Netflix’s ‘Kiss the Ground’ Points Out The Healing Power of Soil

Streaming on Netflix, this optimistic climate documentary presents the healing power of soil, explaining that its capacity to sequester carbon can become central to reversing the effects of climate change.

Narrated by the actor Woody Harrelson, “Kiss the Ground” starts by examining how tilling and the use of pesticides lead to soil erosion, and then links the damage to our environment, health, and climate.

The New York Times reports that for the filmmakers, Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, the answer lies in regenerative farming, a more ethical process that restores degraded lands and traps carbon.

“Traveling around the world, the directors frequently employ juxtaposition to showcase the beauty of soil health. In North Dakota, a regenerative rancher stands at the boundary between his lush acreage and his neighbor’s denuded farmland; footage of the Loess Plateau in China before and after restorative methods reveals how dust bowls can become a Garden of Eden.”

In one sequence, Doniga Markegard, a regenerative farmer from San Francisco Bay Area explains how her family keeps the soil rich and healthy by rotating the paddocks their cattle graze on, helping preserve grassland ecosystems.

Educational points about agriculture and science are underlined by short profiles of celebrities known for their climate activism, like Jason Mraz, Patricia Arquette, and Gisele Bündchen, who together with Harrelson’s narrative, help bind the documentary together as it shifts from topic to topic.