‘Common Ground’ Review: Well-Intentioned Doc About Regenerative Farming Offers Limited Insights Into an American Environmental Crisis

A well-meaning yet generic environmental activism documentary with sporadic insights, “Common Ground” opens with a series of stars including Laura Dern, Jason Momoa, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson and Rosario Dawson as they write apologetic letters to future generations. Their words claim to reveal harsh truths that boil down to, “We have failed you” and “We should have done better.” This parade of famous voices is a curiously trite start for a film driven by facts and stats for the most part. It’s as if co-directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrell Tickell (“Kiss The Ground”) seek instant credibility through empty-calorie celebrity activism, when they should just let the experts speak about the film’s main focus: ethical regenerative farming. And once they do (albeit, with unnecessary interruptions by the aforesaid celebs), “Common Ground” proves it has some meaty arguments to offer, despite feeling like a sunny infomercial on occasion.

The most fundamental of those arguments goes like this: In a world where hungry humans are poisoning the planet, regenerative farming just might be the thing that saves us. And throughout “Common Ground,” we learn how this revolutionary practice that focuses on the health and diversity of the soil is in fact as old as time, and used to be the only way people grew their food. No surprise that once a handful of rich corporations bought the majority of food brands across the United States and became powerful monopolies, the picture changed for American soils. Now, our fields are drained of nutrients and carbon dioxide (apparently, the key ingredient of any healthy dirt), overworked and heavily soaked in pesticides that compromise the integrity of the food that we put on our tables.

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This won’t be news to anyone who’s watched some food-centric documentaries before. From “Food, Inc.” to “Fed Up,” and even the recent “Food, Inc. 2” (delivering a much tougher and more thorough point-of-view than “Common Ground”), various nonfiction offerings have shouted this message loud and clear. Still, it’s one that bears repeating when destructive conglomerates show no signs of retiring methods that willingly destroy the land and the health of those who rely on it.

“Common Ground” does exactly that, briefly touching upon a wide variety of scientific and historical details, from how the indigenous people of the Americas and the revolutionary Black agricultural scientist George Washington Carver had it right, to why it is better for the economy to prioritize regenerative farming and biodiversity. But this broadness of info only means the Tickells remain surface-level on most topics. Their “Common Ground” only teases but doesn’t dig deep enough into the intersection of racism and capitalism that brought us to today.

Still, there are some flashy infographics to take in; popular needle drops, like Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” to swing to; some pretty nature shots; and an impressive group of experts that ask the right questions about the reliability of the food we eat. Some of them are the very specialists that once dared to question Monsanto, a biotechnology corporation that invented a harmful glyphosate-based herbicide in the ’70s and went defunct in 2018 after dissenters drew attention to its harmful products.

Most impressively, “Common Ground” (like the previously mentioned “Food, Inc. 2”) questions whether the new “plant-based” movement in creating over-processed meat-like products is really good for the environment and human health. (Hint: the fake term “plant-based” shouldn’t automatically signal “good” or “healthy.”) As “Common Ground” clearly displays, there is enough evidence to prove that our goal shouldn’t be eliminating meat altogether, but safeguarding a sustainable production model that doesn’t abuse the animals or lands.

As the title of the documentary suggests, the Tickells assume — perhaps a bit naively — that this is a bipartisan value supported both by Democrats and Republicans. To that end, an upright, activism-minded Indiana farmer who says he’s a registered Republican makes an admirably unassailable case for regenerative agriculture, a method he proudly sticks with and advances. But the politics of who and what enables capitalistic corporations today is of course a far more complex issue than “Common Ground” suggests.

Elsewhere, the film holds the everyday consumer frustratingly (and perhaps unintentionally) accountable through a series of deficient calls to action, such as making more educated decisions while buying our groceries. It feels like a big part of the food ecosystem is missing from the Tickells’ parting message when the prohibitive costs of organic, ethically farmed and raised products in supermarkets (and who exactly can afford them) go unaddressed. Still, there is something moving about the earth’s regenerative power that we witness in the film, as well as the Tickells’ naiveté, in the old-timey suggestion that if we could set our differences aside, we could achieve things that can benefit us all. Dare to dream.

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