What Doesn't Kill You (Heritage Radio Network)

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 snowmelt is a desperate scenario indeed.

Read Tom's latest piece here.

Read an excerpt from his book here.

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This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by John Ikerd, a visionary scholar and author who writes and speaks on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. Dr. Ikerd's work on sustainable farming and agricultural economics has galvanized and informed the progressive food movement.

Legal expert Valerie Baron from Natural Resources Defense Council joins to discuss the existential threat to safe, available drinking water across the United States. Topics include The Clean Water Act and regulatory standards,  PFAS and other contaminants in the water supply, the effects of climate change, and new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency. 

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Corwin Heatwole, Founder and CEO of Farmer Focus, joins to talk about creating a whole new model for industrial chicken production: "farmer-focused", organic, and certified humane. How did he achieve that??

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Reporter for Civil Eats, and Farm Report host and producer Lisa Held gives a look at what a Biden presidency might mean for addressing the impact of climate change on agriculture.

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Arizona is a high producing agricultural state despite its desert conditions, and it relies obviously on water from far away. Trouble is, it competes with other states for that same water. How to resolve this is the subject of this episode.
 

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In the 1930's President Roosevelt responded to the tragedy of the dustbowl by planting millions of trees in what he called "shelterbelts". The trees were meant to hold water, as well as protect the plains from the effects of over planting and loss of topsoil. Over the last few decades, many of those all important shelterbelts have been destroyed as agriculture has planted fencerow to fencerow. Could we see a second Dust Bowl scenario as climate change advances? Carson Vaughn explains what is at stake and why we can't have too many trees.

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Amanda Hitt from the Government Accountability Project gives a long view perspective on the new rules in pork inspection. 

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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.

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David Sanchez Carpio is the Spanish liaison to Food and Water Watch. In this episode he describes how rural communities push back against industrial animal ag with the help of NGOS like FWW

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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.

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Award winning journalist Barry Estabrook shares his insights on the multibillion dollar industry that is the diet industry. Fascinating and funny. 

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Will Harlan from the Center for Biological Diversity joins to talk about the keystone species horseshoe crabs, a population that is crashing, and for which the Center is seeking endangered species protection. Learn why we need to protect this harmless and ancient creature from human exploitation.

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In order to support their local farming community, an entire town drinks bottled water. Their groundwater is polluted by agricultural runoff, but the townspeople don't want to penalize their farmers by forcing a costly fix, so they suck it up...from a bottle.

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Forbes journalist Chloe Sorvino describes what happened at a recent congressional hearing where meatpacking CEOs are questioned about their anti competitive, monopolistic, rip-off practices of the last 30 plus years.

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Agriculture is getting some serious attention from the Biden administration with significant investments via the Inflation Recovery Act, and even more from Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities. Tom Philpott from Mother Jones deconstructs.

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Leah Douglas updates her map of COVID-19 in food workers, and discusses the lack of oversight on "depopulation" and its impacts on the environment.

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep What Doesn't Kill You on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

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Anastasia Cole Plakias, co-founder of the Brooklyn Grange, talks about the role of urban agriculture, the business model, community engagement, and more.

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Senior scientist and Director of the Food and Environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ricardo Salvador evaluates some 10 key initiatives brought by Tom Vilsack in his second term as Secretary of Agriculture. There is also some talk about the 2023 Farm Bill and what to expect, and to hope for!

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Iowa, like many states has major water quality issues thanks to Big Ag. Francis Thicke is an organic dairy farmer, soil scientist and leader in the organic food movement. He is also an expert in water quality issues and how the Iowa corn belt is wreaking havoc on the states water supply. Is there a solution?

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Ethan Steinberg of Propagate Ventures describes a modeling tool to identify costs and rewards of adopting an agroecology style of farming. 

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep What Doesn't Kill You  on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

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The Interim Director of OCM, Ben Gotschall, talks about a moratorium on beef imports, consolidation in the industry, and improving the markets for American producers. 

