“We can heal the entire world with our food. Or we can totally destroy the world with the way we grow food.”
That’s the premise of Groundswell, a new documentary on Amazon Prime Video. It sounds like just another depressing climate documentary. But as narrators Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson highlight, the makers are all too aware of this perception and have done their best to create something that many will find uplifting and, in places, inspiring.
Unlike most, it avoids the usual recriminations over fossil fuels or meat consumption. That is because it’s less concerned with the amount of carbon in the air and more with the lack of it in the soil. How do we get more carbon down there? Well that all comes down to how we farm up above.
The film pits regenerative farming against industrial farming, pointing to the need for sustainability over short-term thinking. The problem with industrial farming, it argues, is that it creates monocultures that strip the land of a diversity of plants and animals. Take this too far and we end up with deserts. Fruit & vegetables become harder to grow. Food becomes more expensive. Health deteriorates.
The documentary never quite answers the question of whether regenerative farming can be the whole solution. But it makes a convincing case that industrial farming cannot. The picture it paints of a utopia where we are also closer to the land and the food we eat is just that – an ideal that doesn’t reflect the realities of the modern world. Still, it might prompt viewers to think more deeply about where their food comes from and its role in their – and the planet’s – health.
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