Episodes

At a time when America’s meat industry faces increasing consolidation, fragile supply chains, and the closure of rural processing facilities, Better For Butchery’s acquisition of the Princeton Kentucky plant represents a rare, forward-looking investment in independent meat infrastructure. Backed by USDA Rural Development financing, the facility will serve as a scalable, high-integrity co-packing and processing hub designed to help farmers, ranchers, and emerging meat brands reach market without ...

2030 will be here before you know it with a new world for food. .Ozan Ozaskinli is a Food Futurist and manufacturing strategist who’s asking questions about the future of what we eat and how we’ll produce it. He’s led transformation projects across 17 industries, spent 20+ years at firms like BCG, and now runs Value Gene, where he helps U.S. manufacturers modernize before tech disruption makes them obsolete. Originally from Europe, a big part of Ozan’s POV is how far ahead Europe is when it come...

For the first time in 30 years America’s top Agriculture state, California, finally has a member on the Agriculture Committee of the US Senate, Senator Adam Schiff. Speaking to over a thousand farmers at Eco Farm, Senator Schiff called on farmers and consumers to engage and to make their voices heard. Senator Schiff spoke with Farm To Table Talk and addressd over 1,000 farmers at Eco Farm.

There is something good about local farms supporting schools, distributingCSA (Community Supported Agriculture), hosting a market at the farm and selling organic produce at area Farmers Markets. A farming program that delivers goodness in all these ways is aptly named Something Good Organics. Carolyn Givens shares why they do what they do and why the school and local community they supply are glad they do. Carolyn Givens says they take pride in supporting John Givens Farm’s commitment to cultiva...

Each year, about 32% of the food produced across the world is lost or wasted. Tackling food loss and waste has been on the global agenda for decades, with policymakers citing it as a contributing factor to issues like food insecurity and environmental degradation. Despite this attention, food loss and waste remain a challenge across the world.A new book from researchers at the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) provides an evidence-based framework for addressing food loss...

Farmers across America are beginning to worry that 2026 is bringing a Farm Crisis comparable to the early 1980’s when Willie Nelson launched Farm Aid to draw attention and support to the plight of farmers. Ray Yeung has been farming for over 40 years in northern California and although recently experiencing really good yields, he sees farming costs exceeding returns and that is simply unsustainable. A farm crisis could be felt beyond the farms to farm suppliers and consumers. Viable farms are nc...

While nutrition science knows about 150 well-documented nutrients, there are approximately 135,000 additional molecules in foods that have health impacts but are not tracked in nutritional databases. Laszlow Barabasi, a physicist and network medicine researcher at Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School, explains how these compounds work in the body, noting that many have therapeutic effects when consumed in specific concentrations. Certain food combinations, like those in the Mediter...

Rebuilding our regenerative supply chain is a priority focus of Eco Farm, where a panel of women lead the way in sharing what they’re doing to make a difference. Led by “Reaping What She Sows” author Nancy Matsumoto, the keynote EcoFarm panel reveals how transparency and equity in the food system must progress. Nancy Matsumoto’s book and the Eco Farm panel fights for a healthier more just system and answers the question: How should we eat. www.eco-farm.org

Farmers are supoosed to share $12 billion dollars to make up for lost markets, higher costs and lower prices due to President’ Trump’s global trade war. The Wall Street Journal editorial said President Trump said he was “delighted to give American Farmers $12 Billion” in economic Assistance. The President of the the American Soybean Assoiation told CNN that this was just “a bandaid on an open wound” because what farmers want is an opportunity to make a living, to make a profit from the market, “...

Food innovators, farmers, chefs and foodies have been looking ahead for years, so in this Farm to Table Talk Podcast we go back to a conversation in Coubhoure that was looking ahead to now. Future episodes will be back to now and looking ahead tomorrow. Food is changing. How will we eat? That’s the question posed in the Farm To Table Talk Clubhouse room to Troy Hooper a multi- business entrepreneur in the hospitality space with a consulting practice to build and scale emerging brands. Troy and R...

A backyard hobby that started over 40 years ago has grown into a nationally recognized, family-owned business that produces more than 80,000 quail weekly, raisied responsibly, without antibiotics or hormones, and shipping premium products to chefs, retailers, and home cooks across the country. Manchester Farms is America’s first quail farm, and Brittney Miller is leading its second-generation legacy.. Brittney combines her passion for sustainable agriculture with modern food safety standards. He...

Steve and Candice MacLean, who grew up in New Jersey but have no farming background, transitioned from urban to rural farming after Steve’s experience as a chef working with a farm. Inspired by sustainable farming practices, they decided to purchase a farm in the northwestern corner of New Jersey. They now focus on organic produce and animal husbandry, embracing the farm-to-table philosophy. Starting with pigs to improve pasture conditions and later adding cattle, chickens, sheep, rabbits, and d...

