Earth Protect Blog

by Morgan Clendaniel
In this charming music video from Chipotle, Willie sings about going "back to the start" of American farming, before animals were pumped with antibiotics and kept in factories.

A farmer, not content with his small family farm, starts to modernize. He turns his farm into a factory, pumping drugs into his pigs and pollutants into the water. But one night, he has a revelation: This is not what his life needs to be. He lets his animals roam free and raises them naturally (though still eats them).

That's the premise of the new music video commissioned by Chipotle, featuring Willie Nelson's cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist." The refrain--"I'm going back to the start"--is meant to evoke Chipotle's desire to take American farming to a healthier, more natural place. It's amazingly animated by Johnny Kelly.

It may ring a little false that an enormous fast food chain is trying to end factory farming, but Chipotle often puts its money where its mouth is. It buys more naturally raised meat than any other restaurant company in the country. And this summer, the company committed to using more than 10 million pounds of local produce in its restaurants.

Chipotle plans to show the video in 5,700 movie theaters around the country, and when you purchase the cover on iTunes, $.60 of your $.99 goes to the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation, which supports sustainable farming. And Coldplay, but forgive them for that.

View The Video Here