Farm To Table Talk

Delicious food, locally sourced, is featured today in restaurants all over, from large cities to rural small towns, coast to coast and border to border. This is a welcome trend for farmers and consumers that should last. In Versailles Ohio, Silas Creative Kitchen Executive Chef Aaron Allen is part of this movement to farm-fueled restaurants. His 14-year career has brought him all over the country...

Even new local farmers eventually reach a stage that they can’t do it all themselves and need helpers.  First they put crazy hours in working harder and harder, then after family or friends are maxed they turn to finding other workers. More farmers are having to look to foreign sources such as through the H2A program. Former President of the Missouri Farm Bureau, Blake Hurst is a grain and greenho...

Food tells what makes us tick. From farm to table it is the deep and meaningful connector to everyone. Chef Stephanie White has come to that philosophy with a journey from a New England organic farm to professional kitchens in a variety of roles in different types of establishments, including small businesses, pop-ups, high-end catering, high-volume cookery, and farm to table restaurants. A Chef I...

Farming is just a dream for some and a dream come true for Farmer Lee Jones, a regenerative farmer who is leading the way regenerating the soil , promoting biodiversity, and creating a closed-loop system where waste is minimized and resources are conserved. The family-owned regenerative enterprise grows more than 600 varieties of the most flavorful and nutritious vegetables, herbs, and microgreens...

Food, farms and earth will be better if more people give a damn.  Will Harris does. He has worked as a cowboy and a rancher for decades, but now calls himself a land steward and herdsman. At White Oak Pastures in SouthWest Georgia, over 150 employees work together to raise, process, and ship meat from 10 species of livestock to loyal customers. And while they are proud of the grassfed and pasture-...

When you’re not sure if you’re where you should be and doing what you could be doing, maybe Peace Corps is for you.  Since President Kennedy launched the Peace Corps in the 60’s, thousands of volunteers have found a corner of the world where they could make a difference. Today there is a shortage of volunteers with agricultural interest and experience. Volunteers who range in age...

Humans take turns as the temporary stewards of Earth but the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) earth helpers may just be the humble goat. With a passion for practical conservation, sustainable agriculture , and rural living, an idea was born with goats to grow beyond the hobby stage, to produce  food profitably, while avoiding many of the pitfalls of conventional agriculture. Aaron Steele, Co-founde...

Food will be just what the Doctor ordered.  Prescriptions for medicine from a pharmacy is normal but prescriptions of food from markets, stores, farms or our own garden may become the new normal.  Recognizing the role of good nutrition and even the therapeutic contribution of growing our own foods has led to Doctors and county level health centers finding ways to help low income families.  Edye Ku...

Building a bridge from where Agriculture is now to where the public and policy makers want it to go is advisable.  Even for the best of reasons ranchers are not able to just flip a switch to new prevailing expectations without suffering from unintended and under considered consequences. States like California that are out front with new initiatives make it especially difficult to be competitive wi...

If we reimagine how water flows across our landscape, we can help both fish and our farms.  At Eco Farm in Pacific Grove, California that was the message to farmers from all over the world from a popular keynote presentation by Jacob Katz, the Lead Scientist with California Trout. Mas Masomoto, legendary Organic pioneer sets the stage for the stimulating ideas that always surface at ECO Farms when...

I t’s Meeting Season for farmers and others in the food chain when they gather to agree to disagree and ultimately find middle ground (or high ground). What’s decided when they put their heads together can impact public policy and public opinion.  To cover  this critical process Natalie Kovarik and Tara VanderDussen followed the American Farm Bureau to Puerto Rico where 5,000 farmers a...

Owning land isn’t a prerequisite to loving land, regenerating land and producing healthy food. Andy Breiter does not own a single acre of land since beginning in 2020 but has grown a land base to approximately 400 acres across 7 non contiguous parcels. It has been done through building partnerships with private and public land owners. The focus of the business is utilizing livestock to regen...

