(Earth Eats theme music, composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey)

KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, this is Earth Eats and I'm your host Kayte Young.

MARK MINSTER: Do we need new strip, do we need new soil, do we need better lighting, do we need a better location. It's problem solving. And it's a problem solving you can eat.

KAYTE YOUNG: This week on our show we start the new year off right with plants. We have a story about how you might get more plants into your diet and what you might learn and teach while growing plants. Plus a story about slow food from Josephine McRobbie, a winter cocktail recipe from Cardinal Spirits and more. All coming up here in the next hour here on Earth Eats so stay with us.

(Music) RENEE REED: Earth Eats is produced from the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. We wish to acknowledge and honor the indigenous communities native to this region and recognize that Indiana University Bloomington is built on indigenous homelands and resources. We recognize the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land.

(Music)

KAYTE YOUNG: Starting the new year many of us make plans to do better in one way or another. Maybe by say improving your diet. It might be nice to think about adding to your diet rather than restricting. Next up we have a story from a couple of years ago about a plant eating challenge through the Healthy IU program here at Indiana University in Bloomington.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Asparagus, bell pepper, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, green onion, and lettuce, mushroom, mapo cabbage, hazelnut, peanut, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds.

STEVEN LALEVICH: I'm Steven Lalevich I'm a registered dietician for the IU Health Center, and Healthy IU which is the university workplace wellness program. The Healthy IU serves all the IU campuses throughout the state and we provide a variety of programs and services all of which are free of charge to IU employees. 

Our most popular program is our health screening program where you get your height, weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol and glucose measured. We also offer one on one nutrition counseling. One of our best way to engage employees is through various challenges that we do. We've done sleep challenge, weight loss challenge, stair climbing challenge, and our most recent one that we just completed was a nutrition challenge called Back to Our Roots. 

The Back to Our Roots plant eating challenge was a three-week challenge and it encouraged employees to increase the variety of different plants that they consumed. So this would include vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts and seeds, beans, herbs and spices. Each week participants tracked how many different plant foods they ate and they set a goal each week and tried to achieve their goal.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Garlic, clove, nutmeg, oregano, pepper.

KAYTE YOUNG: I took the plant eating challenge and I kept a radio diary with my 12-year old's son Cosmo.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Hi my name is Cosmo Pearson Young, and I got to Temple Elementary.

KAYTE YOUNG: It has an online interface, a checklist of different plant foods.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Put in the plants that you've eaten today and then click "save" and continue.

STEVEN LALEVICH: The first version of the challenge that I created was just a bunch of blank spaces and I think that would not have gone as well as it did in its current format, where instead of just a bunch of blank spaces, it became more of a checklist and you click on things as you would eat them, and it's counting those as you clicked.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Click "save" and continue.

STEVEN LALEVICH: So yeah it was more interactive that way. It also helped to prompt you to see those things that were maybe opportunities to eat. So then you could then click on them after you ate them.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Click "save" and continue.

Cumin.

KAYTE YOUNG: Cardamom, cloves, nutmeg

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Apple, banana [continues to list foods]

KAYTE YOUNG: I asked Steven about the thinking behind the challenge. Why is it a good idea to have a variety of plant foods in your diet?

STEVEN LALEVICH: One of the first times that I really considered doing a challenge like this was when I was preparing a presentation for employees about the gut microbiome and the benefits of the bacteria that we have in our digestive track. And one of the ways to promote a healthier digestive track and to promote a greater diversity of bacterial species, is to make sure that you're eating a diversity of different plant species. And also there are many different nutrients and phytonutrients found in different plants and it's not something that you can get from just one or two plants. And so by making sure that you're including a variety, through that variety there can be a lot of different health benefits.

KAYTE YOUNG [TO STEVEN]: That's really interesting to think about improving gut health through a variety of plants, because what you mostly hear these days is eating probiotics, eating fermented foods, and hearing that all these different kinds of plants carry these different kinds of microorganisms that improve health.

STEVEN LALEVICH: I guess it helps to distinguish between probiotics and prebiotics. So the probiotics would be those fermented foods or supplements that contain the actual live bacteria, whereas prebiotics are the food that the bacteria eat. And in the form of plant foods this would be primarily be fiber so there are different types of fiber found in different plants. And each different type of fiber feeds a different type of bacterial species so to promote that diversity it helps to make sure that you're eating different plants.

KAYTE YOUNG: So could you just tell us what phytonutrients are, what's the difference between a nutrient and a phytonutrient?

STEVEN LALEVICH: So generally when we think of nutrients we think of things like vitamins and minerals and fats, proteins, carbohydrates. Phytonutrients are other compounds that we find in plants, so "phyto" meaning plant, plant nutrients. And they're different types of phytonutrients, I think there are thousands of different types and these compounds have a lot of different health benefits associated with them, in particular many of them help to reduce inflammation in the body. A lot of chronic diseases have an inflammatory component so by eating more plants, by eating more of those different colors we can help to keep inflammation in check and maybe prevent a lot of those chronic diseases.

