Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet Podcast · Mia Funk

All About Bees, Soil & Regeneration with Documentary Filmmaker REBECCA TICKELL

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

A teaspoon of neonicotinoid can kill billions and billions of bees in one setting.

The speaker says she did not really understand bees until she became a farmer. That changed how she sees them: not as honey producers first, but as part of the food system itself. She points out that bees pollinate 70% of our food and feed 90% of the world, and she notes that people often focus on the honeybee while overlooking more than 20,000 indigenous bee and pollinator species. From there, she widens the frame to the climate argument that has shaped her filmmaking over the last two decades. Her films, including Kiss the Ground and Common Ground, are meant to show how regenerative agriculture can stabilize the climate, reverse climate change, grow nutrient-dense food, and help farmers make a profit through biodiversity and regenerative practices and principles. She contrasts that with the COP process, which she sees as focused on reducing carbon emissions while not talking enough about regeneration. The episode also lays out soil as a living system that can draw carbon out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and biosequestration. That carbon, she says, goes into the roots and becomes healthy humus, which feeds life in the soil. Again and again, she brings the discussion back to planetary health and human health. One of the clearest moments comes when she compares chemically fallow land with regenerative paddocks. That contrast becomes a simple way to ask what kind of food system people want. The episode then expands to the scale of the transition she wants to see. She says the growth in acreage in transition to regeneration since 2020 has been dramatic, and that the goal is 100 million acres in North America as a tipping point, with a billion acres globally. The tone stays hopeful without losing the ground-level details. The speaker keeps bringing the argument back to individual responsibility and collective momentum. She also talks about film as a teaching tool, not just media. Her films are made free, and educational curriculum is provided for classrooms. She closes by inviting people to watch, share, and get involved. The episode leaves the sense that regeneration is a field strategy, a climate message, and a public project all at once.

As heard by us

A soil-first climate argument linking bees, farming, and regeneration.

Rebecca Tickell ties bees, soil, and climate action together without drifting into abstract talk. She keeps the focus on a farmer's view of the problem: bees matter to food, soil can draw carbon down through photosynthesis and biosequestration, and regenerative practices can…

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You want climate hope rooted in soil, bees, and farms.

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