What's For Dinner?

Tonight's Guest: Rita Stevens Rita Stevens (Inspiring Food Movement Learner) is a college sophomore at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. An eastern Massachusetts native, Rita helped lead high school service learning about food, agriculture and hunger. At Evergreen she takes multidisciplinary courses on ecology and the food system and gets to critically examine how agriculture is practiced in Washington. She has nutritional science background to understand the implications of Farm Bill and SNAP policy, and knows how much lies behind food labels and food production, and it makes her feel communicating what's invisible to most people is extremely urgent. She also cooks avidly and learns and teaches by doing; she describes accompanying a goose hunt and processing the meat, and teaching her classmates shellfishing.

Tonight's Guest: Eric Holt-Giminez The year's first guest is Eric Holt-Giminez, Executive Director of Food First, the group founded by Francis Moore Lappe 40 years ago. Social movements, small farmers, and many policy makers and experts now think agroecology can meet the global south's agricultural development challenges and help restore productivity to the global north's degraded agricultural land. A one-time farmer and researcher working with Latin American small farmers, Eric's entire career has focused on this suite of problems and solutions. Knowing this scene well, Eric believes grassroots work for sustainability, food sovereignty and food justice could make the difference they need to make, as long as local efforts can connect across borders and find supporters to mobilize political will.

Tonight's Guest: Ilene Bezahler Since Ilene Bezahler founded Edible Boston 9 years ago, Boston area farmers' markets increased from 65 to 300. The magazine's circulation and objectives have grown as dramatically. 80+ Edible magazines in the US and Canada promote local food businesses and sustainability but now seek more multi-faceted impacts. Edible Boston is embarking on food policy coverage in an upcoming series on local farmers' production costs. Ilene isn't stereotypical - her grandmothers weren't good cooks; her food heritage is one of experimentation and no particular ethnic tradition. Describing the magazine's changing stories and her relationships with food businesses, the interview makes you realize that entrepreneurial publishers in the "local foodspace" can help lay the groundwork for food system change.

Tonight's Guest: Adrienne Altstatt Adrienne Altstatt has been the fulltime farmer at the centuries-old Wright-Locke Farm in Boston's near western suburbs for 4 years. It's a community farm that serves the multiple roles these farms perform when they're close to large metro areas. It raises vegetables and some livestock, helps meet consumers', farmers' markets' and restaurants' demands for healthy, locally grown food, teaches youth and adults about food and farming, and generally embodies values about community that are associated with local food movements. In late December Adrienne leaves for 2 months of refreshment and refueling before the new season begins. WFD catches her for her reflections on the past year, when everything is in place for the cold weather ahead.

Tonight: Future Farmers of America When 60,000 FFA/Future Farmers of America youth convened in Louisville and were addressed by Tyson Foods' CEO, a Greenhorns member and young Virginia apple farmer, Eliza Greenman, was there under a banner saying Ban Factory Farming. The show reveals much about the hearts of future young farmers, big ag's bid to capture them, and the country's stakes in what and how they learn. Eliza notes the integrity and respect shown by the teens. She's shocked by the seductiveness of big ag messaging: youth with access to land (their families' farms) are being primed to feed the world in 2050 and be proud of their role. And the listener may hear the consequences of battling agricultural paradigms on young farmers' self-concepts.

Tonight's Guest: Diana Robinson Diana Robinson describes the Food Chain Workers Alliance and its Thanksgiving 2013 actions. Nearly 20 million men and women in the US grow, harvest, produce and serve food at every stage from field to table. Yet farm workers aren't covered by US labor relations laws; law enforcement to protect immigrants and undocumented workers is poor; and the majority of food chain workers lack benefits, earn poverty wages, and have difficulty unionizing. Diana shows how the US food system, developed on slave labor, still exploits its workers, the majority of whom are members of minorities. Projects she describes are a fine example of what a diverse coalition membership committed to social and economic justice can accomplish.

Tonight's Guest: Danielle Andrews (Boston Urban Garden) Danielle Andrews, urban farmer for The Food Project, describes why urban agriculture requires wearing many hats today. The farm is a social enterprise using revenue generation to fulfill its mission. Teens raise produce in Boston's Roxbury community; it's sold to EBT purchasers in farmers' markets and to high end restaurants. Danielle, teens and community members create cooking classes, build family gardens, and utilize a 10,000 square foot greenhouse as a neighborhood resource. But The Food Project isn't singlehandedly using agriculture for community development. Danielle facilitates the agriculture side of a partnership with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, which provides the organizing expertise, and jointly they use urban agriculture for community development and empowerment.

