Kiss The Ground: From 4% awareness to 73K acres in Transition to Regenerative Farming

Absolutely.

So I joined Kiss the Ground about four years ago.

The organization was actually founded close to 13 years ago.

It took quite some time for the first film, which was named after our work, Kiss the Ground, to come out on Netflix in 2020.

And the, the truth of the matter is, those early days forming a local 501(c)(3) in Venice talking about regenerative agriculture must have been the hardest days because nobody knew what they were talking about.

And, you know, when the film came out, that put the conversation on the map.

Um, and when I joined, they were looking for a CEO to really decide what the organization should be and how the organization could have the greatest impact, because you had, um, really a grassroots organization for many years leading up until, uh, when I joined about four years ago.

And what we arrived at was, my background is in music and, uh, digital media, and what, what I did first was I scratched my head and said, "All of the conversations we're having are as if everybody knows what we're talking about." And when I talk to all of my, you know, friends, some people with great education, some people are PhDs, uh, in the, uh, environmental space, a lot of people have no idea what I'm talking about.

So let's do some research and kinda see what's going on out there.

And what we found was, and this is years after the first film came out, only 4% of the US adult population understood the term regenerative agriculture and how healthy soil ties to our gut health, to plant health, to animal health, and to our overall health, and of course, planetary health.

Um, 4% is a small number.

And we said, "Okay, we need to stop talking over people, and we need to meet them where they're at." A couple of other key findings helped really, um, guide our direction, and that is, while only 50% responded that they would help support a nonprofit that was in the environmental space, it wasn't about denying climate change.

It was more about that's somebody else's thing to fix.

Yet 75% said, "I wanna buy food that makes me healthier." So we pretty quickly landed at, okay, we need to simplify the message.

We need to meet people where they're at.

Not everybody wants to geek out about microbiome and how soil microbiome is like our gut microbiome.

Uh, and not everybody wants to talk about sequestering carbon and carbon credits.

Uh, but people wanna be healthy, and people want to buy foods that make them healthy, yet they're overwhelmed and they're confused for the most part.

So we came up with a strategy based on Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point.

We said, "Okay, where we can have the greatest impact is to work directly with farmers to elevate their voices and to inspire, not to talk about all the doom and gloom, but to inspire people to want to understand the source of where their food is coming from, how it is grown, and to understand that it necessitates healthy soil and an ecosystem approach to farming for all of the nutrient benefits from the food to find its way to us, to lead to our health, and to lead to planetary health."

Absolutely.

So I joined Kiss the Ground about four years ago.

The organization was actually founded close to 13 years ago.

It took quite some time for the first film, which was named after our work, Kiss the Ground, to come out on Netflix in 2020.

And the, the truth of the matter is, those early days forming a local 501(c)(3) in Venice talking about regenerative agriculture must have been the hardest days because nobody knew what they were talking about.

And, you know, when the film came out, that put the conversation on the map.

Um, and when I joined, they were looking for a CEO to really decide what the organization should be and how the organization could have the greatest impact, because you had, um, really a grassroots organization for many years leading up until, uh, when I joined about four years ago.

And what we arrived at was, my background is in music and, uh, digital media, and what, what I did first was I scratched my head and said, "All of the conversations we're having are as if everybody knows what we're talking about." And when I talk to all of my, you know, friends, some people with great education, some people are PhDs, uh, in the, uh, environmental space, a lot of people have no idea what I'm talking about.

So let's do some research and kinda see what's going on out there.

And what we found was, and this is years after the first film came out, only 4% of the US adult population understood the term regenerative agriculture and how healthy soil ties to our gut health, to plant health, to animal health, and to our overall health, and of course, planetary health.

Um, 4% is a small number.

And we said, "Okay, we need to stop talking over people, and we need to meet them where they're at." A couple of other key findings helped really, um, guide our direction, and that is, while only 50% responded that they would help support a nonprofit that was in the environmental space, it wasn't about denying climate change.

It was more about that's somebody else's thing to fix.

Yet 75% said, "I wanna buy food that makes me healthier." So we pretty quickly landed at, okay, we need to simplify the message.

We need to meet people where they're at.

Not everybody wants to geek out about microbiome and how soil microbiome is like our gut microbiome.

Uh, and not everybody wants to talk about sequestering carbon and carbon credits.

Uh, but people wanna be healthy, and people want to buy foods that make them healthy, yet they're overwhelmed and they're confused for the most part.

So we came up with a strategy based on Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point.

We said, "Okay, where we can have the greatest impact is to work directly with farmers to elevate their voices and to inspire, not to talk about all the doom and gloom, but to inspire people to want to understand the source of where their food is coming from, how it is grown, and to understand that it necessitates healthy soil and an ecosystem approach to farming for all of the nutrient benefits from the food to find its way to us, to lead to our health, and to lead to planetary health."