Science writer Maryn McKenna, author of Superbug and Big Chicken, joins to discuss the feeble attempts to rein in antibiotic use in animal agriculture. As the World Health Organization and others blare out the warnings about a post antibiotic medical landscape, American livestock producers can't quite seem to fully wean their herds off prophylactic antibiotics. Incremental progress has been made over the last decade plus, but we are running out of time.

The Humane League, an advocacy organization seminal to both encouraging the egg industry to improve its conditions for laying hens, but also to hold restaurants accountable when they don't keep their promises to use only cage free eggs. Kelly Myers, Director of Corporate Engagement joins to discuss this sea change, and the new Humane League Eggspose, that busts the bad actors who promise one thing, and do another.

According to journalist Keith Schneider whose prize winning series Toxic Terrain has explored many of the ills associated with our style of agriculture, "the voluntary conservation practices promoted by federal and state governments, and Big Ag, are the costliest and least effective pollution prevention strategy ever devised. In the Mississippi Basin $30 billion spent since 1997 by the federal and state governments."

Professors Viveca Morris and Jennifer Jacquet dug into how the livestock industry has co-opted certain university experts to minimize the impact of findings on climate change related to industrialized animal agriculture. Their findings have been published in a new paper detailing just how successful meat companies have been in skewing perceptions of climage change, altering emission targets, and making sure the industry remains the unregulated monster it is. Prepare to be outraged.

Veteran agricultural journalist Tom Philpott joins to talk about what is and isn't in the newest iteration of the Farm Bill. Despite all the extra funds from the Investment Recovery Act, and all the information we now have about climate disruption, and other impacts on agriculture, we seem to be marching toward the same old same old...

Professor Upmanu Lall, director of the Water Institute at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University gives us the details on how we map, model, and distribute our dwindling groundwater supplies.

Author Austin Frerick joins the show to talk about his new book: Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food System. An awesome journey through the biggest monopolies in the food biz, from grains, to hogs, to coffee, to grocery chains... Meet the unknown players making bank on the food system.

For at least 20 years, the burgeoning poultry industry has been spreading the waste litter from their barns across one particular watershed in Oklahoma. Journalist Ben Felder dug into the origins of the lawsuit brought by a long gone state attorney general seeking to bring some accountability to the industry over damage to the local waterways. 20 years later, negotiations on how to manage this by product have broken down, and now new legislation threatens to give industry even wider latitude...

Accross the farm belt, cancer cases are spiking, and states are getting serious about tracking and providing guidelines for exposure to agro-chem. Journalist Keith Schneider has been digging into this for months and reports.

Straight outta the NY Times, a groundbreaking article by journalists Christopher Flavelle and Somini Sengupta shows the highway between mcNuggets and our diminishing supply of fresh clean water for human consumption. Flavelle joins the show to describe what he and his colleague uncovered as part of an ongoing and important series in the NYT.

John Rumpler, Clean Water DIrector and lead attorney for Environment America, joins to talk about the long overdue revision of regulations governing wastewater from slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. Decades overdue, public hearings on the subject are being held January 24th and 31st 2024. Learn more about how much toxic waste could be captured if these revised regulations are allowed to pass. Aside from reducing contamination of our drinking water, these revisions would also have an...

Chris Jones, author of the Swine Republic, featured here in June, is back to talk about the remarkable series of conversations he is now having around Iowa and his region about big ag and water pollution. We will also talk about heavily funded mitigation tools that are not mitigating, but are lining some peoples pockets with taxpayer money.

Big Ag and Big Oil are getting in bed together to promote the buildout of bio-digesters to manage animal waste. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing masquerading as a good thing? Reporter Keith Schneider gives some context on this long overdue attention to pollution from the animal agriculture segment.

Professor Sylvia Secchi from University of Iowa joins to talk about how ethanol is a giant giveaway to the ag industry, purporting to be a partial solution to fossil fuel impacts. Instead, the excessive cultivation of corn is having disastrous impacts on soil and water... and guess what? It's anything but fuel efficient. How did we get here???

Journalist Keith Schneider examines a spate of cancer diagnoses in farm country in Minnesota. On one short stretch of a road in Berne Minnesota, shared by four farming families, 12 people developed cancer, and seven of them died. What linked these people in disease is the contamination of their drinking water with excess nitrates, the chemicals used to encourage bumper crops of corn, soy, and other crops. It has yet to be definitively proven, but the science shows excessive nitrate in...

Organic food purchasers buy organic and pay the extra for a reason. New regulations being proposed by some members of congress would make it much easier for corporate food businesses to use that premium label to sell product that doesn't actually meet the real benchmarks of organic. Tom Chapman, CEO of the Organic Trade Association, and others have introduced the new Continuous Improvement and Accountability in Organic Standards to counteract these efforts to dilute the organic label.

The National Family Farm Coalition is advocating for the Farmland For Farmers Act introduced by Senator Cory Booker in July of this year. Agricultural land needs to stay accessible to actual farmers, rather than offer an opportunity to corporate entities to capitalize on high land prices, at the same time driving those prices into a stratosphere no mere mortal can possibly attain. Our food security depends on measures like this. Tune in to see how this fits into the Farm Bill, and its chances...

Western states are home to herds of grazing beasts, and to keep them in the right place, thousands of miles of fencing is required. Conservation Northwest Associate Director Jay Kehne advocates a different path: shock collars for cattle. The cattle stay put, but other wildlife (think deer, elk, and other ruminants) can run free instead of fouling the fence. A big win for wildlife, and for a rancher's bottom line.

Award winning journalist and author, and favorite guest, Tom Philpott returns to talk all things Farm Bill. What will change, what is new, and what is, sigh, same old, same old?

Every day a new article describes the prevalence of PFAS in our water, land, food, and bodies. David Cwiertny, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and in Chemistry at the University of Iowa, takes us through the impacts, the options for remediation, and what to expect from regulatory bodies in the wake of increased knowledge on the ubiquity of "forever" chemicals.

Iowa State University Water Quality expert Chris Jones, @riverraccoon, just published a damning indictment of the governing officials of Iowa and Big Ag in overseeing the disastrous consequences of our profit over people driven agricultural model. Learn how the Department of Natural Resources and a host of other agencies collude in allowing agriculture to extract maximum payment from taxpayers, even as they flush ever increasing quantities of pollutants into the water system.

Tom Philpott, author of Perilous Bounty, was prescient in his 2020 book in a lengthy description of the 1862 floods that inundated Central Valley in a once in a century flood. Now Central Valley is facing an even more catastropic scenario as climate disruption adds fuel to an already volatile area now packed with dairy farms, oil wells, and massive swaths of land planted to almonds, pistachios, tomatoes, and cotton. What will ensue with the predicted flooding caused by potential rapid...

Vermont farmer Erik Andrus is practicing an ancient form of agro-ecology from Japan. Learn how the old informs the new as Erik describes his approach and how it works.

Bryce Oates, a regular contributor to Civil Eats, Daily Yonder and other pubs has launched a newsletter that comes from a rural perspective. In this episode we talk about the new WOTUS controversy, and all the bluster and drama that plays out in a rule that essentially regulates nothing, but some would like us to believe our food supply is at risk from protecting water supplies.