Bonus episode: Ask Me Anything!
Quivira Coalition communications director Anica Wong and Down to Earth host MaryCharlotte Domandi team up to answer listener questions and look back on 2023.
Land, sheep, and the inefficiency of being too efficient
Elena Miller Ter-Kuile is a sixth-generation farmer living in Colorado, raising sheep for wool and grass-fed meat, and restoring her family’s damaged land.
Transforming 40 million acres of lawns into thriving ecosystems
Erik Ohlsen, author of The Regenerative Landscaper, is helping people, municipalities, companies, and farms create thriving landscapes at every scale––and cultivate native plants, wildlife, and food.
Funneling federal ag money to the people who most need it
The Biden administration has made a great commitment to building sustainable and healthy food systems. But how to get that money to folks on the land who aren’t skilled bureaucrats? Dave Carter is part of the solution.
Weathering global change on an Oregon sheep ranch
When wool processing suddenly moved overseas, Jeanne Carver and her family were left without a market for their products. Through determination and creativity, she turned a setback into a regenerative success story.
From mountaintops to farm fields: Landscape scale restoration
How do you restore an entire forest, or mountain, or watershed? Landscape planner Jan-Willem Jansens has been doing it for decades, and the key is…collaboration.
A food forest on an eighth of an acre
Roxanne Swentzell turned a small piece of bare, dry earth into a garden/forest that produced enough food and wood to maintain a family of four. She founded the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, which teaches how to understand and live on the land and allow it to flourish.
Healing the trauma of Black land loss through regenerative rice production
After the Civil War hundreds of thousands of Black farmers acquired farm land, but through violence, threats, racist policies, and outright theft, millions of acres have been lost. Konda Mason is working to empower black farmers to thrive and to heal historical wounds.
Cultivating oysters for ocean health, human health, and economic development
Shellfish biologist Rick Karney and oyster farmer Alex Friedman talk about the realities of oyster farming and habitat restoration on the East coast.
From urban journalist to country farmer
Beth Hoffman was a college professor and agriculture journalist for years before she and her husband moved his family’s farm in Iowa. Her new book, Bet the Farm, is all about the joys, challenges, and economic realities of farming in the US today.