Nicolette Hahn Niman never thought that she would have anything positive to say about animal agriculture. An environmental lawyer and a committed vegetarian who had seen the horrors of industrial livestock production up close, her life changed when she married a rancher and began to perceive the complexities of both animal and crop production. She's author of the book, Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat, and we talk about the new and updated edition of the book, in which she makes the case that well-raised livestock can be part of the climate solution--and that good meat can improve human health. 

Omar de Kok-Mercado Scientist with background in Agro-ecology, Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry, and he’s at Iowa State University working on a project that integrates prairie strips into row-crop agriculture. By working with farmers to plant strips of land—"prairie strips—with native prairie vegetation, he and his team are working to bring back healthy soil, wildlife, corridors, a healthy water cycle, and innumerable potential benefits to land that is currently being cultivated in ways that are not sustainable in the long run.

Beth Robinette is a fourth generation rancher in Eastern Washington State, where she and her family run a grassfed beef operation, the Lazy R Ranch, based on holistic management principles. She’s co-founder of LINC Foods (Local Inland Northwest Cooperative), a local food hub based in Spokane Washington; and she runs the New Cowgirl Camp, an intensive ranching retreat for women, and New Rancher Camp, which is for both men and women.

Lucille Contreras discovered her Lipan Apache roots as a young adult. After working in IT for many years, she founded the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project as a way of bringing together the Lipan diaspora, cultivating healthy land and food, rescuing the language, and honoring the co-existence of people and buffalo on their native lands.

Kristina Long is founder and CEO of Sea Forest, a kelp farming company in British Columbia, Canada. We talk about everything kelp--sustainable farming and harvesting, uses of kelp, the business model, and the community.

Mark Nelson is an environmental engineer, author, and farmer at Synergia Ranch, in Santa Fe, NM. He's co-author of the book, Life Under Glass : Crucial lessons in planetary stewardship from Biosphere 2, and he's in a new documentary about Biosphere 2, Spaceship Earth. Starrlight Augustine is a scientist manager of the organic farm at Synergia Ranch. We talk about the experience and lessons of Biosphere 2, and their methods of farming in New Mexico.

Rachael and James Stewart were both personal trainers in Phoenix, Arizona, eating a high-protein diet. When the pandemic hit, they decided to make some big changes. Stu (James) sold a classic car and they bought some land in southeastern Arizona, where they are in the first phase of starting a ranch for goats, sheep, and heritage poultry--Southwest Black Ranchers. Stu is African American, Rachael is Filipina-Mexican, and their children are loving their life outdoors and with the animals.

Deborah Madison put vegetarian gourmet cooking on the map—and yet she's not a vegetarian. She learned to cook at the San Francisco Zen Center and the restaurant Chez Panisse, and then co-founded Greens Restaurant in San Francisco in 1979. She’s a chef and is author of over a dozen books on food and cooking; her latest is a memoir called, An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables.  

Joe Maxwell is President of the Family Farm Action Alliance, formerly a state legislator Lieutenant Governor of Missouri, and is retired from the Army National Guard. He's also a family farmer, and has witnessed the shift from a functional capitalism to one that favors large monopolies at the expense of farmers, consumers, and the earth itself. He knows—from multiple perspectives—that consumer demand alone is not enough to make the shift toward a healthy food system. He lays out the problems—and some ways forward—as we look to a new presidential administration.