KAYTE YOUNG [NARRATING]: I filled out the tracker with my son and on the first day I said I had some chutney, and there was some peach in the chutney, but it wasn't a full serving of peach. I asked Cosmo what he thought about that.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: I think you just have to eat the fruit raw because it's kind of like if you eat tortilla chips then you count it as corn. That's kind of what it's like but I don't think you should be able to do that.

KAYTE YOUNG [TO STEVEN]: So he was kind of surprised by that, he didn't think that any junk food should count.

STEVEN LALEVICH: Yeah we intentionally left the rules of the challenge more open ended so that people could interpret how they wanted to categorize things on a more personal level cause we're all coming from a different place in our lives. Some of us may want to focus more on strictly whole plant foods whereas others may be making a step in the right direction including some more of those processed plant foods that still might have some health benefits.

(Music)

KAYTE YOUNG: And as the weeks of the challenge went on I found myself searching for new ways to add additional plants to the list. I was seeking out that variety instead of just sticking to my old favorites. And though I was the only one taking the challenge the whole family was in on it. Carl came home with a pineapple one day and he made a dish with pharaoh with the intention of adding a new grain for the week.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Garbanzo beans, kidney beans, lentils, peas, pinto beans, chamomile, cinnamon, clove, ginger,

KAYTE YOUNG: The whole time it felt like a game. I was competing with myself somehow and it never felt restrictive.

STEVEN LALEVICH: What we wanted through the challenge was for people to have a mindset of more rather than less. Often times when we think of eating or healthy eating we think it means restricting, but in the case of these plant foods they provide a lot of health benefits and by increasing the amount and eating more of them we can reap a lot of those benefits.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Tomato, coconut, peach...

KAYTE YOUNG: If you want to take a look at the Back to Our Roots plant eating challenge, you can go to the healthy IU website and we'll have a link for that on our website - Earth Eats dot org.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: Great job you met your goal for week three. Your goal was 65 plants, you ate 69 plants. Congratulations.

KAYTE YOUNG [TO COSMO]: Thanks for your help.

COSMO PEARSON-YOUNG: No problem. Cranberry, pineapple, plantain, strawberry, pharaoh, oats, almond, and tangerine.

KAYTE YOUNG: (Sighs) For the record, my child's voice no longer sounds like that. He's in high school now. I hope that story offered some inspiration for starting off on the right food for 2021. Later in the show we'll hear about growing plants, the edible kind. Stay with us.

(Music)

For many rural towns across the country, improving water quality is an effort that takes years and millions of dollars to fix. Harvest Public Media's Seth Bodine reports how some rural towns struggle to keep up with the improvements.

SETH BODINE: Cheryl LeFevre doesn't drink the water in the small town of Hobart Oklahoma without a filter. Without that filter, sometimes the water smells like chlorine or rust or sometimes even comes out brown. 

CHERYL LEFEVRE: Some days it's like this, clear and just fine, and some days it's got all of that gunk in it. 

SETH BODINE: That gunk she's referring to, that's what she's seeing in her filter. She said she has to clean it about every two weeks. 

[TO CHERYL] What is that in there? 

CHERYL LEFEVRE: I don't know kind of like dirt, deposits, I'm not sure. But these little brown circle-like ones, that's a constant. 

SETH BODINE: Despite the color and smell a recent EPA report says the water is fine. But Hobart had even bigger problems about a decade ago. Sediment started filling up the lake, and the water had a lot of sediment in it. That caused all sorts of problems in the water. 

JOE TIPTON: The taste and odor was just so horrendous that we couldn't treat it. 

SETH BODINE: That's Joe Tipton, the water superintendent for Hobart. He says the city is dredging the lake and revamping its water treatment facility. It's a huge undertaking and has a hefty price tag. Up to 18 million dollars. Still, the water sometimes comes out brown. Tipton says it might be due to the aging pipes in town. LeFevre says she sees improvement charges on her utility bill each month but after 10 years she's tired of waiting. 

CHERYL LEFEVRE: Granted, you've got your sewer and trash and stuff on there as well, but  $100 a month and I have to buy water and sometimes my dogs won't even drink it. It's frustrating. 

SETH BODINE: Tipton estimates the renovation project will be finished within the next two years. City manager Ashely Slaughterback says replacing some of the old pipes in town is feasible but not until work at Rocky Lake is finished. Checking off one improvement to move to another.

Hobart isn't alone. Erik Olson is the strategic director of health at the Natural Resource Defense Council. He says small rural towns across the country often struggle to keep water safe. 