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep  What Doesn't Kill You on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

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Alyssa Charney from NSAC reports on recent congressional committee meetings acknowledging the devastating impacts of climate change on farmers. Lip service paid to building resiliency. The question is, will they do anything about it.?

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Leah Douglas reports on a Smithfield meatpacking plant in California whose negligence has exposed hundreds of workers to Covid, and thousands of people in the surrounding community. 

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Ted Genoways spent a year following the day to day life of a farming family in Nebraska. What follows is a close up look at the risks and rewards of medium size farming in an Agri-business world. He shows the extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge required to farm successfully, along with just the gut instinct and appetite for gambling that are an essential part of the equation.

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 to pollute at will. Why is industry more important than clean water?

Photo Courtesy of Investigate Midwest.

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Avian Influenza, AKA bird flu is just a few mutations away from becomimg a much bigger deal for humans. With the pandemic just in the rear view mirror, teh news that H5N1 has moved from bird populations to dairy herds to humans should be a red alert. Curiously, the USDA seems relatively unconcerned. Gail Hansen, Public health veterinarian and subject matter expert for government and non-government organizations on public health and animal policy, discusses what could be our next major public health crisis.

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Mother Jones ag correspondent Tom Philpott deconstructs the boondoggle that is the new "climate bill" beloved by all who pollute. Dubbed "GROWING CLIMATE SOLUTIONS", this bill makes people like Joni Ernst and the good people of the National Pork Producers Council rub their legs together like crickets. How can this be good?

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Dr. Thomas Boving, Chair of The Department of Geosciences joins to discuss what and how we can address the contaminations of our waterways, from lakes and streams to groundwater. With agrochemicals, PFAS and other toxic additives, American waterways are challenged like never before. Dr. Boving has worked here and abroad to address challenges to drinking water from a myriad of sources.

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Learn about the incredible operation at Shelburne Farms this week on What Doesn't Kill You. Shelburne Farms is a nonprofit organization educating for a sustainable future. That means learning that links knowledge, inquiry, and action to help students build a healthy future for their communities and the planet. Their home campus is a 1,400-acre working farm, forest, and National Historic Landmark.

Dr. Steve Suppan joins to discuss the very first futures contract for water, and the implications for the rest of us.

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Amanda Hitt, Director of the Food Integrity Campaign at the Government Accountability Project takes listeners through a lawsuit the organization has filed on behalf of a Pilgrims Pride poultry grower. If he succeeds, how will this change the game for integrators and contractors?

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Caitlin Arnold is National Regional Manager for the National Young Farmers Coalition. She is joined by Alicia Harvie from Farm Aid to discuss the challenges to new and beginning farmers

The holiday season is all about food and community. There’s no better time to show your support for food radio by becoming a member! Lend your voice and help HRN continue to spreading the message of equitable, sustainable, and delicious food – together, we can change minds and build a better food system. Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate today to become a crucial part of the HRN community.

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On this week's episode of What Doesn't Kill You, Katy is joined by documentary filmmaker Lydia Tenaglia of Zero Point Zero Production to talk about Lydia's film Wasted! The Story of Food Waste . Through the eyes of chef-heroes like Massimo Bottura, Dan Barber and Danny Bowien, the film shows how the world’s most influential chefs battle food waste — transforming what most people consider garbage, scraps, and rejects into incredible dishes that feed more people, impact the bottom line, and create a more sustainable food system.

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President of the Humane League, a non profit animal rights organization, discusses the game-changing release of internal reports that were previously available only via FOIA requests. What is to be learned, and what to do next is the subject of this episode.

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Author, activist, and professor Marion Nestle joins to talk about her "Unexpected Life in Food Politics". A groundbreaking author and the developer of the first formal food studies program at NYU, Marion Nestle has inspired and informed the public about the many hidden issues that plague our food system and damage our health.

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Tom Philpott returns to discuss his new book, Perilous Bounty, an examination of American Agriculture in our key food producing states.