Powerful movements are happening in our food system and Liz Carlisle, the author of Healing Grounds shares a glimpse of these movements at Eco Farm and on an earlier 2022 episode of Farm To Table.  Liz is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while wor...

For holiday dinners, when your guests like both the idea of “plant based” and the taste of animal protein, there is a way to work-around. Vegan options may still need to be offered because this work-around is serving beef from cattle that were raised on a plant based diet. For the most part the plants the cattle consumed are largely cellulose such as grass that people can’t digest but when convert...

After near extinction, the in-nii (American Bison) are slowly returning to Native American tribes who have the resources to run reintroduction programs. Latrice Tatsey, Buffalo Stone Woman, is an ecologist and cattle producer who advocates for tribally-directed bison restoration and regenerative cattle grazing. Currently, she is a graduate student in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences study...

‘High Tech High Touch’ is an early Silicon Valley term that implies a dynamic paradox.  It is still a paradox in today’s agriculture where “faster/bigger” and “slower/smaller” each have a wave.  In the wake of this wave, Social Scientists like Dr. Julie Guthman of the University of California in Santa Cruz are asking “how do you bring digital product...

Slow water always wins however we can still thrive in this emerging age of climate change caused drought and deluges. Erica Gies has written a book,  about “Slow Water” innovations that are helping us adapt to the increasing water dilemmas. Respect for water’s winning ways is where it all begins as this Journalist/Author shares the ways we must work for smart and slow water systems at the Ec...

Farmers face challenges ranging from rising costs for them to low prices to them and seemingly endless regulations that need more time and attention than they have the ability to give. They need to be more resourceful than ever, whether they have been farming for generations or just coming in to it from a non-farming background, Michael Kilpatrick has been helping farmers make resourceful, sometim...

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has reached a multimillion-dollar legal agreement with online retail giant Amazon.com Services, LLC. (Amazon) for the illegal sale of pesticides in California. Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon will pay DPR a total of $4.97 million – $3.69 million in unpaid pesticide sales assessment fees and related late penalties, and $1.28 million i...

Thirty years ago “The Death of Ramon Gonzalez was published and subsequently began making an impression on thousands of people around the world with, as Wes Jackson of The Land Institute said,” a new way of looking at the tragic human and environmental consequences of chemical-dependent agriculture”. The author of this ground breaking book, Angus Wright recently passed away after a productive life...

  Wendell Berry has shared his unique wisdom for over 50 years in over 50 books. The new book,”The Need To Be Whole” was introduced by Wendell himself at the Kentucky Book Festival at the Joseph-Beth Book Sellers in Lexington, Kentucky. Farm To Table Talk host, Rodger Wasson was there to hear Wendell wisdom first hand. All of Wendell’s books are worth a read but “The U...

Food communicates origin, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and global health upstream, downstream and around our tables. Progressive brands realize that in a true cost accounting future, they will need to be able to provide a suite of environmental impact metrics that go beyond just carbon to include soil, health, water data and biodiversity metrics...

Sequestering atmospheric carbon and placing it in soil  will be a part of the solution to climate change and greater economic resilience and security. Ben Cloud, CEO of BodelAG has commercialized a plant extract discovery with broad  application to improve the health and economic welfare of humans, animals, and plants. The loss of soil’s microbial biomass and the functionality the microbes provide...

Creation takes place in our food chain at the farm, in the kitchen and in our favorite restaurants that “curate” a tasting experience to be savored and remembered. At the Tasting Kitchen in Los Angeles, Executive Chef Travis Passeroti creates daily hand written menus that curate the best of what is on offer that day from the Santa Monica Farmers Market and other select local suppliers...

Resilience is what’s needed for a viable food system and there are more resilient alternatives available today than ever. The supply disruption and fragility exposed by the pandemic highlights the overlooked advantages of smaller local food suppliers. With food costs from the global system climbing, the price gap between the big and the small operations has shrunk. The author of 15 books, thousand...