ERIK OLSON: They often have a disproportionate number of violations and compliance problems because they don't have the economies of scale and therefore they often cannot afford the treatment that would be needed to remove containments. 

SETH BODINE: The problem is so widespread that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has handed out nearly 900 million dollars this year in loans and grants to rural towns in 43 states. It's supposed to update their water systems, but Olson says the money is a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed to solve the widespread problem in rural areas. 

ERIK OLSON: The total need for upgrading and fixing drinking water systems in the U.S. are about 1 trillion dollars. 

SETH BODINE: Even when towns get the loans they need they have to worry about paying it off. Bob Copeland is the city manager of Hollis Oklahoma. His town of a little over a thousand people received a mix of grants and loans from the USDA and Indian Health Service to help fix the nitrate violations in the water. And while the water is much better now, he worries about the town's ability to pay off the loans in the future. 

BOB COPELAND: Like a lot of small towns we have a declining population. We've had to raise our water rates to actually make our loan payments. 

SETH BODINE: Small towns often have to decide if fixing the crumbling infrastructure is worth the price. Seth Bodine, Harvest Public Media. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Find more from this reporting collective at Harvest Public Media dot org. 

(Music) 

Growing food might be one way to increase the variety of plants in your diet. And teaching kids to grow food can get them started on a path of healthy eating and of scientific inquiry. Our next story is from the spring of 2018 back when gathering and cooking and planting together was something we took for granted. 

(Background chatter)

ANDREA: Benjamin Franklin Elementary School. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And what is your name? 

ANDREA: Andrea. We play at the playground, we grow stuff like pumpkins, flowers, bok choy, strawberries, fruit and all kinds of veggies. 

KAYTE YOUNG [NARRATING]: Andrea is describing garden club, an after-school program at Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Terra Haute Indiana. 

MARK MINSTER: My name is Mark Minster and I teach at Rose Holman, I'm an associate professor of English. I teach in what's called the HERE program, the Home for Environmentally Responsible Engineering. And so this started out of our interest of sustainability and we wanted student projects for our college students. 

And I was in Rochester New York and they have a program there called Rochester Roots. And they get students from our IT to work with students in local elementary schools and disadvantaged neighborhoods. And they work with the kids they build gardens, and it's a teaching opportunity for the college students and a learning opportunity for the college students as well as it is for the elementary school students. So it seemed like a nice way to get Rose Holman students out into the Terre Haute community to work with others. What I wanna do is I wanna develop the infrastructure, get the after-school program curriculum where it's working so that this year 2017-2018 this school year is our baseline and then next year we work on improvement over the baseline. And then it gets in a position where we can hand it off. 

(Children chattering in the background)

MARK MINSTER: We are out here Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons, 25 weeks during the year. They're inside all day so it's nice to be able to get them outside as much as possible. We actually have ponchos for the kids, just in case if the weather is warm enough and even if it's raining we're okay with that. We meet for two hour, it would be nice I guess to go just a little bit longer for people who work till 5 but we also we don't want to overdo it because again kids have been in school all day. 

I actually had a teacher say it's nice that at the end of day of being in school they can really do some learning. Which is a dark way of looking at it, but what's nice about what we're doing is even though we are also tied to Indiana academic standards, ours is totally inquiry based. We have things that we want them to learn but we don't have to do it. Right? They're not tested on any of this. So if a kid comes up with a question like, "Why is this growing and not that?" we can run with that and we can explore that. And so whatever comes up we can follow their questions. 

Which to me is the foundation of learning for science, is just exploring what are their questions. So that's the payoff for us. From Rose Holman's side of things is from the Science Technology Engineering and Math side what do you do with inquiry, where do those questions come from and then what could you do. So you're having problems with your tomatoes, well what do you think is causing those problems. Why are they purple, why are they yellow? Should they be? should the stems be so purple? And we can research that, and we can compare, and we can test, that's from the science side of things and then and when it comes to solving them well what could we do to solve that? That's a little bit of science but it's also a little bit of engineering. Right, well what kind of solutions can we have for this? Do we need new drip, do we need new soil, do we need better lighting, do we need a better location? It's problem solving. And it's a problem solving you can eat. 

You get to eat some of what we've grown which is really nice. Last fall we harvested corn that we had planted over there in the three sisters garden. So we mounded it up and did the indigenous style of corn, beans, and squash. And we made cornbread from the corn that we grew, we grew blue corn, cornmeal corn. And we grew popcorn, and we ate the popcorn. And then we cooked up the beans and we ate pumpkin muffins and ate pumpkin seeds. So all that stuff got consumed. 

We try to fold in what it is that we're talking about with what we're eating so if this week for instance we're talking about potatoes, so we have a book that we'll read about potatoes. I've got some hash browns in there that we'll eat. And later today they're gonna cut seed potatoes. We'll cut them today and then we'll plant the seed potatoes on Thursday. 