Extreme steps taken to make food look more appealing, last longer and be addictively delicious is detrimental to our health. State Legislatures from West Virginia to California are not waiting for federal solutions. CA Asssembly-member Jesse Gabriel says “our public schools should not be serving students ultra-processed food products filled with chemical additives that can harm their physical and mental health and interfere with their ability to learn,” Scott Faber leads the Environmental Workin...

In addition to wanting to know where their food comes from and where it’s grown, thirty three million Americans have a diagnosed food allergy. Fifty million have an intolerance that is not technically allergic but certain foods disagree with them in some way. For a variety of reasons over seventy million follow life style diets. That means over half of the country needs to know what is in their food. Dylan McDonnell is the Founder and CEO of Foodini, a company that strives to make it easy for Re...

When debates over SNAP funding heat up, it’s worth remembering leaders like Gus Schumacher —the late USDA Under Secretary who championed farm-to-family connections and bipartisan solutions. This Farm To Table talk episode revisits his insights on SNAP innovation, nutrition incentives and lasting ways to strengthen food access for all. Gus Schumacher, who passed away in 2017, was a respected agricultural economist and former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture. He served as Under Secretary ...

Real rural life today ranges from hope to nostalgic ideals to real world crisis that directly affect farmers and ranchers, their famiies, their communities and ultimately all of us. The rate of suicide in rural communities is 50 % higher than the rate in non-rural communities. And with farmers the rate is 3 times higher than urban. What is going on? Why must we care and how can we help or be helped? Jim Ennis is the Executive Director of Catholic Rural Life. www.catholicrurallife.org

Hot Springs, Arkansas will soon be known as the Napa Valley of Saké if Matt Bell has his way. Saké rice grown in Central Arkansas supplies Origami Sake, the fastest growing US saké brand and the only US brewer to win a Gold Medal at the Tokyo Saké Challenge 2025. Origami is also the largest domestically-owned saké brewery in the USA, 100% powered by solar energy and producing three Saké styles plus a non-alcoholic Sake. (https://drinkorigami.com/)

Iowa has been under stress 50 years as the economy changed fundamentally from diverse independent farmers and business and a union to concentrated cooperative agriculture and Walmart, Dollar General and no union. Art Cullen won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for exposing what corporate agriculture was doing to his Iowa farmingommunity. His new book “Dear Marty, We Crapped in Our Nest” reveals what’s really happening in rural food systems from someone who’s lived and reported there for decades. His repo...

Animals have been domesticated for 10,000 years and the current outbreak of avian flu is the largest and most complex animal disease outbreak in history, with serious risks beyond poultry. Avian influenza risk especially rises when waterfowl migrate in the fall, Maurice Pitesky, University of California Cooperative Extension poultry specialist has developed the Waterfowl Alert Network to help farmers manage their cattle and poultry’s exposure to migratory birds when they are nearby. If farmers a...

How long can a community last if there were no open roads or grocery stores? During the tragic California fire caused mudslides of 2018, the town of Summerland was cut off from the rest of the world and the food supply chain. The devastating effects of the tragedy and the consequences of no grocery stores in Summerland reached a turning point when customers started fighting over stale sandwiches or snacks left at Liquor stores or gas stations. These experiences led to the establishment of Sweet ...

There is a growing rural urban divide and it is effecting our food system locally, globally and nationally, especially in this climate change era. Gilles Stockton is the owner and manager of a sheep and cattle ranch in Montana and an expert in livestock production, livestock marketing, and economic development of pastoral areas, with experience in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. He pursued a dual career, managing and working the family ranch since 1975, and accomplishing numerous assignm...

Sacramento School District’s Central Kitchen is revolutionizing the way to feed over 40,000 students with scratch made, nutritious, local foods. Kelsey Nederveld, is the Director of Nutrition Services at Sacramento City Unified School District, was instrumental in building and designing the district’s own Central Kitchen, a food processing facility that is focused on scratch made, locally sourced ingredients to create wholesome meals, with the support of local chefs and farmers–revolutionizing s...

The MAHA Commission Report to President Trump, outlines the administration’s strategy to “Make Our Children Healthy Again”. Professor Jerold Mande, CEO of Nourish Science and Rodger Wasson, host of Farm To Table Talk podcast, review the report and discuss what it is in it and what is missing. www.nourishscience.org

Farm to Table Talk is about good conversations and no one was better at facilitating conversation than Bill Moyers who has passed away at the age of 91. A journalist, minister, Peace Corps and Great Society leader, Bill Moyers also showed his interest and support of farmers, such as his thoughtful interview with the legendary Wendell Berry. He told Rodger Wasson it was fine with him to have his Wendell Berry conversation shared on the Farm To Table Talk podcast so in his honor, at his passing is...