What the Field?! A podcast by CrowdFarming

Pesticides touch almost everything we eat, yet the system that governs them stays strangely invisible. Host Emilia sits down with Nick Mole from Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK), who has spent twenty years working to end the most hazardous pesticides and protect the people and biodiversity they harm.

They get into why regulation is always playing catch up, how lobbying and the revolving door decide what we are allowed to spray, the myth that we need ever bigger yields to feed the world, what organic really means for our health and for farmers, and PAN UK's famous Dirty Dozen. Along the way: the carrot that was never meant to grow, why a supermarket CEO has more sway than an expert, and the poisoned farmers almost everyone forgot.

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Bold Bean Co.: Making Beans the Next Avocado Toast

Host Amelia interviews Amelia Christy Miller, founder of Bold Bean Co. and cookbook author, about making beans desirable as a fairer, more environmentally friendly and healthy staple. Miller recounts how her interest grew from discovering delicious jarred beans to working in food sustainability and learning beans’ roles in soil health, regenerative farming (nitrogen-fixing cover crops), food security, resilience across climates, and human health (fiber, gut microbiome, blue zones, steady energy). She explains Bold Bean Co.’s focus on premium jarred beans and baked beans, recipe-driven culture change (including “beanottos”), sourcing high-grade varieties (including British Carlin peas), and building farmer value. The conversation covers supermarket dynamics, category “premiumization,” pricing criticism, rejecting meat-replacement messaging in favor of uncompromising deliciousness, and her go-to “miso beans” dish, plus a recommendation to use the brand’s online recipes.

00:00 The Bean Origin Story
06:20 Why Beans Matter
13:15 Farmer Partnerships & Sourcing
21:13 Cracking the Supermarket Shelf
25:33 Beans as a Meat Alternative
29:11 Premium Pricing & Accessibility
36:17 Busting Bean Myths
39:32 Recommendations & Sign-off

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Blog: https://www.crowdfarming.com/blog/en/

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Blog: https://www.crowdfarming.com/blog/en/

Dr. Jenny Goodman on Ecological Medicine, Pesticides, and Regenerative Farming

Dr. Jenny Goodman describes becoming disillusioned during clinical training because hospital medicine focused on symptom management with drugs, avoided “healing,” and ignored root causes and prevention, though she valued emergency care. After leaving practice, she taught medical sciences in alternative-medicine colleges and later found the British Society for Ecological Medicine in the late 1990s, leading her to a practice centered on nutrition and environmental medicine as applied biochemistry. She defines ecological medicine as treating the body as an interconnected ecosystem and as inseparable from Earth’s ecosystems, linking human health to farming and pollution. Goodman argues industrial monocrop agriculture, pesticides (including glyphosate), and synthetic fertilizers deplete nutrients, disrupt the microbiome, and contribute to neurological disease, cancer, endocrine disruption, and infertility, with possible multigenerational effects. She recommends organic food, water filtration, and detox strategies (vitamin C, vegetable juicing, Epsom salt baths, short saunas with wiping, targeted supplements, colonic hydrotherapy, and sprouting), and calls for policy changes supporting organic/regenerative farming and curbing junk food and pesticide use.

00:00 Meet Dr Jenny Goodman

01:07 Disillusioned on the Wards

03:16 Leaving Medicine Behind

04:44 Finding Ecological Medicine

07:26 What Ecological Medicine Means

10:12 Farming as Public Health

17:01 Organic on a Budget

20:48 Detoxing Pesticides Safely

23:59 Colonic Hydrotherapy Basics

24:52 Sprouting for Nutrient Boost

25:36 Filter Water for Detox

26:38 Avoiding Retox Sources

28:42 Pesticides and Disease Links

31:49 How Neurotoxins Disrupt Nerves

35:19 Cancer and Endocrine Damage

40:19 Why It's Still Legal

43:18 Glyphosate and the Microbiome

46:04 Building Change Through Schools

47:14 Practical Hopeful Wrap-Up

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Current estimates suggest that Europe may have lost as much as 90% of its insects over the last century. Dave Goulson is a professor of biology at the University of Sussex and one of Europe’s leading experts on insect ecology. He has spent the better part of three decades studying bee populations, the drivers of insect decline, and the relationship between the way we farm and the health of the ecosystems that farming depends on.

His latest book, Eat the Planet Well, published this month, turns that lens onto our plates, examining the environmental and health costs embedded in the food we buy, and offering a clear-eyed guide to navigating a system that is, as he puts it, not one anyone would have designed from scratch.

In this episode of What The Field?!, we spoke to Dave about how insects underpin the food chain most of us take for granted, and about why the prognosis — despite everything — is not entirely bleak. There is, he argues, a great deal that individuals and communities can do, and insect populations, unlike pandas or rhinos, can recover quickly when given the conditions to do so.