(Music)

And at this point we're now working through the junior master gardener curriculum so that all of the kids will be certified as junior master gardeners by the time that they're done with the program in a couple of weeks. And they'll get little certificates, we'll have t-shirts, they'll be certified, but it's only 10 weeks of the year. 

So in the fall we have our own curriculum that's more designed from a kind of sustainability perspective, we're thinking ecologically in terms of the whole life cycle of things. So we get them to think about inputs and outputs of a system. So what goes into a garden, what comes out of a garden, what are all of the inputs, what are all of the outputs, what are all the various processes in there? And that comes true with eating too, I'm looking at the tables right now that are set. All of that food that's there comes from somewhere, and it goes somewhere. 

Before they come in I'm going to have to get their compost bucket. So they know to scrape the food into the compost bucket, they know to put the recycling off to the side, and the trash, whatever's left a little bit of trash goes into the trash can. But we've got a compost bucket right outside that shed that we put together. So the kids help compost. 

KAYTE YOUNG: One of the great things about Mark's approach is that he doesn't just explain how things work or tell the kids exactly what to do. He lets them experiment and discover on their own. For instance with the compost, he let them put whatever they wanted into it. 

MARK MINSTER: So the very first day when they were experimenting with compost, I had some people put water bottles in there. And some kids put like plastic wrappers, but that's all part of the process is that some only put food, food scraps, and others put plastic, others put paper, they put their napkins in there. 

KAYTE YOUNG: They'll check back later to check which things decomposed and which ones didn't. Probably a more memorable method then instead of rules of what goes in and what doesn't. Garden club starts with some free time outside. Kids draw on the sidewalk with chalk, run around on the playground, while some of the adults get snacks ready inside. Today's snack includes hash browns to make the connection to one of the garden activities. 

ANDREA: We are having a pretzel, orange, a hash brown, a banana, bread and I have sauce on it. 

Hash browns taste like hash browns. 

KAYTE YOUNG: What are they made from? 

ANDREA: They're made out of hash browns and potatoes. 

CHILD: Hash browns are made out of potatoes. 

KAYTE YOUNG: After their snack is cleaned up they gather around one of the college students for a story about... you guessed it, potatoes. 

(Children Chattering)

MARK MINSTER: When all of my friends are on the carpet we will be ready for Maddy to read to us. 

(Children Chattering - "Let's get on the carpet!")

MADDY: So This is Two Old Potatoes and Me. [READING] Last spring at my dad's house I found two old potatoes in the back of the cupboard. They were so old; sprouts were growing from their eyes. Gross! I tossed them in the trash. "Wait!" Dad said. "I think we can grow new potatoes with those. I'll call your grandpa, he'll know." 

After talking with grandpa, Dad and I took the potatoes to the sunniest spot in the garden. We dug, we picked out rocks, we raked the soil smooth. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Then the kids head back outside for some hands-on gardening. They start out transplanting some pepper and tomato seedlings that have outgrown their pots. 

MARK MINSTER: Let's do this first, before we get any plants let's get soil. In your groups can you start to...

Here's what we're gonna do with the scissors. 

MADDY [TO CHILDREN]: In your groups. We'll bring around the soil. 

MARK MINSTER: So this is one of Gabe's. Everyone will have two that you will get transplant. How do you know this needs a new pot? 

CHILD: The roots

MARK MINSTER: Because the roots are sticking out all the way at the bottom, those are like three inches sticking out of the bottom. So what we're gonna need to do, I'm going to use one that Gabe probably won't use, that's a nice looking one. This one is a little bit smaller. It's the runt of the liter. Aw, poor guy. We'll we don't have to kill it. We just.. it might not be one that we choose to do that with. 

So we're gonna very gently peel off the outside, see that? And then you see the roots coming down through the bottom? 

(Children: "Yeah!")

It's kind of holding together nicely, then what we will do, your assistance please. First we will have some soil in our new pots. And then we will plop that in there gently making sure that we create plenty of room for that root, after that we'll water it. You see we will end up with two pepper plants. 

Yeah? Questions about this? Do you have questions? 

(Children chattering excitedly)

KAYTE YOUNG: But it's not all fun and games. Sometimes garden club can get a little bit chaotic. 

CHILD: This is broke! Can't scoop it! 

CHILD: Ah, I got it in my eye!

(Chaotic chattering in the background between children and adults)

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: It's part of the fun. 

MARK MINSTER: Do you see the roots coming out of the bottom? 

CHILD: Yeah

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: The transplanted seedlings will eventually go home with the kids to plant with their families. The garden club program works with families in the neighborhood to get a raised bed garden plot started at home if they're interested. They set them up with the structure, the soil, the plants and some know how. Amy Cotton is one of the parent volunteers. She talked about what it's meant for her kids to nurture plants at home. 

