How come so much of the food in Iowa seems to taste the same? In this two-part mini-series, Beth Hoffman dives deep into how and why restaurants have evolved (not for the better), and the ways chefs can help reinvigorate the state of Iowa.

Listen to this 12-minute podcast on Substack or any other podcast player.

Voices

Suman Hoque of HOQ and Flora in Des Moines, Iowa.

Jill Beebout of Blue Gate Farm, Chariton, Iowa.

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by John Hogeland and Tommy Hexter. Brian Doubek and Ian Post created the music used in the show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Fruits and vegetables are often not the first thing many SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) participants buy. Produce can be more expensive, and when you are trying to stretch food dollars to feed hungry kids (children make up almost 40% of all SNAP users), processed foods often fills more bellies.

A program implemented in Iowa called Double Up Food Bucks helps stretch SNAP dollars by doubling the money spent on fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s a federally funded program active in Iowa for ten years now, and the federal and private funds spent on the program have successfully put more produce on the table.

Yet also ten years old is the fight to get the state of Iowa to also contribute to the program. This year, the legislature is being asked to contribute $1 million of its $9.7 billion budget on the program, a contribution that would also be matched by the federal government.

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It makes sense for Iowa to support the program. Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) not only helps get produce into the homes of people on SNAP, it also supports local farmers. DUFB can be used at farmers markets or on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes purchased directly from farms. In several states, locally grown food has remained the focus, even as budgets have doubled. It is also good for Iowa’s economy—people who use it free up funds to spend on other important Iowa-owned businesses.

Listen to this week’s episode of At the Iowa Farm Table to learn more about Double Up Food Bucks, the people who use the program, and why and how it helps get more fruits and vegetables into the hands of those who need it most.

If you like this post, please “like” it! Comments are always encouraged too.

Voices

Noah Stein—SNAP and Double Up Food Bucks participant

Jazzmine Brooks—Healthy Incentives Director at Iowa Healthiest State

Paige Chickering—Iowa State Manager for Save the Children Action Network

Natalie Estrem—Market and Programs Supervisor at LSI Global Greens

Resources

Only 1 in 10 Adults Get Enough Fruits or Vegetables

Healthy Incentives Pilot Final Evaluation Report

GusNIP Year 5 Impact Findings

SF 2027 (Double Up Food Bucks Appropriation Bill)

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by Tommy Hexter. Brian Doubek and Ian Post created the music used in the show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

“Food as medicine.” The phrase is everywhere in the news and on social media.

But food and farming impacts not only our bodies. In this episode of At the Iowa Farm Table, we look at the concept of healing our bodies, by choosing better foods and by healing our soils.

“If we’re going to have healthy people, we have to have healthy soils that produce healthy plants. That gives us healthy people,” says Shaffer Ridgeway, farmer and Soil Conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the arm of the US Department of Agriculture that works directly with farmers to help them improve their soil health.

Ridgeway will be part of a new Summit to be held in Iowa on March 2 + 3 in Cedar Falls, called Healing from the Ground Up. You can view the entire speaker lineup and register to attend at the webpage here.

“The goal of this Summit is to create the social movement necessary to build the bridge between producers and consumers,” said Tommy Hexter, the IFSC Executive Director and one of event’s planners. “We will not only talk about the microbes in the soil, or the microbes in your stomach—we’ll also talk about how we get food from the farm to the table in Iowa, in a concerted effort. We all have to figure out how to work together.”

Listen to this podcast that features some of the event’s speakers, discussing why and how healthy soil means healthier people.

Voices

Shaffer Ridgeway—Southern Goods Farm

Jenn Arndt—Roots Nutrition Counseling

Tommy Hexter—Iowa Food System Coalition

Resources

An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods: The Biggest Challenge for Future Generations’ Health

Corn Era Hybrid Macronutrient and Dry Matter Accumulation in Plant Components | Agronomy Journal

Thanks to Shaffer Ridgeway, Jenn Arndt and Tommy Hexter. And to Jodie Huegerich and Audrey Tran Lam for their thoughtful editing of this episode.

