Podcasts about kernza

Welcome to Episode 217 of The Spokesman Speaks podcast. In this episode, we talk with a central Iowa corn and soybean farmer who's experimenting with a unique perennial grain: Kernza. Later in the episode, Mykayla Hagaman of the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium explains how Iowa has grown its monarch habitat by more than 10x in just 5 years, while sharing tips for farmers to successfully add pollinator habitat to their fields. Resources mentioned in this episode Register for Iowa Farm Bureau's Economic Summit. Learn more about Kernza. Apply for Iowa Farm Bureau's Grow Your Future Award. Learn more about establishing monarch habitat through the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium. Learn about funding opportunities for monarch habitat: ISU Natural Resources Stewardship, FSA CRP, NRCS EQIP, NRCS Ag Conservation Easement Program, NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program, IDALS cost share, DNR REAP Register for Iowa Farm Bureau's immersive, two-day farm succession planning workshop. Apply for Iowa Farm Bureau's Market Study Tour of India.

This week, I'm joined by Liz Carlisle and Aubrey Streit Krug, co-editors of Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods (Island Press, March 3, 2026), a new collection from The Land Institute and UC Santa Barbara that asks a deceptively simple question: what would agriculture look like if we stopped starting over every year?Perennial crops (plants that come back season after season without replanting) aren't just an agronomic curiosity. They're a lens for examining everything that's broken about the annual monoculture system we've inherited: the debt structures that trap farmers; the subsidies that reward the wrong behaviour; the land ownership patterns that keep wealth concentrated; and the labour arrangements that keep the people doing the work structurally excluded from the land they tend.In this episode we talk about Kernza (a perennial grain that's heavily featured in Living Roots); the Forest-Grassland-Grain structure of Carlisle and Streit Krug's book; and whether restaurants can do for perennial foods what they did for farm-to-table. The hard question at the centre of it all: is this a complement to the system we already have in place, or an argument that the system itself is the problem?If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email at trackandfoodpod@gmail.com 

Lietuvoje tikimasi pradėti auginti naują grūdų rūšį – kernzą. Skirtingai nuo paprastų kviečių, Kernza nereikalauja kasmetinio atsodinimo, mažina dirvožemio eroziją dėl gilių šaknų ir gerina dirvožemio sveikatą. Idėja per Skandinaviją iš Jungtinių Amerikos Valstijų atkeliavo į Lietuvos bandymų laukus. Ši vasara bus ketvirta, kai stebimas šio daugiamečio augalo augimas. Apie tai pasakoja VDU Žemės ūkio akademijos mokslo darbuotojos Z. Kriaučiūnienė, R. Čepulienė, N. Vaitkevičienė.Ketvirtadienio dieną ūkininkai planuoja praeiviams išdalinti 50 tūkst. litrų pieno. Taip siekiama parodyti, kad, nukritus pieno supirkimo kainoms, jį geriau išdalinti praeiviams, o ne parduoti perdirbėjams. Šiuo metu Lietuvoje pieno supirkimo kainos tapo vienos mažiausių visoje Europos Sąjungoje. Anot kooperatyvo „Pieno puta“ direktorės Jūratės Dovydėnienės, taip norima paspartinti sprendimų priėmimą ir atkreipti visuomenės dėmesį į kilusias problemas. Ūkininkas iš Vilkaviškio rajono Aurimas Gelbūda sako, kad labiausiai gąsdina nežinomybė.Ved. Arneta Spaičė

Laura Hedlund sits down with James Beard Award-winning food writer Beth Dooley to chat about why perennial foods are the “pioneer saplings” of a brand-new kind of integral living economy. From the deep, earth-healing roots of Kernza to the satisfying crunch of local hazelnuts, they explore how shifting our agricultural focus can actually restore the… The post Food Freedom Radio – March 26, 2026 first appeared on AM 950.

Laura Hedlund sits down with agroecologist Liz Carlisle and Aubrey Streit Krug from The Land Institute to dive into their new book, Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Agriculture. You’ll hear all about how switching from short-lived annual crops to deep-rooted perennials like Kernza and fruit trees can actually heal our soil while feeding our… The post Food Freedom Radio – March 21, 2026 first appeared on AM 950.

Ep 234 | This week on Discover Ag, Natalie and Tara dig into viral loofahs, ethical eating debates, food allergies, and whether a billion-dollar clothing brand can save agriculture. From the cucumber family plant that keeps breaking the internet to Taylor Sheridan's fiery take on veganism with Joe Rogan, this episode tackles the misconceptions and trade-offs in our food system. Plus, discover why teal pumpkins matter for 1 in 13 kids, how Post Malone shut down Broadway for 30,000 fans, and whether Patagonia's venture into crackers and tinned fish can actually change farming—or if it's just another case of corporate savior complex. Spoiler: a farmer has thoughts, and we want to hear them. What We Discovered This Week

 Today on Consuming the Craft, I sat down with Brian Simpson, CEO of Riverbend Malt House, to explore the fascinating evolution of craft malt in the southeast. We covered Riverbend's journey from a modest basement setup in 2010 to a dynamic operation producing unique and locally sourced malts for breweries and distilleries across the country. I poured Brian a special whiskey from Oak and Grist, made with peach wood smoked pilsner malt from Riverbend, sparking a deep dive into the nuances of smoked malts, wood selection, collaboration with local farmers, and the influence of southern terroir on flavor. We discussed industry trends, new grain varieties, regulatory changes, and the powerful role of innovation in the craft beverage scene. Brian Simpson is at the helm of Riverbend Malt House, the pioneering Asheville-based craft maltster dedicated to bringing local grains into the hands of southern brewers and distillers. Since 2010, Brian has led Riverbend's transformation, supporting research efforts, working with breeders and farmers, and experimenting with new malting techniques and materials. Riverbend's malts have contributed to award-winning beers and spirits, and Brian's passion for innovation continues to drive the industry forward—whether it's through peach wood smoked whiskey, custom malt batches, or supporting the next wave of craft beverages. “We really only had six row barleys... mostly for animal feed. Our whole ‘malt with a mission' was to bring agriculture back into craft beer.” ~Brian Simpson This Week on Consuming the Craft: ·     Riverbend Malt House started in 2010, initially focusing on proving craft malt could be made from southern-grown grains.·     The region's transition from only animal-feed barley to diverse, high-quality brewing and distilling varieties involved close partnerships with breeders and farmers.·     Smoking malt with different woods, such as peach wood, creates uniquely Southern flavor profiles, especially in spirits and specialty beers.·     Collaborations, like Oak and Grist's peach wood-smoked whiskey, showcase the power of local malt and creative partnerships.·     The craft malt industry is watching for regulatory trends, including the potential U.S. adoption of glycosidic nitrile limits and concerns about ethyl carbomate.·     There's growing demand in the south for distillers' malt, high-enzyme, fast-fermentation varieties suitable for whiskey production.·     New and alternative grains like Kernza, millet, and buckwheat present technical challenges but offer gluten-free options and environmental benefits.·     The craft beverage industry's best chance for survival lies in providing experiences, agility, and inventive offerings rather than just chasing trends. Connect with Brian Simpson: Riverbend Malt House Email This episode is brought to you by… McConnell Farms - Taste the Way You Remember. Enjoy homemade ciders and ice cream made from only the best produce on the market. Visit the McConnell Farms website to learn more about our seasonal inventory and the delicious creations you can make with our homegrown produce. Consuming the Craft Thanks for tuning into this week's Consuming the Craft Podcast episode, brought to you by AB Tech's Craft Beverage Institute of the Southeast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart | Amazon Podcasts | TuneIn | Pandora | Deezer  Be sure to share your favorite episodes on social media to help us reach more craft beverage enthusiasts. To learn more about AB Tech and the Craft Beer Institute of the Southeast, visit our website. 