AMY COTTON: One of the things that a lot of the kids have brought home too, are ready to be transplanted. And so we're gonna be doing that. And they're really excited, like they did that. That's something they created and that makes them happy. 

MAN: That sense of pride. 
AMY COTTON: Yeah, like they did that. It makes them happy. 

MAN: I remember Blake being happy about his beans. 

AMY COTTON: Oh he was ecstatic about his beans, they got so huge and then the cat ate them. Of course she ate some lettuce we had too, but he was like "Bob you have to take a picture, we have to show it to Mark." Like they grew probably about that tall, started falling over, the cat started eating them. But for them to get that big, that was like a big accomplishment for him. He really, he was stoked. So stoked. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: The last activity for garden club is getting potatoes ready for planting. The kids gather around Mark as he holds up a potato with sprouting eyes. He asks the kids questions about what they observe. 

MARK MINSTER: These are gonna be roots, you're absolutely right about that. But this is a little bit different, what do you notice about the very end, can you see? 

CHILD: It's like one of those squids from Minecraft. 

MARK MINSTER: (Chuckles) It does kind of. 

CHILD: Yeah it really does. 

CHILD: It's got tentacles!

MARK MINSTER: It looks like a hand. On plants what are the kind of things that open up that look kind of like hands? 

(Children exclaiming "a flower" then "leaves!")

MARK MINSTER: These are little potato leaves. All of this is gonna go under the ground and it's gonna turn into potatoes. How is it going to turn into more potatoes do you think? This is all gonna be a root, but the potato that we eat is a tuber. so how is it gonna turn into a tuber? How is it gonna turn into something else? 

Why do we eat foods like potatoes, what does it give us? Nutrients! Yes, that's sugars and starches which are all the kinds of things that give us energy. Well it gives the plant energy too. And so those carbohydrates it's gonna take the light from the sun and what else is it gonna breath in, what else to plants breathe in? We breathe in oxygen and what do we breathe out? 

CHILD: Carbon dioxide 

MARK MINSTER: Carbon dioxide! Excellent, yeah. And plants breathe in carbon dioxide. So they're gonna take that carbon dioxide and that light and that energy and that's gonna turn into potatoes. So from this one potato we can get as many as it decides to make, but you know what we can get more than that. Because everywhere that there is an eye on this potato can be a different potato plant. So what we have to do before we plant this is to cut it and let that be, there's gonna be one potato plant, two potato plant. Did you ever do that thing where you said, "one potato, two potato, three potato, four?" Do you do that? 

(Children chattering, chanting "One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potatoes more")

MARK MINSTER: Thank you, so much. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And so we've come full circle.

(Music)

The kids are connecting the potato planting lesson with the story they just heard inside. With the aroma of hash browns still lingering in the air it's almost time to start cleaning up and heading home. If all goes well maybe the kids at Benjamin Franklin Elementary can get back out in the garden this spring, if not maybe in time for a fall garden. 

Still ahead, how a food community centered around gathering has adjusted to the pandemic restrictions. And a cocktail recipe for sipping around the fire. Stay with us. 

After harsh and frequent criticism from animal rights activists and environmentalists, many farmers and people who work in agriculture launched an effort to tell their stories to the broader public. A decade later this effort has worked through several themes. With a new president coming, Harvest Public Media's Amy Mayer looks at how AG messaging may change again. 

AMY MAYER: Back in 2013 fresh off Barack Obama's reelection, agriculture groups were hitting their storytelling stride. The United Nations had given them a convenient factoid. Mike Vande Logt is a plant breeder who at the time was with the seed company WinField. 

MIKE VANDE LOGT: We take a look at the plant going from seven billion people to nine billion people over the next 20-25 years, obviously the need to increase food production is very very important. 
AMY MAYER: Farmers signed up for media training, started talking to reporters more, and engaged on platforms like YouTube to spread the message. 

(Rock music: Farmers feed the world, farmers feed the world) 

Still environmentalists and advocates for the hungry would constantly point out that nearly 40% of Midwest corn becomes ethanol, feeding cars not people. Then AG groups and companies some of which sponsored social media campaigns and videos, positioned themselves to get their messages in front of the candidates vying for the 2016 presidential nominations. As a candidate Donald Trump hinted at something that would spark the mantra that replaced Feed the World. Here is in Des Moines more than a year before the 2016 caucuses railing on China for devaluing its currency. 

DONALD TRUMP: And what it's gonna do is make it impossible for you to sell your product. It's gonna make it impossible for you to compete. And they're getting away with it...

AMY MAYER: By the time Trump took office many AG leaders had coalesced around a new message.

