The Pollinate Storytelling program highlights the voices of diverse communities practicing regenerative agriculture.

Liberation Agriculture: A media series

“If you’re eating you’re involved in agriculture” Wendell Berry

Regenerosity envisions a world where the power of giving and collaboration can nurture communities and grassroots initiatives as they steward ecosystems towards vibrant health. 

We do this by resourcing grassroots organizations and supporting their capacity development in order to accelerate global adoption of regenerative practices and traditional ecological knowledge. We believe in the power of trust, shared learning and storytelling to grow impactful place-based initiatives at the intersection of food sovereignty, livelihoods, ecology, and climate.

overview

The so-called “Green Revolution” of the 60s and 70s brought pesticides, fertilizers and mechanization to farmers around the world. Despite short-term gains in yields, it created a way of farming that disconnected humans from the land, while extracting and exhausting the very basis of life: water and soil. The subsequent “Gene Revolution” of the last 20 years further eroded diversity and put patents on life itself. The birth of industrial scale agriculture concentrated land in the hands of big land owners and, despite farming only 19% of arable land, smallholder farmers produce 70% of food globally. 

The awareness of the need to reshape our agricultural systems has finally become mainstream, and with it, the welcome spread of practices like Regenerative Agriculture, Permaculture and Agroecology. As these terms and practices become more and more integrated into our current mainstream paradigms, their stories and narratives also become shaped by the mainstream. A narrow focus on soil carbon, cover cropping and no-till agriculture, or on solutions like ecosystems services or enhanced sequestration create a utilitarian and somewhat restricted view of our relationship with the land. 

The story of regeneration in agriculture goes much deeper, narratives are more complex, and they deserve to be told in a way that shines light on the true revolution, a grassroots revolution of farmers everywhere regenerating our land-based cultures. 

What if we spoke of this life-affirming agriculture as a larger story of connection and deep relationship to the land, of humans co-existing in mutually beneficial ways with the plant, fungi and animal life there? What if we included the social, political and spiritual aspects of our food system, in a way that brings to light the often marginalized voices of our food production systems? What does it look like to acknowledge that many of these agricultural practices are deeply rooted in the ancestral wisdom of indigenous, black and traditional communities?  

Through a planning grant we have contacted and interviewed farmers in the US and UK to refine this media project, the audience, narratives and distribution channels.

For the US Film Project, Regenerosity is working to create opportunity and platform for more holistic, connected and diverse stories of regenerative agriculture to reach wider audiences by making content that is open-source, high quality, accessible, inspiring and transformative. 

To showcase the stories of farmers from across the US, we propose developing packages of open-source content including films, photography, written stories, and quotes, and engage audiences in order to: 

• To broaden the social ecology of the regenerative movement that centers perspectives of BIPOC, rural communities, and less visible peoples.

• To rekindle relationships with living systems and the wild, platforming radical farming practices which center our sacred connection to land and each other, with humans as nature. 

• Reconvene culture and agriculture, widening our understanding of regeneration as means of cultivating dignity, justice, belonging, ecology and spirit.

The long-term objective is to stimulate a shift in consciousness, and a change of practice. Our existence is already crowded with awareness raising and armchair activism - one-time opportunities asking us to sign a petition, donate or be part of a gimmick. Our intention is for this content to have a lasting impact and inspire ongoing change by connecting the viewer to alternative narratives on our food systems. 

If you are interested in learning more about the Liberation Agriculture media series, get in touch with Faith Flanigan.

UK film project

For the UK based project we working to showcase the stories of farmers from across the UK, we propose developing packages of open-source content including films, photography, written stories, and quotes, in order to: 

• Inspire as many farmers as possible to consider farming regeneratively 

• Help transform the mainstream narrative of farming in the UK, to include a more diverse range of voices from across the regenerative farming community 

• Engage new audiences from the farming community and expand the reach of the content via mainstream and farming media. 

The long-term objective is to stimulate a shift in consciousness, and a change of practice. Our existences are already crowded with awareness raising and armchair activism - one-time opportunities asking us to sign a petition, donate or be part of a gimmick. Our intention is for this content to have a lasting impact and inspire ongoing change. 

Reach out to James Atherton if you have questions about the UK Film Project at James Atherton.

Project Partners

Jason Taylor (The Source Image) is a filmmaker and photographer who has been working on media around food and farming around the world. He has been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines while based in India, including the Guardian, The Telegraph and Time Magazine. On returning back to the UK he has focused on understanding how to create media specifically targeted to a particular audience. His films, often no longer than a few minutes, are beautifully shot and carry a very simple, single narrative that attempts to stimulate consciousness of issues that are often difficult to articulate. 

A Growing Culture is a collective working towards a world of food sovereignty. For everyone. Everywhere. They connect peasant and Indigenous-led groups fighting for food sovereignty, building capacity and solidarity. They meet their emergent needs, supporting them with communications training, untethered resources and program development. And they work to shift narratives, expanding our collective understanding of agricultural injustices and our collective responsibility to listen, to learn, and to mobilize. A Growing Culture ultimately serves as a bridge between the communities who continue to advocate for their rights to land and justice, and broader audiences. By bridging these two worlds, they aim to seed food systems rooted in justice.

Sustainable Food Trust is a registered charity that was founded by Patrick Holden in 2011 in response to the worsening human and environmental crises that are associated with most of the today’s food and farming systems. The SFT works to accelerate the transition to more sustainable food and farming systems that nourish the health of both people and planet. To achieve this, we work catalytically and collaboratively, with an emphasis on communication, education and thought leadership.