51: Elizabeth Mpofu of La Via Campesina on peasant leadership and fighting together

Elizabeth Mpofu is the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina, a global coalition of more than 164 farmer organizations from 73 countries.  She is also a small-scale farmer in Zimbabwe, the leader of the Zimbabwe Smallholder Farmers’ Forum, and an advisor to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.  In this episode, she describes her unexpected path to leadership in the food sovereignty movement, the fight to be respected as peasants around the world, and the struggle for representation of the people most affected by development decisions.  We spoke at the Thousand Currents offices in Berkeley last year.  

Photo: DFID (CC 2.0)

18: David Asher on raw milk, kefir cultures, and how diversity makes cheese and food systems resilient

David Asher is an organic farmer, farmstead cheese maker and cheese educator based on the gulf islands of British Columbia, Canada. A guerrilla cheesemaker, David does not make cheese according to standard industrial philosophies - he explores traditionally cultured, non-corporate methods of cheesemaking. David offers cheese outreach to communities near and far with the Black Sheep School of Cheesemaking.  Through workshops in partnership with food-sovereignty-minded organizations, he shares his distinct cheesemaking style.  His workshops teach a cheesemaking method that is natural, DIY, and well suited to the home kitchen or artisanal production. He is the author of The Art of Natural Cheesemaking.  David talks with Devon about raw milk, kefir cultures, and how diversity makes cheese and food systems resilient. 

17: Antonio Roman-Alcalá on coming out of DIY culture, pushing institutions, and transforming the food system at multiple scales

Antonio Roman-Alcalá is a food activist, gardener, teacher and scholar.  In 2005, with a group of friends, he broke into a vacant lot by the freeway in the southern part of San Francisco to start Alemany Farm.  He has taught Ecological Horticulture there and at many other food projects.  He managed a food justice project and garden at San Francisco’s Potrero Hill public housing and organized the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance.  He made a movie called In Search of Good Food, and worked on forming the California Food Policy Council.  He was part of Occupy the Farm.  He recently got a masters degree at the Institute for Social Studies at the Hague for research on Food Sovereignty.  His current project is a book called entitled An antidogmatist's guide to food systems, and how to change them. He will be writing the book blog post by blog post, and you can read it as Antonio writes it at antidogmatist.com -- starting soon in the spring of 2016.  He is a musician and new father, and lives in San Francisco with his family.  Antonio talks with Chelsea about coming out of DIY culture, pushing institutions, and transforming the food system at multiple scales.