Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast Quivira Coalition and Radio Cafe

Women have been invisible in agriculture for too long: not counted in the census, not taken seriously for their work and management achievements, excluded from access to capital and credit––and even farm equipment is not made for their bodies. We talk to Jules Salinas of Women Food and Agriculture Network, which is addressing these issues in ways ranging from political action to storytelling.
 

Doug Fine was an international journalist before he moved to New Mexico to start a polyculture farm and embrace a rural way of life. He's the author of six books, including four on hemp and cannabis, and his film American Hemp Farmer won Best New Mexico Documentary Feature at the 2024 Santa Fe Film Festival. He's a vociferous advocate for hemp as a source of nutrition, healing, clothing and industrial fiber, building material, energy source, and climate change solution.
 

Sarah Wentzel-Fisher is executive director of Quivira Coalition. A native of South Dakota, she came to her work in agriculture and leadership via a circuitous path that included the creative arts, writing, community and regional planning, collective problem-solving. In this podcast we discuss everything from the purpose of scientific inquiry in regenerative agriculture, to Quivira's history and current programs, to her own work in farming. 

Phoebe Suina grew up on Cochiti and San Felipe Pueblos in New Mexico, where she learned about land, water, and cultural values and practices from her extended family and community. With advanced degrees in engineering and management from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, she returned to New Mexico to found High Water Mark, a Native American, woman-owned project management and environmental consulting company with a specialty in water resources. She works with local, state, and federal governments and agencies, private entities, and industry to restore landscapes after disasters like wildfires and floods, and to do planning, management, and disaster prevention. What sets her company's work apart is that they use a holistic approach that focuses not just on engineering solutions, but instead takes into account the entire landscape––including people. Favoring distributed, low tech solutions that communities can maintain over the long run, and working with the forces and flows of nature, they seek to foster resilient watersheds and landscapes, and to do so with the values of humility, respect, and cooperation. She uses and teaches consensus-based planning, a technique that involves deep listening and coming to agreement across differences of opinion and interests. And she works on legal and policy issues with tribal and state governments. 
With her partner and children, Suina also farms seven acres, using no-till, traditional practices to grow food for her family and community––including the wildlife that in turn fertilize the land. 

A decade ago, filmmaker Peter Byck assembled a group of scientists who were looking at agriculture from a whole-system perspective to study regenerative and conventional grazing side by side. The result is an extraordinary new documentary, Roots So Deep You Can See the Devil Down There. It's a fascinating and enormously entertaining journey into the world of family ranchers.

Seed Savers Exchange is a small non-profit that's making a big difference. For a half century, they've been saving seeds, getting them out into gardens, telling their stories––and cultivating biodiversity that has been badly diminished with the rise of corporate agriculture and seed production.
Located in Decorah, Iowa, Seed Savers has a large farm where they cultivate genetic diversity, including vegetables, flowers, fruits, and even heritage livestock. You can get and share seeds through their exchange and their seed catalog.