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
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...
Dr. Caitlin Youngquist started out wanting to be a veterinarian, but then discovered soil science and was so taken by it that she got a PhD, and has devoted her career to serving farmers, ranchers, and rural communities. A practitioner and promoter of regenerative agriculture, she has worked with Conservation Districts, non-profit orgs, Extension, and her own small business, Dirt Works Wyoming, a company that provides compost state...
Montana filmmaker Daniel Glick decided to make a film about bison just because he loved the animals and wanted to be around them. He teamed up with Blackfeet filmmakers Ivan and Ivy MacDonald to co-direct the documentary, Bring them Home, narrated by Lily Gladstone. The film explores the history of bison on the North American continent and the Blackfeet nation in particular; the parallel genocides of native people and the anim...
Xochitl Torres Small grew up in Las Cruces, NM, and started her career as an attorney who has working in water and natural resources law. She served as U.S. Representative for New Mexico's 2nd congressional district (2019-20); she was Under Secretary for Rural Development (2021-23); and she served as United States deputy secretary of agriculture (2023-25). She brings her wide-ra...
In today's podcast, we talk to Jennifer Sahn, editor of High Country News, and writers Rick Bass and Laureli Ivanoff, about HCN's September issue, a collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN). The issue covers a wide range of topics on Food and Power in the American West.
TIMELINE
1'57 High Country News and FERN collaboration on "Food and Power in the West" issue
3'17 stories in the is...
Philip Connors grew up on a farm in Minnesota, studied journalism, and got a job at the Wall Street Journal. But after the September 11 attacks and the death of his brother, he left New York behind and took a job as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Following in the footsteps of other fire lookout writers, poets, and philosophers, like Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and Jack Loeffler, he wrote his first book, Fi...
In 1996, media mogul Ted Turner bought a New Mexico ranch that's bigger than many national parks. A new film, Preserved, details its history, conservation projects, and influence. Previously owned by Pennzoil, the ranch was badly degraded from overgrazing, forest clearcutting, coal mines, fossil fuel extraction, railroads, and a long-term lack of environmental stewardship. Turner's goal was to restore the land and its wil...
Quinn Mendelson is Conservation Program Director of Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, a nonprofit that trains young adults to do conservation work in the "outdoor classroom" of New Mexico's landscapes. Not only do they learn skills like trail building, watershed restoration, and wildfire mitigation, but they also receive training that helps them to get jobs—a...
What is "good meat"? Michele Thorne has a lot to say on the subject. She is executive director of The Good Meat Project, a non-profit whose mission is to foster a healthy and humane meat system that centers local production instead of industrial monopolies that damage ecosystems and consolidate wealth. With the core value of transparency, they offer free services to butchers, ranchers, eaters, and chefs, and produce journals and th...
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