Just like most good things in life, the beers we so love can be quite taxing on the planet before even getting to our glasses. But some breweries are taking the lead on exploring more sustainable practices, whether it's using regenerative grains, organic ingredients, or even solar-powered farms. The five beers on this show represent different ways breweries can make a difference for the sake of the planet - and we're glad to report that none of that comes at the cost of delicious tasting beers. Also, we call in the experts to help get us out of a regatta, we have our reservations about The L*nd Institute, Craig has to explain why he was buying rare Tickle-Me-Elmos, and we no-scope a Best By date like we never have before. Beers Reviewed Deschutes Brewery/Patagonia Provisions - Kernza Lager Off Color Brewing - Beer For The Future (Belgian Blonde w/ Kernza grain) Brooklyn Brewery - Fonio Rising Pale Ale Riggs Beer Company - Pilsner Giant Jones Brewing Company - Barrel-Aged Adambier  

Show 316 Another Full Spectrum Cycling show! JK and Sven ramble through the past week and look at some upcoming bike events, chat craft beer and generally do what we've been doping since 2017! The Milwaukee Minute (or 5) The Slow Roll is Coming Soon! Sunday- September 21st! Bye, bye TTR - https://milwaukeerecord.com/food-drink/triple-taproom-kitchen-on-east-side-has-closed/  Talkin' Schmack  Full Moon Beach Ride this Saturday in Port Washington is looking good - https://www.facebook.com/events/1254108756203125 Videos from the Michigan Trip are up. Day 1 - https://youtu.be/Iqk2WP8rxY0  Day 2 - https://youtu.be/XB1cyybU9_Q  Day 3 - https://youtu.be/2yLTAU-06ds  Day 4 - https://youtu.be/uPlPzztJZek  Free-Fall Fest at Levis Mounds - September 19-20-21st 2025 Because JK Mentioned i show or 2 back and because I love Bristol 45 Diner. See all Full Spectrum Cycling Video Podcast Episodes here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLblXPI1hYVGbwjJjdv_eJGMubhqRU4vwd  Show Beer - Dogfish Head - Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale GrAs beer geeks with a music problem, we couldn't resist teaming back up with this legendary band to continue our long, strange trip together with a brand-NEW beer, Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale!Clocking in at 5.3% ABV, this pale ale is brewed with Kernza® grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing, light-bodied beer that will leave you with nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile. The addition of El Dorado and Azacca hops brings waves of tropical pineapple, mango, and passion fruit notes for a vibrant tapestry of alluring aromas and flavors that just keeps truckin' sip after refreshing sip. If you like this show PLEASE Subscribe in Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/full-spectrum-cycling/id1569662493   Stuff for sale on Facebook Marketplace Call-in to 717-727-2453 and leave us a message about how cycling is making your life better! Shit Worth Doing August 9th - Port Washington, WI - Full Moon Beach Ride August 22nd, 23rd and 24th - MADE! - Portland, Oregon, Zidell Yards - https://made.bike   September 21st - Milwaukee, WI - The Slow Roll September 15th - Chequamegon MTB Festival - Cable, WI - https://www.cheqmtb.com/ September 19-20-21st 2025 - Free-Fall Fest - Levis Mounds, WI Bikes! Omnium Cargo Mini Max - Small - Copper - NEW! Omnium Cargo Electric Mini Max - Small - Galaxy Black Large Schlick Cycles 29+ Custom Build - Black Medium Schlick Cycles 29+ Custom Build - Orange Large Schlick Cycles Tatanka, Orange. 29+ Schlick Cycles frames for custom builds Contact info@everydaycycles.com Call-in to 717-727-2453 and leave us a message about how cycling is making your life better! =============================Equipment we use during the production of Full Spectrum Cycling:============================= Cameras Mevo Core - https://amzn.to/3VpGzmJ - (Amazon) Mevo Start - https://amzn.to/3ZG2B7y - (Amazon) Panasonic 25mm 1.7 lens - https://amzn.to/3OH8Ph0 - (Amazon) Olympus 12mm-42mm lens - https://amzn.to/4iiEyCO - (Amazon) Audio Rode Podcaster Pro II - https://amzn.to/3xKbRfI  (Amazon) Microphones Earthworks Ethos Microphone - https://amzn.to/4eR6kEC  (Amazon) MXL BCD-1 Dynamic Microphone - https://amzn.to/3Yigjx9  (Amazon) Rode Wireless Go II - https://amzn.to/3Su114D  (Amazon) Audio Technica BPHS1 Headset Mics - https://amzn.to/4cXebi2  (Amazon) Blue Compass Boom Arm - https://amzn.to/4cClJr1  (Amazon) Accessories Ulanzi Crab Tripod - https://amzn.to/3WIxWVk  (Amazon) Neewer Camera Desk Mount with Overhead Camera Mounting Arm and 1/4" Ball Head, 17" - 41" Adjustable Tabletop Light Stand with C Clamp - https://amzn.to/3Wuo5Bc  (Amazon) =============================Disclosure: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. Clicking these and making a purchase will directly support Fu...

Mögen Regenwürmer wirklich Regen? Zeigt ihre Anwesenheit wirklich einen guten Bodenzustand an? Und wo ist bei ihnen eigentlich vorne und hinten? Regenwurm-Versteherin Alena Förster steht Svenja Rede und Antwort. Nebenbei verrät sie uns noch, wie viele Herzen Regenwürmer haben. Ihr werdet staunen!

