Farm To Table Talk

Humans take turns as the temporary stewards of Earth but the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) earth helpers may just be the humble goat. With a passion for practical conservation, sustainable agriculture, and rural living, an idea was born with goats to grow beyond the hobby stage, to produce  food profitably, while avoiding many of the pitfalls of conventional agriculture. Aaron Steele, Co-founder and owner of Goats On the Go has led the good fight against noxious weeds, brush and invasive plant species from suburbs, to public lands and a burgeoning frontier of solar farms.  With herds of goats and sheep available to help nature, Aaron Steele shares how they have grown a network of independent, local targeted grazing affiliates and expanded with complimentary brands; now including Barnyard Discoveries Affiliates delivering farm-positive education at the local level.

Food will be just what the Doctor ordered.  Prescriptions for medicine from a pharmacy is normal but prescriptions of food from markets, stores, farms or our own garden may become the new normal.  Recognizing the role of good nutrition and even the therapeutic contribution of growing our own foods has led to Doctors and county level health centers finding ways to help low income families.  Edye Kuyper is the Food and Wellness Manager of the Communicare Food Program in Yolo County California. She shares how getting healthy foods early  in life directly contribute to lower rates of chronic diseases when people are getting foods in a medical context.  This new dynamic of medical prescribed food connects local farms, community gardens, SNAP shopping, farmers markets and aspiring gardeners--healthy families and healthy communities from farm to table. https://communicarehc.org/food-is-medicine/https://allin.acgov.org/recipe4health-main-page/

Building a bridge from where Agriculture is now to where the public and policy makers want it to go is advisable.  Even for the best of reasons ranchers are not able to just flip a switch to new prevailing expectations without suffering from unintended and under considered consequences. States like California that are out front with new initiatives make it especially difficult to be competitive with producers in states that aren't making such big moves.  Jack Hanson, Willow Creek Ranch, is a cow-calf rancher in Lassen County  has experienced the opportunities and recognizes the challenges that a bridge to the future might address.

If we reimagine how water flows across our landscape, we can help both fish and our farms.  At Eco Farm in Pacific Grove, California that was the message to farmers from all over the world from a popular keynote presentation by Jacob Katz, the Lead Scientist with California Trout. Mas Masomoto, legendary Organic pioneer sets the stage for the stimulating ideas that always surface at ECO Farms when surprise and promise float to the surface, even from our rivers. www.caltrout. org www.eco-farm.org

It's Meeting Season for farmers and others in the food chain when they gather to agree to disagree and ultimately find middle ground (or high ground). What's decided when they put their heads together can impact public policy and public opinion.  To cover  this critical process Natalie Kovarik and Tara VanderDussen followed the American Farm Bureau to Puerto Rico where 5,000 farmers assembled to claim the high ground. Tara, an environmental scientist/dairy farmer and Natalie, a pharmacist/rancher, share lives and agriculture stories online as a way to build a community around Ag and contribute their voices to an in industry and lifestyle they are extremely passionate about. Their Discover Ag is a docuseries + podcast that pioneers conversation around relevant and trending topics is Agriculture.

Owning land isn't a prerequisite to loving land, regenerating land and producing healthy food. Andy Breiter does not own a single acre of land since beginning in 2020 but has grown a land base to approximately 400 acres across 7 non contiguous parcels. It has been done through building partnerships with private and public land owners. The focus of the business is utilizing livestock to regenerate land and  working to create healthy land to produce healthy food. This approach provides unique sources of revenue to create ecosystem service contracts with landowners and grant projects with NGOs. Some contracts deal with grazing animals for noxious weeds, others for increased fertility, and fire mitigation contracts. Owning land is not required. www.gramagrasslivestock.com

Powerful movements are happening in our food system and Liz Carlisle, the author of Healing Grounds shares a glimpse of these movements at Eco Farm and on an earlier 2022 episode of Farm To Table.  Liz is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester, which led to a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state. She has written three books about regenerative farming and Agroecology: Lentil Underground (2015), Grain by Grain (2019, with co-author Bob Quinn), and most recently, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming (2022). She holds a Ph.D. in Geography, from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology, from Harvard University. Prior to her career as a writer and academic, she spent several years touring rural America as a count

