Common Ground?

Common Ground, directed by Josh and Rebecca Tickell

The college football season having recently ended with a resounding victory for the Michigan Wolverines, it’s appropriate to remember the mantra of celebrated Michigan coach Bo Schembechler: what’s most important is “the team, the team, the team.”

This idea should echo in ecological farming: what’s most important is the soil, the soil, the soil.

The goal of the new movie Common Ground, from directors Josh and Rebecca Tickell — who in 2020 released the popular Kiss the Ground — is to highlight the importance of the thing that everyone on the planet should be passionate about: the soil. Most of the film does this well, providing both rational and emotional reasons why preserving and improving soil is so important. The filmmakers do spend a lot of time highlighting concerns that are not common to all people, though. Will their efforts persuade those who control most of the largescale acres in this country to change their ways?

There’s much to commend in Common Ground. It ultimately calls for us to care more about the soil. A passion for soil health is the one truly common link among everyone who’s ever appreciated this magazine. It’s also important to acknowledge that this film was not made for Acres U.S.A. readers. Acres U.S.A. readers are the innovators and early adopters of agronomic practices that lead to greater soil health. The audience for Common Ground is the general public — those who know little to nothing about where their food comes from. In seeking to do a little education in this regard, the filmmakers should be applauded.

The messages of the farmers and researchers in the film who have been part of the Acres U.S.A. community for years are also excellent. Gabe Brown shows side-by-side the incredible difference between conventional and ecological farmland management. Rick Clark shares the successes he’s achieved by cutting the cord from toxic inputs and relying on soil biology. Ray Archuletta and Jonathan Lundgren discuss the importance of soil health in producing healthy food and in protecting crops.

Yet, to make their case, the filmmakers do engage in some finger pointing. Much of this is justifiable. We should definitely be against the use of glyphosate and other synthetic inputs that destroy soil biology. We need to guard against corporations dictating the type of research being done in our land-grant universities. These important subjects are treated quickly and very emotionally, but this is mostly the product of the medium — a popular-level documentary.

Farmers know that the stories behind the stories portrayed in a documentary like this are always more nuanced. For example, some of the farmers in Common Ground still use small amounts of synthetic chemicals on occasion — recognizing that these inputs can be tools in certain situations. Yes, we want to reduce their use, eventually to zero. But the way these products are described in the movie is unlikely to persuade conventional farmers to change their ways.

Similarly, one could easily leave the theater thinking that much of the research done in our land-grant universities is untrustworthy. Yes, we should always be on the watch against the undue influence of money or of status-seeking or of any other type of perverse incentives that all researchers are subject to and must guard against; yet this shouldn’t mean that we need to doubt much of the good work being done in universities around the country.

A final critique is the film’s heavy emphasis on identity politics. This is not an issue that we want to start discussing in this magazine; we merely mention it because of the seeming irony that a film named Common Ground spends so much time on an issue that is perhaps one of the most divisive in American society today. For their agenda to succeed, the filmmakers need to make common cause with the farmers who control the vast majority of the nation’s conventionally managed farmland. Many such people are unlikely to appreciate being browbeaten over the sins of their ancestors. And division is the best way to maintain the status quo.

Our only agenda in this magazine is the soil, the soil, the soil. This is the true common ground. Common Ground, while excellent in many respects, spends too much time on what we don’t have in common.