Heartland Stories Radio

Beth Hoffman is a beginning farmer working almost 530 acres in Iowa. For the last twenty years, she has worked as a journalist covering food and agriculture. Her work has been aired and published on NPR's Morning Edition, The Guardian, The Salt, Latino USA, and the News Hour. Her new book "Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America" was published in October 2021 by Island Press. Tune in to learn more about:

- Her own story of moving to Iowa, following her husband to farm and their new life as farmers;

- The mindset of farmers that needs to change;

- How subsidies for farmers really work;

- A farmer makes only $0.14 for every $1 that is spent at the grocery store;

- About "the bigger is better" myth and the race to grow and produce more;

- Why farmers should work together and not be in competition with their neighbors;

- What family farms really are.

You can order Beth's book at your library, or at your local independent bookshop.

Carey Gillam is an American investigative journalist and author with more than 30 years of experience covering food and agricultural policies and practices, including 17 years as a senior correspondent for Reuters international news service. She has specialty knowledge regarding the rise of biotech crop technology and the associated rise in pervasive pesticide use in our farming and food production system. Carey's second book, a legal thriller titled "The Monsanto Papers - Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man's Search for Justice", was published in March 2, 2021 (Island Press). Tune in to learn more about:

-"The Monsanto Papers", her second book, which is the inside story of Lee Johnson's landmark lawsuit against Monsanto;

- What she has learned from the process of litigation and the internal documents from Monsanto that were trying to discredit her work and destroy her career;

- The levels of deceptions by Monsanto;

- How she transcribes the stories of farmers, scientists and academics in a way that is meaningful;

- Why she thinks farmers are essential and critical.

Carey strongly believes that " Our food is where it all began, and we need to respect that and do everything we can to protect our food production system, our environment and the health of our children."

To learn more about Carey's work go to https://careygillam.com/ and https://usrtk.org/.

Loren Cardeli, Executive Director and co-founder of A Growing Culture, an organization that promotes ecological agriculture across the globe. Loren is a leader in a small but growing movement of farmer-centric organizations and has traveled around the world to help set up and run organic farms. Tune in to learn more about:

- His personal experiences and memories of his family dinner table;

- Why being heard is so important and why there are a lot of voiceless communities around the world;

- How the very ones that are feeding us are starving;

- Food waste, ethanol production, animal feed, corn - what is wrong with the current industrial agriculture in the US;

- About his organization A Growing Culture and their mission to support farmers to change the broken food system and their collective learning through farmer-to-farmer exchange;

- Why we have to change the view of how people see industrial agriculture and why the narrative and communication part are detrimental;

- Why the local food movement won't save the world;

To learn more about Loren's work go to: https://www.agrowingculture.org/.

Sophie Ackoff is the Co-Executive Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition and has mobilized young farmers and their supporters for policy change since 2012. In 2019, she was named one of 25 Leaders in Food and Agriculture to Watch by the Food Tank. Tune in to learn more about:

- Sophie's story about organizing farmers;

- About the National Young Farmers Coalition and the integration of farmers of color into the coalition;

- Why immigration reform is critical for farmworkers;

- The current access to land issue for young farmers;

- The ongoing work on policies for the next Farm Bill in 2023;

- The efforts on equitable land transition;

- How soil, climate change, and the environment are topics that the coalition is supporting in the next Farm Bill.

To learn more about Sophie's work go to https://www.youngfarmers.org/.

Before becoming Mayor of her hometown of Viroqua, Wisconsin in 2018, Karen Mischel spent 17 years in the Merchant Marine followed by her current occupation as an organic farm inspector. Tune in to learn more about:

- Her story of growing up on a dairy farm in a small town in Wisconsin, her 17 years of traveling the world with the Merchant Marine, and working in the Steward Department and working with food;

- Lessons learned in communication from working on the ship;

- The challenges of managing a rural community with new and old residents;

- Why hard conversations are important and non-violent communication is the key in her community;

- Her work on banning herbicide spraying on public places in Viroqua and on leased public agricultural land;

- Her focus on prioritizing clean water, healthy soil, organic farming, and community health;

- Why educating people in the community should be a political responsibility.

To learn more about Mayor Karen and Viroqua go to https://viroqua-wisconsin.com.

