Earth Eats

"It really revolves around the environmental justice issues. These operations are popping up in communities of color, where they don't really have a lot of political clout. But these people have fought back." This week on the show a conversation with Sherri Dugger and Craig Watts with Socially Responsible Agriculture Project . We talk about the work they’re doing to support people living in rural...

Many of the farmers talked about the ability to be out in nature with other members of their family and other members of their community and several of them also talked about the benefits of being able to interact with people from other communities. This week on the show, we talk with geographer Pablo Bose about innovative resettlement projects that help refugees connect with familiar foods from h...

“As you walk through the doors, whether you like to cook or you don’t like to cook, you feel welcome, and things are accessible…” “What our vision is, is to make it a better world through breaking bread at the kitchen table, if you will.”   This week on the show, we talk with co-owners of Bloomington’s independent, locally-owned kitchen supply store, Goods for Cooks. We hear some of the shop’s nea...

“As Greeks, we don't really shop from supermarkets. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who comes from a village and has access to olive trees and olive oil.” On today’s show, a conversation with Greek chef and anthropologist Nafsika Papacharalampous. She shares a recipe for Greek comfort food, and talks with me and Ogla Kalentzidou about the role of memory and nostalgia in contemporary Greek...

“We know that there are all sorts of good chemicals that come out of the dirt and working with land–working with plants–that are beneficial to our mood and our health. For refugee populations that have had to be on the run or had to live in refugee camps for decades, having a little piece of land that you can tend to that you can take care of and then see the results and not feel like you’re gonna...

“At least 100 years ago, the last robber barons, we got nice libraries out of it. This one, it’s like ‘oh, what is the family using its money for? To gut public education via charter school networks?’ It’s kind of Machiavellian–it’s Machiavellian in a really sad way” This week on the show, I’m talking with Austin Frerick, the author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Ind...

“And that’s why we call it a food value chain. You know, it’s a supply chain but it’s based on the values that you have as far as how the land is treated, how people are treated, what kind of nutrition contents in your food–all those things [that] people up and down–from the farmer to the consumer have an interest in. And so, this system that we’re developing is about addressing those values and m...

“When you have to make those decisions do you buy the nicest ingredients to make your food, since that’s why people are there? Or do you pay your employees two dollars more an hour? Or do you rent the building that’s gonna put you in the location that gives you the highest chance of success? I think that in many ways restaurant owners have one of the most complicated business owning ventures that...

"...one of which is sorghum sudan grass, and if you don't mow that, it gets to be like ten feet tall. And so we had pigs that were  running through there, that reminded us of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park–you know, you can't see the animal, you just see the top of  the plant waving back and forth. And so we were always on safari when we had to go out and do pig chores." This week on the show,...

“Animal agriculture creates more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation combined. Yet, as individuals we’re often told ‘you should take public transportation and ride bikes,’ all of which are good things but not very frequently are we told, ‘let’s reduce our consumption of animal products, and that will have a tremendous impact on the environment.’ This week on the show, Toby Foster talk...

“Speaking directly to Black women and wanting Black women to know that their bodies are not the problem. The way that our bodies are treated and problematized and pathologized, we’re often taught that it’s our fault, that it’s our problem to fix or we just need to love our bodies out of societal oppression.”   This week on the show a conversation with dietitian and author Jessica Wilson about her...

“I grow tomatoes at my house. My mom’s such a good shot, she was shooting cherry tomatoes  off their stems” This week on the show it's back to school and into the garden. We meet kids in an after school garden club at Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Next we drop into a multi-age classroom in Bloomington where kids work with a chef to craft a garden-to-table snack for their wh...

“When the phorids  arrive, the ants release a pheromone that tells their nest mates, all the other ants that are in the vicinity, their sisters that are in the vicinity, tells them ‘Careful! The phorids are here! You better go back to your nest or get paralyzed.’” This week on the show, we get to nerd out on insects with Ivette Perfecto who studies biodiversity and agroecology. She’s got some wild...

“When you think of literacy and you think of what does that mean and what are all the parts of it– think about reading a recipe. Think about measuring the ingredients. Think about learning how to cook.  Think about planning a meal, or budgeting for that meal. There are so many things  that are learning-through-play, learning-through-doing-it, in a teaching kitchen. That’s the reason  why we call i...

“We’ve been presented with problems today that we’ve never dealt with before as an agriculture industry–like climate change.  And I don’t think that the approach we’ve taken, historically, is going to work here…As long as I’ve heard the words ‘climate change,’ I have heard that Indigenous practice is the solution.” This week on the show, a conversation with Michelle Hughes of the National Young Fa...

Have you ever had a hunch about something, tested it out and been shocked by the results? That’s what happened to public health scholar Funmi Ayeni. She took a traditional Nigerian home remedy and applied the rigors of scientific research to test its efficacy. The results were nothing short of jaw dropping. This week on Earth Eats, food research that could end up saving lives.

“As I started to think more about theories around  food, and it’s a thing that we do every day without fail, and it really shapes the way that we interact with one another, it shapes the way we interact with our environments, the ways that we create networks of relationships–being able to name it has given it a power to be able to use it to tap into ways to think about social relationships in the...

“We use wood so that we give the various microorganisms sort of a place to colonize and live from batch to batch. And over time those colonies and those species that have taken hold will change, they’ll drift and so, you’ll develop a unique character to each tank that’s really interesting.” This week on the show we dive head first into a giant oak barrel full of aging beer.  Okay, well, not litera...

“The dominant vocabulary for talking about restaurants is ‘what food do they serve, what are the good dishes?’ People think that’s the only thing that’s important about restaurants.”  Today on the show we talk with Historian Rebecca Spang, about the origins of restaurants, and what they mean to us today.  “The experience just of knowing that there are other people and knowing that they have their...

“When you begin to zoom out, you realize that in fact palm oil is all around us, and the world, in a strange way, is made of palm oil; and we’re all, in a certain way, made of palm oil–in the sense that we use it to reproduce our bodies and to clean our skin and to live the lives that we live in a globalized world.” This week on the show, a conversation with Max Haiven, author of the book Palm Oil...

“It’s a great thing to be outside, to have birds chirping, to be around green grass, and animals. But the problem has become, that you can’t really be a business unless you are a financially viable business.”  This week on the show we explore the economics of small scale farming, and debunk some of the myths of the agrarian lifestyle. We talk with Beth Hoffman, author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars...

“There are a lot of people, they like the faux meats and they want to eat a Carne Asada that reminds of the actual, like, Beef Carne Asada. There are a lot of people who try to steer clear from the faux meats, so we wanted to have plenty of veggie items on the menu for them as well. We really wanted to represent different ingredients and different flavors that anybody can come and enjoy.” This wee...

“It’s not about simply that protectionism and nationalism–that we only want to make sure that we eat Lithuanian food. It is a much deeper sense of urgency that as a state–and its political sovereignty–depends on the ability to produce food and feed its population for a long time.” This week on the show a conversation with sociologist Diana Mincyte who studies food systems in post socialist Eastern...

“There’s a restaurant on almost every street in our various cities–they are woven into the fabrics of our communities, and they are deeply embedded in our lives.  Restaurants are the places we go to celebrate marriages, to mourn divorces, the places we go to gossip with friends to celebrate after church and they become these places to hear the stories of their community. They’re talking to the far...

“We all need to eat to survive and the quality of the food, the access to the food--the type of food that we eat is central to our health and to the health of the planet.“ This week on the show, a conversation with Carey Gillam, the author of The Monsanto Papers - -Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice. And we have a story from Harvest Public Media about how farmer...