Getting Dirty In St. Louis

Producing Partners are local community organizations that co-present Community Cinema screenings across the country. In St. Louis, MO we partner with KETC9 and The Missouri History Museum. KETC9′s Sydney Meyer describes a recent free event for the film Dirt! The Movie.

“Dirt! The Movie did itself proud – you brought us a jewel of a film!” was only one of the positive reactions from the crowd of over 300 who attended the screening of Dirt! The Movie in St. Louis on March 11.

The night began with a lobby full of enthusiastic “dirt” environmentalists. We had tables of information including the “worm lady”, Missouri Stream Team, Slow Food St. Louis, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, and Operation PayDirt. Resources were given and conversations were exchanged for an hour until finally everyone was ready to see the film. Here’s a taste of the action:

The whole night had a positive, upbeat feel. The panel and audience discussed how healthy eating and living are really guided by our society and we are slowly “getting it”. Evidence of this is in the sheer the number of films with powerful food messages for our communities that have been produced in the last few years.

Missouri is really ahead in “green” gardening supported by churches and neighborhood groups. Farmer’s markets abound here and are expanding all over the city and county. The best reason to buy locally is that the food really tastes better! Freshness does matter. But still it was pointed out, each consumer must do their part and open up pocketbooks and buy good local produce and beef and stop buying cheap, “fast food” meals. Read on to hear a radio clip and  learn more about dirt.

Physicist/Environmentalist Vandana Shiva believes in soil not oil

The idea behind this concept, of course, is the age old balance of more demand on local farmers meaning more production which in turn lowers the demand on big, industrial farms’ mass food production which eventually strips the dirt of nutrients. Communities can also help dirt by knowing about the condition of their watershed. Individuals can help prevent soil erosion by purchasing rain barrels, creating rain gardens, having gravel driveways and green roofs which give water a place to “soak in” instead of running off in powerful streams and taking the precious soil with it. In one study in Missouri, 3.1 million tons of soil was lost from one acre of land during a heavy rain storm. Think about those staggering statics when you start multiplying millions of tons of soil with millions of acres!

A podcast from local St. Louis radio station KMOX and Mike Miller, the Garden Man Show which is on Saturday mornings answers your garden-soil questions and he mentioned our Dirt! The Movie screening. He attended the event was amazed at the huge attendance. Here is a link to his web site and podcast. And, here is a snippet from the show after Mike attended the event.

Jean Ponzi, a manager from the Missouri Botanical Garden EarthWay Center left us with this thought: “We humans have not been on this planet very long and there is much wisdom to be learned from the organisms that have been here for billions of years – we should remember that cockroaches have survived and survived, why not learn a little from them. I’m betting they will still be here in a million years – will we?”

Tags: dirt, farming, Missouri, missouri history museum, st louis