BRIAN KUEHL: Trade is important to farmers. 

AMY MAYER: Brian Kuehl is director of Farmers for Free Trade, a group that wanted to tell a different story. 

BRIAN KUEHL: The folks who founded Farmers for Free Trade said, "Well wait a minute, without trade U.S. agriculture goes down the drain, 20% of farm revenue comes from exports." 

AMY MAYER: The U.S. and China lobbed tariffs on each other's goods. And many farmers watched sales in their biggest market nosedive. As the tariffs wore on the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the Market Facilitation Program. A series of payments to help affected farmers recover. A new slogan was born, Trade Not Aide. 

BRIAN KUEHL: Certainly after the first round of MFP payments that became a mantra that we heard from a lot of people. 

AMY MAYER: But Iowa native Austin Frerick whose an AG policy researcher at Yale sees a coordinated public relations game at play. He says that line's likely to be replaced. 

AUSTIN FRERICK: They'll hire some expensive inner city ad firm to come up with some catchy little jinge. 

AMY MAYER: Frerick says he's a little skeptical about the major commodity groups in agro businesses. He says they use these catch phrases to curry favor with the public. Then the biggest checkoff programs and farm bureaus lobby in D.C. and state capitols for policies that benefit their investment portfolios, not necessarily individual farmers. 

AUSTIN FRERICK: They started off with good intentions, but I just think they lost their way. 

AMY MAYER: He says now many of these groups are too big and too far removed from the farm. But farmers stick with them for some of the benefits they offer even if they don't like the entire policy agenda. 

AUSTIN FRERICK: I mean they're doing the most rational economic thing right now. 

AMY MAYER: So while they say they want trade not aide, Frerick says when the check arrives, they cash it. Kevin Ross is chairman of the National Corn Growers Association and farms in southwest Iowa. He joined a virtual panel sponsored by Farmers for Free Trade in December. 

KEVIN ROSS: The farmer wants to drive their profits from the marketplace. 

AMY MAYER: When they can't, he says, the federal support might keep them in business. 

KEVIN ROSS: For a lot of folks they keep things rolling here and keep the AG economy moving forward in the last few years but we're very hopeful that is in the rearview mirror. 

AMY MAYER: What would Frerick's next great AG line be? 

AUSTIN FRERICK: I would say localize supply chains, but I'm too wonky with my words. 

AMY MAYER: You think? But as the Biden administration settles in, it's likely some catchy phrase will emerge as so-called advocates gear up for whatever comes next. Amy Mayer, Harvest Public Media. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Harvest Public Media brings you agricultural reporting from the Heartland. Find more at Harvest Public Media dot org. 

Kayte Young here this is Earth Eats. Whether it's worrying about the vulnerabilities in our national food supply, or wondering if we should start baking sourdough, throughout the pandemic many of us have been thinking about food more than ever. The goals of Slow Food USA a grassroots organization focusing on food justice for all, couldn't be more timely. But during the rise of a global pandemic, organizers had to think about new and novel ways to share their message. Earlier this year Earth Eats producer Josephine McRobbie spoke with Slow Food USA executive director Anna Mulé.

(Music) 

ANNA MULÉ: My name is Anna Mulé, I'm the executive Director of Slow Food USA. 
(Music)
We're based in Brooklyn, but we have local chapters throughout the United States and our headquarters is in Italy. 
Yeah, the word of the month is "pivot". The word of the season is "pivot." 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] The grassroots nonprofit Slow Food USA operates in 160 countries around the world, with the USA wing that's home to 150 local chapters. Members include farmers, fishers, teachers, chefs, activists and scientists all-round the country all devoted to a goal of good, clean and fair food for all. 
ANNA MULÉ: A lot of our work revolves around gatherings, bringing people together, meeting in person, enjoying food together and really, learning about the whole chain from farm to fork through food but also enjoying the taste of food as well. 

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] In the wake of COVID-19, Slow Food USA has had to find new ways for members to connect. 

ANNA MULÉ: All our well thought out strategies don't work out anymore, so it's a matter of being really flexible, being really nimble and just trying new things to see what really works and what is most effective to respond to the needs of the community. 

JENNIFER HOLMES: So, this is a really nice frame, what you're seeing along the top is all completely tapped nectar that's been turned into honey already. This is stores of preserves for all the baby bees that are gonna...

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] Beekeeper Jennifer Holmes is showing off her bee frames from her backyard in Stuart Florida. She's presenting a part of Slow Food Live, a zoom-based skill share program that covers topics like gardening and cooking. 

JENNIFER HOLMES: [In the background] ... being born. Thus, the cells that are empty on the left may contain eggs, and younger...

So, our first one about sourdough, we had over 500 people register for that one and it's gotten thousands of views online now. You know we had a session how do you make Japanese Curry Bricks; how do you make Japanese Curry Bricks? These things that people wouldn't have time for before but now they find themselves at home and eager to experiment.

