Real Organic Podcast
Farmers interview scientists, activists, politicians, and authors engaged in protecting USDA organic food against an active corporate takeover. Real Organic Project released its add-on food label in stores and markets in 2021, and is focused on introducing eaters across the United States to our movement and its allies. In this podcast series, you'll meet the best organic and regenerative farmers around, as well as journalists, climate experts, policy makers and chefs (Dr. Vandana Shiva, Paul Hawken, Leah Penniman, Bill Mckibben, Alice Waters, Dan Barber, and Eliot Coleman - to name a few!) who support our mission and have lent their voices and insights to explaining the importance of keeping corporate cheaters out of the real food movement. As bad players aim to redefine what food is for the sake of their own profits, we believe there is too much at stake for both human and planetary health today and into the future. Feed the soil, not the plant!!
Episodes
281 episodes
Hugh Kent: The Science Of Life On An Organic Farm
#274: Hugh Kent returns to further the case that there is a growing divide in agriculture between industrial, chemical-intesnive practices and the organic approach of working with nature. He connects living soil, on-farm biodiversity, natural p...
Suzanne Simard: When The Forest Breathes
#273: Suzanne Simard joins Linley to discuss her new book, When the Forest Breathes, and the science that has made her one of the most influential voices in forest ecology. Together they explore mycorrhizae, soil life, clear-cutting, h...
Dr. Ann López: California Farmworker Reality Tours
#272: Dr. Ann López discusses the California farmworker reality tours she's designed and the deeper story they reveal about modern agriculture. As founder and executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, López has worked to expose ...
Jim Cochran: Growing Real Organic Strawberries in California
#271: Jim Cochran joins us to talk about a lifetime of growing organic strawberries in California and the movement that helped make that work possible. A pioneer of organic berry production, Cochran reflects on early side-by-side comparisons wi...
Omar Dieguez: My Hunger Strike Against Driscoll's Berries
#270: Omar Dieguez shares the story behind his 30 day hunger strike over Driscoll’s berries and the campaign to stop pesticides near schools in Watsonville, CA and the Pajaro Valley. From spray drift and youth organizing to farmworker exposure,...
JM Fortier At Farmer Friday: Growing Vegetables For Profit
#269: Recorded live at Real Organic Project’s Churchtown event, this Farmer Friday talk features JM Fortier in front of an audience of working farmers, sharing the systems and economics behind one of the best-known small-scale market gard...
Bill McKibben: Here Comes the Sun for Farmers
#268: Bill McKibben discusses his new book, Here Comes the Sun, and the rapid rise of clean energy in a warming world. While much of the climate conversation focuses on damage and delay, McKibben argues that solar and wind have quietly...
StarWalker Organic Farm: Pasture Raised Organic Beef For All
#267: What does it take to bring truly pasture-raised organic beef to market when the processing system is stacked against small and mid-sized farms? Jason and Kristina Walker of StarWalker Organic Farm join Linley to talk about raising cattle ...
Brisa Ranch: Small Farms As Distributors
#266: Three farmer-owners of Brisa Ranch lay out a practical answer to a big question: how can small farms survive in a marketplace built for consolidated buyers and consolidated distribution? Their approach is to become “small farms as distrib...
Maria Rodale: Family Lore And Organic Farming Trials
#265: Maria Rodale comes from one of the most influential families in American organic history; here she shares how her grandfather J.I. Rodale connected human health to the way food is grown and helped popularize organic through publishing. Sh...
Allan Savory: Using Livestock To Reverse Desertification In National Parks
#264: What if some of the worst biodiversity loss and land degradation is happening inside protected national parks, even where there is no farming, mining, or fossil fuel extraction? Allan Savory, author of the new book
Barbara Damrosch: A Life In The Garden
#263: Barbara Damrosch's new book A Life In The Garden is a reminder that the best garden advice is practical: touch the soil, grow what you’ll eat, and keep learning season after season. Barbara shares stories with Dave from her lifetime of wr...
Sally Fox: Organic Cotton Chemical Dyes
#262: Sally Fox explains why growing organic cotton can't be simplified to “skip pesticides.” She lays out the hard parts people rarely price in: weeds, labor, fertility, and what happens after the bale leaves the field. She also argues the sus...
Max Goldberg: Threats to Organic - Hydroponics & Regenerative Confusion
#261: Organic Insider founder Max Goldberg unpacks the most urgent threats facing organic integrity today: the explosive growth of hydroponic “organic,” the quiet industry push to normalize gene-edited GMO 2.0, and the confusion and green...
Chuck Benbrook: Chemicals In Food DO Make People Sick
#260: Pesticide risk expert Chuck Benbrook returns for a clear examination of how chemical residues in food affect human health. This conversation responds directly to recent claims made on a popular medical podcast (The Checkup With Dr. Mike -...
Nancy Matsumoto: Women And Alternative Food Systems
#259: James Beard Award- winning author Nancy Matsumoto discusses her new book Reaping What She Sows : How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System. From grass-fed dairy farmers and Indigenous fishers to bakers reviving regional grains, Nanc...
Eliot Coleman on the Market Gardener Podcast
#258: What happens when one of today’s most influential market gardeners sits down with one of the founders of modern organic farming? JM Fortier interviews Eliot Coleman - author, farmer, and pioneer of soil-based organic agriculture. Their co...
Bob Scowcroft: A Carrot Caper Birthed The Organic Label
#257: Before the USDA organic seal existed, the movement was held together by trust, community… and the courage to confront fraud when it appeared. Bob Scowcroft, former executive director of CCOF and co-founder of OFRF, tells the inside ...
Will Brinton: Rethinking Carbon Sequestration - It's The Plant Canopy!
#256: Drawing on decades of soil respiration research, scientist Will Brinton explains why the most important action surrounding carbon sequestration isn’t simply in the soil - it’s the plant canopy that captures CO₂ the moment i...
Deborah Koons Garcia: Future Of Food 20 Years Later
#255: Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia joins us, 20 years after the release of her influential documentary The Future of Food, to reflect on how the food system has changed - and how it hasn’t. Deborah shares her thoughts about GMOs, corporate co...
Tom Philpott: Corporate Control And The Future Of Food
#254: Food systems journalist and author Tom Philpott joins Dave for a powerful discussion on the legacy of Joan Gussow, the myths driving industrial agriculture, and the political forces shaping what we eat. From nitrate pollution in the Corn ...
Helen Atthowe: Living Pathways for Mulch, Fertility and Habitat
#253: Farmer, researcher, and author Helen Atthowe has spent 40 years building soil ecosystems that feed themselves while offering their own, living biologic controls In this conversation with Dave Chapman, she explains how living pathways - st...
Leonard Diggs: Building Community-Based Farms for the Future
#252: Farmer, educator, and EcoFarm President Leonard Diggs joins Dave Chapman for a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of organic agriculture, the legacy of EcoFarm, and the urgent need to move from commodity-based to community-base...
Michael Pollan: “Eat Food” Came From Joan Gussow
#251: Michael Pollan joins Dave Chapman for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of food, health, and the organic movement. Pollan reflects on his friendship with Joan Gussow, her prophetic warnings about industrial agriculture, and her inf...
Karen Washington: Food Justice and the Power of Community
#250: Farmer, activist, and Real Organic ally Karen Washington joins Dave Chapman to talk about her decades-long fight for food justice and her friendship with food systems pioneer Joan Gussow Karen traces her journey from growing up in the Bro...