In the Field with Edible Brooklyn

In this final episode of the season, we unpack some mysteries of oat milk and explore a mystery of our own making: is there anything this post-cow drink can’t do? In the first half, we interview Anna Throne-Holst, president of the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce, about Oatly's Scandinavian roots, then to close out the season, we make an oat-milk-in-every-course-even-the-drinks feast. Trust us when we say it's not just for coffee. The first season of our podcast is produced by the insanely talented Kat Aaron and brought to you by Oatly.

GMOs might be the first thing that comes to mind when we think about food and tech. They've been a contentious and emotional issue for decades now, and with new genetic engineering techniques like CRISPR entering the mainstream, keeping up is only getting more complicated. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Matthew R. Willmann, director of the Plant Transformation Facility at Cornell University, as well as Dr. Urvashi Rangan, the chief science advisor for GRACE Communications Foundation, about the potential power, and potential problems, of genetically engineering our food. Read more in the show notes.

Earlier this year, our writer Rene Ebersole partnered with the Food and Environment Reporting Network to report on New York's growing indoor agriculture industry. Some-not-all of these businesses profess that they're posed to revolutionize local food, but as Rene found, that future's not so clear. We take a look inside Gotham Greens' rooftop farm and Farm.One's jungle-like basement. We also nerd out over some truly special plants and poke a few holes in the common high-tech-farms-will-save-the-world marketing.

We sit down with Bon Appétit's Brad Leone and Food Tank president Danielle Nierenberg to wrap our heads around the gargantuan global food waste problem while also learning some tips for how we can think about “waste” at home. We talk about the theater of grocery store abundance, freezers and why it’s naive to think we can just hack our way out of this problem. If you ask Brad, even just knife skills are a good start. Find the show notes at ediblebrooklyn.com/podcast

For our debut episode, we go to Blue Hill and Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture to learn how they view tech and innovation as ways to bring us closer to our food. We talk shop and taste surprising peppers with Stone Barns farm director Jack Algiere before going behind the scenes at Blue Hill with David Barber: Blue Hill co-owner, founder of Almanac Insights and chef Dan’s brother. Find the show notes at: ediblebrooklyn.com/podcast Like the show? We’d be so grateful if you could rate and review wherever you listen. Also feel free to reach out to Edible Brooklyn on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #inthefield. You can also tweet to the host and editor-in-cheif Ariel Lauren Wilson at @ariellauren or email us at info@ediblebrooklyn.com

The first season of In the Field explores where food and technology meet. Join our host, Edible Brooklyn editor-in-chief Ariel Lauren Wilson, as we go inside Blue Hill restaurant and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture—two beacons of sustainable food—to discover how they harness tech both in the dining room and on the farm. Learn why almost one-third of all the world’s food goes to waste from Food Tank’s Danielle Nierenberg, and find out what you can do about it at home with Bon Appetit’s Brad Leone. Join us underground in Manhattan and on a rooftop in Brooklyn as we enter high-tech growing operations to see how startups are redefining local food. Wrap your head around CRISPR—the emerging genetic engineering technology that’s already editing crop and livestock DNA—and consider what it means for people and the planet. Finally, get the DL on oat milk, the latest plant-milk craze, and listen as we test it out in a multi-course oat-milk-in-every-dish feast—we are a food magazine, after all. Featuring David Barber, Jack Algiere, Brad Leone, Danielle Nierenberg, Robert Laing, Viraj Puri, Matthew Willmann, and Urvashi Rangan.