Tonight's Guest: Herschelle Milford After 10 years of fighting forced removals during Apartheid, Surplus People Project (S.P.P.) has worked for 23 years to transform the rural economy through land, water and agricultural reform. Herschelle Milford is a global south movement leader working toward food sovereignty and climate justice. The interview explores different ways people can lack food sovereignty by comparing South African black farmers, who cannot own land, and US black farmers who have lost land or can't afford to farm. Herschelle was in Seattle for the Africa-US Food Sovereignty Strategy Summit (see www.seattleglobaljustice.org/blog/news-events/). She describes the work of the S.P.P. in South Africa's Western and Northern Cape, organizing and doing participatory action research with small-scale farmers, farm dwellers and women.

Tonight's Guest: Hans Muzoora Hans Muzoora works in public private agricultural development partnerships in Africa, most recently in Zambia, as a Ugandan sustainable agriculture and rural development consultant. Because farmers need broad based agricultural extension assistance to be able to have sustainable livelihoods (escape poverty), Hans doesn't question whether countries must partner with NGOs and corporations. World Bank-forced structural readjustment programs destroyed their national agricultural extension capacity. But partnerships' results hinge on structures that assure equity for the people they are supposed to benefit. Seeds' suitability and quality are crucial, but much also depends on ways goals are framed, outcomes are assessed, and standards are defined to favor producers as well as consumers. Hans recounts the details equally important for food sovereignty.

Tonight's Guest: Liz Warran (Fast Track) Important matters for farmers and agriculture will be considered during the 2014 lame duck session in Washington - country of origin labeling (COOL), the Keystone XL Pipeline, Fast Track and the TransPacificPartnership (TPP). Tonight's show reviews all 4, concentrating on implications of Fast Track for meaningful debate on the wide-ranging, highly contested and mostly secret terms of the TPP, the massive proposed trade agreement among 12 Pacific rim countries. Fast Track literally cedes legislators' constitutional treaty'making authority to the Executive, limiting debate to a total of 22 hours and permitting only an up or down vote. Guest Liz Warren heads the National TPP Coalition. She also describes the broad alliance of organizations who oppose the TPP - and why.

Tonight's Guest: Sanjay Rawal The feature length documentary Food Chains opened Friday before Thanksgiving. This documentary examines the plight of United States farm laborers and spotlights the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and its worker-driven Fair Food Program. "With an eye to expanding people's hearts as to the contributions of the millions of workers that make our meals possible", Sanjay Rawal's film describes huge inequities in the supply chain and what consumers can do to help change it. The interview enables Sanjay to share facts about the improved working conditions for CIW members, the still deplorable conditions and grinding economic insecurity still faced by unprotected farmworkers, and the comparatively huge profits of the grocery stores in the supply chain.

Tonight's Guest: Shirley Sherrod The Food Sovereignty Prize was awarded in Des Moines this week, the 5th year this prize has been given to underline and highlight agriculture practiced with different objectives and values from that honored by the World Food Prize, also awarded in Des Moines at this time and typically given to agribusiness corporations. We re-air a US story chosen to highlight the Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony. A black farmers' daughter in the 1950's, Shirley Sherrod wanted to escape rural life, but her father's murder in 1965 redirected her to civil rights activism and then co-founding New Communities, a 6000 acre land trust modeled on a kibbutz, on which black Americans could farm and live. She describes working with the conditions black farmers faced - during those years, at the USDA, and now, when she is fostering opportunities for women farmers and creating the new site for New Communities

Tonight's Guest: Peter Wild Peter Wild, Biochar and Billions of Tree Deaths: When whole species of trees are destroyed by climate change-induced increases of pests and disease, they can be turned into biochar to avoid the release of huge amounts of additional CO2. Peter Wild consults to municipalities facing loss of their street trees - like Minneapolis with millions of ash trees. Biochar production is a way to avoid the emissions problem as well as benefit soil biology, help support local food production, and gradually supplant use of chemical fertilizers. Peter invented the Arborjet infusion tool for treating diseased trees. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Stockbridge School of Agriculture, Peter is a certified Arborist and owns an organic-based, proactive tree care business outside Boston.

