Growing Your Own Food

05/01/20 • 28 min

2 Listeners

The major disruption in how we feed ourselves ignited by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the worries about the on-going impact this will have on America’s food supply chain, has spurred more people to look into growing their own food. But “growing your own food” has been on a long-term upward trend since the financial crisis in 2008.

According to the National Gardening Association, at least 35% of Americans say they do some amount of food gardening, and the appeal is growing across a broad swath of the population. Millennials, in particular, are driving this trend. While the median garden size is 75 sq. ft, the average size is 550 sq. ft. That’s a fair amount of the most popular things we grow; tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, carrots, and summer squash.

This podcast explores a range of approaches to growing and foraging your own food. Marjory Wildcraft, founder of the GROW network talks about her 3-part system, which relies on animals, for growing up to half of your food needs in your backyard. I tap into the wisdom of Wild Abundance, a permaculture and homesteading school, to learn what vegetables to grow, and look at some examples of a forest garden; a valuable but undervalued source of perennial edibles. I also talk with Roman Gonzalez, founder of Gardenio, a company that’s all about initiating Millennials into successfully growing edible plants, one herb at a time.

Sound clip courtesy of dersuperanton at Freesound.org

Sound clip courtesy of dersuperanton at Freesound.org

Previous Episode

Going Meatless - Barriers

We are not flocking to vegetarianism, and even less to veganism. In fact, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization projects that meat consumption will grow by 2% in the U.S. through 2027.

Between 20% and 30% of Americans say they are trying to cut or even drop meat-eating all together. Is it really happening? The increasing popularity of plant-based meat alternatives like the Impossible and Beyond Meat burgers shows that we are willing to try meatless options. We have a long way to go, despite the compelling arguments to go meatless; the ethics and morality of eating animals and/or the treatment of animals in the industrialized farm system, the environmental impact of large-scale animal agriculture, the health concerns around eating a lot of meat, and the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet.

This podcast explores our deep-seated attachment to meat and the journey most of us considering going meatless must travel to get there, with the help of Dr. Paul Rozin, a preeminent food psychologist who coined the term “Omnivore’s Dilemma” more than 40 years ago.