Heartland Stories Radio

Ken Cook is the president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group. He is widely recognized as one of the environmental community's most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture, U.S. food and farm policy, and the nation's broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. Tune in to learn more about:

- His involvement with the Farm Bill in 1985;

- The start of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) back in 1993 and the first published report written by Richard Wiles on "Pesticides in Children's food";

- The birth of the Dirty Dozen list;

- The change in the media industry and the consequences on the EWG work;

- The stories on Roundup, Dicamba and superweeds;

- Extreme monocropping and how we are paying the price right now;

- Ken's hope for the 2023 Farm Bill;

- EWG's newest study on "Certified organic packaged foods contain fewer ingredients linked to negative health effects";

- How the term "regenerative" is being used as a marketing tool only.

To learn more about Ken's work and the EWG go to: https://www.ewg.org.

Dr. Fred Provenza is a Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University, where he worked for 35 years directing an award-winning research group that pioneered an understanding of how learning influences foraging behavior and how behavior links soil, plants, herbivores, and humans. He is also the author of "Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us about Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom" and one of the founders of BEHAVE, an international network of scientists, ranchers, farmers and land managers. Tune in to learn more about:

- Why and how certain foods are hijacking our system;

- What we can learn from goats and other animals;

- The lost knowledge and wisdom of real nourishment;

- About food foraging, animal habitats and the mother connection;

- About dining with change;

- Why learning to eat new wholesome foods can guide us towards a better and healthier life.

To learn more about Dr. Provenza's work, go to http://www.behave.net.

Ken Lee together with his wife Caryl Levine founded Lotus Foods in 1995, a company that focuses on importing handcrafted rice from small family farms. Ken and his team are committed to organic and regenerative practices that is generating more rice from less land, preserving valuable genetic biodiversity, saving hundreds of millions of gallons of water annually, promoting long-term soil health, and removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Tune in to learn more about:

- Ken and Caryl's story on starting their rice business while travelling through China;

- Small rice farms and the toll it takes on women's health;

- The "More Crop per Drop" and "System of Rice Intensification" (SRI),which was developed to improve rice yields of low-income farmers to alleviate poverty and improve food security;

- The story of Henri de Laulanié, a Jesuit priest and agronomist who developed the SRI in Madagascar in the 70s;

- The golden rice, the genetically modified rice, that cannot solve any poverty, distribution or food waste problem;

- Why what we do to the earth we do to people, and what we do to the people we do to the earth.

To learn more about Ken's work and Lotus Foods go to https://www.lotusfoods.com.

Brianna Fiene is a Farm to Institution Outreach Specialist at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on developing partnerships with institutions, researchers, business and industry stakeholders to create resilient value-chains critical for sustainable food-systems and regional farm to school events that connect Midwest producers to institutional markets. Tune in to learn more about:

• The Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and their projects;
• Resilient food systems and the local food systems during the pandemic;
• Her own story of growing up on a small farm;
• Food insecurity in Wisconsin;
• How to keep people on their land and save small family farms;
• Climate change and the connection to the soil and farms;
• About the grain shortage and the Neighbor Loaves.

To learn more about Brianna's work go to https://cias.wisc.edu.

Marlaina Freisthler is a Washington, D.C. based researcher and PhD student fellow with the Heartland Health Research Alliance. A mother with Midwestern roots, Marlaina grew up on a farm in Ohio and is passionate about environmentally mediated health challenges to which pregnant women and children are uniquely vulnerable. Tune in to learn more about:

- Her own journey of becoming a researcher;

- The Heartland Study, which is an observational medical research project designed to answer critical questions about potential impacts of herbicides on mother and infant health, including whether or not there is a connection between herbicide exposure and birth defects or developmental challenges;

- The world of research and data on pesticides;

- The new book "Count Down" by Shanna H. Swan with Stacy Colino, which looks at the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing and endangering human sexuality and fertility;

- The herbicide treadmill;

- Why health is a human right;

- Some simple ways on how to protect yourself from pesticides.

To learn more about the Heartland Study go to: https://hh-ra.org/projects/the-heartland-study.

