At the start of Unbroken Ground, a new film from Patagonia, the nasal drawl of the company’s beloved founding father Yvon Chouinard cuts with familiar bite and grandfatherly wisdom, but on a topic not widely known to be his bailiwick. “If you want to feed your family healthy food, you have to ask a lot of questions,” he said, and just like that, the Ventura-based titan of the outdoor adventure industry entered the food business.
Cinematically delicious and lush with a special type of romanticized authenticity, Unbroken Ground is technically a short documentary by Gaviota filmmaker and Patagonia coconspirator Chris Malloy about conscious agriculture and some of the people currently involved at the forefront of these efforts around the country. The son of a rancher turned pro surfer turned filmmaker (with a serious back-to-the-land bent), Malloy brings an appreciation to the topic that celebrates just as much as it educates. “I spent all of last summer in full immersion with some of my heroes,” explained Malloy recently when talking story about the making of Unbroken Ground, “It was an incredible experience for me, finding these farmers and fishermen and ranchers who have a real vision for the future.”
As the movie makes its way from the Great Plains of South Dakota to the roiling waters off Lummi Island in the Pacific Northwest to the wheat fields of Washington State University’s Bread Lab, a picture emerges of an agricultural underground, one where visionaries such as Wes Jackson of the Land Institute are bucking the one-size-fits-all monochromatic view of mainstream ag and working tirelessly for a cleaner, healthier, and markedly more sustainable food future. It's called “regenerative agriculture,” and by the end of Unbroken Ground, you will know it intimately, and you will want to support it — and, well, I reckon that is the point.
