Real Organic Podcast

Real Organic Podcast

Farmers interview scientists, activists, politicians, and authors engaged in protecting USDA organic food against an active corporate takeover. Real Organic Project released its add-on food label in stores and markets in 2021, and is focused on introducing eaters across the United States to our movement and its allies. In this podcast series, you'll meet the best organic and regenerative farmers around, as well as journalists, climate experts, policy makers and chefs (Dr. Vandana Shiva, Paul Hawken, Leah Penniman, Bill Mckibben, Alice Waters, Dan Barber, and Eliot Coleman - to name a few!) who support our mission and have lent their voices and insights to explaining the importance of keeping corporate cheaters out of the real food movement. As bad players aim to redefine what food is for the sake of their own profits, we believe there is too much at stake for both human and planetary health today and into the future. Feed the soil, not the plant!!

Episodes

June 2, 2026 87 mins
Zephyr Teachout uses the question of organic integrity to explore a larger political problem: what happens when concentrated private power reshapes public rules while staying mostly within the law? Starting with the pressure on Real Organic to join forces with industrial organic against Bayer and Syngenta, she and Dave unpack corruption, anti-monopoly politics, regenerative agriculture, decentralization, and why any movement that g...
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278: Austin Frerick takes the stage at our annual Churchtown Dairy event to explain why today’s food economy looks less like a functioning market that benefits farmers and eaters, and more like a new Gilded Age. He traces how a handful of Big Food "barons" have consolidated power over grain, meat, dairy, coffee, and distribution, often using tactics that average humans would just never consider. He then lays out a practical reform ...
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#277: Lindsey Lusher Shute returns to connect the dots between young farmer organizing, land access, and the practical tools farms need to survive. She shares how Hearty Roots Community Farm helped shape her policy work, why she left the National Young Farmers Coalition to focus on GrownBy, and how a cooperative approach to technology can support CSA sales, wholesale orders, farmers market transactions, and nutrition benefit access...
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This week we’re sharing a special episode from our friends at the Safe to Drink podcast, produced by the Pulitzer Prize-finalist team behind Bear Brook and The 13th Step at New Hampshire Public Radio. Safe to Drink investigates one of the largest PFAS contamination events in New Hampshire’s history. Hosted by NHPR climate reporter Mara Hoplamazian, the series follows a community grappling with “forever chemicals” in its drinking w...
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#276: Mara Hoplamazian joins the Real Organic Podcast to talk about PFAS contamination, poisoned wells, citizen activism, and the long struggle to make drinking water safer in New Hampshire and beyond. Their reporting on the NHPR series Safe to Drink follows the communities, workers, regulators, and advocates caught in a crisis shaped by corporate secrecy and years of delayed action. After this Tuesday release, listeners can stay w...
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#275: Marion Nestle takes the Churchtown stage to examine what the Make America Healthy Again movement is actually doing, and not doing, inside the American food system. She looks at food dyes, the GRAS loophole, SNAP restrictions, ultra-processed foods, pesticide politics, dietary guidelines, and the competing pressures of Big Food, Big Ag, and Washington lobbyists, arguing that the rhetoric around reform has been striking while t...
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#274: Hugh Kent returns to further the case that there is a growing divide in agriculture between industrial, chemical-intesnive practices and the organic approach of working with nature. He connects living soil, on-farm biodiversity, natural pest control, blueberry flavor and shelf life, hydroponic confusion, and the economic case for selling directly to people who still want food grown in a genuinely biological system.  https://r...
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#273: Suzanne Simard joins Linley to discuss her new book, When the Forest Breathes, and the science that has made her one of the most influential voices in forest ecology. Together they explore mycorrhizae, soil life, clear-cutting, herbicides, climate adaptation, and the difference between forests managed for short-term extraction (industry) and forests managed for long-term resilience (indigenous populations). The result is a wi...
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#272: Dr. Ann López discusses the California farmworker reality tours she's designed and the deeper story they reveal about modern agriculture. As founder and executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, López has worked to expose the difficult circumstances farmworker families face while helping the public understand the binational systems that drive migration, poverty, and invisibility in the fields. This episode off...