Music by Beatfonics, Ian Post, and Mujo

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Todd Western III’s family settled in Mahaska County in 1864, a year after Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation. More than 160 years later, the family still farms the same land.

As one would imagine, the Western family has weathered a lot over the course of their time on the land: price fluctuations, weather changes, and racial discrimination. But it was the sudden death of Western’s father that changed the course of his life and allowed him to find his calling.

Listen to Western tell the story of his family and how his passion for agriculture spurred him on to form the Iowa Farmers of Color.

Voices:

Todd Western III — Iowa Farmer and Senior Donor Advisor at Greater Twin Cities United Way

Resources:

You can find more information about the Iowa Farmers of Color at:

* https://www.iowafarmersofcolor.com/

* https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564629460814

* Instagram - @iowafarmersofcolor

You can learn more about the class action suit against the US Department of Agriculture by Black Farmers (Pigford v Glickman) here.

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the IFSC newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities. Sign up today and never miss a bite!

🎧 Produced by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by Tommy Hexter.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Working to change the food system can feel like a slog. Progress is slow, challenges are constant, and wins can be hard to see.

And yet, change has happened. Public understanding has shifted, and a growing movement in Iowa is pushing toward a food system that is more sustainable, more equitable, and more accessible. That progress didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people showed up.

In this episode, we reflect on the moments that inspire people to step into food systems work and to stay. Those moments come from many places: learning, frustration, love for the land, concern for future generations, or simply realizing that things don’t have to stay the way they are.

This work isn’t a sprint or a marathon. It’s a relay race. Each person carries the baton for a while, shaped by those who came before and responsible to those who come next.

When the work feels heavy, this conversation is a reminder that lasting change is built by people who keep showing up together.

Resources

* Find Your Legislators

* Attend Advocacy Training Sessions (Fridays, February 13, 20, & 27)

* Attend Iowa Food & Farm Day on the Hill (March 18, 2026)

* Explore the Iowa Food System Coalition’s food and farm policy priorities for 2026

Special thanks to Threase Harms, Luke Elzinga, Giselle Bruskewitz (Iowa Valley RC&D), Mallory DeVries, Jonathan Lawrence, Kate Gilbert, Chris Jones, and Matt Russell for sharing their time, insight, and inspiration in this episode. Mallory DeVries, Anrica Deb, and Tommy Hexter edited.

Photography from Beth Hoffman, Whippoorwill Creek Farm

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

There’s a word that explains a lot about modern agriculture, even if Merriam-Webster hasn’t caught up yet: chickenization. It’s what happens when animals become “widgets,” farms become factories, and power quietly shifts from thousands of farmers to a handful of corporations.

In this season finale of At the Iowa Farm Table, Beth Hoffman digs into how chicken went from luxury to dollar-menu staple, and what we lost along the way. Journalist and author Christopher Leonard traces the rise of vertically integrated poultry and the contract system that keeps farmers under someone else’s thumb. Former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin reflects on how federal policy helped supercharge “efficiency,” and what that really cost rural communities.

Then we head back to the Midwest to meet two very different kinds of poultry operations charting another path.

We won’t solve chickenization in a 20 minute podcast. But we do ask a pointed question: if cheap meat comes with sick soils, hollowed-out towns, and stressed-out farmers, is it really efficient?

Voices

* Senator Tom Harkin—The Harkin Institute

* Christopher Leonard—The Meat Racket, @cleonardnews, watchdogwritersgroup.com (watch full interview here)

* Jason Grimm—Grimm Family Farm

* Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin—Tree Range Farms (watch full interview here)

Resources

* New Study Highlights Benefits of the Partnership Between Contract Farmers and Chicken Companies—National Chicken Council

* 2024 Americans’ Views on Business Survey

* The Cost of Money and Commercial Poultry Growing

Special thanks to our guests Christopher Leonard, Tom Harkin, Jason Grimm, and Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin for their insight. And to Mallory DeVries and Anrica Deb for their thoughtful editing throughout this episode. Thanks to Meghan Holloran for supporting our social media and promotional work this season.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

This week on At the Iowa Farm Table, learn more about how and where your food is raised!