Dr. Rupa Marya is an Associate Professor of Medicine at UC-San Francisco, an activist, author and musician. She was recently awarded the Chancellor's Award for Public Service. Dr. Marya also co-founded the Do No Harm Coalition, an organization of healthcare workers committed to overturning structural obstacles to health. She is also the co-author with Raj Patel of "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice". Tune in to learn more about:

- How social structures create diseases;

- The teachings and writings of Rudolf Virchow and his recommendations about ways to improve people's health by improving their economic and social conditions;

- The heartbreaking story of Shelia McCarley and how she was killed by her body's own response to her environment, poisoned by ongoing exposure to chemicals;

- About the Do No Harm Coalition and their work;

- The microbiome, the pandemic and why we are a composite of organisms;

- Epigenetics and why what we eat today will have a great impact on the health of the next generations.

To learn more about Dr. Rupa Marya go to: https://rupamarya.org/.

Raj Patel is an award-winning author, film-maker and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. Raj's latest book, co-authored with Rupa Marya, entitled "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and The Anatomy of Injustice" was published on August 3, 2021. Tune in to learn more about:

- How his newest book co-authored with Rupa Marya on systemic inflammation was written during the pandemic;

- Why our world, society and bodies are inflamed;

- The connection between our microbiome and the earth and how when we harm the world around us we harm the world in us;

- The meaning of deep medicine;

- The psychological harm of capitalism;

- About the film Raj co-directed entitled "The Ants and the Grasshopper".

Raj is reminding us that, " If you carry a large debt load, your body is inflamed because of your worry about debt….if you are in debt, or worried about your job or healthcare, if you carry daily anxiety then your body is inflamed….The way to resolve that is through a culture that reassures you that we are taking care of one another, regardless of age, gender, immigration status or ability to pay."

To learn more about Raj's work go to https://rajpatel.org.

Dr. Kendra Klein, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth (FOE) is a writer, researcher, and advocate with expertise in environmental sustainability, food, agriculture, and public health. Tune in to learn more about:

• The women who inspired her to pursue her career
• About FOE and their projects in Food and Agriculture
• How neonicotinoids and glyphosate kill pollinators
• The Organic for All study
• The power of pesticide corporations in the United States
• The new study on the impact of pesticides on soil and invertebrates
• FOE's new report on the school lunch program in California and their recommendations

To learn more about FOE's and Dr. Klein's work, go to https://www.foe.org.

Karen Washington is a leader and a community activist in New York City's urban-farming and food-justice movements. She has won a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2014, has been invited to the Obama White House for her involvement with New York's Botanical Garden, and has been called "urban farming's de facto godmother." Karen is also the co-founder of Black Urban Growers and co-owner of Rise and Root Farm, an organic farm in Orange County, NY. Tune in to learn more about:

- Her own journey from being a physical therapist to becoming a food activist and urban farmer;

- The Garden of Happiness and the community garden movement;

- How New York City communities and their partners were fighting against Mayor Giuliani's plan to destroy community gardens;

- Why food is connected to everything;

- How COVID is changing the service and hotel industry for the better for their workers;

- How wealth was distributed unequally to people of color and passed on through generations;

- How funding of small Black farmers can help in underserved communities;

- Shifting power to people who has been marginalized as a way to shift capitalism.

Karen is reminding us that "... if we want to move the capitalistic system in a way that it should be inclusive and diverse in terms of wealth, then we have to look at shifting power, and taking power from those who had it for so long and had power over others and put it in the hands of people who have been marginalized."

To learn more about Karen's work go to https://www.riseandrootfarm.com.

Mary Cleaver is one of the country's foremost authorities on sustainable food and local sourcing. Together with her husband, Mary operates Green Table Farms, a 200-acre organic family farm in Washington County, NY. She was the founder and owner of the catering company The Cleaver Co. and The Green Table restaurant in New York City. Tune in to learn more about:

- How Mary brought local and sustainable produce and food to New York City 40 years ago;

- About her Farm to Chef network;

- The story of Green Table Farms;

- How the current pandemic challenged and ultimately closed her catering business in New York City;

- The inspiring story of a kindergarten teacher in New York City that led to the the banning of pesticides in the city's parks.

To learn more about Mary's work go to https://www.greentablefarms.net. You can also meet Mary and her husband every Saturday in summer at the Union Square Greenmarket.