I was at a professional meeting recently and I heard an inspiring and insightful and forward-looking talk by journalist and author Roger Thurow. Roger was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal for 30 years, 20 of them as a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. Roger has written a number of books including one on world hunger and another what I thought was a particularly important book entitled The First 1000 Days, A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children and the World. Now comes a new book on farmers around the world and how they are coping with the unprecedented changes they face. It was hearing about his book that inspired me to invite Mr. Thurow to this podcast and thankfully he accepted. His new book is entitled Against the Grain: How Farmers Around the Globe are transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Heal the Planet. Interview Summary I really admire your work and have loved the new book and what I've read before. So, let's talk about something that you speak about: the wisdom of farmers. And you talk about their wisdom in the context of modern agriculture. What do you mean by that? Farmers of the world, particularly the small holder farmers, indigenous farmers, family farmers as we know them in this country, they're really bold and pioneering in what they're doing. And these farmers, kind of around the world as we go on this journey around the world in the book, they've seen their efforts to earn a living and feed nourish their families and communities turn against. So, while conforming to the orthodoxies of modern industrial agriculture practices: the monocropping, the increased use of fertilizers and pesticides and insecticide chemicals, the land expansion, at the expense of savannas, forest wetlands, biodiverse environments. In the face of this, they've really witnessed their lands degrading. Their soils depleting. Their waters dwindling. Their pollinators fleeing. Their biodiversity shrinking and becoming less diverse. Their rains becoming ever more mercurial., Their temperatures ever hotter. And their children and families and their communities becoming ever more hungry and malnourished. So, they've really seen the future of their own impacts on the environment, and then the impacts of changing climates, of more extreme weather conditions. They've really seen this future. They've experienced, lived it, and it's ugly what they see and what they've experienced on their farms. So, that's their wisdom, and they'll really tell us that it doesn't have to be that way if we listen. That such a future isn't inevitable. Because out of their desperation, you know, these farmers have begun farming against the grain. So, there's the title of the book Against the Grain of this modern agriculture orthodoxy to reconcile their roles as both food producers and nourishers of us all, and stewards in the land. They're pushing forward with practices like agroforestry, agroecology, regenerative agriculture, kind of whatever one calls it. Farming with nature instead of bending nature to their will, which is what we too often done and with kind of the larger modern industrial agriculture techniques. So, farming with nature as opposed to against it as they strive to both nourish us all and heal our planet. Give us a sense, if you will, about how important these small farmers are to the world's food supply? So how important are these? They're really important. Extremely vital for the global food chain, certainly for their own families and communities, and their countries. In a lot of places, say in Africa, in many of the countries, on the continent, it's the small holder farmers that are producing the majority of the food. In their communities and in their countries and across the continent. Still not enough. Africa then must become a substantial importer of food. But these small holder farmers are so key and the more success that they have in feeding their communities and families, the more success we all have then in this great goal of ending hunger and malnutrition. Equally important, these farmers are the stewards of the land. And they're on the front lines of these environmental challenges. The threats from the changing climate and more extreme weather conditions. They're the first impacted by it, but they also increasingly see, and that's what stories in the book are about, how they see that their own actions are then impacting their environment and their climates. And this is why they're so important for all of us is that they find themselves at the center of what I think is this great collision of humanities two supreme imperatives. One, nourish the world, so nourish us all. That's the one imperative. And then the other imperative, kind of colliding with that, is to preserve, protect, and heal our planet from the very actions of nourishing us. So, these are these two colliding forces. You know as I think we already know agriculture and land use activities are responsible for about a third of the greenhouse gases impacting our climate and weather patterns. And the greatest impact of this then is felt by the farmers themselves. And they see what's happening to their soils and the depletion of their soils. Their lands being so terribly degraded by their very actions of nourishing their families and then contributing to nourishing us all. I think that's why they're so important for us. I mean, there's certainly kind of the canaries in the coal mine of climate change. Of these environmental challenges that we're all facing. And how they're then able to adjust their farming, as we kind of see in the book and that's this wisdom again. How can we learn from them and what are they seeing in their own situations. They're then having to adjust because they have no other options. They either have to adjust or their farms will continue to degrade and their children and their families increasingly malnourished and hungry. Roger let's talk through this issue of colliding imperatives just a bit. The fact that protecting the planet and nourishing people are colliding in your view, suggests that these two priorities are competing with one another. How is that the case? Some of the techniques of the monocropping, which is basically planting one crop on the same plot of land year after year, after year, season after season, right? And by doing that, these crops that are pulling nutrients out of the soil, many of the crops don't put nutrients back in. Some of them do. They'll restore nitrogen they'll put other nutrients in. But with the mono cropping, it's kind of the same depletion that goes on. And, has been particularly practiced in this country, and the bigger farmers and more commercial farmers, because it's more efficient. You are planting one crop, you have the same technique of kind of the planting and tending for that. And the harvesting, kind of the same equipment for that. You don't need to adjust practices, your equipment for various other crops that you're growing on that land. And so, there's an efficiency for that. You have then the price stability if there is any price stability in farming from that crop. That can be a weakness if the price collapses and you're so dependent on that. And so, the farmers are seeing, yeah, that's where the degrading and the weakening their of their soils comes from. So, what's their response to that when their land's degrading? When their soils become weak, it's like, oh, we need additional land then to farm. So they'll go into the forest, they'll cut down trees. And now there's virgin soil. They do the same practices there. And then after a number of years, well that land starts depleting. They keep looking for more. As you do these things, then with the soils depleting, the land degrading, becoming really hard, well, when the rain comes, it's not soaking in. And it just kind of runs away as the soil becomes almost like concrete. Farmers aren't able to plant much there anymore or get much out of the ground. And then so what happens then if the water isn't soaking into the soil, the underground aquifers and the underground springs they become depleted. All of a sudden, the lakes and the ponds that were fed by those, they disappear. The wildlife, the pollinators that come because of that, they go. The bushes, the plants, the weeds that are also so important for the environment, they start disappearing. And so you see that in their efforts to nourish their families and to nourish all of us, it's having this impact on the environment. And then that drives more impacts, right? As they cut down trees, trees drive the precipitation cycle. Tthen the rains become ever more mercurial and unpredictable. Without the trees and the shade and the cooling and the breezes, temperatures get hotter. And also, as the rains disappear and become more unpredictable. It has all this effect. And so, the farmers in the book, they're seeing all this and they recognize it. That by their very actions of cutting down trees to expand their land or to go to a different crop. Because again, that's what the commercial agriculture is demanding, so maybe its sugar cane is coming to the area. Well, sugar cane doesn't get along with trees. And so, the farmers in this one part of Uganda that I write about, they're cutting down all their trees to plant sugarcane. And then it's like, wow, now that the trees are gone, now we see all these environmental and ecosystem results because of that. And so that's where this collision comes from then of being much more aware, and sensitive in their practices and responding to it. That they are both nourishing their families and then also being even better stewards of their land. And they're not doing any of this intentionally, right? It's not like they're going 'we have to do all this to the land, and you know, what do we care? We're just here for a certain amount of time.' But no, they know that this is their land, it's their wealth, it's their family property. It's for their children and future generations. And they need to both nourish and preserve and protect and heal at the same time. Well, you paint such a rich picture of how a single decision like mono cropping has this cascade of effects through the entire ecosystem of an area. Really interesting to hear about that. Tell me how these farmers are experiencing climate change. You think of climate change as something theoretical. You know, scientists are measuring these mysterious things up there and they talk about temperature changes. But what are these farmers actually experiencing in their day-to-day lives? So along with the monocropping, this whole notion that then has expanded and become kind of an article of faith through industrial and modern agriculture orthodoxies, is to get big or get out, and then to plant from fence post to fence post. And so, the weeds and the flowers and plants that would grow along the edges of fields, they've been taken down to put in more rows of crops. The wetland areas that have either been filled in. So, it was a policy here, the USDA would then fund farmers to fill in their wetlands. And now it's like, oh, that's been counterproductive. Now there's policies to assist farmers to reestablish their wetland. But kind of what we're seeing with climate change, it's almost every month as we go through the year, and then from year after year. Every month is getting hotter than the previous months. And each year then is getting subsequently hotter. As things get hotter, it really impacts the ability of some crops in the climates where they're growing. So, take for instance, coffee. And coffee that's growing, say on Mount Kenya in Africa. The farmers will have to keep going further and further up the mountains, to have the cooler conditions to grow that type of coffee that they grow. The potato farmers in Peru, where potatoes come from. And potatoes are so important to the global food chain because they really are a bulwark against famine. Against hunger crises in a number of countries and ecologies in the world. So many people rely on potatoes. These farmers, they call themselves the guardians of the indigenous of the native potato varieties. Hundreds of various varieties of potatoes. All shapes, sizes, colors. As it gets warmer, they have to keep moving further and further up the Andes. Now they're really farming these potatoes on the roof of Earth. As they move up, they're now starting to then farm in soils that haven't been farmed before. So, what happens? You start digging in those soils and now you're releasing the carbon that's been stored for centuries, for millennia. That carbon is then released from the soils, and that then adds to more greenhouse gases and more impact on the climate and climate change. It kind of all feeds each other. They're seeing that on so many fronts. And then the farmers in India that we write about in the book, they know from history and particularly the older farmers, and just the stories that are told about the rhythm of the monsoon season. And I think it was the summer of the monsoon season of 2022 when I was doing the reporting there for that particular part of the book. The rains came at the beginning, a little bit. They planted and then they disappear. Usually, the monsoons will come, and they'll get some rain for this long, long stretch of time, sometimes particularly heavy. They planted and then the rains went away. And as the crops germinated and came up, well, they needed the water. And where was the water and the precipitation? They knew their yields weren't going to be as big because they could see without the rains, their crops, their millet, their wheat crops were failing. And then all of a sudden, the rains returned. And in such a downpour, it was like, I think 72 hours or three days kind of rains of a biblical proportion. And that was then so much rain in that short of time than added further havoc to their crops and their harvest. And it was just that mercurial nature and failing nature of the monsoons. And they're seeing that kind of glitches and kinks in the monsoon happening more frequently. The reliability, the predictability of the rains of the seasons, that's what they're all finding as kind of the impacts of climate change. You're discussing a very interesting part of the world. Let's talk about something that I found fascinating in your book. You talked about the case of pigweed in Uganda. Tell us about that if you will. Amaranth. So here, we call it pigweed. That's a weed. Yeah, destroy that. Again, fence post to fence post. Nah, so this pig weed that's growing on the side or any kind of weeds. The milkweed, so I'm from northern Illinois, and the milkweed that would kind of grow on the edges of the corn fields and other fields, that's really favored by monarch butterflies, right? And so now it's like, 'Hey, what happened to all the monarch butterflies that we had when we were growing up?' Right? Well, if you take out the milkweed plants, why are the monarch butterfly going to come? So those pollinators disappear. And they come and they're great to look at, and, you know, 'gee, the monarchs are back.' But they also perform a great service to us all and to our environment and to agriculture through their pollinating. And so, the pigweed in Africa - Amaranth, it's like a wonder crop. And one of these 'super crops,' really nutritious. And these farmers in this area of Uganda that I'm writing about, they're harvesting and they're cultivating Amaranth. And they're mixing that in their homemade porridge with a couple of other crops. Corn, some millet, little bit of sugar that they'll put in there. And that then becomes the porridge that they're serving to the moms, particularly during their pregnancies to help with their nutritional status. And then to the babies and the small children, once they started eating complimentary food. Because the malnutrition was so bad and the stunting so high in that area that they figured they needed to do something about that. And the very farmers that this program from Iowa State University that's been working with them for 20 years now, first to improve their farming, but then wow, the malnutrition is so bad in these farming families. What can we do about that? Then it was, oh, here's these more nutritional crops native to the area. Let's incorporate them into farming. This crop is Amaranth. Basically, neglected in other parts of the world. Destroyed in other parts of the world. That is something that's actually cultivated and harvested, and really cared for and prized in those areas. It's a really interesting story. Let's turn our attention to the United States, which you also profile in your book. And there was a particular farmer in Kansas named Brandon that you talk about. And he said he was getting divorced from wheat. Tell us about that. Yes, thank you. That's a really interesting story because he's standing there kind of on the edge of his farm, looking at the wheat crops across the road that his neighbor was planting and he had some himself. And he's saying, yeah, I need to get a divorce from wheat. Because of the impact that that was having on the environment. Again, the planting of the wheat, you know, year after year. It's the wheat belt of our Great Plains, which then is legendarily known as the breadbasket, not only of America, but the breadbasket of the world. This wheat is particularly good and appropriate for the label of Breadbasket because it's really good for breads, baking materials. But he's looking at here's the impact it had on his soil. The organic matter on the soil has been dwindling. In the season that the wheat is underground, and the topsoil is uncovered, then you have the problems with erosion. He's seen the impact over time of the year after year after year of growing the wheat. What's interesting, he says, you know, I need to get a divorce from wheat. Well, it's his relatives, because he's a fifth descendant, of the Mennonite farmers from what is now Ukraine - one of the world's original grain belts, who brought their hard red winter wheat seeds with them when they came to the Great Plains in the 1870s. They're the ones that wed Kansas, the Great Plains, the United States to wheat. So now this farmer, Brandon-I-need-to-get-a-divorce-from-wheat, well, it's your ancestors and your descendants that wed us to that. There's kind of historic irony that's taking place. But along with the wheat seeds that came, then also came the plowing up the prairie lands for the first time. And wheat is an annual crop. It's planted year after year one harvest. With each planting, the soil is disturbed, releasing carbon that had been stored, that had been stored in the soil for millennium when they first started plowing. Carbon along with methane released by agricultural activities is, again, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. And in addition, you know, this annual plowing exposes the soil to erosion. You know, relentless erosion with the wind and the rain in the plains. That's what eventually led to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Some environmental and conservation agricultural practices come along because of that, but now that continues. And Brandon himself is seeing the impact as he measures the organic matter in the soil. These are the microorganisms in the soils that naturally work with the soils to grow the crops to feed us all. The nutrients in the soil are weakened and depleted, which then results in the need for more and more chemical enhancements and fertilizers, particularly nitrogen and all the rest. And then you see the runoff of the nitrogen into the water system. And so, yeah, he's seen the impact of all of this, and he's like I need to do something else. And so, he's taken a rather radical step than of planting and growing perennial crops, which you plant one season and then they'll grow for three or four years, maybe more and longer. He has some cattle, so he is able to graze that on those perennial crops. One in particular called kernza, which is an ancient intermediate wheat grass. Has some of the properties of wheat. And so the Land Institute in Kansas then is also working on perennial crops and how can they then be cultivated and harvested also as crops that we all eat. And so Kernza is very high in protein. There's all sorts of breads and pasta, pastries, that you can make with it. Cereals. It's a good ingredient for brewing. There's Kernza beer. And there's promise with that. And then so these perennial crops, then it's like, okay, so we don't have to plow every year. We plant, they grow, they provide a cover crop, but they also provide food for all of us. So perennials, good for our nutrition, good for the soils, good for the environment. You know, we've recorded a series of podcasts with farmers who've been doing regenerative agriculture. And the kind of story that you talk about Brandon, quite similar to what you hear from some of the other farmers. Farming was in their family for many generations. They were accustomed to a particular type of industrial agriculture. They saw it harming the land, thought it bad for the planet, and decided to really retool and do things entirely different. And they're making a go of it, which is really exciting. Roger, I wanted to ask you about Native Americans. As you write about their agriculture, spirituality, kinship, and how all these things come together. Tell us about that. Exactly. Thank you. And so, if you go travel a little bit further in our great plains from Kansas up to South Dakota, and the Sicangu Lakota communities in the southern part of South Dakota close to the Nebraska border. They're trying to reestablish their food sovereignty and the agriculture practices of the Native Americans destroyed, as we tried to destroy them and their communities. By taking of their land, forced relocations, the Trail of Tears, the Trail of Death, in various parts of the country, from various of the Native American communities. And they realize that, as you and the researchers at Duke, know really well, the health impacts that has had on the Native American communities and the high rates of diabetes and obesity, the shortened life expectancies in those communities. And one of the main factors then is their food pathways, and their nutrition being disturbed through all this. So how can they reestablish their food sovereignty? The emphasis on the crops that they used to grow, particularly the three sisters' crops, the maize, the beans, the squash. And then that they would have crops and taste and nutrients that were so vital to their systems traditionally. To recapture that in various growing projects that they have. And then also, with the Sicangu Lakota, they are trying to reestablish the buffalo herd, which was basically decimated from upwards of 30 million or more size of the herd basically down to several hundred with the intentional slaughter of the buffalo in order to really oppress and impact the Native American community. So vital not only to their food sources and nutrition, but basically everything. Clothing, tools - so using every inch of the buffalo. And then spiritually. And as they explain their approach to regenerative agriculture, they would put a picture of a buffalo as the very definition of regenerative agriculture. Just by the way that the buffalo grazes and then moves around. It doesn't graze to the soil it leaves something behind. Then the grasses grow quicker because there's something that's left behind. They leave things behind for other animals. The way that they migrate, and then kind of knead the soil as they go along. That also helps with the soil. So, all these regenerative agriculture, regenerative soil, healthy soil healing practices of it. And then they also say, look the spiritual nature of things that the buffalo represents their kinship. Their kinship of the people to the buffalo, to their land, to the environment. And to them, regenerative agriculture isn't just about food, about soils, about the cultivation and the planting, but also about this kinship. It is a kinship and a spirituality of kind of all of us together. We're all combined on this global food chain. And so that whole kinship element to regenerative agriculture, I think is also really important for us to all understand. Getting back to your original question about the wisdom. This is the wisdom of these farmers, these indigenous farmers, small holder farmers, family farmers. Like Brandon, the small holder farmers of African, India and Latin America are learning so much about their crops that we have so much to learn from.vIt's inspiring to think that some of the remedies that people are coming up with now in the face of all these challenges actually have historic roots that go back thousands of years is pretty inspiring. And it's nice to know that the resurrection of some of these techniques might really make a difference in the modern world. Roger, there are so many questions I'd love to ask you. And I'd urge people to read your book Against the Grain to further explore some of these issues. But I wanted to end with something. Are you hopeful that things will change in a positive direction? I am. I'm also concerned that we need to recognize the need to both nourish and heal. Recognize that this collision is looming, but it's already happening. And I think my hope, and cautious optimism I guess, then comes from the farmers themselves. They're very resilient, and they have to be, right? If you'd asked them the question about where their hope comes from or their optimism or their motivation and inspiration to keep going, it's they don't have any other option. I mean, this is their land. This is what they do. They're farmers, they're nourishing their families. If their families are to be nourished and to end the effects of poor nutrition as we see in this country, which is then common around the world, they need to adjust. So Abebe, a farmer Ethiopia this is kind of where my hope and inspiration comes from. And he begins the book. He's at the outset of the book and in the prologue. His land in Ethiopia was utterly degraded and you couldn't plant there anymore. They had already cut down trees, moved into areas that had been forested. The humble forest in the area had basically disappeared, in kind of the greater area of where Abebe lives. The bigger kind of ecosystem, environmental changes that then come from that, or the disappearance of a forest. And he had been following then the practices and the orthodoxies of modern agriculture. He realized that that was then behind the degradation of his land and the soil. He couldn't plant anymore. And the World Food Program, the Ethiopian government, other kind of NGOs, were then seeing, look these farm communities, these families, we're going to have to be assisting with food assistance forever because their lands are so degraded. They're not able to nourish their families from them unless we do something to restore and heal the land and bring the land back. And so, Abebe and his family and many others in his community, the kind of wider neighborhood and in this area, the humble forest, a lot of them, they stop farming on their land and they're given assistance saved by the World Food Program, kind of food for work. And they set about rehabbing their land. Kind of terracing their land so it'll hold the water. Digging shallow water pans to collect the rain so it then soaks into the soil, into the ground, and then regenerates the underground springs and sources of water. Planting grasses, bushes, letting kind of the land heal and regenerate itself. After a number of years, they see that happening. They move back to the land, and now he has this wide diversity as opposed to planting say corn every year or other mono cropping. Now he has this wide, wild, riotous array of different crops and vegetables and fruit trees. Some of the staple crops that he's grown also in rotation. Working with trees that have then grown up. Springs, a little pond has reformed that he didn't even know was there had come up because of the conservation the water. And he says, you know, my land, which once was dead, he's living again. Right? A profound statement and a realization from this farmer of this is how we can bring it back. So again, as I say, they've seen the future and it's ugly, right? He's seen his land degraded. He couldn't nourish his family anymore. He then does these practices, takes heed of this. I need to heal my land at the same time as farming it. And now his land is living again. So that to me is kind of a wonderful parable. So again, the wisdom of the farmers. It's through the stories and the wisdom of Abebe, that kind of the hope comes forward. Bio Roger Thurow is a journalist and author who writes about the persistence of hunger and malnutrition in our world as well as global agriculture and food policy. He was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal for thirty years, including twenty years as a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. In 2003, he and Journal colleague Scott Kilman wrote a series of stories on famine in Africa that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Thurow is the author of four books: Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty (with Scott Kilman); The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change; The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children – And the World; and, Against the Grain – How Farmers Around the Globe Are Transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Heal the Planet. He has also been a senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, as well as a Scholar-in-Residence at Auburn University's Hunger Solutions Institute.

