For our last episode of the second season of Feed, we speak with TABLE director Tara Garnett of the University of Oxford, and TABLE strategic director Sigrid Wertheim-Heck of Wageningen University to reflect on our past 15 episodes.

We talk about what surprised us, what we learned, and what we missed across the season. Our wide ranging conversation covered the power of language, the power of imagination, the power of narratives, non-human power and more.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions for the show, you can write us at podcast@tabledebates.org and don’t forget to rate and review us wherever you listen.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode39

As this season on power in the food system comes to a close, we wanted to focus on how food is consumed in institutions - places where people typically have less agency over their own food choices. In this episode we’re focusing on food in prisons in the United Kingdom and Denmark. We're joined by Lucy Vincent, Chief Executive and Founder of the charity Food Behind Bars in the UK, and Linda Kjær Minke, a criminology professor at the University of Southern Denmark who researches food dynamics in Danish prisons. We discuss how food in prisons is procured, prepared and eaten, and how these two systems of prison food can lead to very different results for the incarcerated, for those working in prisons and – potentially – for society as a whole.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode38

What is the corporate food regime? And are we still living in it? We put these questions to our guest Phliip McMichael, emeritus professor at Cornell University who, alongside Harriet Friedman, coined the term Food Regime in 1989. In our conversation we talk about how a historical sociologist thinks about power, what voices were included and excluded in the dialogues leading up to the UN Food Systems Summit, and we flesh out Philip’s view of what a more relocalized food system would look like.

For more info and transcript, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode37

Jason Clay is the Executive Director of the Markets Institute at World Wildlife Fund. He comes with decades of unique experiences and a big picture view of global food systems. In our conversation we ask him how power needs to be shifted to transform the food system, what the future looks like for small farmers, and whether we should be intensifying agriculture and sparing land or extensifying agricultural production and sharing land with nature. Jason Clay also shares ideas around how to increase transparency for consumers, improve farmers livelihoods, and urgently scale up systems level solutions.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode36

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Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the founder and director the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. He moved to the US from Guatemala in the 1990s. In our conversation we talk about the power of movements, why small-scale farmers in the United States are rarely successful, and the difference between ‘feeding’ the indigenous mindset versus the colonizer mindset.

For more info and transcript, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode34

Who is investing in the food system and what are they investing in? What should the future of food, specifically protein, look like in sub-Saharan Africa? These are questions that Jeremy Brice explores in his new report: Investment, Power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa. They are also highly relevant to the food and climate discussions happening now at COP-27 in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt (November 2022).

In our chat with Jeremy Brice, lecturer at Manchester University, we discuss why the issue of protein is important in sub-Saharan Africa; we unpack three different investor visions for this region; and we reflect on the consequences of how little agricultural investment there is in the region compared to the rest of the world.

This conversation is based on a newly published TABLE report by Jeremy Brice. Here you can read the executive summary or the full report.


For more info and transcript, please visit: http://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode33

Blain Snipstal, former youth advocate for La Via Campesina, has thought a lot about power. We talk about how Blain sees the legacy of the plantation model of agriculture still lingering today; how the dialogues and exchanges between peasant farmers can uncover a deep analysis of the food system; and he shares from his many experiences as a farmer, an activist, and an organizer. We also touch on the power of collaborating across grassroots movements and whose knowledge counts in food debates.

For more info and resources, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode32

This is not a typical conversation for Feed. We're still talking about food systems, and we're still talking about power, but we're focusing on the more-than-human world, specifically, mushrooms. Giuliana Furci, founder and executive director of the Fungi Foundation, joins us to talk about how fungi are as diverse as the animal and plant kingdom; what role fungi play in sustainable food systems; the contradicting lessons that you can learn from fungi; and what power do fungi have over humans and food systems?

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode30

Joachim von Braun, former Chair of the Scientific Group for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, lays out the importance of an inclusive process and multi-disciplinary scientific collaboration to meet the calls for food system transformation. Dr von Braun joins us to talk about his experience as Chair, what he sees as the successes of the summit, and what work remains to be done. We also discuss who should be involved in knowledge production and how, and we hear his thoughts on whether we should create an Intergovernmental Panel for Food (not unlike the IPCC) that would have the power to work towards scientific consensus on food system issues.

