Last week, A Red Circle’s Community Wellness team–Erin Tyus, Emma Crocker, Queenie Vesey, Eric Williams, and Tony Rushing–hosted this year’s first film screening on the award-winning documentary, Common Ground. 

Put simply, this movie is literally groundbreaking – a must-see for anyone concerned about the fate of our planet. As the highly anticipated sequel to the 2020 film, Kiss the Ground, it covers the experiences of pioneers of the Regenerative Movement that’s spreading across America. 

In Common Ground, individuals from all walks of life stand in solidarity on a dire revelation: humanity is at a crossroads, with the choice of adopting regenerative measures that bring the planet back into balance, or continuing down a path of irreversible degradation caused by industrial agriculture’s exposure to harmful chemicals. The latter, according to the film, is a recipe of excessive pesticides, fertilizer runoff, soil depletion that leads to food shortages, farmer woes, climate crisis and species endangerment. Understanding industrial agriculture’s failures means recognizing that it has a history built on the model of slavery, brought on by Northern European settlers to extract wealth. 

Regenerative agriculture, however, is a farming technique that vastly reduces the use of chemicals and returns nutrients back to the soil. The method involves a number of restorative practices, like crop rotation, tillage reduction, grazing management and covering crops. Farmers who use this approach help re-carbonate the soil, giving it more life. This, in turn, mitigates climate change, revives biodiversity and strengthens water quality. 

Proponents of regenerative agriculture agree that it requires us to give more to the land than we take. Small scale generative farms can play an integral part in healing the soil and ourselves. As mentioned in the film, food is medicine: The quality of what we eat determines the quality of our health. 

Tony Rushing, A Red Circle’s Food & Farm Coordinator, spearheaded the Common Ground film screening and affirms the intersection of soil health and personal nutrition. His background in gardening inspired the launch of Tony TNT Gardening, a business committed to serving the St. Louis region through gardening and community education around growing food. 

After watching Common Ground, Rushing led an engaging discussion with attendees that covered their takeaways on the movie and how it helps their understanding of tending to one of Earth’s most precious assets: soil. 

“My hope for people who watched this film tonight is they leave knowing that nature sustains itself, especially if it’s given the right tools to heal,” said Rushing. 

Savoring effective resources ultimately means holding agrichemical giants accountable for feeding a morally bankrupt system. 

Following the night’s mental nourishment, visitors received physical nourishment, gifted by Queenie Vesey, A Red Circle’s Food & Farm Teaching Specialist. The food’s savory blend of textures and flavors proved to be a bonus highlighting our organization’s stance on farm-grown foods and healthy living. 

“A Red Circle follows every guideline of the sustainability plan mentioned in Common Ground,” Rushing said. 

It’s confirmation that we’re a small but mighty part of meaningful change in the world.