surface with, live in tune and synchronicity with nature, stop poisoning the lifeforms that maintain and perpetuate life. Probably preaching to the converted but there's no harm reemphasising the message in the hope that a few more pennies drop and habits evolve and ultimately change. That's if it's not too late already.

What I liked 1. Peer Review from multiple people. 2. Simplistic sicientific explanation.

What I didn't like 1. No mention of the logistics and cost involved in regenerative farming.

This documentary was an immensely helpful introduction to the concept of regenerative farming. It has convinced me how benefical this method can be in sloving the problems of climate change, enough production for the mass and good use of carbon footprint. However, their promotion of this method seems very one-sided with no explanation of how farmers can implement it in real life. It gives no information about how much the initial and over-time cost of the method can be?, how long is the harvesting season?, what are the up and downsides? and many more critical basic questions even a child from elementary school will ask.

At the end, this documentary made me feel very optimistic about future, but because of lack of crucial information, it seems like a advertisment giving us false hope.

As a livestock rancher, I am leery of documentaries with vegan spokespersons. But this one covers all the bases and gives livestock it's critical role in healing the environment. Excellent job in explaining the science and role of farming in making things right. Would have been nice to have given direction in how the average person can encourage change in farming.

This documentary was informative, eye opening and inspirational. To me, it seems so obvious what needs to be done in terms of our agricultural methods. I get that people want to stick to their tried and true ways but if helping the planet means a healthier humanity, wouldn't you adjust and evolve your methods for that reason alone? The good news is that I believe that a new generation of farmers are coming up and are more interested in these planet/humanity saving methods than the good ole money making, government subsidized methods. Hope is still alive!

When I consider a film, one of my criteria is relevance. Reversing climate change has to be at the top of that list. Helping farmers, creating more nutritious food, and reversing chronic lifestyle diseases...also pretty damned relevant.

But the story also has to be told well. Does it have flow, is it beautiful? Check!

You will enjoy watching this, you will learn while you enjoy, and you will be motivated. All very difficult tasks, but this film was highly successful at accomplishing all of them.

Being surrounded with bad news for so long, and especially with what's been going on in 2020, it would be easy to give up, or, at least feel relatively powerless. This movie shows how powerful we can each actually be, literally, in our own backyard. Well paced with really interesting stories and fascinating NASA satellite imagery showing co2 emissions from space and how they are directly related to how much tillage is going on in the planet. So mind expanding! I'm so happy that a movie like this was made available on Netflix. Highly recommend!

This is incredible and inspiring for all generations, a film everyone needs to see, an absolute must watch!

I thought the documentary would be interesting because it concerns soil, a rather neglected subject that I've recently read about in a book called The Hidden Half of Nature. And it's soil, right? The film will be about a relatively neutral subject with science backing every idea in it. Alas, it was not like that. Instead, "environmental activist" actors narrate and star into something that is painfully progressive and one sided. It felt political, somehow. How does one politicize dirt?! And it's too bad, because what they said was mostly correct: there are cheap ways of farming sustainably, protecting life, earth, the air, sequestering carbon and giving us tasty food. Decoupled agriculture, plowing and artificial fertilizers are the very opposite of that and only serve chemical manufacturers. But they way they said it. Ugh!

Using science to determine the best way to handle soil, which is the base of everything which is alive on land, is something relatively new. Understanding the role of microorganisms in everything from farming to medicine is relatively new. These subjects deserve recognition and study. Alas, farmers will never connect to something so painfully Californian. My advice: read about the subject and do your own research and experiments. Get acquainted with the way each piece of nature, from the microscopic to the gigantic, function in unison not in isolation.

Bottom line: a fascinating subject, poorly popularized.

This movie was so inspirational and inspiring! Great job! I love how the movie was educational without shoving it down your throat. Definitely recommend to everyone!

No where does the film say anything about the vast amounts of herbicides including Roundup, 2-4D, and Paraquat used in no-till agriculture.

This movie! Great information in a way that people can understand and start to make positive and impactful changes in their behavior. It's the start of something mind blowing! I just might move to California so I can work for this incredible cause!