The Craft Brewers Conference was held in Indianapolis last month and at the ingredients supplier booths, amid the talk of new hop varieties, there were several beers brewed with non-traditional grains. That's worthy of a closer look and on this episode you'll hear from two brewers - Garrett Oliver of the Brooklyn Brewery and Sandy Boss Febbo of Bang Brewing - who are all in on Fonio and Kernza. The BYO Nano Podcast Episode 65  is sponsored by:RahrBSG / Gambrinus IPA MaltGambrinus IPA Malt possesses an elusive color falling between very pale pilsner and golden pale ale malt. Tailor-made to complement contemporary West Coast IPAs, it provides balancing sweetness and body in the presence of piney, juicy, and tropical hop profiles. Delivering a delicate profile of bread, toast, grain, and slight nuttiness, Gambrinus IPA Malt is a workhorse base malt. Available now as the latest addition to the premier range of brewing malts offered by RahrBSG. More info at: rahrbsg.com/gambrinus-ipa-malt/Five Star ChemicalsBig news, brewers—Five Star Chemicals Saniclean PAA Pro officially launched at CBC. This powerful new acid-based sanitizer combines the best of Saniclean with the strength of per-acetic acid for fast, effective cleaning that keeps your equipment in top shape. Trusted quality, pro performance—now in a PAA formula. Learn more at fivestarchemicals.com. Brew better. Brew with Five Star.FermentisDiscover the whole SafLager™ range by Fermentis, covering traditional to modern-style lagers: elegant lagers with floral notes, fruity and hoppy ones. And you can even imagine an estery Lager with the new SafLager™ E-30, producing some fruity esters with subtitle banana characters. Available in 500g, 100g and 11.5g formats. Want to know more about SafLager™ yeasts? Visit www.fermentis.com.BYO Nano+ MembershipGet access to hundreds of hours of on-demand videos covering small craft brewery strategies with BYO's Nano+ Membership. Learn from craft beer experts watching replays of past NanoCon seminars plus a complete library of in-depth workshops. You'll also have full online access to all of BYO's digital content and an annual digital magazine subscription. Check out byo.com/nanoplus for more details.BYO Nano Brew Podcast Episode 65Host: John HollGuests: Garrett Oliver, Sandy Boss FebboContact: nano@byo.comMusic: Scott McCampbell