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Immigrants rights activist Jose Oliva describes the impact of revoking DACA on the American Food Chain. The effects won't be pretty, and we are already seeing them as produce and fruit rot in fields and on trees due to lack of immigrant labor to harvest. What happens when restaurants have to kick out their workers? We will see the effects in grocery stores, fast food and fine dining, and we aren't going to like it. We need Dreamers and they need our support.

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Emily Broad Leib, Faculty Director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, offers policy solutions to managing food waste on consumer and corporate platforms.

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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.

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Executive Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, Lindsay Lusher Shute explains the impact on young and beginning farmers should the Trump budget prevail. The barriers to entry in farming are formidable, and discretionary spending from the USDA helps fund a multitude of programs that encourage and assist people who are looking to get into farming. Losing that money could mean a lot of younger farms wither on the vine. This has major implications for the future of our food supply as our older farmers literally die off. Advancing the cause of young farmers is an imperative in a profession where the average age is over fifty. We could easily lose some of our most vital intellectual capital if we fail to invest in young farmers as they carry on the work of the previous generations.

In the first episode of 2018, What Doesn’t Kill You launches a multipart series diving into the dairy industry. Today’s guest is a dairy farmer and environmental attorney in Herkimer County N.Y., Lorraine Lewandrowski. The lively discussion goes from a day in the life of a dairy farmer to rural development, and from milk prices to consumer education.

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Host Katy Keiffer talks past and future shows.

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Many a suit has been brought against the big guns in Animal Agriculture to force them to clean up their stinking poisonous manure pits. Until now, not one has prevailed. Liz Crampton, a reporter for Morning Ag at Politico, had a ringside seat at the trial.

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Draining the "Big Food"  Swamp is an in depth report on lobbying money in politics backed by major food and beverage corporations. Buying politicians and skewing legislation is the game. Executive Director of Feed the Truth, Lucy Martinez Sullivan joins to highlight key points. 

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Surprise! Those certification labels promising no antibiotics in animals are sometimes a hollow promise. Andrew deCoriolis from Farm Forward unpacks the recent studies from both the Milken Institute School of Public Health and Farm Forward's own research that show that corners can and are being cut, and no one is really minding the store. USDA/FSIS, once again, fail to deliver.

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This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Will Carey and Lesha Pierson, volunteers for the 2017 Panhandle Fire Relief organization.

On March 6, wildfires swept through an estimated 1.5 million acres in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. Thousands of cattle were lost, and homes were destroyed, yet this story remains largely underreported in the mainstream news media.

Schweid & Sons has focused on making great ground beef, and finding the best possible sources for it. As a result, their sales are up by about 12%, while sales of conventional ground beef have only risen by 2%. Why that is and how consumers are voting with their forks is the subject of this conversation.

On this week's What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Joe Fassler and Sally Lee.

Joe Fassler is Senior Editor for New Food Economy, where he covers the politics, economics, and culture of the changing food system His food reporting for TheAtlantic.com has been a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism.

Sally Lee works directly with poultry farmers and manages Rural Advancement Foundation International’s Contract Ag Reform program. She has a background in social justice, including working at RAFI previously for four years with the Agricultural Justice Project, a social justice certification program for farms and businesses. She also worked as the Social Justice Consultant for Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in contributing to the development of the Sustainability Assessments for Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) indicators, which are used globally as a framework for policy development and business assessment.

Tune into a brand new episode of What Doesn't Kill You as Katy Keiffer is joined by Sandy McLeod, director of Seeds of Time. Seeds of Time is a documentary about preserving our agricultural heritage, featuring Dr. Cary Fowler, a pioneer in identifying the global threat to food security posed by losing seed diversity.

Marc Brazeau started the Food and Farm Discussion Lab several years ago to unite his many interests: agriculture, restaurants, social justice, and culinary education. The group grew to over 6,000 members at its peak. He just shut it down. We are going to talk about what the major themes of discussion were, how they changed, and what ultimately led him to close the forum.