This show is informative but leans toward those hippie dairy farmer mentality of selling raw unpasteurized milk. Raw milk DOES carry dangerous germs, and made MANY people SERIOUSLY sick. Me included as kid back in early 60s. The show only talks about carbon fixing soil by drawing CO2 from atmosphere which is noble. The show never mentions Nitrogen fixing soil by by rotating crops planting legumes (beans) which are nitrogen fixing to refertillize soil naturally. All smart farmers know this. Nothing new. I'm not sure how this cover crop business works if they are not nitrogen fixers. All smart farmers understand other plants compete for soil nitrogen even weeds. That's why farmers want to eradicate them. The unwanted plants hog the nitrogen. The parts of show that talks about composting onsite fields can be downright dangerous. That part about composting human feces in Haiti villages is nothing but reckless and dangerous for e-coli outbreak from hell. WE sure don't want to follow cow grazing or human uncomposted dung land with food crops or free grazing chickens pecking fresh cow dung. We all read about food recalls from e-coli and salmonella contaminated agriculture. It's exactly because of plants and animals exposed to uncomposted dung loaded with harmful bacteria. It can be recipe for disaster and probably why the USDA hasn't bought in yet. I encourage the show producers to make part 2 to explain more. One thing I believe will greatly help the problem of soil erosion and dust pollution is for the government to STOP STOP subsidizing farmers not to grow crops. The stupid ass government mandates to farmers to qualify the land must be plowed bare dirt. If you fly over the great San Joaquin Valley in California at 20,000 ft during crop times you can see for yourself. Half the land is bare dirt blowing away top soil dust storms. This is our government at work paying farmers not not grow crops. And California is eat up with air pollution?? Go figure.

After watching this documentary, I was pretty excited. I thought the solution to climate change seemed hopeful. But after the music and positive imagery faded, I started to think about the core message. I couldn't reason why regenerative agriculture could pull more CO2 out of the atmosphere than traditional agriculture. The animations shown on "Kiss the Ground" make it seem like with healthy soil, plants will pump CO2 out of the air and then store it in the ground. And if you till the ground, the CO2 is released into the air. I did some basic research on photosynthesis, which by the way is a very chemically complex process, and what I learned is that the CO2 is converted to carbohydrates. Water is turned into O2. The CO2 will be chemically changed by the plant and doesn't get "pumped" into the soil. I feel manipulated by this documentary and I'm not sure the ideas presented actually have a sold, factual foundation to stand on. We can pull CO2 out of the air with plants, but we need to have more plants, not the same amount of plants with better soil. We need to grow tons of new trees and stop deforestation.

This is a must see. It provides an attainable solution that everyone can take part in to help our planet. It is filled with gems of information and a passionate team behind the research. If not now, then when?

I can't remember the last time I saw a film so absolutely breathtaking. The cinematography of "Kiss the Ground" does an amazing job at capturing the nature of our planet and showing the growth towards restoration. The images this documentary provides are incredibly powerful; even the very last scenes gave me goosebumps. Josh and Rebecca Tickell do a fantastic job at implementing a powerful message and showing that change is possible. I felt incredibly hopeful that we can come together to reverse climate change. After viewing the vivid imagery, data, and graphics in this film, it just motivates me even more to be a part of the movement. Something this beautiful deserves to be watched and appreciated.

Oh thank god! It's tough to see the state of our world broken down so clearly that there is no denying what is happening to our planet -- but this film shows us where we are and then, through great dialogue, beautiful footage and entertaining characters, walks us out of the depths of fear and into the freedom of YES WE CAN! Thank god this movie was made!

Finally a movie that gives a solution, a real, unbiased and scientific solution to climate change! I'm so happy this has finally come out. It's explained perfectly so everyone can understand and realize exactly what is going on and what needs to be done in an entertaining and easy to watch way.

If you cut out of this movie all the nonsense with happy ranchers holding their hands and the need to breed and "humanely" kill animals to regenerate the land, then it is a pretty decent documentary about the importance of moving from conventional farming to a sustainable one.

Kiss the Ground truly redefines what it means to release a film surrounding climate change. While most documentaries like this leave its viewers weary and confused about mother earth, this film does the exact opposite. By the closing credits, I was smiling with inspiration about our world's future and the transition to regenerative agriculture. The film presents a feasible solution to overturn climate change by having CO2 emissions going back down into living plants. Through this process, we can regenerate our soil. Directors Rebecca and Josh Tickell's seven years of hard work on this cinematic piece is undeniable, and their unique approach to providing viewers with hope rather than distress made their message that much stronger. Through the beautiful and vibrant imagery and Woody Harrelson's warmth and authentic narration, I was instantaneously immersed in the film's purpose and now wholeheartedly support the Kiss the Ground movement!