For holiday dinners, when your guests like both the idea of “plant based” and the taste of animal protein, there is a way to work-around. Vegan options may still need to be offered because this work-around is serving beef from cattle that were raised on a plant based diet. For the most part the plants the cattle consumed are largely cellulose such as grass that people can’t digest but when converted by ruminant animals it can be both nutritious and delicious. Since overeating through the holidays is often followed by going back to the gym, some animal protein can come in handy. Grass fed rib-eyes and filets are on the menu at our house, so for this episode of Farm To Table Talk we return to a podcast from last winter with East Sacramento Butcher, Eric Velman, V Miller Meats, who provided the conversion and connection between our holiday table and the plant based pastures where Christmas Eve Dinner began.

After near extinction, the in-nii (American Bison) are slowly returning to Native American tribes who have the resources to run reintroduction programs. Latrice Tatsey, Buffalo Stone Woman, is an ecologist and cattle producer who advocates for tribally-directed bison restoration and regenerative cattle grazing. Currently, she is a graduate student in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences studying how the reintroduction of in-nii (American Bison) contributes to changes in soil characteristics. Researching how the return of the in-nii (American Bison) will influence soil, plant, water, energy, and mineral cycles shows the relationship the in-nii (American Bison) have to the land. Latrice wants to continue to conduct research involving land and creating ways to be better land stewards so that we can protect Mother Earth for future generations. Buffalo Stone Woman shares the vision with Farm To Table Talk and Eco-Farm.

'High Tech High Touch' is an early Silicon Valley term that implies a dynamic paradox.  It is still a paradox in today's agriculture where "faster/bigger" and "slower/smaller" each have a wave.  In the wake of this wave, Social Scientists like Dr. Julie Guthman of the University of California in Santa Cruz are asking "how do you bring digital products to a biological production system?" The tried and true Silicon Valley ways don't always work for the split personalities of today and tomorrow's farms. Dr. Guthman is a geographer and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she conducts research on the conditions of possibility for food system transformation in the US. jguthman@ucsc.edu

Slow water always wins however we can still thrive in this emerging age of climate change caused drought and deluges. Erica Gies has written a book,  about “Slow Water” innovations that are helping us adapt to the increasing water dilemmas. Respect for water's winning ways is where it all begins as this Journalist/Author shares the ways we must work for smart and slow water systems at the Eco Farm. Erica is an award-winning independent journalist and National Geographic Explorer, writing about water, climate change, plants, and animals for Scientific American, the New York Times, Nature, National Geographic, the Guardian, and other outlets. She co-founded two environmental news startups, Climate Confidential and This Week in Earth.    www.eco-farm.org/conference

Farmers face challenges ranging from rising costs for them to low prices to them and seemingly endless regulations that need more time and attention than they have the ability to give. They need to be more resourceful than ever, whether they have been farming for generations or just coming in to it from a non-farming background, Michael Kilpatrick has been helping farmers make resourceful, sometimes 'rogue' adjustments in their plans, execution and results that yield desired incomes.  In podcasts and events including the  annual Rogue Food Conference, the attainable goal is Thriving Farmers. www.growingfarmers.com   www.farmsummits.com  www.thrivingfarmerpodcast.com

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has reached a multimillion-dollar legal agreement with online retail giant Amazon.com Services, LLC. (Amazon) for the illegal sale of pesticides in California.Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon will pay DPR a total of $4.97 million – $3.69 million in unpaid pesticide sales assessment fees and related late penalties, and $1.28 million in civil penalties associated with retail sales of unregistered pesticides into California. Amazon also agreed to register as a pesticide broker, and report and pay the mill assessment associated with all future retail sales of registered pesticides into California. Karen Morrison, Chief Deputy Director and Science Advisor to the DPR explains how the regulation of crop protection materials is extending into cyber space boundaries to protect the public .  www.cdpr.ca.gov

Thirty years ago “The Death of Ramon Gonzalez was published and subsequently began making an impression on thousands of people around the world with, as Wes Jackson of The Land Institute said,” a new way of looking at the tragic human and environmental consequences of chemical-dependent agriculture”. The author of this ground breaking book, Angus Wright recently passed away after a productive life.  For the author of a book that begins with a death from chemical agriculture in Mexico, it seems fitting that the death of the author Angus Wright should begin with a review of lessons learned, progress made and what more is needed for “modern agriculture.” To help with this journey I’m pleased to welcome, Steve Gliessman farmer, retired University of California Santa Cruz professor, one of the first guests on Farm to Table Talk and an author himself-- he literally wrote the book on Agroecology.