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Colonel John Hoffman of the Food Protection and Defense Institute has been advising companies and government on how to harden their cyber functions. Here he deconstructs how JBS came to be hacked and what government and corporations need to do to ensure national food security. 

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FERN reporter Leah Douglas reviews the Covid Map for meatpackers, describes her oped in rebuttal to Smithfield and reviews the ag news

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This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined in the studio by Andrew F. Smith, a writer and lecturer on food and culinary history. His latest book is the three volume set Food In America, which focuses on food controversies related to the environment, nutrition and health, and the economy.

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 impact on wildlife, recreation, human health, and the ecology of rivers and streams currently unprotected.

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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.

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Despite banner investments in big ag, not to mention the end of the trade wars with China and a host of other farm friendly policies, Biden gets no love. Journalist Art Cullen dissects why farmers love to bite the hand that feeds them, gives us the skinny on governor and senate races, and gets real about water.

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Mike Callicrate, activist and rancher, comes aboard to talk about breaking up consolidation in the meat industry and re-regionalizing the system. The man has a plan.

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This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined in studio Sari Kamin. Also a host at Heritage Radio Network, today Sari is sitting on the guest's chair as she chats with Katy about election fake news, Donald Trump, Women's March, and more. Don't forget to check out Sari's The Morning After.

Veteran Agricultural reporter Leah Douglas joins today to talk about how the supply chain is doing and how smaller farms/independent fishermen are managing.

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Prairie Rivers Network has published the results of a 6 year study on the impacts of herbicide drift in Illinois, and its not a good picture. Herbicide drift isn't confined to agricultural fields. They float right into our backyards, schoolyards, parks, and natural spaces. Herbicide drift is having a major impact on trees and naturally occurring plant species, not to mention humans. Kim Erndt-Pitcher, Director of Ecolocgical halth at Prairie Rivers Network explains whats in that report, and why we should all be concerned. It's not just happening in Illinois.

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Tom Driscoll, Director of the NFU Foundation and Conservation Policy describes the biggest challenges facing farmers today. Whether its the 50% reduction in income projected for this year, or the market consolidation in commodities and agriculture, farmers are being squeezed up and down the supply chain. Listen up for a fast paced discussion of the state of American farming and its future.

Kay Cornelius, and Elle Gadient give an overview of the partnership between Niman Ranch and Chipotle to extend money in scholarship and in stocking new farmers, a relatively rare phenomenon in which corporations are building the future through investing in young farmers now.

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Journalist Greta Moran digs into the new version of the National Dietary Guidelines so the rest of us don't have to. Big surprise! Industry dictates what they are going to be. 

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On this week's episode of What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined in the studio by Andrew F. Smith, a writer and lecturer on food and culinary history. Andrew serves as the general editor for the Edible Series, published by Reaktion Press, and teaches Food Studies at the New School University in New York. He is also the author of the new book Fast Food: The Good, the Bad and the Hungry. Tune in as they discuss why the fast food industry has been so successful, and the myriad consequences that have occurred as a result.

Science writer and author Maryn McKenna is back to talk about her newest piece for Wired where she considers the implications of Avian flu moving to new territory and infecting new mammals, though not yet infecting people to any great degree. What does this say about our methods for raising animals in confinement, and how do we check the spread of this pathogen and others like it?

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On the season premiere of What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Ted Genoways, award-winning writer and editor, and author of The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food, a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award for Writing and Literature.

Tune in to hear them discuss the failings of the media throughout the recent election cycle, the dangers of forcing voter demographics to conform to stereotypes, the proliferation of anti-intellectualism, and the vital importance of grain commodities to this country and its economy, and more!

Leah Douglas comes back for her monthly wrap of Covid news in the meatpacking industry. Who is collecting data? Where is it going?

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Chef Andrew Hunter from Niman Ranch joins Katy today to talk about how corporations move forward in sustainability goals, the rise of blended and impossible burgers, food innovation and changing consumer trends.

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Jessica Mayhew and Maggie LePrise offer their thoughts on how to make dairy work better, especially in RI.

