Max and Jess dig into the interesting origins of some of America's most well known foods, including Hershey's, M&M Mars, SPAM, Chef Boyardee, and of course Cheetos!

In this episode of Farms and Frontlines, we explore the burgeoning world of alternative proteins with our special guest, David Voorman, Vice President of Food Solutions Action. As global food systems face mounting challenges and consumers seek more sustainable choices, alternative proteins are emerging as a possible solution.

David brings his wealth of experience to the conversation, sharing insights on the latest advancements in the field, the market's response to new products, and the broader implications for the environment and food security. We briefly discuss the science behind plant-based and lab-grown proteins, the impact on traditional agriculture, and the role of policy in shaping a sustainable future.

Join us for an enlightening discussion on how alternative proteins could reshape our diets, support farmers, and contribute to a more sustainable planet. Whether you're a food enthusiast, a sustainability advocate, or just curious about the future of food, this episode is not to be missed!

Max and Jess finish up their Haiti series with a rundown of Haiti's agricultural history. The hosts match up the events of the previous three histories with what was happening from an agricultural viewpoint and how these events helped create the situation the country finds itself in today.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed by the hosts are their own and do not reflect their employers or anyone else.

Max and Jess try to make sense of Haiti post 1950's. By looking at trends in their politics we can start to see how the country ended up where it is today. Tune in to get caught up to current events and hear some more wild facts about Haitian history.

This week Jess and Max take a bit of a break and lighten things up with a look at how Pepsi ended up with the 6th largest navy in the world, how Pepsi essentially enabled Richard Nixon to run for President, and more!

DISCLAIMER: All of the opinions given by the hosts are their own and do not reflect their employers or anyone else but themselves.

On this weeks episode, Max and Jess dive into the U.S. invasion and the following occupation. This involves a daring gold heist, guerilla insurgencies, and a certain banks hostile takeover of an entire countries finances.

Link to NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/haiti-wall-street-us-banks.html

DISCLAIMER: All of the opinions given by the hosts are their own and do not reflect their employers or anyone else but themselves.

Max and Jess dive into the wild history of the worlds only country founded after a successful slave revolt, Haiti. In their longest series yet, the hosts explore the events that led up to the countries current day struggles. If revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, natural disasters, shady international banks, foreign occupations, gangs, barbecue, and rice laced with arsenic intrigue you, look no further!

***DISCLAIMER***

In the episode we say we will not go into detail about how the U.S. ends up with Haiti's debt, however we dug into it and it is an insane story that we could not leave out. Part 2 will explore this more, and push the remaining episodes to Part 3 and Part 4.

"Green Gold"

The avocado is a prehistoric fruit, patented by a Wisconsin postal worker in 1935, first advertised alongside filet mignon, and launched into mainstream American culture by a Super Bowl guacamole contest. It now moves billions of pounds a year into the United States, almost exclusively from one state in Mexico — Michoacan — the same state where the most violent cartel turf wars in the country have played out for decades. That is not a coincidence.

In Part 2, Jess and Max walk through how NAFTA opened the U.S. avocado market, why Michoacan became the only USDA-approved source, and exactly how the cartels — specifically the Zetas, then La Familia Michoacana, then the Knights Templar, then Los Viagras — muscled their way into every layer of the supply chain. Workers pay to work. Landowners pay per acre. Warehouse drivers pay to pass checkpoints safely. Packinghouses pay to not burn down. And then on top of all that, the cartel takes a cut when the avocados are sold, at a price they set.

It's not a drug operation that happens to touch the avocado trade. The avocado trade IS the operation. Illegal orchards are being carved out of the Monarch Butterfly Preserve. Meth labs are hidden inside avocado groves. USDA inspectors have been threatened. And roughly 92% of Mexico's avocado production flows through a marketing organization that openly says cartel violence is simply not their problem.

The harder question Max and Jess end on: does any of this change anything for you at the grocery store?

Spoiler: there's no clean answer. But you'll think twice next time you order the guac.

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"Blame It on the British"

What do the Opium Wars, the California Gold Rush, Chinese railroad workers, Prohibition, and Miami's cocaine cowboys all have in common? They're all stepping stones on the road to Mexican drug cartels extorting your guacamole.

This week, Jess brings her graduate thesis to the mic as Farms and Frontlines digs into one of the wildest origin stories in food security history. It starts in the mid-1800s with British warships forcing opium trade on China, ripples through waves of Chinese immigration to California, and takes a hard turn when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 cut off immigration and pushed displaced workers — and their smuggling networks — south into Mexico.

From there, it's a chain reaction: human smuggling routes become opium routes, opium routes become alcohol routes during Prohibition, and alcohol routes become drug highways once Prohibition ends and the Mexicans violently take over operations from the Chinese. Add in Nixon's war on drugs (Operation Intercept found almost nothing and just pushed traffickers onto boats and planes), the balloon effect of every crackdown just moving the problem somewhere else, and Colombian cocaine flooding into Miami so fast that the city needed freezer trucks for the bodies — and suddenly you've got the Guadalajara Cartel, one godfather named Felix Gallardo holding it all together, and a DEA agent's brutal murder that blows the whole thing wide open.

Gallardo goes to prison. His lieutenants go to war with each other. And the stage is set for the cartels we know today — and for a fruit from Michoacan that's about to make them a whole lot richer.

Next episode: NAFTA, the Haas avocado, the Knights Templar, and how all of this ends up in your grocery cart.

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"Sea Babies and the Grain that Wouldn't Quit"

Russia killed the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2023, expecting Ukraine to come crawling back to the table. Instead, Ukraine started sinking ships.

In Part 2 of the Ukraine Grain Strain, Max and Jess pick up where they left off and get into the truly wild story of how a country with no navy managed to devastate one of Russia's most powerful fleets — using motorboat-sized kamikaze drones packed with nearly 900 kilograms of explosives (and, inexplicably, flamethrowers). Ukraine spotted the "Sea Baby" drones at a defense expo in Turkey, acquired a few, and then just... started building them domestically. Of Russia's 13 Black Sea landing ships, only 5 are now serviceable.

But it's not all drone warfare. The episode also covers the messy reality of Ukraine's overland grain routes through Europe — how cheaper, less-regulated Ukrainian wheat flooded Polish and Romanian markets, sparked political firestorms, and literally led to protesters dumping train cars full of grain on the side of the road. The unintended consequences of desperation, in real time.

From there, Max and Jess zoom out: the Houthis in the Red Sea, the growing role of drones in modern warfare, what a Bloomberg opinion piece about a "new Cold War" gets right (and what it's missing, looking at you, Saudi Arabia and the Horn of Africa), and what a decade-long recovery timeline for Ukrainian agriculture actually means for global food supply.

It's a lot. And it's all connected. That's kind of the whole point.

Next episode: Mexican drug cartels and the avocado trade. Yes, really.

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