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The meat debate is often stuck in extremes. In this episode, we spoke with farmers Benedikt Bösel (Gut&Bösel) and Alfonso Chico de Guzmán (La Junquera) about what it really means, in practice, to raise a cow — and to slaughter one. That uncomfortable line between integrating livestock to rebuild ecosystems… and killing and selling animals for profit.

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Blog: https://www.crowdfarming.com/blog/en/

What if the future of farming was not only better for biodiversity and soil health, but also a smarter long-term investment?
 In this episode of What The Field?!, we sit down with Alessia Lenders, Head of Impact at SLM Partners, a pioneering investment firm proving that ecological farming and solid financial performance can go hand in hand.

Alessia’s journey into regenerative agriculture did not begin in the fields but in the world of traditional finance. Searching for investment solutions that could genuinely improve biodiversity, she found herself returning again and again to agriculture: one of the biggest drivers of environmental degradation, but also one of the greatest opportunities for change.

Today, SLM Partners manages more than 760 million dollars in farmland and forestland across the United States, Australia and Europe. Their approach is simple yet radical: invest in land, partner with skilled farmers, and scale regenerative systems that rebuild soil, protect water and secure long-term productivity.

What you will discover in this episode

1. The economic logic behind regenerative agriculture

Alessia explains why long-term, patient capital fits naturally with regenerative transitions: healthier soils, more diverse revenue streams (including carbon projects in Australia) and more climate-resilient farms. Far from being a financial compromise, regenerative systems can improve profitability by reducing input costs, stabilising yields and tapping into premium and organic markets.

2. Why investors are turning to farmland

Farmland behaves differently from stocks and bonds, which makes it an attractive diversifier for institutional investors. SLM adds another layer: regenerative farms that can outperform conventional systems over the long term while delivering measurable environmental impact.

3. The crucial role of the farmer

SLM’s model is farmer first. They partner with experienced growers who want to expand but lack the capital to acquire land. SLM buys the land, the farmer manages it and both commit to a regenerative transition adapted to local realities. The result is a partnership that supports young farmers, protects landscapes and proves that ecological agriculture can scale.

4. A clearer picture through data

From soil microbiology to water modelling, biodiversity indicators and carbon estimates, SLM collects an extraordinary amount of data to understand and communicate how landscapes change over time. This allows them to build business models that anticipate droughts, evaluate water security and verify real ecological outcomes.

5. Regenerative agriculture is not one size fits all

Whether transitioning almond orchards in Spain, grasslands in Australia or mixed farms in the United States, SLM adapts regenerative principles to each context. For some farms, the target is organic certification. For others, it is a regenerative outcome-based approach focused on soil health, biodiversity and long-term resilience.

This episode goes deeper than we ever have into the financial mechanics behind regenerative agriculture. It is a rare look at how capital, ecology and farming come together to build food systems that work for both people and the planet.

If you have ever wondered whether regenerative agriculture really adds up financially, ecologically or both, this is the conversation you will not want to miss.

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This episode of What The Field?! looks at a simple question with complex answers: how do farm practices shape the nutritional quality of food? Our guest is Raiza Rezende, co-founder of RHEA — Regenerative Healthcare European Association. RHEA works on three fronts—education, research, and policy—to connect agriculture and healthcare, and is currently running nutrient-density trials in olives and almonds with European universities and farm partners

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Blog: https://www.crowdfarming.com/blog/en/

In this episode of What the Field?!, we sit down with Sabine Bonnot, President of Planet-score, to discuss how their food labelling system is helping consumers better understand the environmental impact of what they buy — and why some types of information matter more than others.

Drawing on research conducted in supermarkets across Europe, Sabine explains why shoppers distrust simplified, aggregated scores, and how transparency on issues like pesticide use, biodiversity, animal welfare, and production methods can guide them towards more sustainable choices.

Sabine shares insights on:

• Why climate impact often ranks lower for consumers choosing food products
  
  
  
• How detailed labels can shift purchasing decisions towards nature-positive farming
  
  
  
• The role of clear communication in building trust between farmers and eaters

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In this episode, we sit down with Reniera O’Donnell, Food Lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to talk about the power of food design — and what it means to truly rethink the system from the ground up.

We dive into the Foundation’s Big Food Redesign Challenge, an initiative inviting food companies to radically redesign their products using circular economy principles. What happens when you apply circular design for food not just on farms, but in food innovation labs, ingredient sourcing, and supermarket shelves?

 Reniera shares insights on:

• How better food design can drive biodiversity and soil health
  
  
  
• Why diversity in ingredients is key to reshaping our supply chain
  
  
  
• What it takes to bring products to market that are designed for nature to thrive

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Blog: https://www.crowdfarming.com/blog/en/