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep What Doesn't Kill You on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

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Michael Stumo, CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America explains why he sees President Trumps efforts to realign trade agreements and impose tariffs as a much needed correction to long abuses of American industry and agriculture. While unable to exactly reassure that the imposition of massive tariffs on our trading partners, especially the Chinese, along with rewriting NAFTA , won't have an negative impact on the agricultural sector, he voices opinions that many of Trumps supporters in the farm belt share.

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This week on What Doesn't Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Jonathan Gelbard, lead scientist at Grasslands Alliance and conservation scientist and sustainable agriculture specialist at Conservation Value, which serves clients interested in developing and implementing programs that benefit our environment, climate and economy alike. In partnership with other conservation entities, Dr. Gelbard’s work for Grasslands Alliance and Conservation Value focuses devising innovative programs for distinguishing the livestock producers who demonstrate verifiably good ranch and farm management, and rewarding them with economically valuable benefits.

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.

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Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership bring to livestock agriculture? Listen to a couple of fire-breathing ranchers and activists duke it out on a brand new episode of What Doesn’t Kill You. Host Katy Keiffer is joined by Bill Bullard of R-Calf and Steve Dittmar of AgFreedom.org. Things get very heated – this is a must listen for anybody following the cattle industry.

Mike Callicrate, a Colorado rancher and activist joins to talk about the beef industry and COVID-19.

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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???

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Wright's Dairy farm in northern Rhode Island INCREASED profitability during Covid. Huh?

Image courtesy of Cathryn Kennedy.

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Vicky Bond, President of the Humane League, joins to discuss their campaign to transition the egg industry to cage free. Who is walking the walk and who talks the talk but doesn't walk?

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What is a sustainable food system? Former undersecretary of the USDA, Kathleen Merrigan, Executive Director of Sustainability at George Washington University talks about what's possible, what's happening and what to hope for.

At George Washington University, Dr. Merrigan leads the GW Sustainability Collaborative, GW Food Institute, and serves as Professor of Public Policy. She serves as a Co-Chair for AGree, Board Director for the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and FoodCorps, a member of the Harvard Pilgrim Healthy Food Fund Advisory Committee, Senior Advisor at the Kendall Foundation, and steering committee member of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors of the National Council for Science and the Environment and the United Nations Environment Programme led initiative TEEB for Agriculture & Food.

Recognizing the history and scope of her work, Time Magazine named Kathleen among the “100 most influential people in the world” in 2010.

This week on What Doesn't Kill You, Arlin Wasserman shows how reliance on corn relates to risk management and financial results in the food industry which has a direct impact on consumers in many ways.

Arlin Wasserman is a partner at Changing Tastes, founding our company in 2003. He is also a fellow at the Aspen Institute and a past recipient of a Food and Society Policy Fellowship, awarded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Arlin holds masters degrees in Natural Resource Sciences and Public Health and has served as an advisor on agriculture, trade and development issues to both the US Department of Agriculture and the European Union Parliament. From 2007 until 2012, Arlin served as Vice President of Sustainability at Sodexo, the world’s leading institutional food service provider, leading it’s efforts to develop and implement its first sustainability strategy encompassing both environment and public health concerns.

Derek Wagner owns two farm-to-table restaurants in Providence, RI. Keeping his family, his staff, and his purveyors going is the Sisyphean task he faces.

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Patricia de Rada from Compassion in World Farming, and Alberto Diez from Anda discuss how the industry is running roughshod over rural communities and traditional methods to ramp up their export business.

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Erik Kanter, President of Clean Wisconsin joins to explain how republicans are withholding funds for clean up until the legislature passes a bill immunizing polluters from prosecution for polluting the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites.

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Professor Peter Carstensen has made anti trust law his specialty, particularly as it pertains to the American Dairy Industry. He explains how a co-op model initiated decades ago to help dairy farmers bargain collectively has become the major impediment to their financial success. Consolidation and monopolization in dairy are very similar to the meat industry. The impacts of that consolidation are examined closely in this episode.

