Feed: a food systems podcast

We continue featuring the Meat: the four futures series with our first exploration of four different futures for meat - Efficient meat 2.0.--Today we farm and eat meat at a scale not matched in human history. We raise 80 billion animals a year for food at a really low cost to the consumer.  Here we look at how technology, research, and innovation have made animal agriculture much more efficient. Do you see efficiency improvements in animal agriculture as essential for feeding a growing population?  Or do you think we should eat less meat, switch to plant-forward diets or create competitive meat alternatives?We speak with agriculture economists, pig farmers, poultry geneticists, and others who make the best case for an efficient meat future.--Visit the episode page with more resources: https://tabledebates.org/meat/episode3Project webpage: https://tabledebates.org/meatTake the values-based quiz: https://tabledebates.org/meat/quizMusic by Blue dot Sessions and Epidemic sound.

Today we are presenting the second episode in the Meat: the four futures series.What are your first thoughts when you see a piece of steak on a plate or a big pot of chicken soup - healthy meal? piece of animal flesh? comfort food? In this episode we explore how our values, ethics and where we live impacts our relationship with meat and livestock.We dig into the history of the diet  humans evolved to eat, visit Burkina Faso and India to hear two different solutions to meet the surging demand for meat across the global South, and talk about the ethics of eating animals in the West, where we’re often distant and detached from where meat comes from.---Visit the episode page with more resources: https://tabledebates.org/meat/episode2Project webpage: https://tabledebates.org/meatTake the values-based quiz: https://tabledebates.org/meat/quizSubscribe to the newsletter: https://tabledebates.org/meat/newsletterAdd your voice to the podcast: https://tabledebates.org/meat/contributeMusic by Blue dot Sessions and Epidemic sound.

Here we present the first episode of a podcast that Feed co-host Matthew Kessler has been creating with TABLE and the SLU Future Food over the last year: Meat the four futuresFood has this incredible ability to bring people together. But it can also divide us. And how can it not? The same foods that some find so nutritious, that give us such a strong sense of who we are - are also believed by others to be at the center of so many existential concerns - global malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality. Meat sits at the center of this controversy. But is it the problem or the solution? Well, that’s complicated. Meat: The Four Futures aims to bring us together on a journey where we can examine our past and our future, our decisions and the science that informs them.The Meat the four futures podcast will explore four competing visions for meat and livestock: 1) Efficient meat 2.0, 2) Alternative "meat", 3) Less meat, and 4) Plant-based no meat. In this episode we set up the series and unpack the promises and pitfalls with each future.--Visit the episode page with more resources: https://tabledebates.org/meat/episode1Project webpage: https://tabledebates.org/meatTake the values-based quiz: https://tabledebates.org/meat/quizSubscribe to the newsletter: https://tabledebates.org/meat/newsletterAdd your voice to the podcast: https://tabledebates.org/meat/contributeMusic by Blue dot Sessions and Epidemic sound.

For our last episode of the second season of Feed, we speak with TABLE director Tara Garnett of the University of Oxford, and TABLE strategic director Sigrid Wertheim-Heck of Wageningen University to reflect on our past 15 episodes. We talk about what surprised us, what we learned, and what we missed across the season. Our wide ranging conversation covered the power of language, the power of imagination, the power of narratives, non-human power and more.If you have any comments, questions or suggestions for the show, you can write us at podcast@tabledebates.org and don’t forget to rate and review us wherever you listen.For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode39

As this season on power in the food system comes to a close, we wanted to focus on how food is consumed in institutions - places where people typically have less agency over their own food choices. In this episode we’re focusing on food in prisons in the United Kingdom and Denmark. We're joined by Lucy Vincent, Chief Executive and Founder of the charity Food Behind Bars in the UK, and Linda Kjær Minke, a criminology professor at the University of Southern Denmark who researches food dynamics in Danish prisons. We discuss how food in prisons is procured, prepared and eaten, and how these two systems of prison food can lead to very different results for the incarcerated, for those working in prisons and – potentially – for society as a whole.For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode38

Why does agricultural research often fall short of addressing food insecurity challenges in sub-Saharan Africa? In this conversation with Ken Giller, we explore this wicked problem from a systems perspective examining the diverse drivers and experiences of smallholder farmers and the socio-ecological systems in which they are embedded.Ken provides a nuanced look at agroecological solutions and argues that relying solely on nature-based solutions would be inadequate to address food security problems in Africa. We also talk about the huge diversity of farmers that can be found under the banner of smallholders, an in-depth examination of the “yield gap,” and what gets lost when translating research into practice.For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode1-rebroadcast

What is the corporate food regime? And are we still living in it? We put these questions to our guest Phliip McMichael, emeritus professor at Cornell University who, alongside Harriet Friedman, coined the term Food Regime in 1989. In our conversation we talk about how a historical sociologist thinks about power, what voices were included and excluded in the dialogues leading up to the UN Food Systems Summit, and we flesh out Philip’s view of what a more relocalized food system would look like.For more info and transcript, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode37

Jason Clay is the Executive Director of the Markets Institute at World Wildlife Fund. He comes with decades of unique experiences and a big picture view of global food systems. In our conversation we ask him how power needs to be shifted to transform the food system, what the future looks like for small farmers, and whether we should be intensifying agriculture and sparing land or extensifying agricultural production and sharing land with nature. Jason Clay also shares ideas around how to increase transparency for consumers, improve farmers livelihoods, and urgently scale up systems level solutions.For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode36Subscribe to Markets Institute newsletter Rethink Food to stay updated on weekly trends in global food systems

Sofia Wilhelmmson recently completed her PhD from  in 2022 from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in the department of Animal Environment and Health. She researches a particular and especially stressful time for farmed pigs: the loading and transport of pigs on their way to slaughter.  She not only considers the welfare of the animals, but also the well-being of the pig transport drivers.  In our conversation we chat about the relationships that humans have with animals - both wild and domesticated; what food systems actors have the most power in the pig production system; and whether we can add incentives for animal welfare and human well-being in our food systems.For more info and transcript, please visit our website: https://www.tabledebates.org/podcast/episode35

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the founder and director the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. He moved to the US from Guatemala in the 1990s. In our conversation we talk about the power of movements, why small-scale farmers in the United States are rarely successful, and the difference between ‘feeding’ the indigenous mindset versus the colonizer mindset. For more info and transcript, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode34