Kiss the Ground is an audience-supported nonprofit promoting regeneration and healthy soil as a viable solution for the systemic wellness, water, and climate polycrisis. Kiss The Ground has released two films, their award-winning eponymous debut and the critically acclaimed Common Ground film.
Evan Harrison is the Chief Executive Officer at Kiss the Ground. He is a digital music and media pioneer and helped transform iHeartRadio (formerly known as Clear Channel Radio) into a multi-platform content creation company. He also held leadership roles at Univision, Townsquare Media, and as a music festival producer.
Errol Schweizer: What are some of the strategic objectives of Kiss the Ground?
Evan Harrison: The strategic objective, first and foremost, is to get the regenerative agriculture movement to the tipping point. Right now, only 4% of the U.S. adult population knows of regenerative agriculture and healthy soil as a viable solution for a climate, wellness, and water crisis.
The first thing is we have to meet people where they’re at.
What our research has told us is that 70% of adults in the U.S. will spend money for something that improves their wellness, and about 40 something percent believe that the climate crisis is somebody else’s issue to fix. So we’re really focusing on driving messages around wellness. And, you know, with that, we aim to get the awareness to that tipping point, that 12%, where enough people know and can make informed purchase decisions that support regenerative products.
And then from there, we believe policy will follow suit and we’ll see sweeping reform and change in subsidies and the way food is grown. Our current agriculture system is broken. We’re sick at rates we’ve never been sick before. And we’ve got the carbon in the atmosphere that we need to take care of and healthy soil can help us do that.
ES: It seems like you’ve got quite a grab bag of topics there, and I’m curious what some of your rhetorical or persuasive strategies are for actually talking to people.
EH: It’s a great question. So what we talk about is a holistic approach to farming, the way things used to be done, and I think no matter what state we live in, I think we can all acknowledge that it’s getting hotter and wetter. When rain events come, more of the rain runs off, as opposed to the soil absorbing it. And our friends and family are sicker. I think that we can pretty much agree across the board on that. So what we talk about is a holistic approach to farming and agriculture and our food system, that just simply makes sense with animal integration, with rotation of crops, with cover crops.
So there’s going to be a bit of trial and error, but there are basic principles and practices which stand true across farms, and that is by regenerative practices, having multi-crop and cover crop and animal integration, immediately the farmer is saving money on what’s referred to as inputs.
A transition for Regenerative is a good thing. To start the transition, it takes time. I heard a lot of different arguments, and where I landed was we need to utilize our voice at Kiss the Ground to be inclusive, and not focus on infighting, because if we focus our energies on infighting, the movement, and the role we play in the movement anyway, will die on the vine. We need to be inclusive.
ES: Tell us a bit about your petition.
EH: Yeah, so Finnian Makepeace, one of our co-founders, started it about two years ago. And he went to DC and delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures. And we’ve been doing work nonstop for the last couple of years to really open the conversation, bipartisan, both sides of the aisle in DC. Stars from the film have joined us on trips to DC. And everybody came and was really willing to listen. And with this farm bill, we’ll see where it lands, but the good news is the door has been opened, and the conversation around regenerative agriculture is taking place. There are a bunch of marker bills and hopefully some policy change makes its way into this farm bill. But back to what I said earlier, I’m a believer that you have to get the knowledge out there in a way that’s easy to digest. And then from there, people will start to make informed decisions, conscious consumers will seek out regenerative products, and then from there, big policy change starts to come into effect.
Video still from Kiss The Ground Anthem.
ES: Last question for you. You came from the entertainment industry. What do you think about the food industry?
EH: It’s fascinating. I mean, we all need to eat. And the food industry is very nuanced, it’s very confusing, and of all industries, I think pharmaceutical and food should be the easiest for everybody to understand, yet they seem to be the hardest to understand. So one of the big things we try to do at Kiss the Ground is to strip away so much of that confusion and really not say, you only need to eat this way, you should never eat that, that you should never eat this. Rather, just make it easy to understand where the dangers are and what everything means. Because marketing is one thing, and then government-sanctioned labels are another thing, and then you’ve got everything in between and so many different certifiers who argue that their certification is the best. It’s a lot to decipher, so our role is to make it as simple as possible, so people who just want to know what they’re consuming can make informed decisions.