Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast
Down to Earth is a podcast about regenerative agriculture, and it’s for everyone who eats. We invite you to meet the people shaping a healthier food system—farmers, ranchers, scientists, land managers, writers, and many others. Designing a future that draws on both tradition and innovation, they’re on a mission to change the paradigm so that the food we eat is healthy and long-term sustainable—for families and growers, for wildlife and water, for climate and planet. downtoearthradio.com
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 50 minutes
- Episodes
- 104
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2025
Bonus episode: Ask Me Anything!
Anica Wong is Quivira Coalition's communications director and she had the idea for an "ask me anything" episode with Down to Earth host Mary-Charlotte Domandi ... and here it is! Listeners asked ques…
Photographing grasslands: beauty, community, life
Photographer Sally Thomson's gorgeous new book of photographs and texts, Homeground, is a deep exploration of rangelands in the Southwest––landscapes, livestock, water, wildlife, and the stewards who…
Land, sheep, and the inefficiency of being too efficient
Elena Miller Ter-Kuile is a sixth-generation farmer living in southern Colorado. At Cactus Hill Farm she and her father raise sheep for wool, grass-fed meat and organic grain and hay, and are in the …
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. …
Sheep and goats for healthy land, thriving businesses, and fire reduction
Cole Bush is a shepherdess, entrepreneur, and educator. Founder of Shepherdess Land & Livestock and Grazing School of the West, she uses a "flerd" (flock-herd) of sheep and goats to restore landscape…
Words of wisdom from a holistic veterinarian and regenerative dairy farmer
Dr. Hubert Karreman started out as a soil scientist and then fell in love with dairy cows. He became a veterinarian and a regenerative dairy farmer, following a path of respect and reverence for life…
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 the money from the government to folks on the land who need it but aren't skilled…
How to have family business meetings that are productive––and short
Joe and Jenn Wheeling talk about how to avoid the pitfalls of a family ranch business––ego, speechifying, wasted time––and arrive at consensus decisions with the full support of each family member.
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 regenerativ…
From mountaintops to farm fields: Landscape scale restoration
How do you restore an entire forest, or mountain, or watershed? The key is...collaboration. Jan-Willem Jansens has been restoring landscapes in New Mexico for three decades. Owner of Ecotone Landscap…
A food forest on an eighth of an acre
Roxanne Swentzell was a young mother on a small piece of land at Santa Clara Pueblo when she was introduced to permaculture design principles––which dovetailed with indigenous patters of thinking and…
From corporation to regeneration––a family's journey
Lorenzo Dominguez was a successful marketing and corporate communications executive in New York City. But during the pandemic he and his wife made the decision to change their lives in order to find …
Healing the trauma of Black land loss through regenerative rice production
Konda Mason is co-founder and president of Jubilee Justice, a non-profit dedicated to regenerative agriculture, racial justice, cooperative practices, and healing the wounds of Black American land lo…
Cultivating oysters for ocean health, human health, and economic development
Oysters are delicious and nutritious. They are also a keystone species and an ecosystem engineer, which means that they provide habitat for all kinds of other species, and they filter and clean the w…
From urban journalist to country farmer
Beth Hoffman was a college professor and agriculture journalist for years before she and her husband picked up and moved from San Francisco to his family's farm in Iowa. In her book Bet the Farm: The…
Establishing an earth-friendly meat business
Corporate meat producers tout their "efficiency" but actually wreak havoc on the environment, local communities, and the animals themselves. Cole Mannix works with the Old Salt Co-op, which is pionee…
Taking it to the street––healthy food entrepreneurship
Tina Garcia-Shams is executive director of the Street Food Institute in Albuquerque, NM. The program teaches entrepreneurship, food preparation, accounting, marketing, and everything else students ne…
Herding animals for land––and human––health
Traditional pastoral cultures have been living in harmony with animals and land for millennia––and they persist to this day, though with serious challenges. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson's new book, Hoofpr…
Hydroponics, aquaponics, and sovereignty
Hydroponic agriculture systems use water––not soil––to grow crops, and yet they use water with exceptional efficiency and can produce abundantly all year round. When coupled with fish farming, the re…
Systems thinking: Coordinating after, during, and before disasters
Many federal, state, and local agencies, as well as non-profits and community groups, carry the responsibility of helping people and fixing infrastructure after a disaster, and some of them also work…