Pro of this documentary: Excellent information--this information would be widely disseminated everywhere.

However a coastal elite audience doesn't need this film--farmers do. Farmers around the world do. Appeal to that demographic with that type of sensibility. They are the targets of change--not people who might do their backyard a little bit differently.

The tone deafness of the film almost drowns out its important information. The lack of people of color being interviewed is mind boggling. The white colonial imperialist mindset got us in this climate mess in the first place and the fact that this is not acknowledged is a huge blindspot. Also why not include Native Americans who are experts at land management? Or non-western indigenous people who never messed up their land in the first place? Or anyone from an urban area who is doing interesting soil restoration work? How are more people on the ground not interviewed and only their "white saviors"? There was no one in Haiti to interview about how the compostable toilets have altered their gardening techniques and sanitation? Or Africans to talk about how the grassland has changed their area?

Climate change is more about the mindset of humans than anything else.

Gisele meditating over her food with her personal chef in the background is the type of thing that prevents a wider population from jumping on board with climate chaos. When it is seen as an elitist upper class concern, the rest of the world will not get on board.

Beautifully done story about this magnificent planet. About how we have hurt it and how we can fix it!

It misses a narrative coherence probably because it wants to speak to everyone but it doesn't know how to do it unanimously: sometimes it feels like a commercial, other times like a strong, detailed and committed manifesto; sometimes it's to confusing and ripetitive with too many numbers, charts or statistics at once other times it's too rushed, superficial and dull feeling like a kids show; some interviews are very interesting, well scripted and important, other, less useful, could definitely be avoided. So as a documentary it could have been made better especially because it's extremely important but at the end at least it's there and it inevitably makes you realize a lot of things and think about them, despite all the technical problems, and that's more important.

This documentary's celebrity charmed message of hope is beautiful and wonderfully put together, that's for sure. But unfortunately its message of holistic grazing is not in alignment with the scientific consensus, the anecdotes (Alan Savory and Gabe Brown) within the film have not had any legitimate scientific testing of their methods and the film cherry picks/misleads findings from the 'Drawdown Report' by Paul Hawken, the report being the core research focus of the documentary.

One of the anecdote farmers within the doc is Alan Savory, whose methods have never been successfully repeated and have not had legitimate scientific testing. What's more, If he is the only one that can achieve the carbon sequestration that hes claiming, then that doesn't provide a lot of hope. Especially when you consider this is the same guy who ordered 40,000 African elephants to slaughter because he incorrectly thought they were damaging the land.

If they wanted to stay with the scientific consensus, such as oxford university's piece by Joseph Poore, showing the biggest positive impact an individual can have on the planet by analysing 40,000 farms across 119 countries. Or by just simply looking at the Drawdown' Report's outlined solutions, not cherry picking the lesser significant parts. Then they should have said eating a plant based diet is the single biggest thing an individual can do for the planet. This is because a plant based food system had the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification, ocean deadzones, land use , water use, deforestation, habitat destruction and both land and marine biodiversity loss. In the solutions of the Drawdown Report they say that the shift to a vegan diet is twice as powerful as a shift to silvopasture and 4 times as powerful compared as shifting to managed grazing - which are two types of regenerative agriculture involving livestock. Hawkens' of the report also concludes the two biggest effects an individual can have are switching to a plant based diet and reducing food waste.

I hope this doc doesn't detriment the required transition to a plant based food system, a part of the climate solution which is supported by the science and not just some damaging celebritised misleading message of hope in the wrong direction.

I was waiting for the shoe to drop and hear this huge "green house gas" lecture or "go vegan" lecture to save the planet...but not even close. a greatly informative film that's not preachy, but makes us see a culprit we never recognized and solutions that are relatively simple. loved it.

I have been learning about and advocating regenerative agriculture and permaculture for years, and seeing how beautifully presented and powerful the message in this movie is brought me to tears. This single film could be the catalyst for massive change, awakening the public to the deep-rooted problems in our agricultural system and demanding change. For the health of bodies, our minds, and our planet.