Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast

American Zion: Religion and rebellion on Western public lands

Cliven Bundy is a rancher who's refused for decades to pay his grazing fees for public lands. But where did his ideas about public lands come from? We talk to author Betsy Gaines Quammen about her new book, American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West.

Why the biggest reservoirs in the west are running low--and what to do about it

Lake Powell and Lake Mead are two massive man-made lakes and they're reservoirs for water used all over the West--for agriculture, residences, industry, electricity, and wildlife. And they're running low on water--we're taking out more than they're being replenished. Brian Richter, president of Sustainable Waters, and author of the book, Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability, talks about the roots of the problem, and what we can do about it.

Food, farmers, and the virus

The Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic has touched all parts of our lives--including the food system. While farms are considered essential businesses, farmers and farm workers are facing huge challenges, including getting food where it needs to go in a changing world, dealing with illness and unemployment, and much more. Rachel Armstrong is founder and executive director of Farm Commons, and she walks us through the many problems--and some solutions--in today's food system.

Restoring public lands through grazing

Gregory Horner is co-author of a series called, Profiles in Land and Management. He tells us about places all over the country where grazing is being used to improve land health--which may come as a surprise to many who have seen the land degradation caused by overgrazing. But when it's done properly, public agencies are seeing the return of native plants and wildlife--and they're saving money by letting animals do the work.

Health, profit, and beauty on the farm in Minnesota

Grant and Dawn Breitkreutz converted from "conventional" agriculture to a regenerative system involving holistic management of livestock, cover cropping, and soil-health techniques. Over the last fifteen years they have seen their farm thrive, their own health improve, and their land become more lush, resilient, and hospitable to wildlife. They tell their story, with its challenges and learning experiences.  

A small New Mexico garlic farmer takes on a Chinese ag giant

Stanley Crawford is a farmer—he's owner of El Bosque Garlic farm in Dixon, New Mexico. And he's a writer—he's author of more than a dozen books of fiction and non fiction. His latest book, The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires, is a fascinating portrait of a quiet life on a small farm, and at the same time about the legal battles between small new Mexico garlic farmers and a gigantic Chinese garlic conglomerate—and the surprising role of the US Commerce Departm...

Grassroots Rising

Ronnie Cummins grew up in a toxic part of Texas so toxic that there are no longer enough classmates to have a high school reunion. He became a human rights activist, and then a food and farming activist. In his new book, Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal, he looks at how the food system contributes to climate disruption, and how that can be turned around so that food, health, climate, and communities are improved by healthy agriculture practi...

Growing food for healthy communities in Indian Country

Kelsey Ducheneaux is natural resources director with the Intertribal Agriculture Council in Eagle Butte, SD--and she's a fourth generation regenerative beef cattle rancher. We talk about the strengths and traditions of native food producers, the many challenges of producing food in the current financial system, and the ways that agriculture can heal land and people.

Organic and sustainable agriculture in the Southern US

Brennan Washington worked in information technology and gardened with his wife just for fun and relaxation. When they moved to Georgia, they produced so much food that they got involved with farmers markets and CSAs--and started seeing the problems as well as the strengths of these outlets. Washington now works with Southern SARE, where he goes all over the Southern US and the Caribbean, talking to farmers and sharing knowledge to promote sustainable and profitable agricultural practices, as...

Farming and fire in Australia today

Darren Doherty is a farm planner in Australia who works worldwide, and he's founder of Regrarians, which promotes and teaches the principles of regenerative agriculture. We talk about the bush fires, the land management problems that contributed to their severity, the loss Aboriginal land management practices--and the opportunities that rise from the ashes.

Regenerative vs. degenerative agriculture

A wide-ranging conversation with Kevin Watt of TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, California, about the hazards of degenerative agriculture around the world, and the evolution toward new ways of thinking about productivity, healthy food, and not just surviving but thriving on a crowded planet. 

