Real Food Media

"In 2021 is the first time in the country we had a huge women protest, like a sit-in protest. We occupied 55 days the presidential house. We demanded law reforms. And we did it! That's how I believe women can change the society." Anuka Vimukthi De Silva is a member of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform of Sri Lanka (MONLAR) and La Vía Campesina. The peasant youth who are fighting to rem...

"I'm always thinking about the natural seeds and the natural plants also because in Sri Lanka, we lost like a lot of varieties of our of native seeds... We’re trying to make an agroecology school in my land—that's my main goal." Anuka Vimukthi De Silva is a member of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform of Sri Lanka (MONLAR) and La Vía Campesina. The peasant youth who are fighting to rema...

“Multinationals are rampant in my country. They lure farmers to take climate resistant seeds by offering them loans [for] seeds, which are not Indigenous, by offering them TVs, radios, and solar panels... At the end, they lose their lands to the multinationals." Catherine Banda is a member of Kenyan Peasants League and La Vía Campesina The peasant youth who are fighting to remain on the land and f...

“La Vía Campesina is a network of social movements with a very horizontal structure. You could say we're a movement of movements." —Amaru Faustino Torrez Ruiz is a member of Climate Justice Collective and a youth delegate to La Vía Campesina from Nicaragua. The peasant youth who are fighting to remain on the land and feed their communities around the world are defying expectations and reshaping wh...

"Women and queer people have always existed and have been doing a lot of work that hasn't been visible. I think we have to change our relationship to production. That's the main thing. And women and queer people carry the knowledge around how this can be done." Sarasvati Shrestha is a youth delegate to La Vía Campesina from Sweden with roots in Nepal. The peasant youth who are fighting to remain o...

"The Palestinian relationship with the land is not abstract… It's reciprocal. It's not about what we get from the land. It's about what we give to the land. We have a responsibility to care for the land and for each other." Yasmeen El-Hasen is a member of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and La Vía Campesina. The peasant youth who are fighting to remain on the land and feed their c...

"Everything to do with food is in women's hands most of the time. So it seemed to me, and to many others, that if we were going to build a movement which was actually transformative, it would have to include women at the center of it." Nettie Wiebe is a farmer in Saskatchewan, Canada, a long-time small farm activist, a member of the National Farmers Union, and one of the founders of La Vía Campesi...

“We see many youths being dragged into mining because mining is a priority in my country... So many people are shunning farming because there's money there. My dream is that those youth come back to the rural side because that's where the means of surviving are." Hendrick Mgcini Ndhlovu is a member of Zimbabwe Smallholder Organic Farmers Forum (ZIMSOFF) and La Vía Campesina. The peasant youth who...

Alicia Kennedy's No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating, delves into the subcultures and politics that have defined vegan and vegetarian cuisine in the United States—from tempeh production to vegan punk cafes. In this episode, Alicia talks to Anna Lappé about the feminist origins of her own veganism, how she eats in Puerto Rico, and how the cultural signif...

Can you believe five years have gone by since the last Farm Bill? It feels like a lifetime ago — SO much has changed politically. Bone up on your Farm Bill history and get ready to organize for a transformative Food & Farm Bill in 2023. This 2019 Real Food Reads interview with Dan Imhoff, farm policy expert and author of “The Farm Bill: A Citizen’s Guide,” is a great place to start. Follow Real Fo...

Insects are the often-times invisible workforce that take on planetary care. According to Dave Goulson, author of Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, “they pollinate, break down waste and provide food for us and countless other species. If they vanished tomorrow, the apocalypse would begin the next day.” Today, insect populations are in rapid decline, with estimates of population loss ra...

When we speak of biodiversity loss, the climate crisis, and food injustice, we have to go to the root: colonialism. From the perspective and "voice" of the nutmeg, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by acclaimed author Amitav Ghosh does just that. Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka and is now based in Brooklyn. He’s the author of numerous wo...

Indigenous people make up 5 percent of the global population and steward 80 percent of the world's biodiversity, yet they aren’t centered in most discussions or actions for environmental justice. An Indigenous woman and scientist, Dr. Jessica Hernandez talks about the importance of Indigenous science (and scientists) in her new book Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indige...

There is a broad consensus around the “endangerment” of crop diversity—among scientists, advocates, policymakers, and corporations, actors who tend to disagree on a number of other issues. But Helen Anne Curry says: not so fast. Where does this endangerment narrative come from? Whose interests does it serve? And what assumptions does it make? Conventional approaches to crop conservation largely ce...

Colonialism is at the root of the problems we see in our food system, and, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently stated, it is also at the root of the climate crisis. By cultivating diversity within the soil and amongst farmers, we can work towards a liberated future. “Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming” by Liz Carlisle shares the stor...

Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by James Beard award-winning author Mayukh Sen gives us an intimate look into the lives of seven women who’ve changed the way we think about food in the US, while sharing some unique insights into how food media shapes our appetites.

Frances Moore Lappé's groundbreaking book in 1971 exposed the true cause of hunger while also changing the way many people eat, for the better. 50 years later, she released a new edition with an updated introduction that speaks to her ethos, what has changed in the last 50 years, and what's next.

The Covid pandemic, mass uprisings against injustice around the world, raging forest fires... Our bodies, societies, and planet are inflamed, argue Raj Patel and Dr. Rupa Marya. Their epic and timely new book "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" will forever change the way you think—not only about food—but about the ruptures in the web of life that have wrought so much damage on...

The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: food. In this episode, Anna Lappé and Mark Bittman dive into how food has shaped our past, but also how we can transform it to reclaim our future. For more on this episode, visit: ht...

“Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice” centers the Black experience within the US food system: what is missing and what is possible. Edited by Dr. Ashanté M. Reese and Hanna Garth, this anthology features voices and experience from around the nation.

Ken Meter is one of the most experienced food system analysts in the United States. He's promoted local food economies in 143 regions in 41 states, two provinces, and four tribal nations. In Building Community Food Webs, he makes a strong argument for reversing the extractive economy and weaving “food webs” that restore local wealth, health, capacity, and connection.

Meet: the Food Justice League. No, they’re not superheroes. They’re a growing community-based movement based in Gainesville, FL, that’s working to abolish exploitation and prison slavery from the food system. They’ve launched a public campaign to pressure the University of Florida to ditch the exploitative food service company Aramark—and commit to buying more ethical and sustainable food. Learn a...

Like many Caribbean and Central American nations, Belize is a place where healthy, diverse farming systems have been violently replaced with sugar plantations. The legacy of that dispossession is yet another sugar-related violence: diabetes. Cultural anthropologist Amy Moran-Thomas contextualizes diabetes within a long history of racial capitalism in her book "Traveling with Sugar: Chronicles of a...

Carey Gillam’s 2017 book, Whitewash, exposed the dangers of the world’s most popular weedkiller: Monsanto’s Roundup. Gillam’s new book, The Monsanto Papers, tells the riveting story of the man who became the face of a David-and-Goliath showdown against one of the world’s biggest agribusiness corporations.

Allinee ‘shiny’ Flanary—founder of Come Thru Market, a Black, Indigenous, and People of Color(BIPOC) producer farmer’s market in Portland, OR—joins us for the season finale of Foodtopias to talk about the origins of the market, what it looks like to offer meaningful support, and the role of abolition in food sovereignty. This conversation was a part of The Power of Community-based Food Systems wit...