The Farm Report

Christophe Hille, Fleisher’s Meat’s CFO, and Kathleen Harris of Northeast Livestock Processing Service Company join Erin Fairbanks for another episode of The Farm Report . Kathleen works with farmers to help market their products and also aids in process facilitation. She believes consumers should be aware of the meat they purchase and encourages them to get in touch with their local farmers or en...

Meet Sarah Teale, documentary filmmaker and founding member of Adirondack Grazers Cooperative, a group of beef producers from small to mid-scale, family farms in New York and Vermont that naturally raise and finish beef. The Co Op’s mission is to maximize member revenue by developing sales in wholesale and specialty markets not easily available to individual farmers. Tune in as Erin Fairbanks chat...

This week on The Farm Report , Erin ushers in blueberry season! She welcomes Ed Flanagan, CEO of Wyman’s of Maine to the program. Wyman’s of Maine is a family owned company that specializes in the growing and marketing of wild blueberries. At the top of the show, Ed explains that Wyman’s of Maine believes in the Japanese philosophy known as “kaizen,” roughly translated as continuous improvement. S...

How is farming tied to carbon and how does carbon keep life on earth possible? Find out on a very elemental and scientific episode of The Farm Report as host Erin Fairbanks is joined by Courtney White, the author of Grass, Soil, Hope. A former archaeologist and Sierra Club activist, White dropped out of the ‘conflict industry’ in 1997 to co-found the Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to bui...

Get ready to learn a whole lot about grains on a special episode of The Farm Report . Erin Fairbanks is joined by Amber Lambke, Executive Director of the Maine Grains Alliance and host of the annual KNEADING Conference. Amber knows her grains and talks about everything from infrastructure to economics. The Maine Grains Alliance’s mission is to preserve and promote grain traditions, from earth to h...

This week on The Farm Report , host Erin Fairbanks speaks with Doug Fine, author of the book Hemp Bound: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural Revolution. In an interesting discussion about the controversial substance that has been outlawed in its time among many states, Erin and Doug discuss the benefits of hemp and why hemp production should be something that is encouraged thr...

Tune in to a special episode of The Farm Report as Erin Fairbanks talks labor and workers rights with author and activist Margaret Gray. Margaret is the winner of the 2014 Association for the Study of Food and Agriculture Book of the Year Award as well as the author of Labor and the Locavore , which focuses on one of the most vibrant local food economies in the country, the Hudson Valley that supp...

What does micro-dairy farming look like? Find out on a brand new episode of The Farm Report . Host Erin Fairbanks is joined by Steven Judge, Founder, President, CEO of Bob-White Systems, Inc. Bob-White Systems, a company established in Vermont, serves the rapidly emerging micro-dairy market. They offer equipment, supplies, technology, and resources to enable dairy farmers to build appropriately sc...

On a special episode of The Farm Report, Erin Fairbanks is joined by none other than Patrick Martins, founder of Slow Food USA, Heritage Foods USA and Heritage Radio Network. He’s also the author of The Carnivore’s Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat. The book features fifty ways to be an enlightened carnivore, while taking better care of our planet and ourselves. We have e...

In October 2013, Storm Atlas devastated livestock farmers in South Dakota, killing over 40,000 head of cattle. This was an unprecedented loss, and farmers in the region are still picking up the pieces and recovering. On a special episode of The Farm Report , Erin Fairbanks checks in Silvia Christen of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association who details the events and response that followed the s...

Today on The Farm Report, Erin speaks to tea expert Sarah Besky, professor at the University of Michigan, about tea plantations and how tea workers often get into the world of tea production. Sarah also tells us about how the culture of tea production differs from country to country across the world. After the break, Erin speaks with Peter Rosenblum, professor at Bard College, about some of the da...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin speaks with family farmer Richard Oswald from the Missouri Farmers Union about how large corporations have been slowly taking over the farming industry, pushing family farmers out. Later, Richard describes how farming has evolved based on changing values throughout the world. This program has been sponsored by Paradise Locker Meats . Today’s music provided by Tak...

