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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
45 Episodes
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The MAHA Commission has made big promises about what it would do to fix the nation’s food system and health. Its new strategy document includes 128 proposals for change – but little evidence that those changes can be made real. Helena and Theodore go through the report and ask: Did RFK Jr. bow to pressure from Big Ag? Is he more interested in cracking down on vaccine injury than high-fructose corn syrup? Also: Whole milk is back!
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 our food system: Nearly half the country’s food system workers are immigrants. In this episode, Helena and Theodore go through the numbers, and explain why the chances of immigration reform are going down. Also: FoodNet gets a haircut at CDC, and Kansas fights USDA over SNAP data.
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 shut up on ultraprocessed foods. And finally – MAGA vs. MAHA.
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’t resist the Trump administration when it’s pushing for things they want. Also, does Coke taste better with cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup? The answer: they taste about the same, and people prefer Pepsi (as long as they don’t know what they’re drinking – then they like Coke).
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 social landscape – and finding help at the Grange. “Whether it’s doing a holiday dinner or … hosting a local food bank, it’s a place where people can do what’s most natural to us, which is focus on our cooperative dynamics and community,” says Erich Jonas, a member of the Anderson Valley Grange. This episode was produced in partnership with “California Foodways” and KQED’s California Report Magazine podcast.
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 2019, claiming it was locally caught when in fact it was imported. Quality Poultry and Seafood—another iconic Gulf Coast business—had sold mislabeled fish to other restaurants, too. Eventually, both businesses had to forfeit more than a million dollars apiece. In this episode, a partnership with Gravy, a podcast from the Southern Foodways Alliance, reporter Boyce Upholt reports on how mislabeled, imported seafood has damaged local fishing fleets in places like Biloxi, which for more than a century has claimed to be the “seafood capital of the world.”
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 to violent land theft and discrimination. In this episode, courtesy of the FoodPrint podcast “What you’re eating,” Jerusha Klemperer interviews Brea Baker, author of Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft And The Modern Movement For Black Land Ownership, who explored this history through her own family’s loss and resilience.
1The 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 collaboration with WWNO’s Sea Change podcast, you’re going to hear the story of synthetic fertilizer, and how this powerful concoction of chemicals has radically reshaped how we farm and what we eat – and how it’s poisoning communities, upending livelihoods, and choking the life out of a huge swath of the ocean. Reported by Garrett Hazelwood and Eric Schmid, hosted by WWNO’s Carlyle Calhoun and FERN’s Teresa Cotsirilos.
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 credentials) and the newest one, Casey Means, has been branded a “Marxist tree hugger” by Laura Loomer. (Questions also remain about her anti-vaxxness). Conversation addresses the split within the groups backing HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – anti-Big Food versus anti-vaccine – “the big questions” about government being posed by the Trump administration; and in a sign of hope – MAHA members meet with public health experts and don’t hate each other.
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 life, and his struggle to bring stability and prosperity to his industry during the profound disruptions of the Mexican revolutionary era, is an epic tale. This new book pulls Cuervo’s name off the bottle and pours it into real life.
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 attending the funeral of a child who died of measles. How many people have been laid off at HHS and why doesn’t anybody know? Bipartisan bonhomie on the issue of plant-based milk, in a Senate proposal that almost no one thinks will pass. MAHA anti-vaxxers would rather RFK Jr. forget about food.
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 influence our health. Now, these products have reached the political discourse. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has targeted ultraprocessed foods as a key part of his plan to “Make America Healthy Again.” As part of FERN’s special series in partnership with Inverse, reporter Claire Maldarelli interviewed nutritionist and public health expert Marion Nestle.
The premiere of FERN’s newest podcast looks at how RKF Jr. is making waves on food policy.
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 largest meatpacking company – in a controversy over mistreating workers. Reported by FERN senior producer Ted Genoways and produced in partnership with Reveal, this episode dives deep into a poorly understood part of the food system, which is depended on foreign-born workers the government now seems intent on deporting.
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 Journalism Review, with Buzzkill host Teresa Cotsirilos, Sara Hobel, executive director of the Horticultural Society of New York, and Rebecca Louie, executive director of the Bee Conservancy.
The Golden State’s annual almond harvest shows what happens when biodiversity collapses and bees become a commodity valuable enough to steal.
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-pollinating bat that’s only three inches long.
A suburban couple was passionate about pollinators, native plants, and living in harmony with nature. Their neighbors were not impressed. This “battle of the backyard” turned out to have national implications.
White settlers viewed farmland as a resource to be exploited, while Indigenous people saw it as a partnership for mutual benefit. Now, a Native American tribe is solving today’s environmental problems and helping pollinators with ancient techniques.
In Nebraska, a researcher’s bee colonies kept dying, and the evidence pointed to the ethanol plant next door – and a food system built on pesticides.
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