Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast

If you're a small or mid-size farmer, it's nearly impossible to compete against giant food conglomerates. But fairer policy could help smaller farms to prosper, provide healthy food and thriving communities, and keep more profits for food producers––rather than executives and stockholders. Sarah Carden is a policy advocate with Farm Action, a group working to democratize the food system in the U.S. She's also a vegetable farmer, who knows first hand what the barriers are for small and mid-size growers who are forced to compete against giant corporations. She talks about the movement for a more fair and regenerative Farm Bill in 2023––and beyond.

Both big ag and small family farms have their problems...but what's the alternative? We talk with agricultural journalist Sarah Mock about the some possible models.

Linda and Larry Faillace spent years at the University of Nottingham in England, where Linda became an expert in Mad Cow Disease (BSE). Upon return to the U.S., they imported sheep from Europe, with USDA approval, and began a cheese making business in Vermont, with their three children active participants in the enterprise. But a few years later, the USDA came after them, claiming that their sheep might carry BSE, and told them to surrender their sheep. Because they had science on their side––no sheep had ever had BSE––the Faillaces fought back...with grim and dramatic consequences. Linda's book, Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family Farm , tells the story...well, most of it. The real reason for the USDA's attack on their farm was revealed a decade later, as she recounts in today's podcast. Still, Linda Faillace remains an optimist, and she and her husband have continued to make cheese and teach cheese making and culinary arts. She has a lot to say about the growing power of the ever-growing local food movement.

Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM-3), a native of Las Vegas, NM, deeply understands the challenges and strengths of rural people in northern New Mexico. She's been working to bring money to those whose property and livelihoods have been damaged by the recent wildfires and floods, and to build resilience––heathy soil and water practices––to provide more fire, flood, and drought resistance in the future. But getting federal money, and then distributing it to those who need it, is not an easy task. We discuss the needs, the daunting bureaucracies, and the short and longer term goals for restoring land and protecting communities.

Bees date back over 10,000 years on the American continent and are vital to the health of almost every bite of food we eat, but today they face threats from industrialization and habitat fragmentation. Melanie Kirby is a decades-long beekeeper, a scientist, a member of Tortugas Pueblo, and extension educator for the land-grant program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her diverse background gives a perspective on bees and pollinators that brings together Western and indigenous perspectives, and that can help everyone from farmers to urban gardeners play a role in the revitalization of this keystone species.

During Carol Ekarius's early years in Colorado, the Buffalo Creek Fire burned just under 12,000 acres — and at the time was considered a huge, catastrophic fire. Now fires in the west are consuming hundreds of thousands of acres, and doing inestimable damage to property, livelihoods, and ecosystems. A long-time farmer-rancher, Ekarius has been involved in fire management and mitigation and watershed restoration. She has written nine books for small-scale agrarians, and worked with organizations focused on watershed restoration and sustainable agriculture.Carol Ekarius has worked in both large- and small-scale farming, and has written many books for hobby farmers. She talks about the daunting challenges ahead—and gives us some reasons for hope.

We all know the term carbon "footprint." Well, Foodprint takes this idea and broadens it to apply to our food system; they explore how the foods we eat affect not only carbon emissions, but a whole range of things, like livestock and wildlife, soils and water, communities and human health. Foodprint is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation, and in today's episode we talk to its director Jerusha Klemperer, who is also producer and host of their podcast, "What You're Eating," and Urvashi Rangan, Chief Resident Scientist at GRACE and co-chair of Funders for Regenerative Agriculture.

Ryland Engelhart came from a family of vegans and vegetarians and knew early on that he wanted to devote his life to the health of the planet. Once he began to see that there is no food –– no life at all –– without the death of animals, he revised his perspective and at 35 ate his first hamburger. (It went well.) This perspective grew into a deeper understanding of the role of soil as the source of all life, and as the best answer to the question of how to reverse climate change, and he started the non-profit Kiss the Ground and set out to make a film by the same name. Seven years later, the film broke all records for movies about soil; seen by over six million people and translated into 26 languages, it has helped catalyze the regenerative agriculture movement.

Most of the American Midwest was once a vast savanna, an open grassland with abundant trees and wildlife. As the land was converted to agriculture many of the trees were lost, and with them went countless benefits to the landscape, to air and water, soil health, and wildlife. The practice of agroforestry allows farmers to return those benefits to their land –– and provides profit opportunities and increased carbon sequestration. We talk to Keefe Keeley, executive director of the Savanna Institute about how farmers can get started using trees to their advantage.

In New Mexico and across the West wildfires are burning through wildlands, farms, ranches, and communities. Lesli Allison, executive director of the Western Landowners Alliance, has many years of experience in prescribed burn management—and like many New Mexcians she's directly affected by the fires. She helps us to understand how we got to the volatile situation we're in, where "controlled" fires so easily go out of control, and the critical importance of prioritizing good land management if we want to keep our ecosystems and our communities safe and in balance.