Six Inches of Soil: The Story so Far
Filming with our principal Ben Thomas
Writing this blog and looking back on our journey over the past year, we can’t help but feel proud of what we’ve achieved so far. Through the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, we focused on building strong relationships and partnerships with many people in the farming and food communities, including the team behind NFFN who have been so supportive of our film. In case you haven’t heard about Six Inches of Soil, we’re a small independent documentary feature film that will follow the journeys of three young British new entrant regenerative farmers – Adrienne Gordon, Anna Jackson and Ben Thomas. We’re documenting all the highs and lows of setting up nature-friendly farming systems and telling the story of extraordinary farmers, communities, small businesses, chefs and entrepreneurs who are leading the way to transform how our food is produced.
We had a brilliant Crowdfunder in March where we raised over £20,000 thanks to the amazing support from people in the UK and across the world, and we’ve had generous corporate sponsorship from the fabulous Dave Gordon, owner of BAM Clothing and incredible support from the wonderful David White from Hawk Mill Farms. As well as NFFN, we have strong support from our other film partners including Sustain, Soil Association, Groundswell, Food Farming & Countryside Commission, OF&G Organic, Pasture for Life, FarmED, Sustainable Soils Alliance, BASE UK and Matthews Cotswold Flour who do a wonderful job helping us with research, ensuring we produce a factually accurate film, working closely with us on the Impact Campaign (more below) and helping us to organise screenings.
We’ve shot many hours of content on location at our principals’ farms, at festivals including Groundswell and Cereals, farming and food events and more. Plus, we’ve had the honour to attend talks, book launches – Sarah Langford and Jenny Jefferies – film festivals, we’ve spoken to numerous regen farming and food security experts, and soil scientists appeared on podcasts and radio programmes and had coverage in local and national publications. It’s been a whirlwind, and we’re so grateful for all of you who are travelling on this journey with us.
As well as the film itself, which will launch in autumn/winter 2023, Six Inches of Soil has an important Impact Campaign that will provide a tool to engage the public and policymakers to support an agroecological vision for farming in the UK. It will show how modern industrial agriculture is degrading our soils, rivers, biodiversity, climate and long-term food security and will illustrate how the soil food web is a complex living system that interacts with the environment, plants and animals on which we all depend. It will also challenge the major supermarkets, agrochemicals and biotech industries and corporate food lobbyists to respond to this alternative vision for agriculture.
If you’d like to join us on this brilliant journey follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and sign up for the newsletter on our website. We’re continuing to raise money to cover production costs, so if you’d like to donate click the “Fund the Film” tab on our website.
We’ll give the final word to the amazing Martin Lines who, back in March, very kindly made a short video to highlight our Crowdfunder. In the video he said:
This blog was first published on our partner Nature Friendly Farming Network’s website.
“Six Inches of Soil will highlight what farmers are doing to farm in regenerative and agroecological systems, to inspire many other farmers to start the journey in reducing artificial inputs, working more with nature and working on a healthier soil system. Soil is our key to all future food production and if we can help farmers improve their soil health and their production systems that would be really great.”
