Feed: a food systems podcast

“Is a microbe less natural than a cow?” This season we ask scientists, farmers, technologists and philosophers about how natural our food systems should be. In this age where industrial technology has profoundly transformed our eating habits and the landscapes around us, we explore whether we should let nature be our ultimate guide or fully lean into the technological innovations reshaping our wor...

Sofia Wilhelmsson researches a very specific and stressful time for farmed pigs: the loading and transport of pigs on their way to slaughter.  She not only considers the welfare of the animals, but also the well-being of the pig transport drivers. In our conversation we chat about the relationships that humans have with animals; what food systems actors have the most power in the pig production sy...

Imagine a world where nature reclaims its place in the landscape.  What would that mean for food systems? Walter Fraanje joins Feed co-hosts to talk about his new publication, "Rewilding and its implications for agriculture" co-authored with Tara Garnett.  The explainer introduces the concept of rewilding, compares different rewilding strategies across the globe, explores their relations...

People across the world are consuming more ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Will Latin American countries and elsewhere follow the path of the US and the UK, where over half of calories consumed now come from UPFs?  Dr Neena Prasad, director of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Food Policy Program, joins us to talk about the power of and the power behind UPFs. We talk about the utility and harms of processin...

Food systems are finally getting more attention at global climate conversations. But who is at the table shaping our food futures?  We caught up with Jessica Duncan, Associate Professor on the Politics of Food Systems Transformations at Wageningen University, to hear her thoughts and concerns about COP 28. Then we re-air our conversation with Jessica Duncan from May 2021, where we talk about dialo...

Is CRISPR the solution to controlling the pest plaguing California’s wine industry? In this episode of A CRISPR Bite, we take you to a lab where researchers are using CRISPR technology to genetically modify a frightening insect called the Glassy-winged sharpshooter responsible for spreading a bacteria and killing vines. CRISPR bites is five-part podcast series hosted by food anthropologist Dr Laur...

There are over 2,000 types of insects that people eat across the world. Some of these species could have the potential to be cultivated at scale using less land, less water, and fewer greenhouse gas emissions while supplying a nutritious protein source to many. But what does scaling insect production look like, and will people actually eat them? In this bonus episode, we dive deep into the world o...

The yield gap refers to the difference between the potential agricultural yield that could be achieved under ideal conditions and the actual yield that farmers harvest. In sub-Saharan Africa, the yield gap is in some cases 80% meaning that farmers have the potential to double, triple or even quadruple their harvests. The causes of the yield gap are debated and so are the solutions to narrow it. In...

Presenting the Meat: the four futures series final episode. -- Over the last few months, we explored what the future of meat and livestock could look like. We’ve talked about how our values, ethics and where we live in the world can impact our desired futures for meat. And we did a deep dive into four potential futures - efficient meat, alternative “meat”, less meat and no meat. To wrap up the ser...

We continue featuring the Meat: the four futures series with episode 7. -- We've heard four distinct visions for the future of meat and livestock. But realistically, won't they all play a role? As we wrap up the series in the next two episodes, we’re going to review what’s in conflict between the four futures and how parts of them might co-exist. In this episode we ask three experts to c...

We continue featuring the Meat: the four futures series with our fourth and final exploration of four different futures for meat - Plant based no meat. -- Should we remove animals from agriculture and our diets altogether? What if all the land that produces animal feed now could instead produce human food--or be rewilded? Would this be a planet friendly future--or impoverished and unnatural? In th...

We continue featuring the Meat: the four futures series with our third exploration of four different futures for meat - Less meat. -- What if we had a more compassionate approach to farming animals, where we raised and ate fewer animals - and so meat cost more?  We speak with farmers, researchers and campaigners who don’t see farmed animals only as producers of meat and milk, but instead highlight...

We continue featuring the Meat: the four futures series with our second exploration of four different futures for meat - Alternative "meat". -- What do some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, animal activists, and environmentalists have in common? They each envision a future where meat alternatives can tackle the environmental impacts and animal suffering caused by global livestock prod...

We continue featuring the Meat: the four futures series with our first exploration of four different futures for meat - Efficient meat 2.0. -- Today we farm and eat meat at a scale not matched in human history. We raise 80 billion animals a year for food at a really low cost to the consumer.  Here we look at how technology, research, and innovation have made animal agriculture much more efficient....

Today we are presenting the second episode in the Meat: the four futures series. What are your first thoughts when you see a piece of steak on a plate or a big pot of chicken soup - healthy meal? piece of animal flesh? comfort food?  In this episode we explore how our values, ethics and where we live impacts our relationship with meat and livestock. We dig into the history of the diet  humans evol...

Here we present the first episode of a podcast that Feed co-host Matthew Kessler has been creating with TABLE and the SLU Future Food over the last year: Meat the four futures Food has this incredible ability to bring people together. But it can also divide us. And how can it not? The same foods that some find so nutritious, that give us such a strong sense of who we are - are also believed by oth...

For our last episode of the second season of Feed, we speak with TABLE director Tara Garnett of the University of Oxford, and TABLE strategic director Sigrid Wertheim-Heck of Wageningen University to reflect on our past 15 episodes. We talk about what surprised us, what we learned, and what we missed across the season. Our wide ranging conversation covered the power of language, the power of imagi...

As this season on power in the food system comes to a close, we wanted to focus on how food is consumed in institutions - places where people typically have less agency over their own food choices. In this episode we’re focusing on food in prisons in the United Kingdom and Denmark. We're joined by Lucy Vincent, Chief Executive and Founder of the charity Food Behind Bars in the UK, and Linda K...

Why does agricultural research often fall short of addressing food insecurity challenges in sub-Saharan Africa? In this conversation with Ken Giller, we explore this wicked problem from a systems perspective examining the diverse drivers and experiences of smallholder farmers and the socio-ecological systems in which they are embedded. Ken provides a nuanced look at agroecological solutions and ar...

What is the corporate food regime? And are we still living in it? We put these questions to our guest Phliip McMichael , emeritus professor at Cornell University who, alongside Harriet Friedman, coined the term Food Regime in 1989. In our conversation we talk about how a historical sociologist thinks about power, what voices were included and excluded in the dialogues leading up to the UN Food Sys...

Jason Clay is the Executive Director of the Markets Institute at World Wildlife Fund. He comes with decades of unique experiences and a big picture view of global food systems. In our conversation we ask him how power needs to be shifted to transform the food system, what the future looks like for small farmers, and whether we should be intensifying agriculture and sparing land or extensifying agr...

Sofia Wilhelmmson recently completed her PhD from  in 2022 from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in the department of Animal Environment and Health. She researches a particular and especially stressful time for farmed pigs: the loading and transport of pigs on their way to slaughter.  She not only considers the welfare of the animals, but also the well-being of the pig transport dri...

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the founder and director the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. He moved to the US from Guatemala in the 1990s. In our conversation we talk about the power of movements, why small-scale farmers in the United States are rarely successful, and the difference between ‘feeding’ the indigenous mindset versus the colonizer mindset. For more info and transcript, visit: http...

Who is investing in the food system and what are they investing in? What should the future of food, specifically protein, look like in sub-Saharan Africa? These are questions that Jeremy Brice explores in his new report: Investment, Power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa . They are also highly relevant to the food and climate discussions happening now at COP-27 in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt (November...

Blain Snipstal, former youth advocate for La Via Campesina, has thought a lot about power. We talk about how Blain sees the legacy of the plantation model of agriculture still lingering today; how the dialogues and exchanges between peasant farmers can uncover a deep analysis of the food system; and he shares from his many experiences as a farmer, an activist, and an organizer. We also touch on th...