Our Grade 11 Business Management students attended the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) to see Common Ground, an eye-opening documentary looking at the importance of regenerative agriculture.
The students took the opportunity to improve their understanding about stakeholder conflict, lobbyists, production methods and sustainability in the context of the agricultural industry and the role of companies such as Monsanto and Bayer.
They made connections between the business management topic of The Triple Bottom Line (ecological, social and economic sustainability) and applied those understandings to the documentary’s portrayal of debt loads held by US farmers, cancer causing ingredients contained in pesticides and fungicides and the cost benefits of regenerative farming practices.
Additionally, reflecting on the documentary’s focus on Indigenous farming practices, and after listening to the Haida and Squamish storyteller Kung Jaadee in the SJS assembly the day after the trip, our students better understood the connection between regenerative agricultural practices and The Seventh Generation Principle, whereby the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.