Beth Hoffman and Amanda Severson chat about their cattle businesses and how they raise meat differently than what you typically buy in the supermarket. They discuss current political trends and how the nutrition of the meat they raise differs from cattle raised on corn.

You can learn more about Amanda Severson and her family at https://www.grandviewbeef.com/ and on instagram @grandviewbeef

Beth Hoffman runs Whippoorwill Creek Farm with her husband—find them at iowa-farm.com and @whippoorwill_creek_farm on Instagram.

Thanks for listening to the At the Iowa Farm Table Podcast! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support the work of the Iowa Food System Coalition.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

What’s going on in farm country?

China, which normally buys half of America’s soybean crop, hasn’t bought a bean. Corn prices are dragging below the cost of production. Wheat and hogs? Also in the tank.

Across the Midwest, people are whispering—and in some cases shouting—that we might be headed for another farm crisis, the likes of which Iowa last saw in the 1980s.

To get perspective, I turned to Sarah Vogel. She’s an attorney, advocate, and author of The Farmer’s Lawyer, the memoir that chronicles the landmark Coleman v. Block class action lawsuit. As a young lawyer and single mother in the 1980s, she took on the federal government on behalf of 240,000 farmers facing foreclosure.

Later, she made history again as the first woman ever elected Commissioner of Agriculture in the United States, serving two terms in North Dakota.

After five decades fighting for farmers, Vogel’s perspective on this moment cuts through the noise. We talk about what she’s seeing on the ground, how federal policy is failing rural America, and what it takes to keep fighting for a fair food system.

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. We invite you to stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news: subscribe to our newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities. Sign up today and never miss a bite!

Edited by Mallory DeVries.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

In recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day (October 13th in Iowa), we hear from two Indigenous women residing in Iowa and learn how shifting our perspective can help bring us back into balance with the natural world.

Featured Voices

* Marianna G. M. Cota, MPH — Ecologist, dreamweaver, heartist, disruptor, folklorist, and public health scholar with Yoeme/Yaqui, Kapampangan/Filipino, and Mexican lineage. Marianna is the dreamer behind INDIGENEXUS, inviting others to develop and maintain relationships with the creative and spiritual aspects of their being.

* Zine: Beauty All Around Us, a community-led project featuring indigenous youth perspectives.

* Sikowis Nobiss, BA, MA — Founder of Great Plains Action Society, which addresses the trauma that Indigenous Peoples and the Earth face through community engagement, civic engagement, mutual aid, rematriation, and healing justice.

* Nobiss works closely with the Honor Native Land Fund, an opportunity for non-Native people living in the Midwest to contribute to the rematriation of land to Indigenous stewardship. Through supporting land return, participants in HNLF acknowledge that we live on Indigenous homelands while taking practical steps toward repair.

* You can also join the Decolonial Repair Network to dive deeper.

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the Iowa Food System Coalition’s newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities. Never miss a bite!

🎧 Produced by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by Mallory DeVries.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Iowa schools spend millions feeding kids — in effect, they’re the largest restaurants in the state. But here’s the catch: most of those tax dollars don’t stay in Iowa. When food is trucked in from across the country and contracts go only to national corporations, local farms and rural communities lose out.

In this replay of our very first episode, we dig into the real economics of school lunch. You’ll hear how the now-defunded Local Food for Schools program changed what ended up on kids’ trays, why school districts’ purchasing power shapes what farmers grow, and what’s at stake in bills like HF 851 and SF 525.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit attheiowafarmtable.substack.com