Chris Damico is the founder of Farm’d, a platform that connects local farms to restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia. In this episode, Damico talks to host Lisa Held about how the platform simplifies supply chain logistics to help farmers sell their food into local markets, the value of regional food systems, and how he plans to replicate the model in other cities in the future.

This year, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture launched a Regenerative Farming Fellowship program in partnership with the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC). In this episode, two of the farmers from the inaugural cohort—Drew Blankenbaker, a vegetable farmer in Montana and the founder of The Farmland Company and Kelly Placke, herd manager at organic grassfed dairy Placke Organic Acres in Wisconsin—join host Lisa Held in studio, along with NYFC co-executive director Sophie Ackoff. They discuss how they’re implementing regenerative practices on their farms, the economic and climate-related challenges they face, and what the term “regenerative” means to them.

Animal welfare activist Leah Garces, the current president of Mercy for Animals, has been fighting against industrial animal agriculture her entire career. In this episode, she talks to host Lisa Held about her new book "Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry," in which tells the story of working with farmers and chicken companies to make incremental changes in the system. They discuss distrust between farmers and activists, how farmers might participate in a new market for plant-based foods, and more.

“No farms, no food,” is a slogan American Farmland Trust (AFT) popularized to describe the importance of its farmland conservation programs. Its newest program that speaks to that mission is Farmer Batch, a collaboration with Greek yogurt maker Chobani. Based on a portion of sales from special Farmer Batch yogurts, AFT will offer grants to struggling dairy farmers to help them manage farm transitions, work on business planning, and more. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to AFT vice president of programs David Haight about how the grants will work, why he thinks they can help farmers stay on their land, and why Chobani is engaging in charity for farmers rather than paying them more for their milk.

Gail Taylor started Three Part Harmony Farm three and a half miles from the White House. In the process, in addition to growing plenty of organic vegetables for the residents of DC, she also helped pass city legislation to make it easier for others to start urban farms in the nation’s capital. In this episode,Taylor talks to host Lisa Held about her farm, her approach to agroecology, and the effects of DC’s local “Farm Bill.”

The fourth-generation Oregon rancher worked in environmental policy before she moved home and converted her family’s ranch to a grass-fed cattle operation based on the principles of holistic management. Now, she’s partnered with other ranches nearby to create a new supply chain for grass-fed beef. In this episode, Carman talks to host Lisa Held about building soil health to restore grasslands and store carbon, partnering with restaurant chains like Dig to grow the market for grass-fed beef, communicating around the role livestock play in healthy ecosystems, and the rural-urban divide.

According to The Washington Post, the number of dairy goats in the US is now climbing quickly. But Suzanne Behrmann, owner of Shepherd’s Way Creamery, got into milking goats a long time ago, simply because she liked them. Now, her farm has a herd of 14, and she sells her artisanal goat cheese at farmers markets in West Virginia and Washington DC’s famed Dupont Market. In this episode, Behrmann is in DC to attend Freshfarm’s annual Feast, and she talks to host Lisa Held about what it takes to run a goat dairy, setting up an on-farm cheesemaking operation, and her experiences selling at farmers markets.

United States Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue recently made a lot of farmers angry. At a time when small dairy farms are going out of business at unprecedented rates (and small farms producing other crops are also struggling), Perdue made a comment that suggested the situation was par for the course. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” he said. This week, host Lisa Held is joined by three guests—Brenda Cochran, dairy farmer and president of Farm Women United, Russell Diez-Canseco, president and CEO of Vital Farms, and Jordan Treakle, policy director at the National Family Farm Coalition—to discuss Perdue’s comments, what current challenges faced by America’s small farmers really look like, and what can be done to help small farms survive.

Why take a “wild” approach to farming? Nancy Hayden has been co-owner of The Farm Between in Jeffersonville, VT for 28 years, and she’s the co-author of the new book, Farming on the Wild Side: The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery. In this episode, she joins host Lisa Held to talk about the agricultural benefits of wild spaces, agroforestry and other climate-friendly farm practices, and the economics of making a small, regenerative organic farm successful.

Dave Herring is the executive director of Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, a demonstration farm, training center, and campground on 600 acres of preserved coastal land in Freeport, Maine. In this episode, he talks to host Lisa Held about a new initiative —OpenTEAM—launched in collaboration with partners like Stonyfield Organic and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. Herring outlines a vision for the project in which farmers will utilize the platform to build up data that can then be used to improve regenerative agriculture practices, to ultimately help mitigate climate change.