REAP/SOW
Dispatches from the frontlines of food, farming, and the environment. From the Food & Environment Reporting Network, the producers of Hot Farm, REAP/SOW brings you narrative and investigative reporting that examines the consequences of what we choose to eat and why. Currently featuring BUZZKILL, a six-part series on the pollinator crisis
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 33 minutes
- Episodes
- 44
- Years Active
- 2022 - 2025
The U.S. has lost 1.2 million immigrants since January. What happens now?
The impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown is starting to show up in new preliminary census data, and that poses major problems for all parts of U.S. society, but particularly in …
00:39:02 |
Tue 09 Sep 2025
What happens if RFK Jr.’s radical reinvention of the food system…isn’t so radical?
In this episode, Helena and Theodore talk about the MAHA commission’s leaked strategy report. Turns out that there’s more talk than action. Also: a former FDA chief challenges RFK Jr. to put up or sh…
00:33:09 |
Tue 26 Aug 2025
What makes MAHA so popular?
In this episode, Theodore and Helena discuss why the (non-vaxx) ideas of the MAHA movement are popular, but the movement itself is less so.. That split presents a major problem for Democrats, who can…
00:33:32 |
Tue 12 Aug 2025
Small town's residents find common ground at the Grange
In this episode, FERN contributor Lisa Morehouse reports on the Anderson Valley Grange Hall in California’s Mendocino County. She finds an organization, and a community, trying to adapt to a changing…
00:17:34 |
Tue 05 Aug 2025
Did Coca-Cola really say it was going to switch to sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup?
The major companies that produce and sell ultraprocessed foods are making big changes, or at least they are promising to. The Trump administration has celebrated “wins” over companies as varied as Pe…
00:39:41 |
Tue 29 Jul 2025
How bad are the SNAP cuts in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Act?
Helena and Theodore explain why Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski flipped to cast the deciding vote on Trump’s Big Beautiful Act: an exemption that rewards her state’s highest-in-the-nation SNAP error ra…
00:42:57 |
Tue 15 Jul 2025
Does anyone in Biloxi care about seafood fraud?
In 2024, the owners Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, an iconic restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi, pleaded guilty to fraudulently selling more than 29 tons of fish between December 2013 and November 2…
00:25:03 |
Tue 08 Jul 2025
Forked: Trump stopped immigration enforcement raids on food system workers – but not for long
In the “Double Take,” Helena and Theodore have Trump whiplash on the threat of mass deportations in the food system. In “Forks and Knives,” the discussion turns to the historic cuts to food assistanc…
00:42:24 |
Tue 01 Jul 2025
Introducing: Forked, presented by REAP/SOW
American food politics are a mess. The traditional forces driving policy in agriculture and nutrition have been wiped away, and ordinary people are struggling to figure out who is in charge, what the…
00:02:07 |
Tue 24 Jun 2025
Black land loss: A Conversation with Brea Baker from What You're Eating
In 1910, Black farmers owned as many as 16 million acres of American farmland. Today that figure has plummeted. Between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost an estimated 90 percent of their farmland t…
00:34:56 |
Tue 17 Jun 2025
Fertilizer’s toxic journey
The chemical industry is a cornerstone of modern American farming. It helps grow the food billions of people eat. It’s also causing vast environmental damage. In this episode of REAP/SOW, produced in…
00:35:42 |
Tue 03 Jun 2025
Forked: MAHA drama as food fighters duke it out with anti-vaxxers
Theodore Ross and Helena Bottemiller Evich work through the tumultuous nomination process for Surgeon General. Donald Trump’s first nominee withdrew (questions about her medical and anti-vaxx credent…
00:52:38 |
Tue 20 May 2025
Mexico’s Spirit: A Conversation with Ted Genoways, author of ‘Tequila Wars’
FERN editor-in-chief Theodore Ross talks to Genoways about his new book, Tequila Wars, which is an extraordinary exploration of the little-known – and often bloody history – of Jose Cuervo. Cuervo’s …
00:43:00 |
Tue 06 May 2025
Forked: RFK Jr.’s ‘massive’ promise to ‘eliminate’ autism ‘exposures’
Is it possible that RFK Jr. believes autism research can be done so fast because he already thinks he knows what those causes of autism are? Other topics include: RFK Jr. “hitting his stride” after a…
00:56:30 |
Tue 22 Apr 2025
To me, it’s junk food – a Q and A with Marion Nestle
Americans increasingly rely on processed food products as key parts of their everyday meals, even as scientists are just starting to scratch the surface in understanding how these food products influ…
00:37:31 |
Tue 08 Apr 2025
Forked: Among the MAHA Moms
The premiere of FERN’s newest podcast looks at how RKF Jr. is making waves on food policy.
00:45:44 |
Tue 25 Mar 2025
Trouble on the Line
This is a story about how a single TikTok video, taped in 2023 outside a meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado would change the lives of hundreds of Haitian immigrants, and embroil JBS – the world’s…
00:44:12 |
Thu 20 Mar 2025
Buzzkill Bonus Episode: “Is urban beekeeping bad for bees?”
This is an engaging conversation on urban pollinators taped live during the Buzzkill celebration in New York City on March 3, 2025, moderated by Sewell Chan, executive editor of the Columbia Journali…
00:31:16 |
Tue 11 Mar 2025
Buzzkill: A post-pollinator world
The Golden State’s annual almond harvest shows what happens when biodiversity collapses and bees become a commodity valuable enough to steal.
00:29:25 |
Tue 04 Mar 2025
Buzzkill: Bats and the blue agave
Nearly all tequila is made from cloned plants that are vulnerable to species collapse. In Mexico, a small group of people is trying to change that – and protect an endangered, nectar-slurping, agave-…
00:31:00 |
Tue 25 Feb 2025
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