Agriculture as if people mattered : A values-based perspective on the food system
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Anthropologist Andrew Flachs's new book explores the food system through the lens of values like soil health, human health, biodiversity, and rural communities—not just profits and yields. In his new book, Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields, he shows how we could, by expanding our accounting to include people and the biosphere, have a thriving food system that actually benefits life itself.
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Saving the bees that feed us: Cultivating pollinator-friendly agriculture
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Bees live at the foundation of our food system—but they are imperiled by industrial agriculture. Sarah Red-Laird is helping to revive farm and ranch lands by cultivating healthy and diverse bee habitats. She teaches bee-friendly practices, including cover-cropping, no-till, and reduction of chemical use, which help farmers and ranchers to cultivate both abundant pollinators and healthy soil. Her work includes data collection, storytelling, teaching, doing bee-retreats (beetreats), and nature-based art.
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Return to the savanna: How grazing restores the land and reawakens our human roots
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Nate Chisholm is in a lifelong exploration of the savanna ecosystem—the landscape in which the first human societies evolved, and some of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Savannas are where we learned to hunt and gather. Ironically, as human beings developed technology, starting with stone tools, we altered these landscapes by over-hunting large animals, leading to degradation of the land and eventually the loss of most of the savannas themselves. According to Chisholm, the degradation of land through technology is the root of all our modern problems—but we can return to...
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Knowing When to Shut Down the Farm
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Mary-Charlotte has bronchitis, so this week we will be joined by Kristina Britt, the new podcast host of Regeneration Rising, as she interviews Taylor Muglia, the former host and previous New Agrarian Program manager. (Regeneration Rising is the other Quivira Coalition podcast; you can find it , or wherever you get your podcasts.) In this heartfelt episode, Taylor shares her unique journey into regenerative agriculture, her experiences running and eventually closing a small farm, and the emotional struggles and triumphs along the way. While we talk a lot about how to get started in...
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Chasing Cheese: One man's trek to learn from pastoral producers across the planet
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Trevor Warmedahl's new book, Cheese Trekking: How Microbes, Landscapes, Livestock, and Human Cultures Shape Terroir, documents natural cheesemaking practices in traditional communities. Warmedahl is a cheesemaker, educator, and founder of the , where he teaches natural methods of milk fermentation suitable for the home, farm, restaurant, or commercial operation. The book recounts his travels to Mongolia, India, Norway, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Georgia, and Spain, where he met cheesemakers using practices that go back generations and result in cheeses with flavor and "terroir" far...
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ReciproCity — Caring for urban land and water
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Steve Glass is board chair of , which is hosting the annual : March 4-6 of this year at the at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Albuquerque, New Mexico. This year's theme is "Reciprocity with Nature," and it's all about turning even the most arid cities into oases of stewardship where every drop that falls from the sky is used for to nourish the soil, wildlife, and people.
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Growing food year-round—in any climate
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Charlie Shultz is back on Down to Earth to update us on the thriving greenhouse programs in Santa Fe—and the explosion of interest around the world. He teaches aquaponics and hydroponics at Santa Fe Community College, and is helping people around the world not only to learn to do indoor agriculture, but also to run successful businesses.
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Renewing farms with renewable energy
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Joe Heinrich comes from a multi-generation Iowa farming family. As executive director of the non-profit , he's helping farmers to navigate the new world of renewable energy. Solar and wind developers are looking for land, which farmers have; farmers are looking for extra income steams, which energy can provide. But what happens to land with utility-scale energy installations? Some farmers are making sure that the panels are high enough off the ground that cattle can graze under them—and take advantage of the shade they provide. Others are grazing sheep under the panels, providing landscaping...
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Putting soil science to work
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
started out wanting to be a veterinarian, but then discovered soil science and was so taken by it that she got a PhD, and has devoted her career to serving farmers, ranchers, and rural communities. A practitioner and promoter of regenerative agriculture, she has worked with Conservation Districts, non-profit orgs, Extension, and her own small business, , a company that provides compost statewide. She uses science as a tool to solve on-the-ground problems, which range from crops and livestock issues to mental health, family dynamics, and food insecurity. She also guides hunting programs for...
