The Farm Report

“Brownsville is a food desert,” one student says while standing against a backdrop of dozens of giant cucumbers ready to be harvested. “We want to help the community by giving them healthy food access.” In this episode, student farmers give host Lisa Held a tour of the hydroponic farm they built inside an empty classroom at their Brooklyn middle school, where 25,000 pounds of produce now grows ann...

Meriwether Hardie is the chief of staff at Bio-Logical Capital , where her work focuses on developing new models for regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, and climate-positive land use. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to Hardie about how the company invests in farms and projects that “un-scale” the food system, how small farms and diversified, regenerative agriculture operations can co...

Naomi Starkman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Civil Eats , a “daily news source for critical thought about the American food system” that is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to Starkman about how agriculture and conversations about farming have changed over the past decade, how media companies should be covering agriculture and the many impor...

Based in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Shenandoah Valley Organic sells USDA-certified organic chicken grown on a network of small farms. In this episode, host Lisa Held sits down with Jefferson Heatwole, chief sales and marketing officer, and Jason Daugherty, a fourth generation farmer who raises chickens for SVO. They discuss how the company’s “Farmer Focus” model is designed to give growers more power...

Founded by former Blue Apron co-founder and COO Matthew Wadiak, Cooks Venture is a “next generation food company committed to regenerative agriculture and a truly transparent supply chain for the future.” The company launched March of 2019 and its “pasture-raised, slow-growth, heirloom” chickens hit the market soon after. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to Wadiak and EVP and farmer Blake Eva...

In this episode, Saveur editor-in-chief Stacy Adimando joins host Lisa Held to talk about the magazine’s recently released “Grower’s Issue,” which features stories of the intricacies of hop farming in San Diego, how India’s saffron farmers are suffering during a multi-year drought, and how sheep farming could revive rural regions of the US that once relied on coal mining. According to Adimando’s E...

For more than 20 years, Just Food has been at the forefront of building a sustainable regional food system in New York City and advocating for the same elsewhere, via developing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) networks that create long-term relationships between small farms and city eaters. Now, the organization is sharpening its focus to hone in on cultivating a food system rooted in racial...

It’s been almost a decade since New York City legalized beekeeping, and the city is now buzzing with activity. There are hives at rooftop farms, community gardens, and schools in all five boroughs. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to Brooklyn Grange Farm’s head beekeeper Geraldine Simonis and City Growers beekeeper and educator Renel Saint Jour about what beekeeping in an urban environment lo...

Tom Gamble is a third-generation farmer, and while he’s the first in his family to make wine, he founded Gamble Family Vineyards with a mission to carry on his family’s farming legacy in the Napa Valley. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to Gamble about Napa’s agricultural history, what sustainable farming practices look like at a vineyard, and how he’s one of the region’s farmer-winemakers pr...

Debuting in theaters on May 10, The Biggest Little Farm is a film that follows two urban professionals, John and Mary Chester, as they leave Los Angeles on a mission to build a farm that exists in harmony with nature. Eight years later, the pair owns and operates Apricot Lane Farms, a thriving diversified, organic, biodynamic farm. In this episode, farmer and filmmaker John Chester joins host Lisa...

Due to intensive, extractive agriculture techniques, soil across the United States is incredibly depleted. Healthy soil, on the other hand, produces nutrient-dense food, requires less chemical fertilizer (and therefore helps prevent water pollution), and sequesters carbon (which helps reverse climate change). Kiss the Ground is one organization that is calling attention to that fact by “inspiring...

Over the past 40 years, ownership of the American food supply chain has become concentrated in the hands of a continuously shrinking number of giant multinational corporations. In a new report, the Open Markets Institute details the degree of consolidation in agriculture and its related industries, from seed and chemical inputs and farm equipment to meat processing to grocery sellers. In this epis...