For more info and transcript, please visit https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode29

“Everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food” is written in the South African constitution. But how is that implemented, and who is responsible for making that a reality? Scholar-activist Busiso Moyo grapples with what ‘a right to food’ actually looks like in practice. In our conversation, he shares why he sees 'right to food as a valuable framework to build a just food system. We also cover various aspects of power in the food system including: agenda setting power; power of corporations; the power of paradigms; and who has power along the value chain.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode28

In this episode, Agricultural economist Jayson Lusk puts forward a vision of how science, technology and innovation are what we need for a sustainable food future, and what aspects of power he feels are getting in the way of this future. We discuss: whether having more information actually changes what food people buy; why Jayson is excited about venture capital flowing into the food system; and why he disagrees with some of the narratives and policy proposals put forward by the “food movement”. We also touch on some hotly debated topics like agricultural subsidies, GMOs, and true cost accounting.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode27/

On 8 December 2021, TABLE hosted an open-ended discussion about power in the food system with representatives from civil society, academia, media and the private sector.  At TABLE we recognise that our own biases and perspectives will influence how we think about power in the food system so the purpose of the event is to hear a range of different views and understandings of power. This kick off event helps us think about who and what shapes, controls and influences past, present and future food systems. 

Event panelists:

• Media: Eddy Wax - Reporter covering food and agriculture for POLITICO in Brussels.
• Academia: Wendy Godek - Professor of Politics and International Relations with focus on Latin American food and agriculture politics
• Civil society: Shefali Sharma - Director of Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) Europe
• Private: Sahil Shah - Co-founder of agri-tech company Sustainable Seaweed and policy consultant
• Moderator: Matthew Kessler, Project coordinator forTABLE at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

We're curious to hear your views about power in the food system. Continue the conversation on our community platform.

In this episode we explore the role of power in multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) with two people who are no strangers to this topic - Herman Brouwer and Joost Guijt, at Wageningen University and Research. In this conversation we ask: what are MSPs, do they actually work, and what are the different ways that power plays out in them? We learn how different food stakeholders perceive MSPs differently, whether the UN Food Systems Summit could be considered a successful MSP, and what are some tips and tracks for dealing with power in MSPs.

For more info and transcript, please visit https://tabledebtes.org/podcast/episode23/

In the third episode on power in the food system, we speak with Dr Channa Prakash, professor of crop genetics, biotechnology and genomics at Tuskegee University in the United States. Channa has been actively involved in enhancing the societal awareness of food biotechnology issues around the world. We speak with Channa about who decides what ends up on our table, discuss how his personal story connects to the Green Revolution, and unpack how he sees ideology as getting in the way of science. We also learn how Channa approaches food systems debates as we discuss Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and different efforts to promote Organic farming across South Asia.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode22

Follow Channa on Twitter: @AgBioWorld

In our second conversation exploring power in the food system, we speak with Julie Guthman, professor and food geographer at UC Santa Cruz. We ask her: how is Silicon Valley trying to transform the food system, who within Silicon Valley has the most power, and how does their vision compare with the Organic food movement? We discuss the different ways 'sustainability' is understood in these two different worlds and the broader structures that define or limit their competing visions. We also chat about how Julie's views on the Alternative Food Movement have evolved over time, and how Silicon Valley might be different if venture capitalists took her "101: Intro to Food and Ag'" class.

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For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode20

In the first Feed episode about power we speak with Phil Howard, author of Concentration and Power in the Food System, a book that asks "who controls what we eat?" We dive right into big questions, asking whether Phil Howard’s ideal food future is compatible with capitalism. We also talk about the rise of organics, how is power distributed within corporations, how a US farmer’s prospects about staying a small and diversified operation has diminished over time, and how food corporations intent on growing cope with the fact that human stomachs remain the same size.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode20

We kick off our second season introducing our new theme power in the food system. Across the season we’ll speak with researchers, farmers, activists and others to dig into what kind of power shapes food systems, if this needs to change, and how.

Send us an e-mail to podcast@tabledebates.org with what aspects of power you’d like to us to explore and which guests you’d like us to speak to.

For more info and transcript, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode19