Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Down to Earth is a podcast about regenerative agriculture, and it's for everyone who eats. We invite you to meet the people shaping a healthier food system—farmers, ranchers, scientists, land managers, writers, and many others. Designing a future that draws on both tradition and innovation, they're on a mission to change the paradigm so that the food we eat is healthy and long-term sustainable—for families and growers, for wildlife and water, for climate and planet. downtoearthradio.com
Episodes
Sarah Jones didn't start out as a farmer, but when she married into a 4th generation farming family in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, Jones Farms Organics, she went all in. She recently co-founded the Rye Resurgence Project when she saw that rye, traditionally a cover crop, could be a profitable cash crop. Rye uses far less water than other crops being grown in the valley, and because it covers the ground in the winter, it protec...
Frances Whitehead is an award-winning transdisciplinary environmental artist who integrates art with plants, soil, food, and agricultural sustainability. Having spent much of her career in cities of the Great Lakes Basin, she moved to New Mexico five years ago because she wanted to live in a dry climate and work on what she calls "arid reworlding" — which is all about responding to climate change by building a healthy future ...
Karl Thidemann is co-founder of Soil4Climate, a non-profit that advocates for regenerative agriculture, with a focus on grazing and the restoration of grasslands. In this podcast he makes the case, supported by extensive scientific research, that the restoration of grasslands can provide a multi win-win––for the climate, biodiversity, soil health, good nutrition, farmer profitability, the water cycle, rural communities,...
Gary Paul Nabhan is an agricultural ecologist, ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author of thirty-four books who has devoted his life to understanding the relationships among species in ecosystems and between human beings and their environments. His work spans regenerative agriculture, habitat conservation, indigenous communities, and so much more. In addition to his work in science, for which he has won many a...
Roxanne Swentzell was a young mother on a small piece of land at Santa Clara Pueblo when she was introduced to permaculture design principles––which dovetailed with indigenous patters of thinking and land use. She turned her yard from hard, sun-scorched earth into an agroforest that provides food, wood, fiber and habitat. She founded the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, which focuses on teaching principles and pra...
At last year's Regenerate conference, I attended a session about climate emotion, led by Addie Candib of American Farmland Trust, in which participants were asked two questions:
What is one thing you have lost to climate change? and
What helps you build resilience in yourself/your land/your world?
The answers were profound and fascinating. So I decided to ask some of the participants in that session to speak with ...
In today's podcast we bring you an episode of the podcast Landed, from our friends at American Farmland Trust. It's called "We Need A Plan," and it's all about the issue of succession—addressing the question of what happens to our food-producing lands when the people who've been working them retire or pass on.
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.
Today we're sharing a conversation from the Down to Earth archive. We talk to Kevin Watt, who at the time was strategic advisor at TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, California, about the the practice and benefits of regenerative agriculture, how to incentivize it, and the dire long-term consequences of the degenerative practices of industrial agriculture—and the evolution toward new ways of thinking about productivity, healthy food,...
Anthropologist Ashanté Reese's new book explores Black community gatherings—and the nourishment, fellowship, and strength they cultivate. Reese is an anthropologist, author, and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches and writes about food studies and food justice. Her new book is called: Gather: Black Food, Nourishment, and the Art of Togetherness. R...
Mimi Casteel grew up on a vineyard in northwestern Oregon, where her family made wine as much for the passion as for the livelihood. She left home to study forestry and worked as a botanist for the forest service, but the pull of agriculture brought her back to the family farm, where she introduced regenerative practices and eventually started her own vineyard, Hope Well Wine.
For Casteel, the practice of wine-making begi...
Six college students are bicycling from Washington State to Washington, DC, stopping at farms, restaurants, truck stops, and classrooms along the way, and asking, "What is the future of food?" In this podcast we talk two of them, Augusta Halle and Molly Moore. Their plans are to make a portrait series and short documentary based on what they find.
Anthropologist Andrew Flachs's new book explores the food system through the lens of values like soil health, human health, biodiversity, and rural communities—not just profits and yields.
In his new book, Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields, he shows how we could, by expanding our accounting to include people and the biosphere, have a thriving food system that actua...
Nate Chisholm is in a lifelong exploration of the savanna ecosystem—the landscape in which the first human societies evolved, and some of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Savannas are where we learned to hunt and gather. Ironically, as human beings developed technology, starting with stone tools, we altered these landscapes by over-hunting large animals, leading to degradation of the land and eventually the loss of m...
Mary-Charlotte has bronchitis, so this week we will be joined by Kristina Britt, the new podcast host of Regeneration Rising, as she interviews Taylor Muglia, the former host and previous New Agrarian Program manager. (Regeneration Rising is the other Quivira Coalition podcast; you can find it here, or wherever you get your podcasts.) In this heartfelt episode, Taylor shares her unique journey into regenerative agriculture, her exp...
Trevor Warmedahl's new book, Cheese Trekking: How Microbes, Landscapes, Livestock, and Human Cultures Shape Terroir, documents natural cheesemaking practices in traditional communities. Warmedahl is a cheesemaker, educator, and founder of the Sour Milk School, where he teaches natural methods of milk fermentation suitable for the home, farm, restaurant, or commercial operation.
The book recounts his travels to Mongol...
Steve Glass is board chair of Ciudad Soil and Water Conservation District, which is hosting the annual Land and Water Summit: March 4-6 of this year at the at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Albuquerque, New Mexico. This year's theme is "Reciprocity with Nature," and it's all about turning even the most arid cities into oases of stewardship where every drop that falls from the sky is used for to nourish the soil, wildlife, and pe...
Charlie Shultz is back on Down to Earth to update us on the thriving greenhouse programs in Santa Fe—and the explosion of interest around the world. He teaches aquaponics and hydroponics at Santa Fe Community College, and is helping people around the world not only to learn to do indoor agriculture, but also to run successful businesses.
Joe Heinrich comes from a multi-generation Iowa farming family. As executive director of the non-profit Farm-to-Power, he's helping farmers to navigate the new world of renewable energy. Solar and wind developers are looking for land, which farmers have; farmers are looking for extra income steams, which energy can provide.
But what happens to land with utility-scale energy installations? Some farmers are making sure that the p...
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