Tony Bedard is the Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Co-op, whose mission to nourish people and planet is rooted in corporate social responsibility. Tony has also led more than 25 humanitarian missions to El Salvador and Haiti to support projects in the areas of education, clean water, and healthcare. Tune in to learn more about:

- The story of Frontier Co-op and their products;

- Tony's story of growing up in rural Iowa in a family with 16 kids and his career starting at Frontier back in 1991;

- Frontier Co-op's corporate social responsibility;

- Frontier Co-op's apprenticeship program of hiring former inmates, refugees, homeless people and their amazing Giving back projects;

- The sustainable sourcing program Well Earth Program.

To learn more about Frontier Co-op go to https://www.frontiercoop.com.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we are bringing you back this amazing episode about Cynthia Barstow and her organization Protect Our Breasts.

For Cynthia Barstow, Senior Lecturer of Marketing at Amherst Isenberg School at the University of Massachusetts and Founder and Executive Director of Protect Our Breasts, the fight against breast cancer is personal. In 2010, a routine mammogram led to her own breast cancer diagnosis—something faced by nearly 300,000 women each year. As her treatment began, so did a deep dive into breast cancer research, especially what causes the disease. Tune in to learn more about:

- Her personal story of going through breast cancer and how the idea for her organization was born;

- About the window of susceptibility, the period of developmental stages when a woman may be most vulnerable to environmental exposures, starting from the womb all through puberty;

- About Protect Our Breasts, an organization that empowers women to make safer choices to protect their breasts during the most vulnerable periods of their lives and shares the conversation about chemicals in everyday products found on grocery shelves;

- Why packaging is as important as the ingredients when it comes to toxins, as they can leak into the product;

- The endocrine system explained;

- How 85,000 synthetic chemicals have been introduced into the environment and only 7% have been tested for effects on human health;

- About the

53 chapters of the organization in the USA, Canada, UK and India;

- About how men can get breast cancer as well.

Cynthia's 'a-ha' moment that it's younger women (up through their first full-term pregnancy) who are most susceptible to harmful chemicals and carcinogens that can lead to breast cancer later in life lead her to burst into tears. "Every day looking out on the sea of faces of those that I teach, those women were the ones that were susceptible. They were going through life believing it was their mother and their grandmother and their aunts, but it was them." She realized that getting information to younger women about positive choices they could make to steer clear from certain ingredients in everyday products was more important than ever.

To learn more about her work and Protect Our Breasts go to: https://protectourbreasts.org/.

Ashley Koff is a registered dietician, an award-winning nutrition expert, and educator for doctors, nutritionists and fitness professionals. Her mission is to help people get better health powered by better total nutrition. She is the founder of the non-profit Ashley Koff Approved (AKA) and of The Better Nutrition Program. Tune in to learn more about:

- The connection between the microbiome, soil and climate;

- What is wrong with the food system and especially the marketing of food;

- Why standards are needed especially for glyphosate levels;

- The challenges of being a dietician today;

- Her creative approach to helping her clients and why the understanding of our own body is the key to make better choices;

- Lessons learned from the current pandemic.

To learn more about Ashley's work go to https://thebetternutritionprogram.com and https://ashleykoffrd.com.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of twenty books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment, beginning with the three-million-copy Diet for a Small Planet in 1971. She is the co-founder of three organizations, including the Oakland-based think tank Food First, the Small Planet Institute, which she leads with her daughter, Anna Lappé, and the Small Planet Fund, which channels resources to democratic social movements worldwide. Tune in to learn more about:

- What she learned during the pandemic;

- About Diet for Small Planet 50 years later;

- Her experience with the farmers in the Midwest from the 1980s to today;

- The concentrated power of corporations in the food industry;

- Why she is a "possibilist" and she believes that voices and actions count and can make a difference;

- What democracy really means and about Democracy Movement;

- The culture of valuing and taking responsibility of our natural resources.

To learn more about Frances go to https://www.smallplanet.org.

Melody Meyer is an organic pioneer, with over 40 years of extensive knowledge in international trade, the marketing of organic food and organic industry policy. She is on the Board of Trustees for The Organic Trade Center and leads Source Organic, a company dedicated to Education, Advocacy, and Thought Leadership (EAT) for the organic industry and manages the Organic Matters Blog. Tune in to learn more about:

- Her grandparents' organic and diverse farm in Iowa;

- Her connection to growing and cooking their own food;

- Her journey into an organic food career;

- Her thoughts on hydroponic and aquaponic farming;

- Stories and lessons learned from her international work in the food system;

- Climate change, migration and the food system;

- The inequality of water;

- How the current pandemic are changing our perspectives on food and our food system.

To learn more about Melody, visit her blog at: https://organicmattersblog.com/about.