The science of water

Kate Zeigleris a geologist/hydrologist who works with farmers and ranchers in New Mexico and Colorado to provide scientific data about their wells and water table. We talk about the importance of not only data collection but also building trust and community decision-making for future sustainability on arid agricultural lands.

Know the law...save the farm

African Americans in agriculture have endured generations of discrimination and deceit that have resulted in the loss of countless families' land and livelihoods. Attorney Jillian Hishaw helps farmers protect themselves, their families, and their property--through understanding the laws that affect them and doing smart long-term planning.

Hemp: Growing into the future

According to Colorado hemp growers Ed Berg and Scott Perez, hemp is an extraordinary plant with many uses: It can feed people and animals, heal medical conditions, make cloth and rope, produce biodegradable plastics, sequester carbon, and remove toxins from soil. So what's in the way of its widespread use--and how can small producers survive when it becomes a major commodity crop?

From apprentice to foreman

Paul Neubauer worked on his uncle's farm before he went to college, and developed a passion that led him to a life in agriculture. To build his skills he went through the Quivira Coalitions apprenticeship program, and now works for Vilicus Farms in Montana. He reflects on the challenges and rewards of working in agriculture, being both a mentor and a student, and the many kinds of skills——practical and personal——that it takes to build a thriving operation.

Red meat--where does it fit into a healthy eating and a healthy planet?

Diana Rodgers is a nutritionist and real food dietician. She’s the author of several books and is working on a new book and documentary film project, Sacred Cow. She hosts the Sustainable Dish podcast, and she lives and works on an organic farm in Massachusetts.

How to deal with mental and physical challenges--on the farm and beyond

Dr. Robert Fetsch grew up on a dairy farm in Texas, and saw first hand the stresses of rural life. He now works with farm and ranch families with disabilities and helps them manage their stress, anger, depression, and suicidal thinking. He is co-project director of the Colorado Agrability project, Professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences Department at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

For the love of soil

Nicole Mastersis an agro-ecologist and educator in regenerative agriculture. She's founder of Integrity Soils, and author of the new book, For the Love of Soil.  

Making the business case for regenerative agriculture

We talk to Meriwether Hardie, chief of staff at Bio-Logical Capital, a Denver-based company that's looking at ways to transition to economically and ecologically healthy agriculture practices.

How to regenerate land with livestock...

Graeme Handteaches Holistic Management in Australia and around the world, and he helps people restore native perennial grasses--and make a profit--with livestock. He shares his stories and secrets, some of which will surprise you!  

Holistic management: it’s not just for land

Joel Benson studied Holistic Management, but he didn’t have any land to farm. So he turned the principles toward what he was doing: first his own business, and then the town of Buena Vista, Colorado, where he was mayor for eight years. The results were striking – a thriving business, and a dramatic reduction in corruption.

Conservation Cattle on the California Coast

Rodrigo Sierra Corona is Grassland Ecologist and Stewardship Director at the Santa Lucia Conservancyin Carmel, California. His mandate is the conserve and regenerate the land, foster native species, and monitor the health of the land. Guess what's one of his main tools: Cows. Because they're a domesticated species they can be used in a targeted way and easily moved. We talk about the challenges, successes, and hopes for conservation on this mixed-use land.

Kate Greenberg, Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture

Kate Greenberg has a broad background in regenerative agriculture. She serves as board chair of the Quivira Coalition, she worked with the National Young Farmers Coalition, and has extensive experience in farming and natural resources management. She was recently appointed Commissioner of Agriculture for the state of Colorado. We talk about the challenges facing the state, and ways to put the idea of the Radical Center into practice in government.  

The Science of Holistic Grazing

Richard Teague is Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Texas A&M University. He shares with us his deep understanding of the science of holistic management, soil science, and the psychology of changing over to new practices and paradigms.

Mountain and Prairie host Ed Roberson

Ed Roberson is conservation director at the Palmer Land Trust, and he's host of the Mountain and Prairie podcast. We talk about some of the problems surrounding water in the West--and some new approaches to balancing urban and agricultural water needs.