What if I told you there was a grain that doesn't have to be replanted every spring, that has roots growing 10-feet deep, taking in carbon and holding it deep in the soil, that helps prevent soil erosion and excess fertilizer from washing into our lakes--AND it makes a tasty beer. In this episode, a look at the work behind an experimental batch of Kernza® beer at Karben4 Brewing in Madison that has the farming research world taking notice. Host: Amy Barrilleaux Guest: Joe Walts, Karben4 Brewing Resources for You:  Taste the Change: Wisconsin Kenrnza® Natural Climate Solutions: A path forward for Wisconsin's agricultural sector Three cheers for climate beer! Kernza® Crunch: The race to develop the world's first perennial grain crop    

Mastering the market is no easy task for a cutting-edge perennial grain. What lessons have Forever Green learned from its work with Kernza? More Information • Forever Green Initiative • Blog: Don Wyse’s Land Grant Legacy • Ear to the Ground 365: Perennial Pivot • Ear to the Ground 229: Kernza's Continuous Cover • Wrap-Up…  Read More → Source

Wendy Johnson is experimenting with Kernza because she believes in the power of perennials. And livestock are helping make this cutting-edge crop a little less of a gamble. More Information • Jóia Food & Fiber Farm • Forever Green Initiative • Ear to the Ground 367: Disrupting the Food Chain • Ear to the Ground 365:…  Read More → Source

When Sogn Valley Farm transitioned out of intensive production of vegetable crops, it opened up opportunities to utilize a unique cousin of wheat as a way to steward the land. More Information • Sogn Valley Farm • Forever Green Initiative • Ear to the Ground 229: Kernza’s Continuous Cover • Wrap-Up of LSP’s 2025 Small…  Read More → Source

A Seed Chat with Bill McDormanIn this episode, Greg Peterson from Urban Farm U and Bill McDorman discuss seed-saving and the importance of embracing creativity and chaos in gardening, particularly during winter. They delve into personal anecdotes about sustainable practices and running businesses, highlighting the intersections of fear, excitement, and change in various aspects of life. Additionally, they touch on the evolving practices in permaculture and grain cultivation, particularly Kernza, and its potential for sustainable agriculture. Visit www.urbanfarm.org/858-seed for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!What is the Seed Chat?At least ten times a year we have a live Seed Saving Class with Bill McDorman, the former Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013. Come join us for the next live class, or catch up on our previous classes through our podcast episodes. Either way you will expand your seed knowledge and gain new perspectives on your food system. Register anytime for the next event.Register Here for the Monthly Seed Saving Class with Live Q&ABecome an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In this episode, Sabrina Halvorson and Lorrie Boyer discuss key agricultural issues anticipated for 2025. The conversation explores rising input costs exacerbated by geopolitical events, ongoing supply chain pressures, and the impact of climate change. They also touch upon shifting consumer preferences towards plant-based proteins, vertical farming, and the impacts of inflation on the agriculture sector. The hosts emphasize the resilience of the agricultural industry in finding solutions to these challenges. Lorrie talks with Ray Miller, a meteorologist with Meteorology, who discussed the impacts of climate change on weather patterns. He explained that increased CO2 levels lead to more extreme weather conditions, including severe droughts, heavy rainfall, and intense storms. He noted that the central U.S. saw above-average precipitation this year, but parts of the South remain in drought. Miller emphasized the critical need for water management in agriculture due to these extremes. He also highlighted the rise in hurricane intensity and size, and the increase in wildfires in unexpected regions. Despite other factors like urban heat islands and solar cycles, Miller stressed that human-induced CO2 and methane are significant contributors to climate change. Sabrina interviews Mitch Hunter, Co-Director of the Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota. They discuss the challenges and innovations in growing crops during winter in regions like North Dakota and Minnesota. Key topics include the development of winter-hardy cash cover crops such as winter camelina and domesticated pennycress, which can be harvested for biofuel. Hunter also highlights other exciting agricultural developments, including Kernza, a perennial grain crop. The Forever Green Initiative aims to promote soil health and provide farmers with diverse income streams. 

In this episode, AURI's Business Development Director of Novel Supply Chains, Alexandra Ostlund, and Juan Medina Bielski, Malting Scientist at RahrBSG, discuss the challenges and opportunities of brewing and distilling with Kernza® perennial grain.

Pour up a Black Currant Pistachio pint and hear the beginnings of Fenceline Beer Lab, as told by owner and head brewer, Susan Frantz. Opening in November of 2019, Susan shares experiences of the pandemic as a newly established brewery, their philosophy of beer, food, and serving the Busch Light drinker, and how their tap lineup has evolved over the last five years. Susan discusses brewing with Kernza, Iowa Brewers Guild, and Pink Boots of Iowa. If you like supporting small communities and brewpubs, give this a listen.     Find out more about our show @thevorlaufhour on all social platforms.

