The History of Fresh Produce

By The Produce Industry Network

What if you could tell the history of the world through the food we grow?

The History of Fresh Produce explores the extraordinary stories of the fruits, vegetables and crops that have shaped human hi... more

2020 ratings

FAQs about The History of Fresh Produce:

How many episodes does The History of Fresh Produce have?

The podcast currently has 195 episodes available.

The History of Fresh Produce episodes:

August 25, 2026In a Pickle
How did a jar of pickles keep Julius Caesar's legions marching, Cleopatra beautiful, Captain Cook's sailors alive, and Napoleon's armies fed — and why does the same basic technology of salt water and a vegetable keep reappearing at every major turning point in human history? What is the true story of the poisoned green pickle, the Heinz pickle pin that required police crowd control at the 1893 World's Fair, and the man who went over Niagara Falls in two welded plastic pickle barrels? And, why does Connecticut law require that a pickle must bounce?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the global history of the pickle — ten thousand years of brine, from Mesopotamia to the Lower East Side deli...
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
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58min
August 18, 2026The History of Peas
How did a green vegetable reduce the court of Louis XIV to what contemporaries called "a fashion and a madness" — with ladies smuggling peas to their bedrooms and the Sun King himself eating so many that his doctors prescribed billiards as the cure? Why does the humble pea, which unlocked the fundamental laws of genetics, turn out to be better frozen than fresh — and what does a machine called the Tenderometer have to do with Mendel's monastery garden? And, how did a crop that fed Neolithic hunter-gatherers quietly become the building block of the plant-based food revolution?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of the pea — ten thousand years of the most underestimated vegetable in history...
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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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50min
August 11, 2026The 1944 Water Treaty
How did a treaty signed in the middle of the Second World War end up with farmers seizing a dam at gunpoint, a woman shot dead by her own country's National Guard, and American lettuce growers in 2026 wondering whether they'll have a crop at all? Why does 80 percent of America's winter salad come from a single Arizona county that only exists because of a river it doesn't own? And, what happens when a legal framework built for one climate and one scale of agriculture is asked to hold together under a completely different one?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of the 1944 Water Treaty — the dam standoff, the shrinking rivers, and the piece of paper that two nations and their farmers are still fighting over...
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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32min
August 04, 2026The Parasite in the Salad Drawer
How did five farms in the highlands of Guatemala end up sickening nearly a thousand people across fifteen American states and two countries — and why did California's strawberry industry lose forty million dollars for something it had nothing to do with? Why does a parasite that was "fixed" in 1996 keep coming back, outbreak after outbreak, in a different salad drawer each time? And, what does the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak in years, unfolding right now across three dozen American states, tell us about the food system that hasn't changed at all?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Cyclospora — the 1996 raspberry mystery, the invisible parasite in America's produce aisle, and the structural problem that got faster but never got solved...
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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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Give a 5-star rating
Write a review

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Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
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@historyoffreshproduce
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...more
29min
July 28, 2026Netherlands: Operation Manna
How did a Nazi food embargo, a frozen canal, and a railway strike combine to starve one of the most developed societies in Europe to below 400 calories a day? Why does the Dutch Hunger Winter still leave measurable chemical marks on the genes of people who were in the womb during it? And, what did the bomber crews of Operation Manna find spelled out below them in tulip bulbs as they flew low over the Netherlands dropping food instead of bombs?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of the Netherlands and the Hongerwinter — the starvation, the epigenetics, and the Lancaster crews who wept all the way home...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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@historyoffreshproduce
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27min
July 28, 2026South Korea: The Cabbage Crisis
Why did the South Korean government fly in emergency cabbage from China in 2010 — and why was that decision experienced as a national humiliation as much as a practical solution? How did a fermented vegetable become the subject of diplomatic warfare between South Korea, Japan, and China, a million-dollar space programme, and a UN cultural heritage inscription shared by two countries technically still at war? And what does kimjang — the autumn tradition of women gathering to make a year's supply together — reveal about what kimchi actually is, beyond the jar?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of South Korea and kimchi — the Cabbage Crisis, the kimchi wars, and the earthenware pot carrying the weight of geopolitics...
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
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Give a 5-star rating
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Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
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@historyoffreshproduce
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...more
28min
July 21, 2026Ivory Coast: Blood Chocolate
Why does the country that grows 45 percent of the world's cocoa receive between five and seven percent of the value of the chocolate bar it becomes? How did a single crop fund two civil wars simultaneously — with the government and the rebels taxing the same beans to buy weapons to fight each other? And what does the concept of Ivoirité — invented to exclude a presidential rival — have to do with the farms that feed the global chocolate industry?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Côte d'Ivoire and cocoa — the Ivorian Miracle, the blood chocolate report, and the smallholder farmers at the end of the longest supply chain in food...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
Share this episode with your friends
Give a 5-star rating
Write a review

-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Email: [email protected]
...more
24min
July 21, 2026Uruguay: The Basque Vine
Why did a Basque immigrant fleeing the Carlist Wars plant a vine from the Pyrenees on the banks of the Uruguay River in 1870 — and how did that single decision produce what may now be the healthiest red wine grape in the world? How does a pre-phylloxera cutting, preserved in Uruguayan soil while the original European stock was wiped out, become a living archive of a grape that no longer exists in its original form in France? And what does it mean that Uruguay didn't pick Tannat — Tannat picked Uruguay?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Uruguay and the Basque vine — the Carlist Wars, the old vines, the cardiology research, and the smallest nation ever to win the World Cup...
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
Share this episode with your friends
Give a 5-star rating
Write a review

-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Email: [email protected]
...more
23min
July 21, 2026England: 5,245 Acts of Parliament
Why did Parliament pass 5,245 individual Acts to enclose 6.8 million acres of English common land — and why does almost nobody in England know it happened? Who were the people who lost the right of pannage, turbary, and estovers, and what does it mean that the hedged fields every English person loves as the quintessential English countryside are the direct product of the legislation that destroyed the English peasantry? And how do the Enclosure Acts, Kett's Rebellion, the Swing Riots, and the Premier League turn out to be the same story told two centuries apart?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of England and the commons — the open fields, the Parliamentary robbery, and the hedge that made the view beautiful by ending a way of life...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
Share this episode with your friends
Give a 5-star rating
Write a review

-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Email: [email protected]
...more
25min
July 16, 2026Switzerland: The Cherry and the Still
How does a fruit with a two-day shelf life become one of Switzerland's great protected exports? Why does the finest kirsch come not from Germany's Black Forest but from a small lake-side canton in Central Switzerland? And why does a splash of cherry brandy hold a bowl of molten cheese together at every Swiss dinner table?
Join John and Patrick as they trace the story of kirsch — from wild cherries in the forests of Central Europe, through the Chriesimärt of Zug and the founding of Etter in 1870, to the almond note hidden in every glass and the layered indulgence of the Zuger Kirschtorte. Along the way: distillation, terroir, blossoming orchards on the slopes above Lake Zug, and the tale of a spirit that turns a single Alpine spring into something that can travel the world in a bottle.
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
Share this episode with your friends
Give a 5-star rating
Write a review

-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Email: [email protected]
...more
17min

FAQs about The History of Fresh Produce:

How many episodes does The History of Fresh Produce have?

The podcast currently has 195 episodes available.

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The History of Fresh Produce

FAQs about The History of Fresh Produce:

How many episodes does The History of Fresh Produce have?

The History of Fresh Produce episodes:

FAQs about The History of Fresh Produce:

How many episodes does The History of Fresh Produce have?

More shows like The History of Fresh Produce

How I Built This with Guy Raz

The Daily

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

History Daily

American History Hit