About this event

Six Inches of Soil is a British independent full feature documentary shining a spotlight on soil health and regenerative farming. It tells the inspiring story of young British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, our health and provide for local communities. The aims of the film are to sound the alarm on a broken system, but to also give hope that there is a way to fix it; to inspire farmers to adopt agroecological and regenerative farming practices; and to encourage consumers, food corporations and policymakers to support their efforts.

Half the food we eat in the UK is produced by about 180,000 farmers, who manage 70% of our land.  Current “industrial” mainstream farming practices significantly contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Regenerative farming practices, (within an agroecological system) promote healthier soils, provide healthier, affordable food, restore biodiversity and sequester carbon. 

Six Inches of Soil is a story of three new farmers on the first year of their regenerative journey to heal the soil and help transform the food system - Anna Jackson, a Lincolnshire 11th generation arable and sheep farmer; Adrienne Gordon, a Cambridgeshire small-scale vegetable farmer; and Ben Thomas, who rears pasture fed beef cattle in Cornwall. 

As the trio of young farmers strive to adopt regenerative practices and create viable businesses, they meet seasoned mentors - John Pawsey in Suffolk, Nic Renison in Cumbria and Marina O’Connell in Devon - who help them on their journey. 

They are joined by other experts - Henry Dimbleby, Ian Wilkinson, Mike Berners-Lee, Vicki Hird, Dee Woods, Tim Lang, Hannah Jones, Satish Kumar, Nicole Masters, Tom Pearson - providing wisdom and solutions from a growing movement of people who are dedicated to changing the trajectory for food, farming and the planet.

The 96 minute film, with its original music score and beautiful animation, was completed at the end of 2023, and was launched at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on 4th January 2024. It was also shown at COP 28 in December 2023 through EIT Food Systems.

We are now delivering an exciting film screening roadshow, kicking off with a soft launch in six venues including Lost Gardens of Heligan and FarmEd, as a thank you to the farmers we have filmed with, partners and supporters and to start building momentum. This will be followed by community screenings across the UK on farms, estates, village halls and independent cinemas. All of these screenings will include a panel of farmers and food producers with a Q&A session, plus for many, a celebration of food and drink produced ethically and locally. Bringing communities together in this way allows us to maximise the opportunity for the film to help bring about change. 

We have also been taken on by PIcturehouse as part of their Green Screen programme which means they will allow us use of 13 of their cinemas across the UK to show the film. Corporates are helping us fund our community screening programme by running internal screenings and paying a more significant licence fee.

Event information

Event: Film Screening

Date: Thursday, 28th March 2024.

Times: 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm

Location: MacLaren Stuart Room in Old College, University of Edinburgh, South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL.

About the project funding

This project has been run almost entirely on a pro bono basis since the beginning 3 years ago. All of the team work on the film when they can, but some of the team work on it every day. We are ambitious as we feel this is a very important story to tell and we know from other films, such as US films Kiss the Ground and Common Ground (who are advocating to put regenerative farming into the US Farm Bill 2023) that films can champion change. We have been encouraged since the start to create the film by our farming and food sector partners and the wider community. We have a very dedicated and passionate team, all of them experts in their areas from publicity to finance.  Without the hours that they have volunteered to the project our budget would have been at least triple the cost.

The only team we have paid in the production of this film are the technical freelancers such as camera operators and sound engineers, plus the post-production editing team. All have offered us a reduced fee as they understand it is an environmental piece.  We are producing this film sustainably at minimum cost.

We have been funded through:

• two successful Crowdfunders which also helped build a supporter base

• generous private donors 

• partners including Jude’s Ice Cream, Dave Gordon (founder of BAM Bamboo Clothing), BASE-UK (UK organisation supporting farmers), LSP Leadership

• Foundations including Lush, The A Team Foundation, Aviva Community Foundation (Save our Wild Isles campaign) 

We are also part of the 1% of Planet global network which allows companies to give to us on that platform if they are members.