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Trump's administration is taking aim at SNAP benefits, WIC benefits, watering down school lunch standards, and implementing draconian immigration policies. A distinguished panel led by Food and Environmental Reporting Network, and CUESA, Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture held a panel discussion to look for community based solutions to these problems. Sam Fromartz moderated the panel and is interviewed about the discussion and any solutions.

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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 drinking water is increasingly connected to cancer clusters such as this one in Minnesota.

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Katy Keiffer is flying solo today on What Doesn't Kill You and she's got plenty to say. First, she recaps some news - from legal pot to cheese in cat food. Later, she talks about the industrial food industry at large and identifies some of the worst and best aspects of the current system we have. Tune in for some sharp insights and timely topics!

Policy Director for NSAC, Dr. Eric Deeble joins to discuss the USDA program, the biggest direct payment program to farmers  in history, what works, and what doesn't.

HRN will be donating 10% of our membership drive proceeds from now until June 15 to the Philando Castile Relief Foundation. Visit heritageradionetwork.org/donate to make your gift.

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Today on What Doesn’t Kill You, Katy Keiffer speaks with Annie Speicher and Matt Wechsler, the two filmmakers behind Hourglass Films and a new documentary. Sustainable tells the story of a family farmer in Illinois who fought to keep a sustainable farming model in the midst of transformation in America’s heartland.

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.

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Nitrogen and Phosphorus runoff from agricultural chemicals is killing the gulf of Mexico, and local waterways as well. Iowa is a case in point. Chris Jones, a hydraulic engineer is the lead author on a new study just out from the University of Iowa talking about how that fertilizer runoff is an expanding problem, despite efforts to curb it. Agricultural runoff is not just a problem in Iowa, but in many states with major corn soy cropping. What to do about it, and how to fix this is the subject of this episode.

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Crispin Hernandez came up from Mexico to work in an upstate NY dairy with 10,000 cows. In 3 years he was transformed into an activist, participating in a successful lawsuit against the industry with the help of Rebecca Fuentes and Workers Center of Central New York, and author of Milked.

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Journalist Carey Gillam has been rooting around in the glyphosate archives and comes up with some studies from 1985 that show tumors in mice, but those were neatly suppressed. Tune in to hear what else she found out.

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.

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Leah Douglas from the FERN returns to discuss a couple of her recent stories, including jaw-dropping stats on COVID-19 in meatpacking towns and a scary executive order opening the path toward FinFish aquaculture in open seas.

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BlueTriton has gobbled up a lot of water companies, including Nestle's water division. They say they are addressing the kinds of problems we saw in Flint. But what exactly does that mean, and what should consumers expect from a giant water company that makes its profit from selling bottled water? Chief sustainability officer Ed Ferguson will try to show us what role his company plays in maintaining water quality and supply.

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This week on What Doesn’t Kill You, host Katy Keiffer is joined by Molly Anderson. Anderson is part of the Food Studies program at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she teaches about hunger and food security, fixing food systems, and sustainability. She is especially interested in multi-actor collaborations for sustainable food systems, sustainability metrics and assessment, food system resilience, human rights in the food system, food security and the right to food in the U.S. and other industrialized countries, and the transition to a post-petroleum food economy.

Janet Holt saw a niche for low gluten, ancient and heirloom grains already cooked. She started RTE Cuisine and has some lessons to impart to anyone who thinks they have a great idea!

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As if being a farmworker could get any worse, the Trump administration, via USDA has killed a critical report that determines wages for farmworkers, all but guaranteeing even less income in the coming year. Why and how is explained by Bruce Goldstein,  President of Farmworker Justice.org

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Some recently concluded studies by the USGS indicate some better news about water quality in agricultural areas, but its not all rosy as the amount of nitrogem in our water systems is growing, due to fertilizer runoff. The impacts can be seen in the Dead Zone in the Gulf, the great lakes and the chesapeake. How much should rural communities in the Corn Belt worry?

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