An organic farmer in Kenya

Emmanuel Karisa Bayawas an orphan in rural Kenya by the time he was nine years old. His mother had taught him to farm, and after going into another profession, he was called to return to the land. He found himself helping other orphans and poor children, and founding the Magarini Children Centre and Organic Demonstration Farm, where he practices and teaches organic and regenerative food production as well as conflict resolution

Envisioning a post-carbon food system

  There's an unspoken assumption that renewable energy will seamlessly replace fossil fuels. But what if that's not the case? We talk to Dr. Jason Bradford, author of the new report, The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification from the Post Carbon Institute. He makes the case that the post-carbon society will be simpler and more local--and he gives us some guidelines to preparing for that future.  

Incentivizing healthy soils through sensible policy

Aria McLauchlan and Harley Cross are co-founders of Land Core, a non-profit dedicated to bringing about policies and programs that lead to healthy soil.

Zombie agriculture

Keri Brandt Off and Janine Fitzgerald are professors of sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and they're both ranchers. They've coined the term "zombie agriculture" to describe a food system that raises food from dead soil--it looks like it's alive but doesn't have the life or history or interactive communities on the level of either soil or interpersonal relatedness. Can we keep it from eating our brains?

Farming While Black

Leah Penniman fell in love with farming when she was a teenager, became a farmer and food justice advocate, and with her husband founded Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. The farm provides food in for those with limited access to fresh produce, and it's a center for teaching and learning about farming and African/indigenous heritage for people of color. Leah's new book, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land, is a profound and wide-ranging explorat...

Rounding up the evidence on Roundup

We talk with investigative journalist and author Carey Gillam about her book, Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science.

The little rodent that could...

Ben Goldfarb is a "beaver believer." He’s author of the new book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. We talk about the historical role of beavers in the ecosystems of the entire North American continent, how they were nearly wiped out, and why many communities are brining them back—and with them lusher wetlands and healthier rivers.

Regeneration in the rockies

Glenn Elzinga is a rancher on mostly public lands in the Idaho Rocky Mountains. He's also a forester, and his wife is a botanist...and together they have developed a practice of cattle grazing called "inherding" that is very healthy for the cattle because of the diversity of plants they eat; that restores streams and creeks to the point that beaver have returned; and that allows native plants and wildlife--including sage grouse and wolves--to flourish on the land. It's labor-intensive and ye...

Reawakening our instincts for healthy eating

Animals—and people—have instincts that will guide them to eat a very healthy diet if given half a chance. But we also have cultural practices, marketing, dubious government guidelines, degradation of food supplies, and many other impediments to healthy eating. Fred Provenza explores all this and more in his book Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom. In this podcast we discuss how wild animals, livestock, and people can find their way through the m...

On Pasture Magazine

The science of farm and rangeland is often incomprehensible to the people on the land. We talk to On Pasture magazine founder Kathy Voth, whose mission is to make science accessible to people who need it--and to help keep them from being bamboozled by the latest agriculture fads.

Why is so much topsoil disappearing...

Today's program is from the Radio Cafe archives. David Johnson is a senior research scientist and molecular biologist at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. We talk about the process of restoring soil, and how farmers, ranchers, and land managers can be incentivized to engage in healthy soil practices.

Coyotes, hawks, and minks -- in Chicago

Gavin Van Horn is author of the new book, The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys of the Urban Wild. As we read the book we walk with him along streets, rivers, and lakes, and learn a slower and softer way of seeing – even in the bustling city – that includes the wildlife with which we share our world.

Think like a chicken

Reginaldo Haslett Marroquín of the Main Street Project in Northfield, Minnesota, talks about a new model for  a healthy and regenerative poultry industry -- and how it can be accomplished with modest investments of land and capital. One of the main challenges of envisioning a healthy food system is how it can work at a large scale, and not just for niche markets. Here you'll hear how it can be done -- and how this model can also provide a model for other types of meat production that's healt...

