Unconfined

In this episode of Unconfined, three experts help us sort through the new administration's agenda and try to figure out what it all might mean for food policy.

Claire Kelloway, program manager for fair food and farming systems at the Open Markets Institute; and primary writer of Food & Power, a newsletter covering corporate consolidation of agriculture markets.

Mike Lavender, policy director at National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which also produces a newsletter, this one on Beltway policy developments.

Adam Sheingate, professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Science, where he teaches courses on American politics and institutions, including a seminar on the politics of food. He's also a faculty affiliate at the Center for a Livable Future.

In this episode of Unconfined, World Food Prize winner Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted explains how biodiversity, local resources, and saying "no" to pricy pesticides helped cut childhood hunger in Bangladesh

In this episode of Unconfined, Dave Love explains oyster farming, why it's impossible to industrialize it, and how oysters offer benefits ranging from amino acids to storm surge buffers.

In this episode of Unconfined, veteran journalists Douglas Frantz and Catharine Collins expose what lies beneath those rosy salmon filets that grace our supermarket seafood cases.

In this episode of Unconfined, Philip Loring discusses practical ways for fishers, grocers, and consumers to contribute to the repair and restoration of global fisheries.

In this episode of Unconfined, author and life-long fisherman Paul Greenberg makes the case for eating more wild-caught U.S. seafood—and much less factory-farmed shrimp and salmon from abroad.

In this episode of Unconfined, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin tells us about Tree Range Farms, a poultry ecosystem alternative to the industrial food animal production model that injures workers and degrades the environment. Find out how his farmers create chicken heaven.

In this episode of Unconfined, the formidable husband-and-wife team of David Montgomery and Anne Biklé draw on their deep experience as environmental scientists, gardeners, and celebrated book authors to show that regenerative farming isn't some crunchy fad or marketing jargon to be seized by pesticide purveyors. Rather, it might hold the key to keeping our farms humming as the climate warms and curing our epidemic of diet-related health troubles.

In this episode of Unconfined, the Center for a Livable Future's food system correspondent Leo Horrigan walks us through the world of biological farming, the soil food web, the unpaid labor done by billions of microbes on the daily (they need a better agent!), and how we could all save a lot of money and agita if we just let nature do its thing. It's not enough to simply stop the loss of soil—we must regrow new soil, and we can do that using plants, fungi, and microbes in an ecological system that's been doing pretty well without our help for billions of years.

Debbie Berkowitz has been at the center of the vexed effort to ensure a safe workplace for poultry workers since her time as a union workplace-safety advocate in the early 1980s. In the Obama era, she served as a top official in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and has since emerged as a leading advocate and researcher on the topic. In this episode of Unconfined, she lays in stark detail all the ways the federal regulatory system has failed to live up to its obligation to ensure the safety of the people who produce America's favorite meat.