Two giant pandas on loan from China have arrived at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. Also, originally from Central Asia, Kernza doesn't need to be replanted every year, unlike crops such as corn and soybeans.Pandas Return To Washington, D.C., ZooOn Tuesday, two VIPs (Very Important Pandas) arrived at Washington's Dulles International Airport, en route to new quarters at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.The arrival marks a new chapter of “panda diplomacy,” which leverages the public's affection for the cute, charismatic animals to both strengthen US-China ties and fund conservation initiatives. Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist, joins SciFri's John Dankosky to talk about the giant pandas' arrival and other stories from the week in science.Scientists Push For A Lesser-Known Grain Called KernzaOn a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of people filled the cozy taproom at Blue Jay Brewing Company. On tap that day was a fresh creation called New Roots. The American Lager was a hit, with many of the patrons going back to the bar for another glass.Blue Jay's owner and brewer, Jason Thompson, was also pleased with the result of this experimental beer, which he described as “earthy, almost nutty,” with a “lingering honey-like sweetness to it.” Those flavors came from his choice to use a novel grain called Kernza for 25% of the 600 pounds of grain needed for the whole brew, he said.Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

A grand jury blames Governor Stitt and Ryan Walters for pandemic education misspending.State lawmakers are trying to nail down numbers on illegal immigration.The new grain known as Kernza looks to have a budding future as a sustainable crop.You can find the KOSU Daily wherever you get your podcasts, you can also subscribe, rate us and leave a comment.You can keep up to date on all the latest news throughout the day at KOSU.org and make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at KOSU Radio.This is The KOSU Daily, Oklahoma news, every weekday.

Kernza is a perennial grain that can produce an annual crop, even as it stays in the ground for up to four years. Its deep root system make it a sustainable crop, but the grain doesn't have many markets.

The global food system is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for about 25% of annual anthropomorphic CO2 emission, the unfortunate, planet-warming exhaust of our industrial society. But what if we could eat our way out of the climate crisis? Author Mark J. Easter joins the conversation to talk regenerative farming and his new book, The Blue Plate: A Food Lover's Guide to Climate Chaos. He explores how we can change our diets to help restore the environment  — he gets to the roots of the challenge, a failure of industrial farming. As an ecologist who has spent years studying the carbon footprint of food at Colorado State University, Mark connects the dots between what we eat, how it's produced, and its impact on our planet.In The Blue Plate, Mark plumbs the concept of regenerative agriculture and carbon farming—showing how these practices can not only reduce the carbon footprint of food but also actively restore ecosystems. From the smallest urban farm to sprawling agricultural lands, he argues that how we grow, process, and distribute food holds tremendous potential for climate solutions. For instance, he reports on the innovative use of cover crops and perennial grains like Kernza, a perennial grain, which has been shown to pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil—effectively turning farming into a climate-positive practice. Mark's journey from greenhouse gas accounting to becoming an advocate for low-carbon meals is filled with fascinating insights into how the food system shapes the world we live in—and how, with the right approach, it can help reverse some of the damage done to the environment. You can find The Blue Plate: A Food Lover's Guide to Climate Chaos at Amazon, Powell's Books, and your local bookseller.

Most agricultural crops like corn, wheat or barley are replanted into the ground every single year. It's a lot of work, and hard on the soil where they're grown. Perennial crops, like Kernza, can stay on the land for several years, offering environmental benefits. But there's not that much of it being grown right now. St. Louis Public Radio's Eric Schmid reports on how researchers hope to change that with more consumer products made with Kernza, like beer.

This week on AgweekTV, we cover all things agriculture at the Big Iron Farm Show. A crop could help keep a Minnesota water source cleaner. We tell you how a new agricultural college degree option is helping students stay in central South Dakota. And some children learn how to show pigs.

What if there was a grain that didn't have to be replanted every year? One with deep roots that stay in the soil, trap carbon, prevent erosion, filter water. Kernza – the world's first perennial grain crop – could be a game changer when it comes to sustainable food production and using our land to help fight climate change. But the big question: does is make a good beer? In this episode, Amy heads to Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee to find out. Kernza® is the trademark name for the grain of an intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) being developed at The Land Institute in Kansas. Host: Amy Barrilleaux Guest: Russ Klisch, Owner & Co-Founder of Lakefront Brewery Background Reading:  Climate-Smart Crops: Kernza Kerna Crunch: The Race to Develop the First Perennial Grain Crop (podcast) Impacts of Conventional Agriculture in Wisconsin The Land Institute: Kernza Grain

A brand new been from Pure Project they just announced last week in collaboration with Patagonia Provisions.  It uses a new grain  called Kernza that not only adds an unforgettable flavor profile but also is a better more sustainable grain for the planet.

What is Kernza and does it belong in your next recipe? Special Guests: Alexandra Diemer , Harmonie Bettenhausen, Juan Medina Bielski, Tessa Peters, and Xiang Yin.

Last year, Arizona Wilderness' (https://www.azwbeer.com) beet-centered saison Jitterbug Perfume scored a perfect 100 with our blind judges, and went on to nab a spot in our Best 20 Beers in 2023. In this episode, head brewer Brad Miles and wood cellar manager Nick Pauley dissect that particular beer, from the blend of wood-aged saisons that form the base, to the way they roasted and processed the beets, and the particular fruit juice and spice additions that rounded it out. They also discuss the Arizona Wilderness approach to spontaneous brewing, using a mobile coolship and wort that they drive out to cooler, higher elevations in the wintertime to capture wild microflora. Along the way, they touch on: building a spontaneous process that works in a dry, desert environment using aged American hops like Crystal, Chinook, and Cascade in spontaneous beer adding funk character to saison with aged hops using regenerative certified organic grains in saison building a base with 5-6 different wood-aged saisons to stand up to strong flavored ingredients balancing acidity in spontaneous and saison beer brewing with Kernza grain partnering with local growers and a local maltster to support a new grain economy And more. This episode is brought to you by: G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): At G&D Chillers they always strive to Build Great Chillers. Partner with them as you Build Great Beer. Choose G&D Chillers on your next Expansion or Brewery start up and receive 1 free year of Remote control and Monitoring of your new G&D Chiller! ProBrew (https://www.probrew.com) Turnkey brewery systems. Production line design services. Retro-fitting processing systems. ProBrew™ can do all this and more with any brewery, old or new, small or large. For more information, fill out our contact form on www.probrew.com or email contactus@probrew.com. Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): Old Orchard has supplied flavored craft juice concentrate blends to over 46 states for the production of fruit-forward beer, cider, seltzer, wine, spirits, and more. To learn more and request your free samples, head over to oldorchard.com/brewer (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer) Omega Yeast (https://omegayeast.com): Streamline efficiency with Omega Yeast's Diacetyl Knock Out series. The DKO series is comprised of 8 familiar yeast strains engineered to knock out the formation of diacetyl before it starts. The strains you know, now better. Contact Omega Yeast today at omegayeast.com. ABS Commercial (https://abs-commercial.com). ABS Commercial are proud to offer brewhouses, tanks, keg washers, and preventative maintenance parts to brewers across the country as well as equipment for distilling, cider-making, wine-making, and more! Contact them today at sales@abs-commercial.com to discuss your customized brewery needs. Ss Brewtech (https://SsBrewtech.com). Ss Brewtech was founded by a group of home and craft beer brewers, dedicated to bringing an engineering-first approach to brewery equipment. Ss brewhouses are used to formulate new beer recipes at some of the world's greatest breweries. To learn more, head over to SsBrewtech.com US Water Systems (https://uswatersystems.com): Depending upon the city and day, water quality can vary 40% to 50%. The best method is to start with the same water every time and Reverse Osmosis gives you that power. Visit USWaterSystems.com (https://uswatersystems.com) for a free expert analysis.

