Media

42: Dan Imhoff on how the wild got pulled out of farming, and making agriculture hospitable to wild nature

Dan Imhoff is an author, musician, and artisan food producer who has written for 25 years on ecological sustainability. His books include Farming with the Wild, Food Fight, and Building with Vision.  Dan is the president and co-founder of Watershed Media as well as president and a co-founder of the Wild Farm Alliance, a national organization that works to promote agriculture systems that support and accommodate wild nature. He lives on a small homestead farm outside of Healdsburg, California.  In this episode, Dan talks to Devon about how the wild got pulled out of farming, how to make farms hospitable to wild nature.  

 

25: Anna Lappé on the connections between food systems and climate change, the myth that we need toxic chemicals to feed the world, and the growing influence of the food movement

Anna Lappé is a bestselling author and widely respected educator, known for her work as an expert on food systems and as a sustainable food advocate. She is the co-author or author of three books and the contributing author to ten others. Anna’s work has been translated internationally and featured in The New York Times, Gourmet, Oprah Magazine, among many other outlets. Named one of TIME magazine’s “eco” Who’s-Who, Anna is a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and the Small Planet Fund with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé. She is also the founder and director of the Real Food Media Project, which uses creative movies, an online movie contest, a web-based action center, and grassroots events to grow the movement for sustainable food and farming. Her latest book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, was named by Booklist and Kirkus as one of the best environmental books of the year. Anna is also the co-author of Hope’s Edge, which chronicles doc ial movements fighting hunger around the world, and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, showcasing the ecological and social benefits of sustainable food with seasonal menus from chef Bryant Terry.  In this episode, Anna speaks with Chelsea about the connections between food systems and climate change, debunking the myth that we need toxic chemicals to feed the world, and food movement’s growing influence in popular politics.

 

August 15

5: Kati Greaney and Pete Rasmussen on farming, solidarity, and Cuba's agroecology movement

In this episode, Chelsea interviews husband and wife team Kati Greaney and Pete Rasmussen about their collaborations in farming, activism, and filmmaking. Kati is a photographer, filmmaker, and educator who has for the last ten years worked internationally creating documentary photography and film about farmers and farmers movements. She holds a MA from the Social Documentation program a at UC Santa Cruz. Most recently she directed and produced Los Guajiros, a film that follows two young Haitian agronomists, exploring Cuba's world-renowned agricultural model. Pete is a farmer and educator who founded Sandhill Farms in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. There he grows over 30 varieties of rare, gourmet, heirloom garlic from around the world. Pete worked for the Community Agroecology Network where he organized and led farmer exchanges from Latin America to the US, and planned student trips to farming communities throughout Latin America.

3: Maywa Montenegro on GMOs, agrobiodiversity, and the politics of who speaks for science

Maywa Montenegro de Wit is a seed scholar and science writer who I know through many mutual friends and through the agroecology movement.  I love to keep up with her written work, in part because it is so well crafted, but also because she continually brings fresh analysis and perspective to conversations that can feel tired-- like conversations about the role of urban agriculture, the importance of biodiversity conservation, and the use of genetically modified organisms. She is a PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley, where her research focuses on the social relations around seeds and seed systems.  She also has a degree in molecular biology, and a masters in science writing from MIT. She publishes work in academic journals and also widely in the popular press.  She was an editor at Seed Magazine, and her work is published recently by Ensia, Gastronomica, The Huffington Post and Grist.org, among many other publications.

Maywa talks with Devon about the conservation of crop wild relatives, GMOs, the food movement, and the privileged positioning of scientific knowledge and the need to recognise many kinds of knowledges about food.