On this episode of The Farm Report, Erin interviews Scott Chaskey of Quail Hill Farm. Scott is the author of (among other titles) This Common Ground and most recently, Seedtime. Today, he and Erin discuss his newest book and the world of seed farming. This program has been sponsored by Squarespace . Today’s music provided by The Hollows . “The unusual thing about this farm is that…our members actu...

Erin speaks with Ed Staehr this week, the Executive Director of NY FarmNet, an organization that helps farmers with a wide range of farm business or family issues. Ed describes some of the many ways that NY FarmNet does this, such as helping with inheritance concerns, making the best of resources, strategic planning, and much more! This program has been sponsored by Heritage Foods USA . Today’s mu...

Today on The Farm Report, Erin interviews Richard McCarthy from Slow Food USA about the Slow Meat conference that Slow Food is having at the University of Denver this summer. After the break, Erin brings in Joe Maxwell of the Humane Society to further discuss the goals of Slow Meat and some of the biggest issues it will address. Tune in for the whole interview! This program has been sponsored by W...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin interviews Alice hill from Beaver Creek Ranch. Alice tells us about pheasant hunting in Kansas, which used to be the pheasant hunting capital of the world! This program has been sponsored by Heritage Foods USA . “You’ve gotta be kinda tough to survive out here!” [5:30] “In the 1950s, Kansas was considered the pheasant hunting capital of the nation.” [8:10] –Alice...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin speaks with David Haight from The American Farmland Trust about the Census of Agriculture. David tells us some of the most important statistics that the census gathers, and how this information can be so helpful to farmers across the country. This program has been sponsored by White Oak Pastures . Today’s music provided by Obey City . “We’ve lost 425,000 acres of...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin interviews Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne, founders of JQ Dickinson Salt-Works, located in Malden, West Virginia. Nancy and Lewis tell us about how their company was founded over 200 years ago, and how the aquifer below the land in Malden is essential to the production of their product. This program has been sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons . Images from J...

This week we welcomed Jerry Caldari into the studio. Jerry is one of the architects behind Brooklyn Grange, an urban farm located on the rooftop of a 6-story industrial building. Jerry tells us about how large a scale this rooftop farming project was from an architectural standpoint, and expresses his optimism about the future of urban farming. This program has been sponsored by Fairway Market . T...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin interviews Will Harris from White Oak Pastures about running his farm in Bluffton, Georgia. Will tells us about how genetics have affected the animals raised at White Oak Pastures, as well as the difficulties of keeping meat production costs under control. This program has been sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons . Today’s music provided by Shadowbox . Ima...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin speaks with Andrew Novakovic, E.V. Baker Professor of Agricultural Economics and Management at Cornell University. Andrew tells us about what dairy farming was like 30 or 40 years ago, and explains how the industry has become so much more exciting in the last 20 years. This program has been sponsored by Regional Access . Today’s music provided by Shadowbox . “Jus...

Erin Fairbanks digs into the lamb business with David Piestch of the Australian Lamb Council on this week’s edition of The Farm Report. Tune into this episode to hear why Australians eat twenty times more lamb than people in the United States, and the roots of the industry in wool. Find out what types of Australian lamb carcasses are shipped to the United States based on the cuts that Americans pr...

This week on The Farm Report, Erin calls Mike Fedison, the Assistant Manager at Hilltop Hanover Farm in Westchester County. Mike’s farm participates in multiple educational programs with high school and college students which helps promote and preserve agriculture in the Westchester area. Later, Mike shares with us his feelings about running a farm on your own vs being part of a larger team. This...

On this week’s episode of The Farm Report, Leah Eden interviews Laura Ten Eyck, a hop farmer at Helderberg Hop Farm in upstate New York. Laura tells us about her farm’s introduction to growing hops for commercial production. She describes for us what it takes to plant and harvest hops, as well as the unique needs of a hop plant. This program has been sponsored by White Oak Pastures . Music provide...

This week on The Farm Report, host Erin Fairbanks brings in Hannah Beal from Heermance Farm. Hannah describes her introduction to farming, as her interest bloomed when she was 16-year-old. She then talks about her experiences working on a vegetable farm, and assembling an ideal team to work with. This program has been sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery . Music provided by Obey City . “I ended...