Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast

Beth Hoffman was a college professor and agriculture journalist for years before she and her husband picked up and moved from San Francisco to his family's farm in Iowa. In her book Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America , she recounts the story of transitioning the farm from commodity corn and soybean cropping to grass-finished cattle and produce––and the challenges they f...

Corporate meat producers tout their "efficiency" but actually wreak havoc on the environment, local communities, and the animals themselves. Cole Mannix works with the   Old Salt Co-op , which is pioneering vertically integrated models for regenerative, sustainable, and humane meat production––including meat processing, direct to consumer and retail sales, and restaurants––and all the while focusi...

Tina Garcia-Shams is executive director of the Street Food Institute in Albuquerque, NM. The program teaches entrepreneurship, food preparation, accounting, marketing, and everything else students need to open a local food truck or catering business. And it's been so successful that it's spreading to other parts of the state and the country, and attracting students from all over.  

  Traditional pastoral cultures have been living in harmony with animals and land for millennia––and they persist to this day, though with serious challenges. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson 's new book,   Hoofprints on the Land: How Traditional Herding and Grazing Can Restore the Soil and Bring Animal Agriculture Back in Balance with the Earth , shines a light on what they can teach us.

Hydroponic agriculture systems use water––not soil––to grow crops, and yet they use water with exceptional efficiency and can produce abundantly all year round. When coupled with fish farming, the result is a nearly closed-loop system––aquaponics––in which the plants filter the water for the fish, and the fish provide fertilizer for the plants.  

Many federal, state, and local agencies, as well as non-profits and community groups, carry the responsibility of helping people and fixing infrastructure after a disaster, and some of them also work to try to prevent or mitigate disasters before they happen. But how to they coordinate with each other, and how do they really meet the needs on the ground...and what are the sticky points?

Industrial agriculture imposes a simplified production model onto complex ecosystems––with dire consequences. In the new book,  The Great Regeneration: Ecological Agriculture, Open-Source Technology, and a Radical Vision of Hope , co-authors  Dorn Cox and Courtney White explore the place where complex technologies and complex ecosystems meet. With today's digital networks, sensors, and computation...

After being driven almost to extinction, wolves are back in some of their natural habitat. A new podcast, Working Wild University , explores how ranchers, conservationists, and others are coming together to find paths toward peaceful co-habitation. We talk to podcast co-host,  Jared Beaver , about the presence of wolves on Western landscapes, and explore the economics of ranching, the importance o...

The price of land keeps going up across the country as wealthy investors buy farmland and people move out of cities. This puts untenable pressure on farmers and land stewards who are producing healthy food and maintaining biodiversity,  land health, and water cycles. But what can be done against the seemingly intractable laws of supply and demand? Neil Thapar,  co-director of Minnow ,and Mariela C...

Liz Carlisle 's new book, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming , is a fascinating exploration of food, agriculture, and cultural traditions of the North American, Mesoamerican, African, and Asian diasporas that have survived against all odds in the United States. Despite brutal social and political oppression, these communities have preserved soil-friendly...

TomKat Ranch manager Mark Biaggi talks about dealing with winter floods, summer droughts, and degraded landscapes––and the process of continual experimentation that leads to dramatic regeneration of damaged land.

66 million years ago an asteroid struck earth, causing the fifth mass extinction of species on earth. With the dinosaurs gone, new species proliferated all over the planet. Now we're in the sixth extinction––this time caused by people. But when did it start? And what happened on on this continent in particular? Dan Flores ' new book,  Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals & People in America, ...

66 million years ago an asteroid struck earth, causing the fifth mass extinction of species on earth. With the dinosaurs gone, new species proliferated all over the planet. Now we're in the sixth extinction––this time caused by people. But when did it start? Dan Flores ' new book,  Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals & People in America,  explores the deep history of the North American conti...

Brando Crespi has devoted decades to sustainable development as co-founder and Executive Chair at Pro Natura International and Global Biochar. His holistic approach to sustainable development could be called regenerative––instead of telling poor and exploited people what they should do, it's about recognizing and cultivating local leadership, helping them form a community vision for their future,...

John D. Liu started his career as a journalist and cameraman, covering politics, economics, and culture. In 1995, he began documenting the Loess Plateau in China, a massive landscape that had been destroyed by poor agriculture practices over the course of centuries. He watched and filmed as the landscape––and the people––came back to vibrant life over decades, through an intensive process that inv...

Gary Paul Nabhan , known by many as the "father of the local food movement," is a prolific author, scientist, and activist for a healthy and truly regenerative food system that respects the land and its plants and animals; the people grow food, process, and serve the food and their communities; and to all the rest of us who eat and want our food to nourish us. He's an ecumenical Franciscan brother...

Coley Burgess  grew up on a conventional farm, then studied mathematics and electrical engineering...and he brought his scientific rigor and curiosity to a 20-acre pecan farm that he and his family bought in southern New Mexico. The ground was bare and turned to mud––and then cracked, dry earth––after he irrigated. But a series of happy accidents, including the purchase of a milk cow for his daugh...

Professor Phillip Warsaw 's work is all about the interconnectedness of the systems that keep our lives going––food, housing, transportation, health care. In his research in Milwaukee  he discovered that in Black and Latino neighborhoods housing was significantly more expensive if it was near grocery stores, but the same wasn't true in more affluent White neighborhoods. Why? And does this mean tha...

If you're a small or mid-size farmer, it's nearly impossible to compete against giant food conglomerates. But fairer policy could help smaller farms to prosper, provide healthy food and thriving communities, and keep more profits for food producers––rather than executives and stockholders.   Sarah Carden is a policy advocate with  Farm Action , a group working to democratize the food system in the...

Both big ag and small family farms have their problems...but what's the alternative? We talk with agricultural journalist Sarah Mock about the some possible models.

Linda and Larry Faillace spent years at the University of Nottingham in England, where Linda became an expert in Mad Cow Disease (BSE). Upon return to the U.S., they imported sheep from Europe, with USDA approval, and began a cheese making business in Vermont , with their three children active participants in the enterprise. But a few years later, the USDA came after them, claiming that their shee...

Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM-3), a native of Las Vegas, NM, deeply understands the challenges and strengths of rural people in northern New Mexico. She's been working to bring money to those whose property and livelihoods have been damaged by the recent wildfires and floods, and to build resilience––heathy soil and water practices––to provide more fire, flood, and drought resistance...

Bees date back over 10,000 years on the American continent and are vital to the health of almost every bite of food we eat, but today they face threats from industrialization and habitat fragmentation.  Melanie Kirby is a decades-long beekeeper, a scientist, a member of Tortugas Pueblo, and extension educator for the land-grant program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her dive...

During Carol Ekariu s's early years in Colorado, the Buffalo Creek Fire burned just under 12,000 acres — and at the time was considered a huge, catastrophic fire. Now fires in the west are consuming hundreds of thousands of acres, and doing inestimable damage to property, livelihoods, and ecosystems. A long-time farmer-rancher, Ekarius has been involved in fire management and mitigation and waters...

We all know the term carbon "footprint." Well, Foodprint  takes this idea and broadens it to apply to our food system; they explore how the foods we eat affect not only carbon emissions, but a whole range of things, like livestock and wildlife, soils and water, communities and human health. Foodprint is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation , and in today's episode we talk to its direct...