Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

Annaliese Abbott, Author Malabar Farm & The Rise of Sustainable Agriculture Common sense tells us that if soil is deficient in essential nutrients, the crops grown in that soil will also be deficient, as will the people and animals that eat those crops.  And so we ask: Is there a common-sense connection between soil fertility and human health? Topics include why Albrecht believed there was a c...

Marc Cooke, President, Wolves of the Rockies The Billings Gazette reports that the State of Montana will not have enough money to cover all the claims of livestock killed by predators.  And so we ask: Who should pay for the animals that have been eaten by animals? Topics include the current state of wolf populations; how wolf populations are managed by the policies and programs of the federal and...

Nicolette Hahn Niman, Author, Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Beef America’s beef industry has many enemies and few friends.  The enemies-of-beef camp includes the environmentalists who claim that the cow destroys the earth by trampling it beneath its hooves, and forces the climate to change by emitting its greenhouse gases.     The camp also includes nutritionists who clai...

Mark Cushing, CEO of Animal Policy Group and author of Pet Nation On a recent flight from New Orleans, my wife pointed to four companion animals that were visible from where we were seated.  And when one is buckled into a seat on an airplane one’s vision is pretty limited.  There must have been more animals aboard that flight!  Holy Smokes!!! Our pets are now flying with us!   In the past two deca...

Judy Hoy, Author, Changing Faces & Amazing Wildlife On a previous edition of the Food Chain we talked with Marc Cooke of Wolves of the Rockies in Stevensville, Montana about the attempt to manage the predation of wolves, bears and lions.   Marc made note of the fact that, to make it possible for farmers and ranchers to tolerate the predation of domestic animals by predators, they are paid up t...

Jeff Herman, Editor in Chief, Lawn Starter I once worked as a story producer for NBC Magazine with David Brinkley.  One story we told was about the “survivalists” who believe the economy is going to collapse and so move more than one tank of gas from the nearest big city, where they arm themselves with defensive weapons, store up canned foods, and hunker down to wait.  Our story was titled, “Armed...

Mike Wade, Executive Director, California Farm Water Coalition What will happen to our food supply if politicians buy up farmers' rights to water? The good Lord blessed the Golden State of California with the perfect environment– for growing food!  The State was given 28 million acres of arable farmland, a benevolent Mediterranean climate, and a spectacular north to south range of mountains to...

Attorney Sarah Vogel, Author, The Farmers Lawyer BOOM!  It was 1914 and the world was at war.  Europe was being torn to shreds by trench warfare, and wherever the trenches went, the land was certain to be in fallow.  It was hungry times for America’s friends and foes alike.  What America had at that time that the nations of Europe did not have was farmland and farmers.  American farmers were given...

China is buying up America’s farmland…  with the money we send it to manufacture stuff for us in their coal-burning factories.  Some say this a good deal because we don’t have to work in those factories.  Others say it’s a bad deal because we are selling out our future.  And so we ask:  Should China be allowed to buy up America’s best farmland? Topics include why China is having trouble feeding it...

Glenn Simpson, Executive Director. Golden Gate Audubon  I was raised in the high prairie of Montana, very near the Crow Indian reservation.  While growing up a boy under the Big Sky I became fascinated­– as boys once did– with the plains Indians and their culture.   When we played cowboys and Indians, I was an Indian.    But one thing puzzled me about my Crow Indian neighbors.  Why, I wondered, di...

Stiv Wilson, Co-Founder, Peak Plastic Foundation & Producer, The Story of Plastic We were going to watch the Equinox sunrise while seated in the sand between the paws of the Great Sphinx up there on the Giza plateau.  Our guide assured us that it would be a most mystical experience.  It being very early, I grabbed a large to-go cup of coffee on the way out the door to sip along the way.    Our...

Zeka Glucs, Ph. D., Director, Predatory Bird Research Group, University of California, Santa Cruz Should we foster the existence of birds that prey within our civilization? There are 557 species of birds that prey in our world.  Each of these species has found a unique way to get along in nature.    Carl Linnaeus, who went about organizing just about everything in nature, organized all the birds i...