Bringing back the Texas Prairie

This is the second in our series of interviews from the Regenerate 2018 conference in Albuquerque. We talk Jonathan and Kaylyn Cobb, co-owners Green Fields Farm in Rogers, Texas, who tell us the story of almost selling the farm but then coming in contact with regenerative principles and changing not only their way of working the land but of understanding and seeing it. The result has been a happier way of life, healthier soil, and increased profitability.

Bringing regenerative meat to the marketplace

What does it take for a retail brand to make a commitment to sourcing meat from ranchers who are regenerating the land? We talk to Gina Asoudegan, vice president of mission and innovation at Applegate Natural and Organic Meats, and Katie Forrest, cofounder of EPIC Provisions about how they work with producers, and how the mission of a small food company can influence -- for the better -- the large companies that own them.

Money where your mouth is

Sallie Calhoun is president of the Globetrotter Foundation, owner of the Paicines Ranch, and founder of the #NoRegrets Initiative. She came to ranching from electrical engineering and high-tech entrepreneurship, and has devoted her life to sustainable agriculture–and both investing and teaching others about investing in a healthy food system. She also works to empower women in ranching and agricultural communities. 

Converting from industrial to regenerative agriculture

Since the end of the civil war, White Oak Pastures has been in the Harris family, but their farming practices have ranged from 19th century subsistence farming to post-war industrial agriculture — and now larger scale regenerative farming. Will Harris has created a closed-loop, no-waste farm, whose goals include providing healthy food raised in a healthy manner, humane animal welfare practices, and revitalization of the rural community where they’re rooted.  

Working at the "Radical Center”

How do adversaries find common ground? How do they work together to find common goals an interests? Food from the Radical Center: Healing our Land and Communities by Gary Paul Nabhan is about food and land conservation, but its lessons have the potential to bring together many people in our polarized nation.    Nabhan is a writer, seed conservationist, and MacArthur genius grant recipient; he’s  endowed chair in sustainable agriculture at University of Arizona, and he’s a long time activist ...

Food, faith, and farming

Dr. Hisham Moharram founded The Good Tree Farm and Good Tree Farm, Inc. as an expression of his Muslim faith. He explains how to keep a farm profitable, regenerate the land, feed communities that don’t have good access to healthy food, and provide entrepreneurship opportunities for young people.

Pasturemap: High tech on the range

Christine Su is CEO and co-founder of Pasturemap, a tool that helps ranchers increase productivity on their rangelands. We talk about the synergies among soil health, grass abundance, profitability, carbon sequestration, and intergenerational--and inter-regional--information sharing.

Practicing regenerative agriculture

Nicole Masters is an agroecologist who teaches, writes about, and consults on regenerative agriculture and soil regeneration. With projects in both the US and her home, New Zealand, she has worked on nearly a million acres of crop lands and range lands to improve soil and help producers reap the many benefits of doing so -- healthier food, healthier farm work, less pollution, lower costs for farmers, and carbon sequestration, to name a few. She will be speaking at the Quivira Coalition Conf...

Bill McDorman: Planting the seeds of a diverse, local agriculture

Bill McDorman, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance in Ketchum, Idaho, and co-founder of the Seed School, has been saving seeds for over three decades. He explains the dangers of the massive biodiversity loss that's happened in the last fifty years, and how seed saving can move us toward a well-adapted local agriculture.  

Cattle grazing for ecosystem restoration

Eating Wild Foods in the Industrial Age

Jo Robinson is an investigative journalist whose book Eating on the Wild Side is all about the deep history of the human diet -- and how we can find nutritious food even in the plastic jungle of industrial agriculture and retail. She spoke at a Quivira Coalition conference several years ago.

Saving the Gunnison Sage Grouse

In Gunnison, Colorado, there is an innovative collaboration to conserve the Gunnison Sage Grouse, a threatened--but not endangered--species native to this part of the Southwest. By building simple rock structures, using the techniques of land restoration pioneer Bill Zeedyk, they have been able to build up habitat for the sage grouse, and at the same time provide increased forage for cattle. We talk to Nathan Seward Terrestrial Biologist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and Brett Redden of...