Tonight's Guest: Cynthia Mellon We preview the September 21st Climate March when 1000 groups and several hundred thousand people march in New York to underline global concern about climate change in advance of world leaders' meetings at the United Nations. Cynthia Mellon was part of negotiating the lineup of the march and planning the Climate Justice Summit, the "parallel" meetings for civil society during the UN sessions. Her account about organization of the march and summit reveals a lot about participants' commitments to just and innovative responses to climate change. Cynthia is environmental justice organizer for Ironbound Community Corporation, in the New Jersey ward that is home to Newark Airport and incinerates half of Manhattan's garbage, named for its encircling railroad yards.

Tonight's Guest: Patty Roess In one of California's driest years ever, Patty Roess has many customers who want to learn landscaping with native plants from Tree of Life Nursery south of Los Angeles. Patty's account shows how much native plants offer beyond saving money on water. Gardeners can still choose among different garden styles (such as desert or Mediterranean) when using plants whose water needs match California's seasons. Wildlife flourishes, and garden putterers find other ways than watering to enjoy caring for their garden. Looking at reasons for replanting yards and gardens with native plants really highlights the interrelationships among climate change, exotics and natives, wildlife habitat, and ways nurseries and gardeners can adapt to climate change going forward.

Tonight's Guests: Fisheries Activists at FarmAid In addition to music, FarmAid features exhibits that teach but can't distribute ANY paper, groups develop games to get their message across. Barbara Garrity-Blake and Bryan Blake, Christy Shi-Day and John Day act out the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA) game with What's for Dinner. Barbara is a cultural anthropologist who studied the menhaden fishery and works on NC fisheries policy. Bryan is a wooden boat builder. Christy and John live in North Carolina's "Down East" region, an area of fishing villages. Both work for the NC State University's Center for Environmental Farming Systems, he on the supply chain to military bases, she helping all the players in the NC food system to build it together.

Tonight's Guest: Christopher Leonard - The Meat Racket (Part 1) Whether or not US farming is profitable today depends on a lot more than hard work. Today's show explores what's decisive for poultry farmers - contract terms between them and the corporations they raise bird for. Once Christopher Leonard learned how contracts with Tyson Foods bankrupts and breaks the spirits of Arkansas poultry farmers, he spent nearly a decade to research and tell their stories. Farmers don't control the quality of the birds they get or the food they're supplied, but they do go into debt for the physical plant to raise them. Christopher says he dream now is for people to understand what vertical integration means, and he explains it with examples you wont forget.

Tonight's Guest: Christopher Leonard - The Meat Racket (Part 2) The Meat Racket author Christopher Leonard reports on the "chickenization" of poultry and meat producers' farm and ranching operations. Christopher's business journalism in the Midwest took him to small towns where he saw poultry and hog farms and beef feedlots going out of business. He was witnessing emergence of what he calls "broken markets" and an almost feudal relationship between growers and owners of big meat companies. Listen to him describe the real facts behind the graying of rural America, as well as the couple years when he thought things might change, what happened instead, where his hopes for the future lie, and the risk that increasing proportions of supermarket meat will be imported.

Plant conservation should concern everyone who eats. Over 20 percent of US flora are at risk. 80 percent of those are closely related to plants with agronomic importance With some potentially valuable species still to be identified and with climate change endangering more plants, it is even more urgent to identify, prioritize and address conservation needs. But how can awareness of this still arcane problem grow? Naomi Fragga, research botanist at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, CA, talks about why people already working in this field care so much about it. Patty Roess of Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano, CA, describes the way drought is helping recruit non experts to restore native species in gardens and landscapes.

Tonight's Guest: Ben Grosscup (Northeast Organic Farming Association) Lots of formal and informal learning takes place when the organic and ecological farming associations hold their annual meetings. - The NOFA conference is one among so many that you could learn, see their exhibits, and eat the usually great local food just about any month of the year. Ben Grosscup, organizer for the Northeast Organic Farming Association describes this year's summer conference, held in the center of the state on the campus of UMass, Amherst. There are "tracks" at this meeting on carbon farming, using draft animals, new farmers, dowsing, cooperatives, and more.