  Wendell Berry has shared his unique wisdom for over 50 years in over 50 books. The new book,"The Need To Be Whole" was introduced by Wendell himself at the Kentucky Book Festival at the Joseph-Beth Book Sellers in Lexington, Kentucky. Farm To Table Talk host, Rodger Wasson was there to hear Wendell wisdom first hand. All of Wendell's books are worth a read but "The Unsettling of America" is especially appropriate in these unsettled times. It is wonderful to hear Wendell in person and is almost as good to once again listen to the conversation he had in 2014 with Bill Moyers. To commemorate a special weekend in Kentucky with Wendell we're bringing back this conversation of Wendell Berry and Bill Moyers.  It is a production of the Schumann Media Center and         Mannes production.  www.Berry Center.org

Food communicates origin, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and global health upstream, downstream and around our tables. Progressive brands realize that in a true cost accounting future, they will need to be able to provide a suite of environmental impact metrics that go beyond just carbon to include soil, health, water data and biodiversity metrics. Wyatt Ball, Land to Market's Client Success Manager sheds a light on the responsible brand journey that starts on farms or ranches and ends on our plate. www.landtomarket.com

Sequestering atmospheric carbon and placing it in soil  will be a part of the solution to climate change and greater economic resilience and security. Ben Cloud, CEO of BodelAG has commercialized a plant extract discovery with broad  application to improve the health and economic welfare of humans, animals, and plants. The loss of soil’s microbial biomass and the functionality the microbes provide causes a loss of ability to cycle carbon and nutrients. Then soil health declines, along with water holding capacity and crop water use efficiency, resulting in excessive water and fertilizer inputs, and their associated costs, as well as an accumulation of salts. The frontier is below us. www.biodelag.com  

Creation takes place in our food chain at the farm, in the kitchen and in our favorite restaurants that "curate" a tasting experience to be savored and remembered. At the Tasting Kitchen in Los Angeles, Executive Chef Travis Passeroti creates daily hand written menus that curate the best of what is on offer that day from the Santa Monica Farmers Market and other select local suppliers and farmers. Chef Travis and the award winning food program at the The Tasting Kitchen display a passion for sustainably sourced ingredients and expert knowledge of local food communities. https://www.thetastingkitchen.com

Resilience is what’s needed for a viable food system and there are more resilient alternatives available today than ever. The supply disruption and fragility exposed by the pandemic highlights the overlooked advantages of smaller local food suppliers. With food costs from the global system climbing, the price gap between the big and the small operations has shrunk. The author of 15 books, thousands of speeches around the world and founder of Polyface Farms, Joel Salatin understands and shares the opportunity he sees. Ben Glassen is one of thousands who have been inspired by Joel’s wisdom and vision. He has established his own version on Vancouver Island in British Columbia by adhering to these principles: detaching land ownership; mobile/modular infrastructure; and direct marketing. In conversation Joel and Ben agree that this is an exciting time of resilient alternatives for farmers, would-be farmers and their customers. www.polyfacefarms.com  www.glassenfarm.com

50 years ago the White House conducted a conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. It has finally happened again as President Biden announced a national plan for ending hunger in the United States by 2030 with these actions: 1) Improve food access and affordability; 2) Integrate nutrition and health; 3) Empower all consumers to make and have access to healthy choices; 4) Support physical activity for all; and 5) Enhance nutrition and food security research. Chef Patrick Mulvaney of Mulvaney's B&L and Chef Santana Diaz of UC Davis Health traveled to Washington from Sacramento with an invitation to participate and then shared some of what they learned from a taxi leaving the conference and in a Clubhouse room that was opened to further the conversation. WHHungerHealth@hhs.gov