On April 26, Portland, Maine kicks off its first annual Seaweed Week to celebrate the harvest and showcase seaweed’s culinary versatility, from kelp purees to seaweed beers. While seaweed aquaculture was non-existent in the US just a decade ago, it’s now on the rise, and Maine is at the forefront of the growing industry. Heritage Seaweed founder Josh Rogers sits down with host Lisa Held to discuss...

When she isn’t responding to farmers’ emergency texts about fennel, director of supply and sustainability Taylor Lanzet is lining up producers and streamlining logistics at Dig Inn , a New York-based fast casual restaurant chain with a strong focus on sourcing from local farms. Meanwhile, Lanzet works alongside farmer Larry Tse, who runs the restaurant’s organic farm 60 miles north of the city. In...

Farm Forward is the rare animal rights group that doesn’t advocate for veganism. Instead, its programs focus on ending animal suffering on factory farms and developing agricultural systems and markets that prioritize animal welfare. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to executive director Andrew deCoriolis about the organization’s work—from establishing farm standards and educating consumers to...

Peter Stein started Peeko Oysters —an oyster farm on Long Island’s North Fork—in 2016, after leaving a corporate job. Three years later, his oysters are served at top New York City restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern, and Le Bernardin. Host Lisa Elaine Held sits down with Stein to talk about what oyster farming looks like (in terms of the landscape, methods, and labor), how to gr...

In February, legislators proposed the Green New Deal, “a sweeping attempt to reorient energy production and shift public resources in an urgent bid to make the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2030.” Award-winning journalist Christopher D. Cook, author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis, reported on what the plan might mean for food and agriculture in the United States for Ci...

Bob Quinn was born into a family of farmers who grew wheat and raised cattle in Montana. After he left home to get a PhD, he returned to take over the farm and started doing things differently. He transitioned the farm to organic production and began milling his own grain whole in the 1980s. He also began growing an ancient variety of wheat that is now sold around the world as KAMUT. His book, " G...

Who are the people growing our food, and what are their experiences? How, as informed eaters, can we make food choices that lead to fair wages and safe, humane working conditions? In conversations about building a sustainable food system, these questions are often ignored or overshadowed by other issues; in this episode of The Farm Report, they are front and center. Join host Lisa Held as she lead...

Hemp played an important role in America’s history—it was grown by many of the founding fathers, and the Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper—but its production has been restricted since 1937. That changed with the passage of the Hemp Farming Act, which was attached to the 2018 Farm Bill and legalized hemp farming, processing, and selling in the US. Now, hemp is set to become an i...

He’s on the board of Tesla and SpaceX, but Kimbal Musk’s current tech entrepreneurship is focused on food and farming, not transportation. Musk (who is Elon Musk’s brother) is the co-founder and executive chairman of three companies that approach food and agriculture from different angles: Square Roots , a vertical farming company that grows hydroponic herbs in shipping containers, the Kitchen Res...

In this episode broadcast from Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture , farm director Jack Algiere offers a tour of the greenhouse and answers questions big and small about his approach to farming. He talks about his holistic approach that starts with healthy, living soil, experimenting with new crops, working with chef Dan Barber as “collaborating artists,” and thinking about animals in a wa...

"Whether it’s a salad, a hamburger or your morning egg sandwich, your meal has an impact on the environment and on the welfare of animals, food/farm workers and people." That message is at the core of the new website FoodPrint, a platform designed to educate eaters about how agriculture and other links in the food supply chain impact people and the planet. Director Jerusha Klemperer joins host Lis...

In this live audience broadcast from the Brooklyn Podcast Festival's Smart Cities series, host Lisa Held talks to two urban agriculture pioneers: Brooklyn Grange co-founder Anastasia Cole Plakias and Gotham Greens co-founder Viraj Puri. They discuss how urban agriculture has changed and expanded over the past ten years, the environmental and community benefits of growing food in cities, and how ci...

At a time when the average age of the American farmer is approaching 60, the future of the food system depends on growing and supporting the next generation of growers. In this special season finale episode of the Farm Report, host Lisa Held sits down with four young farmers during the 2018 Young Farmers Conference at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture . From Davon Goodwin, a United S...