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#271: Jim Cochran joins us to talk about a lifetime of growing organic strawberries in California and the movement that helped make that work possible. A pioneer of organic berry production, Cochran reflects on early side-by-side comparisons with conventional farming, the importance of flavor and customer trust, and the economic pressures facing real organic growers today. The conversation also explores farm labor, land access, wat...
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#270: Omar Dieguez shares the story behind his 30 day hunger strike over Driscoll’s berries and the campaign to stop pesticides near schools in Watsonville, CA and the Pajaro Valley. From spray drift and youth organizing to farmworker exposure, Omar explains why he believes a handful of fields near local schools should be converted to organic. This is a unforgettable conversation about berries, power, and the communities asked to b...
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#269:  Recorded live at Real Organic Project’s Churchtown event, this Farmer Friday talk features JM Fortier in front of an audience of working farmers, sharing the systems and economics behind one of the best-known small-scale market gardens in North America. He discusses permanent raised beds, human-scale tools, greenhouse production, irrigation, labor, compost, and why pricing vegetables correctly is one of the most important pa...
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#268: Bill McKibben discusses his new book, Here Comes the Sun, and the rapid rise of clean energy in a warming world. While much of the climate conversation focuses on damage and delay, McKibben argues that solar and wind have quietly become the cheapest energy sources on Earth, creating a real opening for change. Bill also mentions the promising field of solar power for farmers, including agrivoltaics, the land between rows of so...
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#267: What does it take to bring truly pasture-raised organic beef to market when the processing system is stacked against small and mid-sized farms? Jason and Kristina Walker of StarWalker Organic Farm join Linley to talk about raising cattle on pasture - and how they purchased their own USDA certified processing facility in northern California  - turning a supply-chain problem into a model that could help other farmers scale regi...
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#266: Three farmer-owners of Brisa Ranch lay out a practical answer to a big question: how can small farms survive in a marketplace built for consolidated buyers and consolidated distribution? Their approach is to become “small farms as distributors” by pairing production with aggregation, cold storage, sales, and last-mile delivery through the Coastside Local Food Hub in Pescadero, California. A Real Organic Project certified farm...
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#265: Maria Rodale comes from one of the most influential families in American organic history; here she shares how her grandfather J.I. Rodale connected human health to the way food is grown and helped popularize organic through publishing. She also traces the practical takeaways behind (her dad Bob) Rodale's organic farming trials, launched in 1980, to test organic side by side with conventional systems as rigorously as possible....
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#264: What if some of the worst biodiversity loss and land degradation is happening inside protected national parks, even where there is no farming, mining, or fossil fuel extraction? Allan Savory, author of the new book "Unsavory: African Stories of Wildlife, War, and the Birth of Holistic Management," explains how we can use livestock to reverse desertification in these areas. He also makes the case for convincing governments and...
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February 15, 2026 58 mins
#263: Barbara Damrosch's new book A Life In The Garden is a reminder that the best garden advice is practical: touch the soil, grow what you’ll eat, and keep learning season after season. Barbara shares stories with Dave from her lifetime of writing, filming a television show and farming alongside her husband Eliot Coleman. https://realorganicproject.org/barbara-damrosch-a-life-in-the-garden The Real Organic Podcast is hosted by Da...
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February 8, 2026 109 mins
#262: Sally Fox explains why growing organic cotton can't be simplified to “skip pesticides.” She lays out the hard parts people rarely price in: weeds, labor, fertility, and what happens after the bale leaves the field. She also argues the sustainability story got narrowed to farming, while dye waste, processing impacts, and worker issues were pushed offstage. https://realorganicproject.org/sally-fox-organic-cotton-chemical-dyes T...
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#261: Organic Insider founder Max Goldberg unpacks the most urgent threats facing organic integrity today: the explosive growth of hydroponic “organic,”  the quiet industry push to normalize gene-edited GMO 2.0, and the confusion and greenwashing surrounding the word "regenerative." Max also shares his thoughts on pesticide liability shields and the food-as-medicine movement, as well as why organic advocates need to shift their foc...
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