Money where your mouth is: Investing in a healthy food system
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.
More Episodes
Episode 95 – The deep history of apples
Orchardist Gordon Tooley knows apple trees–and has been cultivating rare and heirloom varieties for three decades. But for him it’s as much about the landscape and lifestyle as about the product. We talk about living slowly, observing closely, and promoting healthy land, water, wildlife, and human communities.
Episode 94 – Pests, pathogens, and porcupines: thwarting the marauding hordes in an apple orchard
New England is lush and green—and all kinds of creatures want to eat a farmer’s crops. Apple grower and cider maker Steve Wood talks about Integrated Pest Management and its challenges.
Episode 93 – Rockweed: underwater forest or industrial commodity?
Seaweed has always been used for food, fertilizer, and medicine. But now, off the coast of Maine, over-harvesting threatens rockweed and the many species that depend on it.
Episode 92 – Designing systems that improve as they age
Jesse Smith‘s work aims for the opposite of planned obsolescence—the goals at Jalama Canyon Ranch are resilience and perennial productivity, through restoration of ecosystems and a truly regenerative vision of agriculture.
Episode 91 – Into the Pasture: Grassfed Goes Mainstream
Getting certified for grassfed meat can be challenging–but the American Grassfed Association supports producers in regenerative practices that are good for the earth, the farmer, and the eater.
Episode 91 – Busting myths about beef
Nicolette Hahn Niman was an environmental lawyer and vegetarian when she married a rancher—so she has a unique and broad-based perspective on agriculture. We discuss the new edition of her book, Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat.
Episode 90 – Transforming the American Prairie, one strip at a time
Native Americans used fire and other methods to cultivate food on the prairie. In the 20th century it was plowed under for endless rows of monocrops. Omar de Kok-Mercado is part of a team that is working to make prairie land ecologically–and economically–sustainable.
Episode 89 – Welcome to Cowgirl Camp!
Beth Robinette grew up on a ranch but didn’t expect to stay there. But then she got so interested in food system and regenerative practices that now she’s ranching, developing new business models, and teaching the ropes to the next generation of ranchers.
Episode 88 – Lipan Apache: Bringing back the buffalo in Texas
Lucille Contreras calls buffalo her relatives. She’s a Lipan Apache and founder of the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, which brings together food, culture, and language around this animal to reestablish its homeland.
Episode 87 – Regenerative production of…seaweed
Kristina Long is a ship captain and an artisanal kelp farmer in British Columbia. We talk about kelp ecosystems, food, and keeping sustainable practices in a growing market.
Episode 86 – Living and farming inside a closed system—for two years
Mark Nelson and Starrlight Augustine talk about the lessons learned from the ambitious experiment of 30 years ago, in which eight people lived in a sealed space and grew all their own food–recycling water, air, and waste.
Episode 85 – Starting a ranch–from the ground up
Rachael and James Stewart saw a lack of Black and Brown farmers and ranchers–and an opportunity to serve communities with unusual meat products. So they sold a classic car and started a ranch.
Episode 85 – Acclaimed chef Deborah Madison on her new food memoir
Author of fourteen books on food and pioneer in vegetarian cooking, she talks about her new memoir, An Onion in my Pocket, and her adventures during fifty years as a chef.
Episode 84 – Shifting our food system to benefit farmers and eaters–not corporate monopolies
Joe Maxwell is a farmer and policy leader, and he knows that consumer demand is not enough to make the shift toward a healthy food system. He lays out the problems–and some ways forward.
Episode 83 – From Journalist to Butcher: Camas Davis and the Good Meat Movement
Camas Davis had what she calls an “early onset midlife crisis” when she was around 30–and it led her to study butchering in France. But when she came home she found that the market for good, local meat needed to be cultivated.
Episode 82 – Deep resilience: healing through herbal medicine, farming, and ancestral memory
Jovan Sage carries on traditions passed down from African and Indigenous ancestors, and is a healer on many levels–herbalist, “food alchemist,” farmer, chef, and community organizer.