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Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin: The Next Frontier in Regenerative Agriculture & the Power of Stories Nov 05, 2018

Show notes

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, is not only responsible for the incredible regenerative agriculture system happening at Main Street Project and the recent recipient of a lifetime Ashoka Fellowship as a result of this work, he's also the author of In the Shadow of Green Man: My Journey from Poverty and Hunger to Food Security and Hope. The book weaves his own firsthand experience of growing up hearing traditional fables in revolution-torn Guatemala, and his story will delight and inform readers in equal measure.

Tune in to hear about…

How the character of Green Man manifested in Regi's own life
The role of poultry in regenerative agriculture and how Regi credits the chickens his family raised with the fact that he is not simply another child hunger statistic
The relationship between economic poverty, intellectual poverty and poor nutrition
How we could re-haul our entire food system with poultry!

Denise O'Brien: Amplifying Women's Voices in Communities, on Farms & in Legislature Oct 29, 2018

Show notes

Seasoned farmer, community volunteer, and founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, Denise O'Brien, talks about how she and her husband have experienced positive and negative shifts around the idea of organic food—and agriculture in general—over the last forty years. She also talks about what led her to be among the many women running for public office in her home state of Iowa, and across the country, in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections.

Tune in to hear about…

How Denise and her husband have created a "bio-diverse oasis in a sea of industrial agribusiness"
What prompted Denise to run for public office, and what the campaign trail has been like for her
How she thinks things might be different if women had more decision-making power over the land they farm (and what Denise is doing to make that happen)
How Denise turned her own frustration and despair into action—and you can too!

Dr. John Ikerd: An Economist's Take on Efficiency in Agriculture Oct 22, 2018

Show notes

Dr. John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agriculture and Applied Economics at the University of Missouri, talks about :

How the calorie count in our food is skyrocketing as the nutrient density plummets
How the loss of independent agriculture producers is NOT cyclical but rather a fundamental transformation of the system (and why you shouldn't believe anyone who tries to convince you otherwise)
How large operations are gaining market power and then overproducing—and the problems this creates
How we have sacrificed so many things in our food system by chasing a very narrow definition of efficiency
The Iowa Alliance for Responsible Agriculture
How we can put personal connection back in our food system

The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming Oct 15, 2018

Show notes

Vice President of Communication & Engagement at Project Drawdown, Dr. Katherine Wilkinson was lead writer for the New York Times bestseller Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Katherine didn't have time to go into each of the 100 strategies for addressing, adapting to and mitigating climate change that are in this book,but she does touch on some big ones: reducing food waste, plant-rich diets, educating girls and family planning, to name just a few!

Tune in to hear about…

Why Katherine chooses to steer clear of the terms 'hope' and 'optimism' in regard to climate change (this doesn't mean she's resigned to the end of our planet though, not by a long shot!)
How many of the solutions identified by Project Drawdown can be undertaken by anyone anywhere in the world
How gender equality is, in itself, a solution to climate change

The Case FOR Playing with Your Food Oct 08, 2018

Show notes

Creative food event planner and award-winning writer and multimedia producer, Lola Milholland, talks about starting her Portland-based organic ramen noodle company Umi Organic and the importance of being playful with food. From 'experimental ice cream socials' to 'noodle luges' Lola is turning the American bad habit of rushing through meals on its head with creativity, ingenuity and—of course—the spoils from her CSA box.

Tune in to hear about…

Exactly how Lola and Rootstock Radio host Theresa Marquez know each other. Let's just say they go waaaaaaay back…
Food adventures like 'melon milk ice cream' and 'blind tasting bingo'
How to get millennials to cook!
What the heck a 'noodle luge' is and what inspired this crazy-awesome idea
Deepening local cuisine even as more extraordinary ingredients show up on grocery store shelves

Rebuilding Food Sovereignty on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Oct 01, 2018

Show notes

On this episode…

Nick Hernandez, director of the Food Sovereignty Initiative and member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, shares his personal definition of food sovereignty and how it can be as simple as returning to the way that Native people lived, pre-colonialism. In many cases, this fancy term "food sovereignty" is just, as Nick puts it "what we did."

