Eating Matters

By 2050 we will have 10 billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change. This of course begs the question – how will we do this? Joining host Jenna Liut with the inside scoop on what factors need to be addressed in order to achieve global food security is Dr. Ken Foster. Ken is an award-winning professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, where he teaches agricultural price analysis and applied time series analysis. He served as the Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University at from 2008 – 2017 and he is also the co-editor of the recently published book “How to Feed the World,” available from Island Press.

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Host Jenna Liut is thrlled to welcome Deb Eschmeyer to the show today. A dedicated and passionate food system reformer, Deb's work has included organic farming; co-founding the national nonprofit, FoodCorps; and serving as the Executive Director of Let’s Move! and the Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition in the Obama Administration. Currently, she is the VP of Communications and Community Affairs at Danone North America. In this episode, we will more about how – in each of these roles – she has worked to create a more sustainable, healthy and just food system, and the lessons she has learned along the way. We will also discuss one of her most recent projects at Danone sponsoring the Slow Food Nations, a festival of flavor, culture and exploration happening in Denver, CO from July 13 – 15th.

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Michigan, which sits in the middle of one-fifth of the Earth’s surface freshwater and has a higher percentage of surface water than any other American state, has experienced a spate of water related issues in the past few years - from the 2014 Flint water crisis to the Detroit municipality water shutoffs amid a recent announcement from Nestle that it will be increasing the amount of water it bottles and sells from the state. Joining the show today to discuss the current status of these issues and what can be done to help ensure the future availabilty of this precious natural resource is Nick Schroeck, and Environmental Law professor and the Director of the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.

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Have you ever wondered why most grocery stores – despite the chain – more or less have the same floor plan? Or why candy bars are always available at the cash register? The layout of stores and strategic placement of certain items is the result of a purposeful decision-making progress designed to encourage people to buy more of one thing or another. Often, the items offered for sale tend to have a lower nutritional value – helping to fuel high levels of obesity and diet related disease prevalent in our society today. But what if these strategies and subtle cues that influence all of our decision-making processes were used to promote healthy items instead?

Joining the show today to discuss the possibility of using behavioral economic based interventions to lead food consumers of all ages to healthier diets is Dr. David Just, whose recent paper, titled “Influencing the food choices of SNAP consumers: Lessons from economics, psychology and marketing” was just published in the Journal of Food Policy. Dr. Just is currently a professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. He serves as co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs. David’s work uses the tools of psychology and economics to examine important ways in which misperception and emotion can drive economic decisions.

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Jillian Hishaw joins the show to talk about her work as the Founding Director of F.A.R.M.S., a nonprofit located in the South that provides legal services to small farmers and hunger relief services in their community. Her work has largely focused on the aging challenges farmers face, many of which go overlooked and underreported. Host Jenna Liut talks to Jillian about what those issues are, the impact she and her organization have had to date, and what she will be advocating for in the upcoming Farm Bill.

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Hemp is a plant that has an enormous opportunity to benefit the american agricultural system in myriad ways and yet has been faced with a series of legal and regulatory issues over the past several decades. Joining the show to give an update on the legality of hemp cultivation in the U.S. and her recent article on the matter, “Hemp is on the Horizon. Will it Change the Game for Farm Country,” is Christina Cooke. Christina is a freelance writer and associate editor at Civil Eats – a daily online news source about the American food system. Later in the show, we will welcome John Bell, a hemp farmer in Kentucky, to offer his experience growing hemp over the past few years and his perspective on the future of its cultivation.

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Caitlin Dewey, who covers food policy for Wonkblog at the Washington Post, joins the show to talk all about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, one of the most important, successful, and misunderstood welfare programs in the US today. Perhaps because of these misunderstandings, it is often a target, with many lawmakers actively working to dramatically decrease the amount spent on the program and the number of people it supports. Most recently, the Trump Administration has put forward a proposal to not only significantly cut federal spending on the program, but to majorly overhaul what it looks like and how benefits are administered. Host Jenna Liut digs into Caitlin’s recent coverage of these issues and what they will mean for millions of Americans.

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Kara Cook-Schultz from U.S. PIRG joins the show to talk about their recently released report, Reaping What We Sow: How the Practices of Industrial Agriculture Put Our Health and Environment at Risk, that breaks down the problems of industrial agriculture and offers common-sense solutions. Host Jenna Liut is also speaks with Seth Watkins, 4th generation Iowa farmer whose grandmother, Jessie Field Shambaugh, started 4H. Seth offers his experience in implementing the types of sustainable farming practices proposed in the report.

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Eating Matters welcomes Sam Fromartz, Editor in Chief of the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), back to the show to discuss the new, annual survey highlighting the top 10 issues their journalists think will make up the news in 2018. From the fight to control seed technology to antibiotic resistance in livestock to the health risks of Roundup, not to mention the Farm Bill renewal, there will be no shortage of things for us to talk about over the next year!

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Christine Haughney, food and agriculture writer at Politico, joins the show to talk about her work as the investigative reporter of Rotten, Netflix’s new food crime docu-series. ROTTEN covers some of the “greatest hits” in food crime and fraud and shines a light on the pervasive greed and misconduct behind some of the world’s biggest corporations and the global food production industry. From honey to chicken to cod, this series will surprise and shock you, and hopefully encourage you to become more informed consumers.

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