Janisse Ray, Author The Seed Underground  and  Wild Spectacle For a hundred million years, give or take, plants looked for a way to reproduce themselves.  Those that found the most efficient ways to reproduce won the right to survive, produce seeds, and populate the earth.  A hundred thousand years ago, give or take, we showed up on the scene and began our search for ways to survive in this what’s...

With Amanda Starbuck, Research Director, Food & Water Watch There are a lot of ways to make people feel guilty, and so most of us go through life being guilty about something. What if our guilt could be used to make us to do something we would otherwise not want to do?   Let’s give it a try, on me!  Let’s put our collective finger on the chest of Michael Olson and accuse him of being cruel to...

M.D. Usher, University of Vermont Professor of Classical Languages and Literature & Author of How to Be A Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land Does the more farming change, the more it stays the same?     They are called “classics” because they do not wear out with time­ – even with thousands of years of time!   The writers of the classics captured life as they saw it with the words of...

Allen Moy, Executive Director, Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association How can city dwellers close the distance to their food?    We begin with Michael Olson’s Second Law of the Food Chain:   The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in our food. If, as is said, the average food in the United States travels 1,500 miles from where it is grown to where it i...

Mike Keller, Michael A. Keller & Associates Consulting This just in:   Russia has launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years in a bid to be the first nation to make a soft landing on the south pole of the moon.   The Russians are racing to beat India, which launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander last month, and also with the United States and China, both of which have advanced lun...

Farmer of the Year Tom Bros, Live Earth Farm, Watsonville CA A while ago, I had a consulting contract on the island nation of Cyprus.  The task was to find a crop with an economy sufficient to repopulate an agricultural plateau near the village of Akourdahleia, that had been depopulated by the jobs available in coastal casinos.   As I strolled the plateau with my hosts we came upon a village of Gr...

With Jo Ann Baumgartner, Executive Director, Wild Farm Alliance and Sam Earnshaw, Executive Director, Hedgerows Unlimited Back in 2006, a multistate outbreak of E. Coli O157:H7 killed three and sickened an additional 202. The source of that E. Coli was found to be spinach from California, and the cause was believed to be contamination from the spinach farm. Consumers stopped buying the spinach, as...

Michael Olson with Royal Bagheri, Executive Director, COOK Alliance Should we open a restaurant in our kitchen? Let’s begin with Michael Olson’s Second Law of the Food Chain:  "The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over our food."  Makes sense, don’t you think?  If you eat a carrot from your garden, you have a lot of control over what’s in the carrot.  B...

With Jessica Ridgeway, Executive Director, Farm Discovery at Live Earth I had the good fortune to have lived on the grandparents’ Montana farm when very young.  I still remember, to this day, driving my first working tractor at the age of six.  It wasn’t anything special.  Grandfather Karl hoisted me up into the seat, put the tractor in gear, and said, “I’ll meet you at the end of the field.”  Eve...

Lisa Steele, Chief Chicken Influencer, Fresh Eggs Daily Which should come first: the chicken or its egg? Having spent the summers of my early youth on the grandparents’ farm, I became well acquainted with chickens.  When old enough to put on a pair of shoes I was taught how to feed them, and later, how to collect their eggs, and later still, how to butcher them and process them for grandmother’s k...

Nicholas Sullivan, Senior Research Fellow, Tufts University and Author, The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age Can we catch fish so there will be fish left to be caught? Given the technologies of the information age, we-the-people have become very adept at catching fish.  In fact, if we could get away with it– like we got away with killing all the buff...

Dr. John Fagan, CEO & Chief Scientist, Health Research Insitute In the 1930s, people began the migration from the farm into the city.   Those farmers who were left on the farm began growing food with money, which they used to buy equipment and chemicals to do the work that people once did.  Thus it became cheaper to grow food with money, than with people.   This industrialization of the food c...

Ken Kimes & Sandra Ward, Farmer / Owners, New Natives Microgreens It really does seem as though we are running out of food.  That is not to say that we are running out of things to eat.  No! On the contrary!  There are many things to eat, and most all of them are cheap and easy to get, too!   And yet, so many of those things we are being offered in brightly colored packages for so little money...