Tune in to hear about…

The incredible changes the Thunder Valley Community Development Corp. has made in its 10 years of development work
How they are empowering Lakota youth to be involved in the food that comes to their plates.
How the Food Sovereignty Initiative is using chickens to regenerate both a food system and its soil (and why Nick and his colleagues fondly call them "Buffalo Chickens"!)
The way health disparities can be traced back to the astounding percentage of food that is shipped to, rather than grown on, the Reservation

LaRayia Gaston on Feeding the Homeless: Mind, Body & Spirit Sep 24, 2018

Show notes

On this episode…

LaRayia Gaston talks about how her life has been shaped by her passion for feeding the homeless community, and how Lunch On Me is about much more than simply food. She shares how practices recently embraced by wealthy and privileged demographics, like meditation and yoga, are incredibly beneficial for everyone—especially disadvantaged populations.

Tune in to hear about…

How Lunch On Me grew to be the powerful change-agent it is today
Why LaRayia feels so strongly about cooking and sharing organic meals with the homeless
The three women who inspire LaRayia every day
The thing that she believes is "vital to human beings to exist, to coexist, and to heal collectively." You might be surprised!

Author Kristin Ohlson & How the Soil Will Save Us Sep 17, 2018

Show notes

On this episode...

Kristin talks about what got her interested in soil in the first place, and she details her journey from knowing very little about the relationship between carbon, plants, microorganisms and soil, to writing an entire book about it. Even armed with all of this knowledge, Kristin says she continues to be amazed by the way nature is so flawlessly designed to keep its ecosystems thriving--if only we would let it.

Tune in to hear about

How farmers are really "citizen scientists"
"Carbon farming"
How plants leak what Kristin calls "carbon fuel" to one another and what that does for the soil around them
How many billion tons of carbon scientists estimate is released from the soil due to human activity (brace yourselves…)

Farm Labor Rights and "Ecofeminism" with Rosalinda Guillen Aug 27, 2018

Show notes

Rosalinda Guillen is a widely recognized rural justice leader and a champion of farmworker rights. Born in Texas, Rosalinda spent her first decade in Coahuila, Mexico before emigrating with her family to LaConner, Washington in 1960. At the age of ten she went to work as a farmworker in the fields in Skagit County. Today, Rosalinda is the executive director of Community to Community, an organization that works to, broadly, redefine power in order to end settler colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Within the labor movement Rosalinda has worked with Caesar Chavez's United Farm Workers of America and has represented farmworkers in ongoing dialogues of immigration issues, labor rights, trade agreements, and strengthening the food sovereignty movement.

"We have no choice but to take action," says Rosalinda on this episode as she discusses organizing, participatory democracy, and embracing what she and her colleagues call "ecofeminism" which she explains is about empowering the feminine in our society—both people and mother nature herself. Rosalinda also talks about some of her proudest victories as an activist and organizer, and what she'd like to accomplish next.

Hippies, Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs & Revolutionaries Aug 20, 2018

Show notes

Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco-based writer who's made food the subject of his career. For eleven years he reviewed restaurants in the Bay Area and Seattle as the staff critic for the East Bay Express and the Seattle Weekly. In 2015, he joined the food section at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he broadly covers the intersection of food and culture. Add to those accolades his 2018 book, titled Hippie Food, How back-to-the-landers, longhairs and revolutionaries changed the way we eat, has been described as "an entertaining fusion of Tom Wolfe and Michael Pollan" and examines the way the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s has profoundly affected the way we eat today.

In this episode Jonathan talks about how his upbringing contributed to his interest in the food of the counterculture movement. Raised in a liberal Mennonite family he was no stranger to tofu and brown rice. However, it wasn't until he began to do research for his book, that he realized the depth and breadth of the history of these foods, and how the people who popularized them laid foundations for today's trendy grain bowls and tofu stir fries.

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