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Bringing bison back to indigenous lands
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Montana filmmaker Daniel Glick decided to make a film about bison just because he loved the animals and wanted to be around them. He teamed up with Blackfeet filmmakers Ivan and Ivy MacDonald to co-direct the documentary, Bring them Home, narrated by Lily Gladstone. The film explores the history of bison on the North American continent and the Blackfeet nation in particular; the parallel genocides of native people and the animal that provided them with sustenance, both practical and spiritual; and the movement to bring surviving herds of bison back to their ancestral lands. In this...
info_outlineGilles Stockton is author of the new book, Feeding a Divided America: Reflections of a Western Rancher in the Era of Climate Change, published by University of New Mexico Press. A third generation cattle rancher, he raises beef cattle and sheep on a 5000-acre ranch in Grass Range, Montana. He’s also an international agriculture development specialist and an advocate for ranching and farming communities. The new book imparts a lifetime of wisdom and analysis of what happened to our agriculture system, why, and how we can create a system that gives power back to the farmers who are actually growing our food.
3’01 the book is an extension of his op-ed pieces
4’24 multi-generation ranch background
6’30 raises cattle and sheep, as well as hay
7’14 how Western ranching improves the land
7’46 overgrazing damaged the land; it developed from the collapse of homesteading
9’47 ranching the only sustainable model of large scale agriculture in the US
10’48 the decline of his town early 20th century, and the decline of farms in general
11’57 overproduction led first to subsidies, then to the elimination of small farms
13’37 200,000 farms produce 80% of our food. The rest are trying to survive in an industrial agriculture economic model that doesn’t really want them
14’48 how megafarms came into being in the 1980s–the decision not to enforce antitrust laws, leading to monopolies/cartels
16’57 the problem of externalities
18’11 the difference between competitive capitalism (free enterprise where buyer and seller have equal power) and cartel capitalism–which is more like old-style communism
20’33 cartels can raise prices indiscriminately
21’14 not enough slaughterhouses–system is too centralized
21’52 agriculture has never had a golden age–it’s always been difficult
22’48 farmer gets 15.9¢ out of consumer dollar
23’22 the system steals from the farmer and farm labor
24’25 the “illusion of economies of scale”
24’45 smaller farmers are better farmers
25’20 the role of the farmer has been squeezed out in the name of “efficiency”…then there’s no advocate for the land and animals
26’24 what’s lost when you don’t have the farmer on the ground…the land, the workers, the animals
27’20 corporate boards instead of farmers are making decisions about things they know nothing about
28’23 why monocrops systems are so un-resilient, especially during climate instability
29’39 the problem of the super wealthy buying farm land–looks like colonialism
30’11 the wealthy neighbors don’t understand how their elk sanctuary affects their ranching neighbors
32’02 rural people hate environmentalists more than they hate the corporations that are ruining them
32’36 the sense that their vote doesn’t count
33’32 “they don’t ask our opinion”
35’16 policy for the last 50 years has been anti-rural. Rural voters vote red, but they don’t do anything for rural people. But blue doesn’t either.
36’15 climate change is making things existential
36’46 there’s a movement for anti-trust enforcement, which is encouraging
37’54 we need to decentralize in order to have a healthier food system — what that could look like
38’35 about 1/3 of food in France is sold locally, unlike the US where it’s more like 3%
39’16 the US imports more food than it exports. So much for “feed the world”
39’47 the need for auction markets for all food commodities (instead of contract work)
40’46 we don’t need new anti-trust laws, just enforcement of the existing ones
43’04 Citizens United decision of 2010 was a huge gain for the wealthy and corporate power
44’15 revitalizing rural communities = revitalizing democracy
45’05 the importance of being organized around an idea and staying with it
47’04 the local foods movement is extremely important. But it’s very libertarian in its politics, which means that they don’t deal with the globalized competition, they just do their own thing and stay a part of the 3% of local food
48’33 the Farm Bill isn’t so much a farm bill as an ag business bill. The orgs doing good work need to organize with each other more
49’42 what gives him hope
50’35 what happens after Gilles, what is the plan for the next generation