Navajo farming and entrepreneurship––for the next generation
Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Release Date: 08/12/2025
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.
info_outline
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.
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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.
info_outline
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.
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outlineZachariah Ben is a sixth-generation farmer from Shiprock, New Mexico. He and his family founded Bidii Baby Foods. Using traditional Navajo food traditions, they provide healthy, nutritious, and locally-grown food to Navajo people, many of whom are living in food deserts. And, through entrepreneurship and traditional farming, they seek to heal generational trauma by fostering not only physical health but also spiritual connection to land and community––from surviving to thriving.
4'12 traditional Navajo farming principles
5'01 trauma healing
5'31 farming with the stars, singing, birth rituals as strategies for successful farming
8'05 sharing/trading seeds to keep biodiversity, human beings as seeds
10'35 the ritualistic culture at the root of healthy food
11'36 corn at the base of all their foods
12'50 traditional Navajo foods
16'07 taking care of elders
17'43 majority of the market for the baby food is their own people
19'05 resistance of commercialization
20'22 goal of investing across the community through their non-profit
22'53 developing a business on tribal trust land, with all its legal and regulatory issues
25'48 the insanity of bureaucracy and red tape
28'19 dealing with water, irrigation, water rights
30'15 difficulty of local leadership because they've dealt with hardship all their lives
31'08 what "bidii" means
33'53 they don't believe in a diet that subtracts food, but one that adds
35'07 a lot of people on the reservation don't have access to electricity and running water
37'25 Navajo nation junk food tax on the food that is the only affordable food for many
40'24 building up the next generations to be thriving, not just surviving--and healing
42'14 a healed self is a healed community
43'37 annihilating the monsters of anxiety and depression
46'55 Zach is a sand painter
48'59 now he sees the farm as the medium for his art
49'43 looking not for return on investment but return of impact
50'16 contact Bidii via social media