Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast

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 wildlife, whi...

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—as well as less ...

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...

Zachariah Ben is a sixth-generation farmer from Shiprock, New Mexico. He and his family founded Bidii Baby Foods. Using traditional Navajo food traditions, they provide healthy, nutritious, and locally-grown food to Navajo people, many of whom are living in food deserts. And, through entrepreneurship and traditional farming, they seek to heal generational trauma by fostering not only physical health but also spiritual connection to...

Gilles Stockton is author of the new book, Feeding a Divided America: Reflections of a Western Rancher in the Era of Climate Change, published by University of New Mexico Press. A third generation cattle rancher, he raises beef cattle and sheep on a 5000-acre ranch in Grass Range, Montana. He’s also an international agriculture development specialist and an advocate for ranching and farming communities. The new book imparts a lifet...

Bryan Hummel is a big-time water nerd. Specializing in nature-based solutions to watershed and land management issues, he has brought his expertise to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Air Force, industry, and agriculture. The key to preventing flooding, he says, is to restore degraded land so that the soil becomes like a sponge, absorbing water and recharging subterranean aquifers––and in the process preventing floodi...

Doctor and professor of public health Wendy Johnson saw in her medical practice people who thrived against all odds, and those who suffered grave challenges due to environmental factors like toxicity, poverty, stress, loneliness, and isolation. Her new book, Kinship Medicine, explores the reality that 80% of our health is determined by factors outside of us—which are largely ignored by our industrialized medical system. What's miss...

Orion Kriegman and his friends started clearing a trashed vacant lot in Boston to create green space and grow food. City hall was not on their side at first, but with persistence and community effort they were able to secure that lot as permanent green space—and so The Boston Food Forest Coalition was born. A dozen more urban lots were acquired and put into Community Land Trust by the coalition, but the stewardship and management o...

Montana rancher Amber Smith didn't grow up in agriculture, but ranching became her life's work.
As a young adult Kristen Kipp left the family ranch in the Blackfeet but felt a deep longing to go back to her home and the work of raising livestock.
Amber is the executive director of Women in Ranching, which was first a part of the Western Landowners Alliance and then later became an independent non-profit, and Kristen is a board memb...

The Transition Movement is a worldwide network of people working locally to move away from fossil fuel-base infrastructure toward locally-based systems. Projects include community-owned renewable energy utilities, local food security projects and farmers markets, local currencies, conversions of lawns into edible landscapes, waste reduction, ecosystem restoration, social entrepreneurship—all things that cultivate resilient and heal...

Eileen Napier and Stan Hayes of Ramstead Ranch teamed up around their common interests in organic gardening, permaculture, and healthy living. They started on two acres and sold eggs on the honor system, and then the project grew––they bought ranch land in the Pend Oreille Valley, in the northeastern corner of Washington State and soon expanded to 240 acres. Brining in business skills from their own experiences outside of agricultu...

Paul Rice started out as an anti-capitalist labor organizer, working with coffee farmers in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Over time he saw that what growers needed most was a fair price for their product––and so began his work as a Fair Trade advocate. He returned to the US to study business, and founded Fair Trade USA, where he was CEO for 26 years. Winner of many awards for social and ethical innovation, he’s author of the new book, Ev...

Since the new administration took office, programs benefitting farmers have been slashed, frozen, paused, and canceled––and the effect is leaving agrarians in a tough position. Carolina Mueller, Associate Coalition Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, and Leah Ricci, Interim Executive Director of Quivira Coalition join us on today's podcast to talk about what they're hearing from folks on the ground, what resources are...

Minni Jain and Philip Franses are co-founders of The Flow Partnership, and they are co-authors of the new book, The Language of Water: Ancient Techniques and Community Stories for a Water Secure Future. In this podcast they explore the process of helping communities around the world to restore streams and rivers, prevent flooding, and recover local water wisdom.
For decades they have been working to help communities regenerate thei...

Since the 1930s, Ducks Unlimited has been protecting habitat for ducks and other migrating waterfowl, and has conserved over 18 million acres of wetlands and bird habitat in North America and beyond. Founded by hunters, the organization originally focused on duck breeding habitat in Canadian prairie lands. Over the decades their conservation work expanded to including the US, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America, and embraces b...

Adam Mason is Senior Manager of Farm Animal Welfare and Environmental Policy at the ASPCA, the American Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In our conversation he talks about their multi-pronged approach to getting animals out of buildings and into cruelty-free lives in which they can express their natural instincts and behaviors. Farmers who make the transition from industrial/conventional livestock practices to anima...

Entomologist, agroecologist, farmer, rancher, and beekeeper Dr. Jonathan Lundgren was a scientist with USDA Agricultural Research Service for 11 years. He left to undertake regenerative agriculture science studies that embraced a larger paradigm, looking at the interconnection of all the living beings on the farm and in the community, from the soil microbiome to the insects to the plants and animals — and the farmers. He's founder ...

Virtual fencing is a new technology that employs GPS collars to keep animals in "virtual" pastures—so instead of using physical fences, the fence lines are drawn on a computer screen, and the collars direct the animals' movements through sound cues and mild electrical stimulation. This saves ranchers on labor and materials, allows more adaptive and flexible pasture management, and allows free range for wildlife.
The Nature Conserva...