Kernza is a new grain that has been bred with regenerative agricultural practices in mind. After decades of development, there is now a movement, supported by Patagonia Provisions, a division of the famous outerwear company, to use this perennial grain in brewing beer.  Will brewers like how it performs in the brewhouse?  Will consumers like the taste?  It is too early to tell, and a lot of infrastructure is needed to make the grain more widely available, but Kernza is probably the biggest development in brewing grains in centuries. This Episode is Sponsored by:The Best of Craft Beer AwardsAttention brewers: registration is now open for the 2024 Best of Craft Beer Awards. Now in its 10th year, this is a BJCP sanctioned event judged by fellow brewers, professional judges, and industry leaders. Judged in Oregon, it's the third largest professional brewing competition in North America and is a chance to have your hard work evaluated and rewarded. In addition to traditional styles, new this year is the smoothie sour style category, and the collaboration competition. Learn more and register your beers through January 31, 2024 by visiting www.BestofCraftBeerAwards.com/registerEstrella GaliciaEstrella Galicia is an independent, family-owned brewery  in northwest Spain, founded in 1906.Estrella Galicia Cerveza Especial is a world class lager, brewed using the finest Spanish malts, locally  cultivated Galician hops and the best brewing practices, in a state-of-the-art facility in La Coruña . Recognized around the world for quality and exceptional character. Estrella Galicia is “A beer like no other.”Hosts:  Don Tse and Em SauterGuests: Tammy Kimbler  and Layne Carter Sponsors: The Best of Craft Beer Awards, Estrella Galicia, All About BeerTags: Kernza, Farming, MaltThe following music was used for this media project:Music: Awesome Call by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3399-awesome-callLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://incompetech.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This is a re-release of our 10th episode with Wes Jackson and David Kline. Wes talked to us about the development of Kernza at The Land Institute and other sustainable farming practices. Rooted In Organic Podcast is sponsored by Byron Seeds and SoilBiotics.

Kernza, spelt, emmer, and eincorn. These days there is a bouquet of flours to choose from when baking. We talk about what the different grains can add to your baking and eating pleasure.

There are high hopes for perennial grain Kernza to someday be as productive as wheat.

The unique flavor profile of this perennial grain has drawn a lot of interest and engagement from the beverage industry.

Sustain-A-Grain hopes to prove that in the future growers won't need to choose between productivity and conservation.

In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, we are joined once again by Caroline Saunders, a skilled pastry chef and dedicated recipe tester, who channels her passion into crafting delectable treats using climate-friendly ingredients. Ross Kenyon and Radhika Mogalkar enthusiastically embraced the challenge of trying Caroline's climate-friendly baking recipes. Discover who fared better in their quest to bake the perfect key lime pie! Discover how Caroline's journey towards becoming a climate-conscious baker was ignited in her personal life but then involved a radical career change out of environmental media and into studying abroad at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and interning at a Michelin-starred restaurant. The ingenuity and precision of the pastry chefs she encountered inspired her to harness her culinary skills for a greater environmental cause. Explore how Caroline is developing best practices, creating a gateway for at-home bakers into regenerative foods. Currently, Caroline tests recipes for a cookbook author who shares her passion for climate-friendly baking. She experiments with Kernza flour, spelt flour, and non-dairy milks, sharing her innovations on her blog and social media. Caroline encourages culinary exploration with novel elements and the generous sharing of discoveries. She underscores the importance of supporting businesses that embrace climate-friendly ingredient choices. Discover the perspectives of other bakers on seed-saving and recipes that prioritize the climate's welfare. Envision the future of global sustenance in the decades and centuries ahead. Connect with Nori ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Purchase Nori Carbon Removals⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Nori's website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Nori on Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our other podcast, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carbon Removal Newsroom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carbon Removal Memes on Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carbon Removal Memes on Instagram Resources Caroline on Twitter Pale Blue Tart The Sustainable Baker podcast Earth Alliance Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute of America Kneading Conference Mark Hyman --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/support

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Sustain-A-Grain: https://www.sustainagrain.com/The Land Institute: https://landinstitute.org/Today's episode features Peter Miller and Brandon Schlautman, Ph.D. of Sustain-A-Grain. Sustain-A-Grain has a two-part mission: to introduce consumers to Kernza® perennial grain and to support family farms in growing Kernza®. The team has been growing Kernza® themselves for nearly 5 years in close collaboration with The Land Institute—where Kernza® was first developed. They are certified seed dealers, handlers, and growers, and they work with dozens of farmers across the Great Plains to grow and market their grain. They also work with food companies, restaurants, breweries, and distilleries to source high-quality Kernza®. This is an interesting episode about the potential for perennial grains, and what it takes to commercialize a brand new crop. The problems are different that what you would expect. For example, Kernza® has received a ton of press and excitement from some pretty big end users, which sounds like a great thing, and ultimately it is. But Peter and Brandon have to find ways to build the supply chain in a way that buyers remain happy, farmers remain profitable, and supply and demand can grow together at a sustainable pace. No easy task. We'll talk about the research and breeding efforts that continue to go into the crop and what this means for farmers, food companies, and the future of agriculture. Peter Miller, CEO & Co-founder, has global agribusiness experience and previously worked in three early-stage startups, including helping to launch FarmLead's online grain marketplace. Peter has over 10 years of operations and private equity experience in the ag industry. He holds an MBA from University of Illinois.Dr. Brandon Schlautman, Chief Science Officer & Co-founder, is a crop scientist who previously led cranberry breeding and domestication efforts at University of Wisconsin and perennialization of edible legumes at The Land Institute. Brandon serves as the Research Director for a $10M National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant for perennial cover crops and holds a Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin.We begin the conversation with Brandon talking about where this all started, the place where Kernza® has been developed over the past 20 years: at The Land Institute.

In this episode, Gwen Williams and Tahir Sandhu, Co-owners of Artisan Naan Bakery, chat about unexpected flavor varieties, a pilot project with Kernza perennial grain, retail expansion and the joy of loving what they do.

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.Aubrey Streit Krug is the Director of the Perennial Cultures Lab at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. The Land Institute is a nonprofit and one of the global leaders in sustainable agriculture research and education. Aubrey grew up in a small town in Kansas where her parents farm wheat and raise cattle. She is a writer, teacher, and researcher who studies stories of relationships between humans and plants. Aubrey gives us a crash course in understanding the perennial grain ecosystem, its history, the research behind how to develop new crops, and the labor needs to sustain production. We also cover the education required to introduce new crops for human consumption, equity considerations on access to crops, and why the ability to grow grains year-round is key to sustaining global food stability. In this episode, we cover: [03:03]: Aubrey's background and connection to farming[05:27]: Her interest in community and diverse perspectives in agriculture[07:19]: The semi-arid grassland ecosystem of the Great Plains[08:28]: The Land Institute's focus on developing sustainable alternatives, including perennial grain crops[12:26]: Paradigm shifts in food and agriculture throughout human history [15:00]: The need to undergo another paradigm shift, from annual grain crops to diverse perennials [17:45]: Two pathways to creating perennial crops: hybridization and domestication [22:21]: Domestication as a process of human co-evolution and interdependence with plants [23:41]: Perennial rice and Kernza perennial grain success stories[27:07]: The diverse skilled labor roles needed to sustain perennial grain agriculture[29:55]: Ensuring just and equitable distribution of perennial crops with inclusive research processes [32:11]: The Land Institute's civic science program and community participation[35:17]: Challenges posed by climate change and the need for resilient agricultural systems[37:27]: What gives Aubrey hope and joy Resources Mentioned:The next era of crop domestication starts nowGet connected: Aubrey Twitter /The Land Institute TwitterYin Twitter / LinkedInMCJ Podcast / Collective*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.Episode recorded on May 4, 2023 (Published on Jul 20, 2023)

What's it like being an organic brewery in 2023? Harder than you might think, but getting a little better. My guest is Sandy Boss Febbo of Minnesota's Bang Brewery and she'll explain.  I love hearing about breweries that are not trying to be everything to every one. The ones that were founded with a sense of purpose and continue to stick with it. Headed into the craft brewers converence in 2022 in Minneapolis, I heard about Bang Brewing, just over the river in St. Paul. It's an all organic brewery, with a low profile, robust local following, and a strong sense of identity.  Sandy Boss Febbo is the co-owner and co-brewer of Bang Brewing, with her husband Jay. The brewery opened in 2013 after the pair spent a fair amount of time homebrewing and honing recipes. A decade later the brewery is still committed to the original plan: to produce lagers and ale with only sustainably farmed, all-organic ingredients.  The brewery is located in a custom built pre-fabricated grain bin that also houses the taproom. The grounds feature rain gardents, a prairie beer garden, and is dotted with the unwavering focus on environmental responsibility and sustainability. Sandy and Jay are founders of the Organic Brewers Alliance, members of the NRDC's Brewers For Clean Water Campaign, Partner Member of the Artisan Grain Collaborative, and Patagonia Provisions Partner Brewer.For more Drink Beer, Think Beer check out All About Beer.This Episode is Sponsored By:Yakima Valley HopsLooking for an easy hop sourcing experience? Yakima Valley Hops offers the finest quality hops from right here in our Valley and premium growing regions around the world. Get the hops you need when you need them, with ultra-fast shipping and awesome customer service. With a full line of liquid hop products and all your favorite varieties, no contracts are needed to brew with the best. Shop now at YakimaValleyHops.com. Host: John Holl Guest: Sandy Boss Febbo Sponsors: All About Beer, Yakima Valley Hops Tags: Beer, Minnesota, Grain, Sustainability, Kernza, Process, Farming, History  

