Kiss the Ground

And I see hope in the fact that there's more and more things kind of in the popular media that are helping spread the word.

I mean, I'm thinking of documentaries like Kiss the Ground.

I mean, Millions of people have seen that and Roots So Deep, which is an amazing portrayal of how regenerative agriculture can heal the land and heal the farmers.

So I think the more of that message we get out, we can expand that 10% to 15% to a number that really makes this a sustainable movement and helps us make real change.

There's a great film called Groundswell.

I'm not sure if you've seen the trilogy with k- starring with Kiss the Ground.

One of my favorite-

No

John, you founded Nativa and you grew it to almost a billion-dollar organic superfoods brand.

You, you executive produced Kiss the Ground.

For those of you who don't know, this is the Netflix documentary that really woke up millions of people to regenerative agriculture.

But it seems like you saw that the organic world has some deep cracks in it.

So it was quite the ride, and, uh, you know, helped influence, um, not only the organic food industry to, you know, driving sales, showing the popularity and the demand.

Um, but we also helped...

We were the first $30,000 to go into the film Kiss the Ground.

And we funded these campaigns, you know, we mentioned also against...

I'm thinking about two things.

One of them is a movie, Kiss the Ground, that is on Netflix.

And the other one is a book, The World Without End, by Jean Covici.

So none of them are about buildings, but sometimes I like reading about other things every day, right? But they're both about sustainability.

Along with her ex-husband, Josh Tickell, she went on to produce Fuel, which won the Audience Award at Sundance, followed by more than 20 environmental films over the past two decades.

Their work includes The Big Fix, Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, in which I appeared, and most recently, Groundswell.

Through these films, Rebecca has helped bring the idea of regenerative and organic agriculture to a mainstream audience with an ambitious goal of helping move one billion acres of land toward regeneration.

Rebecca is also a farmer herself, transforming her five acre property in Ojai while working within her own community to bridge some of the deep divides around agriculture, food and environmental change.

And we spray 72 times per month with hazard warning and caution label pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides because we're an agricultural community.

And as a result of that, I consider this area a sacrifice zone, which is ultimately we're all experiencing the pollution of these neurotoxins that are sprayed 72 times per month.

And I have become known for helping to spread the message of regeneration, helping to introduce the idea on some level to the mainstream through Kiss the Ground and Common Ground and now Groundswell.

But here in the Ojai Valley, I've been called a hysterical terrorist, spreading non-science-backed fear-based hysteria was the exact quote, a Hollywood newcomer.

And that kind of links me back to one of our previous episodes we recorded on the podcast, and that was with Rebecca.

And for some of you that might not know, she is one of the amazing people behind Kiss the Ground or Kiss the Soil.

the Netflix documentary and I'll link it up here because definitely, you know, we dig so deep into this and that is the one thing.

If you've got good soil, you know, you're going to have good stuff growing in there.

that both of these guys are doing and giving of their time freely.

So I'll say Woody actually, because he was involved in the first documentary movie called Kiss the Ground.

So he was the narrator through that.

And this was around, the story starts with them being quite disillusioned as to how things are going in the world with climate change and really heading in one direction, the wrong direction.

And that I think is means we're getting to a better place where people are open to different ways of living and they're open to healthier ways of living and taking care of yourself and going to bed earlier or being aware of products that you're consuming and thinking about them having those conversations could be normalized and i think that'll help bring it more to the masses so you have a healthier society and a healthier humanity, which is ultimately my goal and what I want to contribute through my work as a founder of AlterBio and then also through my work with UNICEF and as a farm owner.

A couple of years ago, maybe five or six years ago, I watched the film Kiss the Ground.

Have you seen it? Oh, boy.

Oh, yeah.

I was like, oh, we could talk for hours about all of it.

Yeah.

So anybody should watch Kiss the Ground.

You can get it on