The Food Chain

Emily Bonder, Apiarist & Educator, Santa Cruz Bee Company (metropolitan bee keeping, apiarists, honey bees) They say bees are responsible for one-third of every bite of food we eat.  Given how much we love to eat, and how much we love to hear the buzzing of bees, we simply must ask: How does one keep bees in the city? We all know how important honeybees are to the productivity of natural and m...

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (Food industry consolidation, Driscoll's Berries,   Across the landscape of American agriculture, one can see where there were many, there are now few.  What we see leads us to ask: Is it better to have a few big farms or many small farms? The Food Chain Radio Show & Podcast with Michael Olson hosts A...

Maisie Ganzler, Chief Strategy and Brand Officer Bon Appetit Management Company & Author, You Can’t Market Manure at Lunchtime   (Food marketing, advertising and public relations) He who has a thing to sell, and goes and whispers in a well, is not so apt to get the dollars, as she who climbs a tree and hollers!    And so we ask: How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food? Muc...

Fred Provenza, Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Ecology,  Utah State University & Author of Nourishment: What animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom (Food Nutrition and Labeling) The supply chain that feeds our food chain now extends across the country and around the world.  Given what we see happening across our country, and around the world, we simply must ask:   Can...

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In Company of Meadowlarks (Environmental Degradation and the Vanishing of Song birds)   Meadowlarks are the canaries of the prairie.  Where one hears their song, its safe to go out onto the prairie.  But where the meadlark’s song is no longer heard, there is danger on the prairie.  And so we ask:   Can people...

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens (Animal Nutrition and Environment) Yellowstone Park in winter is a cruel place for the wildlife that can no longer endure its cold, snow and hunger.  And yet what is cruel for some can be a blessing for the corvids of Yellowstone’s winter   And so we ask:   Can anyone love t...

Fred Provenza, Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University, Author of Nourtishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom (Animal and Human Natural Nutrition) One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and...

Fred Provenza, Author, Nourishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom (Animal & Human Environmental Nutrition) Animals learn what to eat, and what not to eat, from their mothers – before they are born.  It is a taste they pick up in utero, as the mother eats her way across the landscape.  If such is the case, we wonder:  What tastes are American mothers teac...

Zen Honeycutt, Founder & Executive Director of Moms Across America / Author of Unstoppable: Transforming Sickness and Struggle Into Triumph, Empowerment and a Celebration of Community   Over 80 million Americans, including over one-third of the nation’s children and adolescents, eat fast food every day. And some eat it multiple times a day! This leads us to ask: Can America’s moms chase the da...

Dr. Michael Greger, Author, How Not To Age   (Diet, Nutrition, Aging) We have been searching for that proverbial fountain of youth for as long as we have been capable of searching.  Though we have searched in many places, and spent many fortunes doing so, we still grow old.  This leads us to ask:  Can we maintain what we have, so we can retain what we want? As we grow old, we begin resisting the f...

Allen Moy, Executive Director, Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association   (California's Certified Farmers Markets)   They say, in the United States food travels an average of 1,500 miles from where it is grown to where it is eaten. That leads us to ask:  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 sourc...

Mike Keller, Michael A. Keller Associates Turning ice into hydrogen fuel They say, if we can get to the South Pole of the Moon, we can convert some of the frozen water we find there into rocket fuel that will take us on to the next best place.  That leads us to ask:  Can hydrogen be farmed to fuel our future? Topics include the prospects of turning water into rocket fuel; the difference between bl...

TOM BROZ, FARMER OF THE YEAR, LIFE EARTH FARM   Community Supported Agriculture Community is where everybody works together today to ensure that everybody can eat tomorrow.  This thought leads us to ask: How does one farm community? 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...

JO ANN BAUMGARTNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WILD FARM ALLIANCE  & SAM EARNSHAW, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HEDGEROWS UNLIMITED    When an outbreak of Ecoli killed three people and sickened 200 others a couple of decades ago, those in charge of food safety began discouraging the existence of wildlife on farms. This leads us to ask: Should wild life be allowed back on farms? Back in 2006, a multistate outb...

JESSICA RIDGEWAY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FARM DISCOVERY AT LIVE EARTH When people moved off the farm into the city, they took their children with them.  What children find on the streets of the city does not appear to bode well for their future nor the future of country.  And so we ask… How can we lead children back to the farm? I had the good fortune to having lived on the grandparents’ Montana farm...

DR. JOHN FAGAN, HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE LABS  There are many ways in which industrialization has served to make food cheap.  One way is to subvert the growth of natural competitors, like weeds, with herbicides, like glyphosate.  This leads us to ask… What happens to the chemicals after they have been used to made food cheap? In the 1930s, people began the migration from the farm into the city.  ...

Ken Kimes & Sandra Ward, New Natives, Microgreens It is really simple:  Sow some uncontaminated seeds in organic soil.  Add clean water, fresh air and sunshine.  Then enjoy eating the maximum nutrition of microgreens.  This leads us to ask:  If it really is this simple, why doesn’t everybody eat microgreens? It seems as though we are running out of food.  That is not to say that we are running...

Tending to California's Golden Agriculture Karen Ross, California's Secretary of Agriculture Begin with a Mediterranean climate; add a long range of mountains to collect and store winter’s precipitation; carve out a deep valley at the foot of those mountains, then add to that valley rich, alluvial soils. It is a fact, the nation’s Golden State was designed and built for agriculture. Stand back and...

Guest:  Chef & Restaurateur India Jozseph Schultz His India Joze restaurant was the West Coast capital of fusion food-ism.  The taste that lingers of that fusion leads one to ask Jozseph Schultz:  How can one cook East in the West so the hungry return for more? Topics include how India Joze served an ever-changing menu of the world’s spicy foods in a commercial restaurant; how that restaurant...