"Could you more effectively get people to care about protecting place and conservation and biodiversity if you tried to talk about it through food?" wondered Jill and her colleagues. The answer they came up with was simple: Yes. Everyone has to eat, after all. Jill Isenbarger, CEO of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, is committed to bringing about a system of agriculture and eating that reflects and values ecological health, strong communities and the integrity of place, region and season. This starts with investing in the land.

Tambra Raye Stevenson jokes that when she made the switch from pre-med to a nutrition program in college, at the time she was thinking "even if I didn't get a job, at least I'll be eating healthy." The good news is that she has had an incredible impact as a nutritionist. Tambra, founder of WANDA and NATIVSOL Kitchen, is a nutritionist, activist, author and change-maker who is passionate about healing through nutrition -- both in communities here in the United States and around the world. Hear her speak about the power of nutrition and why many real-life heroes wear aprons, not capes, here on Rootstock Radio.

"We know that there are direct connections to some forms of cancer pertaining to exposures to certain forms of pesticides...the science on that is extremely clear," says Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, executive director of Children's Environmental Health Network. Learn about the environmental perils children face today from a leader in the field of children's environmental health on this week's Rootstock Radio episode.

Dr. Stephen Jones, a professor of Crop and Soil Science and the director of The Bread Lab at Washington State University is a wheat breeder who never dreamed he'd be producing wheat varieties bearing "hints of chocolate" or "spicy overtones." And yet, with his interest in flavor and commitment to championing farmers, it's really no surprise that he's found himself doing exactly that. Under Dr. Jones' direction, The Bread Lab at Washington State University is run in such a way that it "can put the farmer first and then figure out the best uses [for the wheat] later." Dr. Jones explains that farmers in the Pacific Northwest used to grow wheat (and that yields for wheat in that area are actually incredibly high) but most of these wheat farmers switched to more lucrative crops during the industrial agriculture boom when wheat became a commodity crop. Dr. Jones is on a mission to once again put wheat farmers first and support a thriving regional grain economy in his area. Listen in!

Adrian Hale is a baker and food writer whose foray into baking bread began as a last-ditch effort to find bread that her daughter's stomach could tolerate. After a bit of experimenting, Adrian perfected her "Mama Bread" and has never gone back. Today she combines her passion for writing and bread baking-her essays have appeared in publications such as Saveur, Culture and Brain, Child Magazine. She also edits an online magazine called Communal Table, and blogs about her baking adventures on her blog Thousand Bites of Bread. Adrian's family has a deep-rooted connection to bread, which is part of the reason she refused to give up on it. "My grandmother was a concentration camp survivor and she always said that bread saved her," shares Adrian, explaining that bread has long been a pillar of their meals and family culture. Listen in!

Diane Hatz, founder and executive director of Change Food and founder of the Change Food Video Library, is a creative marketing expert and events innovator who raises awareness about problems and solutions within the food and farming system while encouraging individuals to create their own change. From 2011-2015 she was the founder, organizer and host of TEDxManhattan "Changing the Way We Eat."
Diane, who has dedicated 20 years to making positive change in the food industry, admits that in some ways she still doesn't understand "how people can look at profit and greed over [the wellbeing of] their neighbors." And yet, it's still happening every day in our food system, a fact that gets Diane, as she puts it, "pissed off and passionately involved." Currently she is working hard to bridge the divide between urban "eaters" and rural "producers," but she says this disconnect is not as simple as it once was.

Lisa Kivirist, an old hand at this whole Rootstock Radio thing (listen to her other episode here!) is still involved with supporting, empowering and connecting women farmers through Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) and serves as a Senior Fellow, Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Minnesota.
Recently, Lisa has also redoubled her efforts around cottage food activism in Wisconsin. Fighting for people to be able to sell low-risk foods, like cookies for instance, that they make in their own kitchens is really common sense to Lisa. "what we're talking about is actually the 'oldest' newest thing," she says, reminding us that before commercial kitchens were even a concept people sold goods they'd cooked in their home kitchens almost exclusively.

Gary Hirshberg, Chairman and Co-Founder of Stonyfield Farm (the world's leading organic yogurt producer) champions a simple philosophy: "everybody who eats has to vote."
Of course, Gary doesn't expect to realistically enforce this statement, it's the idea behind it that he's passionate about. The author of "Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World", and a frequent speaker on the topics of sustainability, organic agriculture and the profitability of green business, Gary knows a thing or two about the intersection of agriculture, business and policy.
"We have never had more facts at our disposal than now about the real impacts of non-organic, or conventional or chemical-dependent food and processing," says Gary continuing that "the first thing we need to believe is that science and facts still matter."
For instance, it's a fact that the cheapest form of healthcare is preventative; that is, not getting sick at all. It's also a fact that organic food can be a form of preventative healthcare-because it isn't laden with carcinogenic chemicals, for starters. Just as anyone who eats (that is, everyone) can and must find power in their right to vote, Gary also sees the act of choosing organic as a form of personal power.
"The choice to embrace organic whether as a grower or a consumer, or as a policy person or a scientist, is really a choice to exercise your own will and commitment to a world that's really better for our children, better for all species and ultimately more sustainable and more durable."
Unfortunately, the current US administration is not interested in supporting organic agriculture or climate and environmental initiatives. "Without some normal, reasonable checks and balances, without some folks in there who actually are going to honor science and honor fact, and honor medical and agricultural and environmental statistics, I'm afraid there's no hope," says Gary.
This is, again, why Gary holds that "everybody who eats" needs vote in the upcoming elections-both the midterms and beyond.

What began for investigative journalist Carey Gillam as "just an assignment" on food and agriculture grew to be not only her passion, but the focus of her reporting for the last twenty years. Carey's intimate knowledge of food and farming in the U.S. comes from time spent with row crop farmers, ranchers, vegetable growers and orchard operators from the Dakotas to Texas, and from California to the Southeast. She has been welcomed inside the high-tech laboratories, greenhouses and corporate offices of some of the largest U.S. agribusinesses. And Carey has spent countless hours interviewing key U.S. regulators, lawmakers, and scientists involved in food and agriculture. Her book "Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science", was published in October 2017, and has been compared to Rachel Carson's famously hard-hitting expose on DDT, "Silent Spring".

"Cheap things can never stay cheap for long, in the end those costs always catch up with you," says the award-winning writer, activist and academic, Raj Patel, co-author of the new book "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things." Food is one of those seven things that become cheapened when subjected to capitalism. Plus, Raj discusses what Jeff Bezos and Christopher Columbus have in common, among other things on this week's episode of Rootstock Radio. Listen in!