Shuswap Food Conversations

In this episode Warren's guests are Melanie Bennett and Mary Rodriguez with the Shuswap Food Action Society. Melanie will outline the spring and summer programs for SFAS including what's going on at the John McLean Community Garden, the Community Teaching Garden and with Project Grow, the youth gardening contest. Mary oversees the School Food program for School District 83 and will update us on th...

In this episode listen to Warren's interview with Dr. Navin Ramankutty, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Data Science for Sustainable Global Food Systems at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Ramankutty's research program aims to understand how humans use and modify the Earth’s land surface for agriculture and to determine the implicatio...

This week Warren welcomes Christine Tether, Manager of the Downtown Salmon Arm Farmers Market. Christine will share her experience coordinating this weekly event and working with the many vendors who attend the market. She and Warren will talk about Christine's past roles as a Biologist and her life raising three (soon to be four) children with her partner on their homestead in Notch Hill.

Warren welcomes back Dr. Keith Williams of Athabasca University to talk more about indigenous agriculture practices and returning to the theories of land stewardship that our first peoples have followed for centuries.

In this episode you will hear Warren's interview with Dr. Cary Fowler, an American agriculturalist who served as the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security from 2022 to 2025. He was previously executive director of the Crop Trust, which has a mandate to ensure "the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide." Dr. Fowler is known as the father of the Svalbard G...

In this episode Warren welcomes Denise Griffiths and Larissa Stagg of the Sorrento Village Farmers Market . Market Manager Denise and Society VP Larissa talk with Warren about the origins, growth and success of the market that has been running on Saturdays in Sorrento (May to October) for twenty-five years. You will hear all about Larissa's bee keeping business and about the other artisans, brewer...

This week Warren's guests are Adam and Jenna Wall of Purple Pasture Homestead in Salmon Arm. Working on Jenna's grandparent's land, they started their homestead in 2019 while living in a 26 foot trailer. Now well established, Adam and Jenna are regulars at the Downtown Salmon Arm Farmers Market. Their goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible. They grow their own food, raise their own animals,...

This week Warren's guests are Jade and Isabelle Shamen, Quoc Nguyen and Amelia Jensen, all members of the recently formed FRIES Society. This new organization in the Shuswap is dedicated to making available the equipment and infrastructure that local food growers need to establish their farms and help to rebuild our local food system. FRIES encourages using regenerative farming methods to protect...

This week Warren's guests are Kevin and Joy de Vos of Foxtrot Dairy located just off Hwy 97B near Enderby, BC. Joy and Kevin have been running Foxtrot Dairy on Kevin's family land for decades. Now, they have opened Foxtrot Dairy General Store on the property and are offering educational tours of the dairy, local produce and dairy products, and their own farm raised beef. Kevin and Joy are long tim...

In this episode Warren's guest is Salmon Arm City Councilor Sylvia Lindgren. Sylvia and Warren talk about the role of the City's Environmental Advisory Committee and its relationship to preserving the environment for sustainable farming and food production in the Shuswap. The EAC mandate is to protect, maintain and enhance the natural environment in accordance with the provisions of the Environmen...

From November 2022 - Part 1 - Warren talks with Annylise Gruber-Cavers and Steve Maggait of Fresh Valley Farms in Spallumcheen, BC.

From November 2022 - Part 2 - Warren talks with Annylise Gruber-Cavers and Steve Maggait of Fresh Valley Farms in Spallumcheen, BC.

In this episode Warren's guest is Dr. Hannah Wittman, Professor of Land and Food Systems with the University of British Columbia. Dr. Wittman’s research studies agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and agrarian citizenship. Her projects include community-based research on farmland access, transition to organic agriculture, and seed sovereignty in British Columbia, food sovereignty in Ecuador and Bra...

From November 2022 - Warren talks with Keli Westgate of Lekker Land Design about her work on the Salmon Arm Food Forest and the principles of Permaculture.

From November 2022 - Warren talks with Keli Westgate of Lekker Land Design about her work on the Salmon Arm Food Forest and the principles of Permaculture.

From December 2022 - Warren talks with Brad Demille about the recent highway closures, their impacts on the food supply chain, and how this has increased the focus on local food production and eating local.

From December 2021 - Warren talks with Serena Caner and Melanie Bennett of the Shuswap Food Action Society.

From February 2022 - Warren talks with Melanie Bennett, Serena Caner and Samantha Gambling about current programs and challenges for the Shuswap Food Action Society.

From February of 2022, Warren Bell talks with Jed Wiebe of Elderberry Grove Farm in Salmon Arm.

In this episode Warren's guest is Ashlee Rutherford of Gnominvore Kitchen. Ashlee joins Warren for a lively discussion of her new local food endeavour where she offers tasty foods with sustainability in mind. Ashlee is becoming a regular at the Downtown Salmon Arm Farmers Market where she sells frozen meals, novelty items like cook at home Poutine Kits and Duck breast pastrami - a ready to eat del...

From February of 2022 - Warren's guest is Jed Wiebe of Elderberry Grove Farm in Salmon Arm.

In this episode Warren's guest is Valerie Tarasuk of the University of Toronto. Valerie is the lead investigator behind PROOF, a project conducting research to advance understanding of the causes and consequences of food insecurity in Canada and the policy interventions necessary to prevent this problem. Dr. Tarasuk’s work has helped lay the foundation for food insecurity monitoring in Canada, and...

From March 2022 - Warren talks with Melanie Bennett of the Shuswap Food Action Society about the recently past and extremely successful Coldest Night of the Year fundraising event.

From March 2022 - Warren interviews Samantha Gambling about the importance of healthy school food for all children in BC.

From March 2022 - In this episode Warren meets with Samantha Gambling, Lead for the BC chapter of the Coalition for Healthy School Food. Warren and Samantha explore her life in BC and the experiences and education that brought her to her current role, and the issues around providing healthy meals for all school children in BC.