Common Ground
Screening: Friday, 9/27 @ 7:00pm | Run Time: 1hr 45 min
Sunday, 9/29 @ 4:00pm
Directed by Josh & Rebecca Tickell
Synopsis
COMMON GROUND is the highly anticipated sequel to the juggernaut success documentary, Kiss the Ground which touched over 1 billion people globally and inspired the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health.
By fusing journalistic expose’ with deeply personal stories from those in the front lines of the sustainable food movement, COMMON GROUND unveils a dark web of money, power, and politics behind our broken food system. The film reveals how racist practices forged our current farm system in which farmers of all colors are literally dying to feed us. The film profiles a hopeful and uplifting movement of white, black, and indigenous farmers who are using alternative “regenerative” models of agriculture that could balance the climate, save our health, and stabilize America’s economy - before it’s too late.
Director Statement
We wrote Common Ground as a love letter to our children. In a very real sense, the film is an urgent call to action and a plan for how we can save the future, heal our climate, and fix our broken food system – all through regenerative agriculture. If fixing some of the world’s most vexing problems through a new way of farming seems a tall order, consider this: farming is the primary way we interact with planetary ecosystems. Taken together, farms and ranches represent the largest biome on planet Earth (approximately 10 billion acres globally). Because of its vast scale, agriculture is the key to unlocking so many of the issues, we face as a species today.
COMMON GROUND represents our two-decade-long quest to learn how to rebuild our food and farming system in a way that stabilizes the climate, balances the checkbooks of farmers, rebuilds ecosystems, restores biodiversity, and creates an equitable and just food system that provides more food, and more nutritious food, for humanity. The film is filled with “Easter egg” type info points that we will build upon throughout the film’s distribution, from social media posts to policymaker toolkits to farmer training programs to celebrity talking points.
Ultimately, the core of COMMON GROUND is empowering and teaching viewers, farmers, policymakers, corporate leaders, influencers, and students with the tools and information they need to alter our food and agricultural systems. Information is power. By distributing the powerful information in this film to as many humans as possible, we empower millions of people to become change makers. The Earth is warming. We have entered the Sixth Mass Extinction. Our food system and soils are in collapse. And time is of the essence.
Jason Tickell
Rebecca Tickell