Here we present the first episode of a podcast that Feed co-host Matthew Kessler has been creating with TABLE and the SLU Future Food over the last year: Meat the four futures Food has this incredible ability to bring people together. But it can also divide us. And how can it not? The same foods that some find so nutritious, that give us such a strong sense of who we are - are also believed by others to be at the center of so many existential concerns - global malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality.  Meat sits at the center of this controversy. But is it the prob ..read more

For our last episode of the second season of Feed, we speak with TABLE director Tara Garnett of the University of Oxford, and TABLE strategic director Sigrid Wertheim-Heck of Wageningen University to reflect on our past 15 episodes. We talk about what surprised us, what we learned, and what we missed across the season. Our wide ranging conversation covered the power of language, the power of imagination, the power of narratives, non-human power and more. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions for the show, you can write us at podcast@tabledebates.org and don’t forget to rate and ..read more

As this season on power in the food system comes to a close, we wanted to focus on how food is consumed in institutions - places where people typically have less agency over their own food choices. In this episode we’re focusing on food in prisons in the United Kingdom and Denmark. We're joined by Lucy Vincent, Chief Executive and Founder of the charity Food Behind Bars in the UK, and Linda Kjær Minke, a criminology professor at the University of Southern Denmark who researches food dynamics in Danish prisons. We discuss how food in prisons is procured, prepared and eaten, and how these two sy ..read more

Why does agricultural research often fall short of addressing food insecurity challenges in sub-Saharan Africa? In this conversation with Ken Giller, we explore this wicked problem from a systems perspective examining the diverse drivers and experiences of smallholder farmers and the socio-ecological systems in which they are embedded. Ken provides a nuanced look at agroecological solutions and argues that relying solely on nature-based solutions would be inadequate to address food security problems in Africa. We also talk about the huge diversity of farmers that can be found under the banner ..read more

What is the corporate food regime? And are we still living in it? We put these questions to our guest Phliip McMichael, emeritus professor at Cornell University who, alongside Harriet Friedman, coined the term Food Regime in 1989. In our conversation we talk about how a historical sociologist thinks about power, what voices were included and excluded in the dialogues leading up to the UN Food Systems Summit, and we flesh out Philip’s view of what a more relocalized food system would look like. For more info and transcript, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode37 ..read more

Jason Clay is the Executive Director of the Markets Institute at World Wildlife Fund. He comes with decades of unique experiences and a big picture view of global food systems. In our conversation we ask him how power needs to be shifted to transform the food system, what the future looks like for small farmers, and whether we should be intensifying agriculture and sparing land or extensifying agricultural production and sharing land with nature. Jason Clay also shares ideas around how to increase transparency for consumers, improve farmers livelihoods, and urgently scale up systems level solu ..read more

In this episode, Agricultural economist Jayson Lusk puts forward a vision of how science, technology and innovation are what we need for a sustainable food future, and what aspects of power he feels are getting in the way of this future. We discuss: whether having more information actually changes what food people buy; why Jayson is excited about venture capital flowing into the food system; and why he disagrees with some of the narratives and policy proposals put forward by the “food movement”. We also touch on some hotly debated topics like agricultural subsidies, GMOs, and true cost account ..read more

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the founder and director the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. He moved to the US from Guatemala in the 1990s. In our conversation we talk about the power of movements, why small-scale farmers in the United States are rarely successful, and the difference between ‘feeding’ the indigenous mindset versus the colonizer mindset. For more info and transcript, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/episode34 ..read more

Who is investing in the food system and what are they investing in? What should the future of food, specifically protein, look like in sub-Saharan Africa? These are questions that Jeremy Brice explores in his new report: Investment, power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa. They are also highly relevant to the food and climate discussions happening now at COP-27 in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt (November 2022). In our chat with Jeremy Brice, lecturer at Manchester University, we discuss why the issue of protein is important in sub-Saharan Africa; we unpack three different investor visions for this reg ..read more

Blain Snipstal, former youth advocate for La Via Campesina, has thought a lot about power. In our chat we talk about how Blain sees the legacy of the plantation model of agriculture still lingering today; we discuss how the dialogues and exchanges between peasant farmers can uncover a deep analysis of the food system; and he shares some of his many experiences as a farmer, an activist, and an organizer. We also touch on the power of collaborating across grassroots movements and whose knowledge counts in food debates. For more info and resources, please visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast ..read more