[Music, woman singing]

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Awesome, awesome. Thank you Melanie- 

MELANIE BROWN: Thank you, thank you so much. 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: That was wonderful, what a great way to start this off. Hello everyone and thanks for joining the second installment of...

JENNIFER HOLMES: So slow fish is one of the events that got cancelled. 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And we just heard from Melanie Brown, who is a dear friend, a colleague and the person who taught me how to pick [inaudible] out of a set net in Naknek Alaska last summer. 

JENNIFER HOLMES: Slow Fish is an amazing international group of people that come together around sustainable fishing and our slow fish event in New Hampshire was going to bring together indigenous fish harvesters, small scale producers, everyone who is in the chain of fishing. 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Just please remember that part of the safety of this forum, aside from the guaranteed distancing of at least the distance of a mature sturgeon, means that all comments should be thoughtful and respectful. So, let's jump in and get ready to...

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] In the gatherings that were moved to webinars the slow fish members shared the strategies, frustrations and successes of a changing food economy. Anna has seen this kind of activity throughout the organization’s chapters and groups. 

ANNA MULÉ: Needs on the ground are so different. For instance, some ranchers used to share primarily to restaurants, and to airports, and to like large scale food distribution platforms. And now they're struggling because now they're trying to pivot to online sales, to direct to consumer. If they're able to pivot that way they've seen a really amazing response. People are eager and ready to buy online, but they don’t necessarily have the technologies and the processes set in place to do that quickly and effectively. So, they need to... you know, they're working overtime, they're working around the clock to fulfill these online sales. 

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] Not every food producer is able to set up an online store, delivery protocol, and customer management system on their own. 

ANNA MULÉ: So Slow Food East Bay for instance is establishing... like a food hub at a central farm where these small-scale producers can drop off their goods. And then they and partners will manage all the logistics of getting that to... you know, low-income communities who need food right now, or to organizing a drive by pickup kind of situation. I think it's all about logistics right now. 

[Flute Music]

So, we believe delicious food is a right. It's not just a nice thing to have. It's something that everyone should have access to. 

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] The slow food movement started in the 1980s in Rome, during the protest of a planned McDonald's on the Spanish Steps. Its mission seems increasingly difficulty to reach, and now the cracks seem even more visible as members work for fair and good food for all. 

ANNA MULÉ: I mean this is what happens in pandemics, right? That vulnerable communities are especially affected because they were already at a disadvantage. 

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] Slow Food USA is concerned that these inequalities will intensify if policy decisions leave out people like their members and so they've worked to step up fundraising and advocacy efforts. 

ANNA MULÉ: We're looking especially that small scale family farmers, and ranchers, and community-based fishers are not overlooked in things like the CARES act. There's a limited amount of funding and we don't want big AG to win. We want funds to go to the small-scale family famers, the folks who are really active players in the local communities and making sure that those communities are getting healthy food.  

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: [Narrating] Like all of us, Anna and her colleagues are searching for meaning as the weeks wear on. 

ANNA MULÉ: I think this moment, we all want answers on when this is going to end, and I also want answers. But I think we can also lean into this moment a little bit, and I think this is a moment to develop some new habits that focus on a really healthy and robust food economy. How can we hold onto those as the pandemic slows down? I think that's the message of Slow Food is we really want to help people understand those values of living slow, of understanding where your food comes from, and hang on to those.

KAYTE YOUNG: That was producer Josephine McRobbie. Find links from this story at Earth Eats dot org. 

(Music)

(Music)

Given the kind of year we've just had, we might need more than a day or two to celebrate the arrival of 2021. And the hope for a better tomorrow. If you're looking for cocktail suggestions for ringing in the new year, look no further than our local distillery Cardinal Spirits. Last year I met with Scott Lowe who showed me how to make one of his favorite winter drinks. 

STEVEN LOWE: This is a rum walnut Alexander so it's a riff on a brandy alexander. And instead of using the brandy I'm using our Lakehouse Spiced Rum and the Cardinal Nocino. We're going to be using a little bit of heavy cream and some demerara syrup which is heavy molasses forward syrup. 

It's a one-to-one syrup, simple syrup. And to start I'm going to use 2oz of the Lakehouse Rum, it's a spiced rum. Spiced forward rum we use a lot of cinnamon and clove, and we also use a ton of citrus. We use dried citrus, a peel, mainly orange peel, and on the second installation we use fresh orange peel. So it gives a nice citrus background to it. 

