Ian Somerhalder brings awareness to the food movement in ‘Common Ground’

Ian Somerhalder is best known for his role as Damon Salvatore in “The Vampire Diaries,” but his latest role is not one of fiction but humanitarianism.

He’s joined forces with other celebrities to help raise awareness about our broken food system. His documentary film “Common Ground” is a sequel to the documentary “Kiss the Ground.”

“The film is a love letter to our children,” he explained to KTLA 5’s Sam Rubin. “We got to narrate it with some special people. It’s me, it’s Woody Harrelson, Donald Glover, Rosario Dawson, Laura Dern, Jason Momoa. We got to put together an unbelievable set of voices because the idea is, (that) we can fix our climate and our economy, just by using agriculture.”

Somerhalder then explained a little bit of the process.

“It’s just the use of planned grazing methods and using living growing plants, literally agriculture at scale, to sequester enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, put it safely back in the ground prolongs. Now when you do that, you feed all the vital microorganisms in the soil, healthier soil, and healthier plants. Yields go up,” he said.

The practice of improving soil health is called regenerative agriculture.

The documentary’s mission is to shine a light on the broken food system, which could help lead to changes that could reindustrialize agriculture.

“Agrochemical companies are the ones that finance all of the university agricultural curriculum in this country. So we can reverse all that (and) put $50 to $80 billion back into middle America each year. Because it costs money for all these inputs, right? $400 an acre, farmers can save now multiply 200 million acres, times $400. That’s $80 billion a year we can inject back into middle America.”

Some farmers in the country have already started doing this.

“Gabe Brown, he has a regenerative farm in the Dakotas and the reason he’s so well known is because his farm makes money,” Somerhalder said. “Rick Clark out in western Indiana saves over $2 million a year on a farm. Think about what farmers could do with that money. It’s pretty special. Regenerative agriculture produces higher yields, which produces more food, but also more money for farmers. So you think about it, the more they make higher tax bases, better water districts, better school districts, it’s just such a positive cascade.”

While the solution may seem very simple, it’s not being done.

Somerhalder believes this documentary will help bring the conversation to the forefront.

“We’re hoping that anyone watching this will consider this as Best Documentary because once we get that lift that only the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences can give you, all of a sudden, now we’ve got a half a billion people saying this,” he said

Besides promoting education, the “V Wars” star explained that people can help the cause by supporting local farmers and watching “Common Ground” on Netflix.

“Common Ground” is screening across the country. For tickets and information, head here.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.