Week Five
Information pollution
What can education do?
David Bronner, Cosmic Engagement Officer at Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, has been a longtime activist in the fight to label GMOs in our food system. He continues to call out the chemical companies that stand to profit from the sales of the biocides that must accompany their GM crops.
Ep 70: Verifying Organic Supply Chains
Watch from 34:34 to 35:46
Food systems author Michael Pollan shares a simple example of how little we dig into the information presented to us. If we see a cow on pasture on the milk carton, do we question whether the milk inside came from cows who ate grass? If we use the code locator to ID where the milk is from, do we question whether or not grass could even grow naturally in that area? How many of us even consider which diet is healthiest for a cow – grass or grain?
Ep 53: Antitrust + Democracy At Your Dinner Table
Watch from 58:22 to 1:00:50
Charlotte Vallaeys shares how easy to follow, boiled-down thinking can lead to incorrect takeaways. Her example is found in the beginning of the movie “Kiss The Ground” where an NRCS scientist shows farmers an animated CO2 emissions map over the course of a year. As the emissions erupt during spring in the northern hemisphere, he tells the room that they are watching what happens when they till their fields in the spring. The takeaway for most viewers has been that tillage is bad (although, listen to Charlottes’ explanation!). Many organic vegetable and grain farmers have since argued that tilling responsibly is among their most- valued tools for improving organic matter and soil health.
Ep 110: Why Organic Is Worth Fighting For
Watch from 28:25 to 31:52
Week Four
The New Food Supply
Who asked for it? Who profits?
Author and UC Santa Cruz Professor Julie Guthman writes about the intersection of social sciences and the food system, often focusing on California agriculture.
Ep 22: Big Tech’s Takeover Of Organic
Watch from 1:05:51 to 1:10:45
Dr. Mwatima Juma is a rural development specialist based in Zanzibar and the chairperson of the Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement. She earned her PhD in Agronomy and Crop Science from University of London Wye College.
Ep 178: Chemical Companies Pressure Farmers In Africa
Watch from 04:01 to 05:25
In Episode 147, author and farmer Kristin Kimball addresses an audience at Real Organic Project’s annual live event at Churchtown Dairy in Hudson, NY. Kristin co-owns and operates a full-diet CSA, Essex Farm, alongside her husband Mark Kimball. Her books are about the deep connections she makes through the daily life of farming, and her observations about the food system are filled with meaning and beauty.
Ep 147: The Small Farm Revolution Needs Activist Eaters
Watch from 14:13 to 17:07
Week Three
Energy
Will we get through this long emergency before it’s too late?
In Episode 27 of the Real Organic Podcast, ecologist David Montgomery discusses the relationship between societal collapse and extractive farming practices. This idea has come up in our interviews, as we discuss how “desertification” leads to hunger as it perpetuates drought, and speeds up the effects of Climate Change. Desertification is when fertile lands degrade into desert-like conditions – examples include: the Fertile Crescent, the Dust Bowl, and current concerns about food-producing areas of California. David is the co-author of four books, along with his wife soil scientist Anne Biklé, including You Are What Your Food Ate.
Ep 27: Clever Modern Technology vs Ancient Soil Wisdom
Watch from 5:34 to 8:50
In Episode 76, David Weinstein, one of the first organic produce buyers and distributors discusses how differently the organic “industry” has ended up operating as compared to the original sentiments of the organic “movement” that he was part of. David was present at some of the earliest gatherings in California where an organic label and marketplace were being dreamt up by health-seeking farmers and eaters.
Ep 76: Owing and Fixing The Shortcomings of Organic
Watch from 0:00 to 1:00
In Episode 254, journalist and author Tom Philpott touches upon the competing facts and opinions that can help determine whether our US food system is getting worse or better.
Ep 254: Tom Philpott: Corporate Control And The Future Of Food
Watch from 20:31 to 24:52
Week Two
The Great Food War
Will we be able to continue nourishing?
Amanda Starbuck is a research director at Food And Water Watch, where she helped to author an eye-opening investigative series for The Guardian titled “Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies and who pays the price.”
Ep 64: Corporate Consolidation And Our Food system
Watch from 17:58 to 19:20
Author Timothy Wise is an expert on the present-day effects of the Green Revolution, tracking governmental policies, the campaigns of philanthropic organizations and real-time hunger and yield statistics.
Ep 175: Today’s Green Revolution in Africa and Iowa
Watch from 41:55 to 45:26
Upon its publication and for decades to follow, Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet has captivated the world. One of the first to tie the shortcomings of our food production system to hunger and environmental degradation, she has since shifted her writing and everyday work to bolstering democracy which she sees as the core solution to hunger issues.
Ep 201: Power, Democracy and Food
Watch from 49:07 to 53:51
Limits to Growth?
How long can we go on like this?
Author of Farming While Black, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm and James Beard Award winner Leah Penniman, shares her thoughts on whether or not growth and extraction can serve our planet into the future in
Episode 55: Ecological Healing Means Putting Land Back Into Indigenous Hands
Watch from 20:48 to 21:34
In Episode 246, Real Organic Project certified farmer Emily Oakley shares her antithetical vision of rejecting the growth that’s been inherently expected of farmers, since the famous “Get Big or Get Out” statement from Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz (1971-1976). Butz encouraged farmers to plant “fencerow to fencerow” after ending a federal program that previously paid corn farmers NOT to plant corn, in an attempt to prevent a glut and price drop.
Ep 246: A Standalone Label for Real Organic Project
Watch from 3:23:10 to 3:26:09
In Episode 254, while part of a broader discussion about the work of Joan Dye Gussow, journalist Tom Philpott rebuts Michael Grunwald’s 2024 NY Times article “Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food” which claimed that food systems should focus on pairing chemical agriculture with untended natural spaces that could be “rewilded”. (Watch a debate on the UC Berkeley stage between Grunwald and Agrocecology professor Tim Bowles about this subject, moderated by Kim Severson of the NY Times.)