A Model For The Power of Local Agriculture

It’s ironic that at a time when our air, water and food are under siege, more people than ever seem to care about the protection of all three. Organic grocery sales have never been higher and local agriculture is undergoing a kind of millennial renaissance.

Nonetheless, for best practices, we have to turn our gaze to a small town in the Italian alps. It is the first place on earth to fully ban pesticides via referendum, and it represents what may very well be the future of local agriculture everywhere.

Philip Ackerman-Leist tells this story in A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved Its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement.

My conversation with Philip Ackerman-Leist:

If You Want To Understand America, Look At Its Food

We’ve all seen the pushback to Michelle Obama as she has attempted to improve food quality and nutrition in our nation’s schools. In part, it reflects the degree to which everything is politicized these days. But it also reflects the degree to which food is and has been a political, cultural and historical touchstone

It’s long been observed that if we want to understand the history of a nation or a city or a period in time, we can start by looking at its food.

Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe have long taken this approach and now they look at the food of depression era America in their new book A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression.

My conversation with Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe:

Eating Viet Nam

Historians and journalists have devoted millions of pages to trying to understand the world. In fact, it may be a lot simpler than that. Just maybe it can be done by eating.

We’ve all seen politicians in America, campaigning by eating the local foods and imitating local eating customs. Why isn’t the same true for geopolitics?

If we can understand the culture of another country through its food, perhaps we’d better understand its people, its culture and its ideas. In so doing, the world just might be a happier, and more satisfied place.

That’s what Graham Holliday has done in trying to appreciate first south Korea and then Viet Nam. A place that he takes us to in Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table.

My conversation with Graham Holliday:

Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production

Even amidst the concerns about the impact of cattle on global warming, the disgrace of industrialized farming and slaughterhouses, and the increased worldwide population that has sworn off beef, it’s still very much a part of our diet.

And perhaps it should be. But is there a better, more sustainable, more humane way to process that beef and bring it to market?

In what too often seems to be world of black and white thinking, can we find a middle ground? A way in which beef is healthy, sustainable, humane and actually good for us and the environment? Nicolette Hahn Niman thinks so. Her book about what she has discovered is
Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production

My conversation with Nicolette Hahn Niman:

A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World

One of the foundations of the changing nature of education, is the idea of deeper learning. Direct, hands on mastery of content, though solving real world problems in a collaborative way. This has created dramatic results in all academic areas.

But it’s also something that can take place right at home. That’s what best selling author Mark Kurlansky did with his daughter Talia. They combined culture, geography, chemistry and all in the context of preparing delicious meals.

Now they share their efforts in International Night: A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World.

My conversation with Mark and Talia Kurlansky:

Farm to Health

We see demographic statistics that in the next 20 years more than 65% of the world will live in cities. We seem to be moving further and further from the land.  In spite of it’s current romanticism, the number of family farms continues to shrink, at the same time that science and technology promises that we may soon be able to create food from 3D printers.

While urban Farmers Markets grow, as perhaps the last vestige of our evolutionary roots to the land, one wonders how this shift will really impact us? Can we move so far away from our biological heritage, and still be truly healthy?

Daphne Miller, MD is a family physician,and Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and she looks at all of this in Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing.

My conversation with Daphne Miller:

The Man Who Changed The Way We Eat

Restaurant reviews, foodies and food criticism have all become a major part of the culture. I sit here writing this, at the epicenter of American Food, Wine and Celebrity Chiefs. But this wasn't always the case. There was a time before food critics, before the rise of quality ethnic food, before celebrity, before Craig Claiborne came to the New York Times.

Craig Claiborne invented professional restaurant criticism, and was also the man who introduced the American palate to arugula, balsamic vinegar and chef's knives; leading us out of a vast culinary wasteland. Thomas McNamee, who previously wrote about Alice Waters, takes us inside The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance

My conversation with Thomas McNamee:

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The food/industrial complex

What are the forces that cause us to continue eating when we know we should stop? Why has the quality of food, that most Americans eat, deteriorated even while more and more healthy choices are available? Why are our children experiencing an epidemic of obesity, and what role does the food industry play in this?

These and many similar questions are the ones asked by Dr. David Kessler in his look at big food. Just as he took on the tobacco companies in the 80’s, Dr. Kesser, in his new book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, takes on the food/industrial complex, that is clearly culpable in some of our bad food choices.

My conversation with Dr. David Kessler:  

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