(Sound of rum being poured)

So 2oz of the Lakehouse rum and then I'm going to use 1oz of the Walnut Liqueur the nocino. And this spirit by itself to me just to me screams winter, cold weather, just because of the nice warming spices of clove and cinnamon and a bit of lemon peel. But just a sip by itself by a fire is just as satisfactory to me as is something like a brandy or cognac. But this such a super cool spirit. I'm going to use one ounce of heavy cream. This is the classic traditional ingredient in an alexander, and then I'm going to use one half ounce of the demerara syrup. And then I'm going to add ice for our shaker tin.

(Sound of ice being scooped)

Then we shake this for about 20 seconds just to get a nice dilution and just to chill it really really well. 

(Sound of ice shaking in tin)
I'm going to place my hawthorn strainer on top of the shaker tin and I'm going to double strain. Because especially with cream-based drinks, if it gets diluted too quickly it's just a watery mess. And I'm using a coop glass which is a type of martini glass or cordial glass, it's a bit larger than a cordial glass but it's a coop glass. It is very popular in strained cocktails, especially like an Alexander. And I'm going to take a little duster of nutmeg, I'm gonna place a piece of paper over half of the coop glass, and I'm going to dust one half of the cocktail with nutmeg. The nutmeg is going to have a very nice warming quality as well as very nice...

KAYTE YOUNG: Aroma

STEVEN LALEVICH: Aroma. Thank you. And that is the rum walnut Alexander. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Well that is so beautiful, I love the design of the dusting of nutmeg across the top, it's really nice. 

STEVEN LALEVICH: It's so simple. It's so simple to just be a little bit creative with your garnishes. It doesn't have to be anything extravagant or spectacular just something really simple but just going over half the glass just has a nice eye appeal to it. And I always like to go in when I'm taking a first sip of this particular cocktail because you're gonna nose the nutmeg first before you drink. And that's another thing with cocktails, as you think of cocktails think of how a chef approaches his food. In the same way he uses the finest ingredients, and you're also eating first, when you sit down you eat when your plate arrives with your eyes first before you actually even taste it. And that's pretty important in a cocktail as well. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Mind if I try it? 

STEVEN LALEVICH: Please do. 

KAYTE YOUNG: The nutmeg is my very favorite spice of all. That is so nice. The nocino really comes alive with the cream. 

STEVEN LALEVICH: I agree. And I was kind of interested to see the biggest thing I was interested in this cocktail was to see how the Lakehouse Rum was gonna play with the nocino since they both have such strong flavors on their own. And sometimes you have two spirits that are very complex on their own, they don't marry well together. But I think with the cream and the demerara kind of tying it all together you can still taste the rum qualities in the citrus, and the orange peel in the rum, and you can also taste that clove with the nocino. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah, yeah. I'm familiar with the nocino but not with the rum so much, but I'm definitely tasting something different and it's probably that. Almost and orange or something. 

STEVEN LALEVICH: Yeah. There's definitely a dry and fresh orange peel in the distillation process of the Lakehouse Rum. But that's something that we wanted to achieve with the rum too, a lot of the mass-produced rums have artificial colors and they're very sickeningly sweet. We wanted to avoid all that we wanted to be very spice forward and let the spices kind of speak for themselves in the rum. And not have it to be really super sweet. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I wanted to hear more about the process of infusing the spices into the spirits. 

STEVEN LALEVICH: So we have what is called a botanical basket. The metal basket and what we do is we take a bunch of different botanicals depending on what we're distilling at the time. The rum we're definitely using a lot of orange peel, we're definitely using a lot of lemon peel. We do vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, and then we have a secret ingredient that we just can't really give out. 

So we take all those different botanicals in their purest natural form, spices, and then we run this basically. Rum is gonna be a sugar cane base. Everything else that we do pretty much at the distillery is using our Vodka base. So this is gonna be using our sugar cane base which is all rums. We run the liquid through the columns and as the column passes over the last, as the liquid passes over the last column it infuses with the different botanicals and aromatics. And then vapor locks itself and then becomes a rum. We were fortunate enough to have a three column still, a copper still that we love to use. And that is kind of what is unique to making our spirits. 

(Music)
KAYTE YOUNG: Well thank you so much, I really appreciate this. This is great. 

Scott Lowe's Rum Alexander features the walnut liqueur nocino. Cardinal usually only has a limited supply of this specialty spirit and its production is dependent on a particular crop from a specific location. All this to say, don't be surprised if you don't find it on their current online ordering menu. Check back with them next year. Nocino is bound to return, eventually. Thanks for tuning in this week, and we'll see you next time. Cheers. 

RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eobon Binder, Spencer Bowman, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Payton Knobeloch, Josephine McRobbie, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.  
KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Steven Lalevich, Cosmo Pearson Young, Mark Minster and everyone at Benjamin Franklin's garden club, Anna Mulé and the slow foodies, Scott Lowe and everyone at Cardinal Spirits.

RENEE REED: Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from the artist at Universal Productions Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.