How many of y'all have heard of the long root ale? Climate smart honey oats cereal? How about Kernza? The main ingredient in these products, and the perennial grain that has the potential to revolutionize our modern agricultural system. Tune in today for a deep dive into Kernza and the other perennialization projects taking place at the land institute. Tessa Peters fills us in on the history of perennial grain research in the U.S., what Kernza is, where it grows, what conditions it prefers, what hurdles perennial grains have to overcome in our current agricultural model, and much more. Don't touch that dial! Find our guest at @thelandinstutue and us on instagram at @forestgardenpodcast. Links: https://kernza.org/ https://landinstitute.org/

Forever Green Bio-economy Dr Nick Jordan professor of agronomy and co-director of https://forevergreen.umn.edu/talks about how perennials like Kernza, woody crops like Hazelnuts as well as annual cover crops can transform American Agriculture

Wheat feeds billions but it has some big climate problems. Wheat production degrades the soil, which releases carbon. It also requires a lot of land. That means clearing land—often forest—to make room for it, which also releases carbon. Plus, wheat harms ecosystems: fertilizer runoff causes water pollution, and monoculture hurts biodiversity. One alternative? Kernza. Developed over decades by the Land Institute, it's a perennial relative of wheat that sequesters carbon with its massive root system. But does its carbon-sequestering power make it truly climate-friendly?   This week, Mike and Tamar talk about Kernza and the decades-long movement to domesticate the holy grail of grains: a crop that not only produces high yields but also improves the environment. To leave a message for Mike and Tamar, call the Climavores hotline at (508) 377-3449. Or email us at climavores@postscriptaudio.com. We might feature your question on a future episode.  Climavores is a production of Post Script Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hear from a Milwaukee man who has struggled with thoughts of suicide and the work he's doing to help others. Then, we learn how the Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee is working to support the next generation of Latinos in Wisconsin. We learn about a grain called Kernza that's changing farming in the Midwest. We tell you about the legends surrounding Friday the 13th. Plus, hear a poem inspired by the Streets of Old Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

The Earth is burning—so why don't more people care? It turns out, one way to get people's attention is to let them know that if things don't change (a lot, and soon), we might not have beer for much longer.  In her piece titled “Seeds of Change — The Promise (and Challenges) of New Brewing Grains,” which was published on September 28, 2022, freelance writer Hollie Stephens explores the world of experimental and sustainably oriented grains like Kernza and Salish Blue, which agricultural scientists hope will change the face of craft beer and the ingredients that it's made from. As a writer who often covers topics like sustainability and climate change, Hollie describes a sense of growing fear she feels as she learns more about the agricultural side of things. But in today's conversation, she also shares a sense of optimism due to the ingenuity and passion of people working to make the world not just a better place, but one that simply continues to exist. Today, you'll hear about her initial discovery of experimental grain growing programs and why she decided to dive into their origins, scientific importance, and their effects on craft beer. We also discuss the ways that we as consumers can help incentivize brewers to invest in this developing technology. As it turns out, things are changing whether we like it or not, so time is of the essence if we hope to keep up. Hollie says it's a wonderful time to be a beer drinker, but only if we collectively commit to understanding and engaging with where that beverage we all hold dear comes from, and where it might be going next.

Episode Notes Episode Summary For this episode of This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Casandra chat about more horrible things and some fixes. They talk about supply chain shortages, corn, ways to keep your house warmer without using a ton of energy or resources, dubious debunked how warming myths that also might burn it down, and a thorough introduction to hurricane preparedness. Host Info Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra or Instagram @House.Of.Hands. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Next Episode Hopefully will come out Friday, October 4th, and every two weeks there after. Transcript An easier to read version is available on our website TangledWilderness.org. This Month In the Apocalypse: October Brooke Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, one of your hosts today, along with the brilliant Margaret Killjoy and the iridescent Casandra. This is October 2022 installment of your most favorite Live Like The World Is Dying sub-segment, This Month In The Apocalypse. Today, we're going to talk about the latest shortages, the looming crisis in energy, fuel sources and what can be done about the crisis, war, climate disasters and probably some shit about the economy. But first, we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other luminous podcasts on our network. Doo doo doo. Jingle Speaker 1 Kiteline is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system, you'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions and how it impacts all of us. Margaret Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite, whispered words, a note passed hand to hand, a request submitted the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bare it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kiteline, we hope to share these words across the prison walls. Jingle Speaker 1 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at Kiteline radio.no blogs.org. Brooke And we're back. Quick introductions for those of you who might not remember each of us or might be listening for the first time. I'm Brooke an indigenous, baby anarchist woman who loves spreadsheets home remodeling and connecting with the land. And I'm going to toss to Margaret. Margaret I'm Margaret, and I am someone who writes a lot and is on podcasts a lot. And does useful stuff too. But, those are some of the things I do. And I will pass it to Casandra. Casandra I wasn't prepared for an introduction. Margaret Neither was I. Casandra My name is Cassandra. I garden and weave. Check! Margaret Yay. Brooke And do amazing art. Casandra Yeah, I make books. And drink tea. Okay. Margaret That's good tea. Casandra Yeah. Margaret Back to you, Brooke. Casandra Oh, yeah, we're supposed to remember to plug things. Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness is putting out our...Well, it's not really technically our first book is it, Margaret? Brooke Speaking of books, I feel like there's a book that you've been working on lately. I know we're supposed to plug things at the end. But this sounds great to mention it now. Margaret No, but it's our first book is a new collective. Casandra Okay, we're putting out our first book as the new collective. And also, first book in a long time, called "Try Anarchism For Life: The Beauty Of Our Circle" by Cindy Barukh Milstein. And I think I sent it to the printer yesterday. So fingers crossed. Brooke If people want to preorder that, Casandra, where can they do that? Casandra On the Stranger's site. And if you preorder it, you'll get some cute little book plates, which I didn't realize other people didn't know what book plates are. But, they're like the little stamps or stickers, you can put at the beginning of books. And it says "ex libris," which means 'from the library of,' and you can write your name so everyone knows it's your book. Brooke Nice. So check out our website for that awesome book, which is beautifully designed, and actually a really, really good read. I really enjoyed it. All right, in our very first episode of This Month In The Apocalypse, one of the things we talked about was things that were in shortage, and surprise, surprise, we are continuing to have supply chain shortages. The thing that made me recall this and want to bring it up, again, is that I saw an NPR article in the last week about the fact that Adderall is facing a shortage, which is interesting, and did a little more digging on what's going on there. And part of it is that they had labor shortages. So, they fell behind in their production. And then the part that was super interesting to me that I've never thought about, Adderall is a highly controlled substance. It's probably a well known fact, part of the part of the highly controlled portion of it is that manufacturers are regulated in how much of it they can produce. So, if they fall behind their schedule, it's not as easy as just like, "Oh, we're gonna do a double shift and make extra this month," they have to get like, special dispensation to be able to make more. So they can make the amount that they're allowed to, but not more than that without special permission. Margaret So they can't catch up? Brooke They can if like they apply for FDA approval and get, you know, temporary approval or whatever to make extra, assuming they can get the ingredients they need and workers to actually make the extra. But yeah, it's not as easy as just like, "Oh, we need to make extra." There's a whole bunch of extra stuff going on that they have to do to do that. Casandra Yay, bureaucracy. Brooke Yeah, totally. So ration your Adderall? That's probably probably not how that works. There are other medical supplies that are still in shortage too. This, I also found interesting because we haven't seen it in the headlines as much, or at least I haven't, right.? Like, it hasn't been in the news. But, there have been things that have continued to be in short supply of the throughout the whole pandemic. One of the items is gloves. There's lots of different kinds of gloves that medical providers use, you know, you've got vinyl gloves, and nitrile gloves, and powdered, and non powdered, and the thicker and thinner, and all of that kind of stuff. And so there's like several different types of specific gloves that are in short supply that.... Casandra When you said gloves, I was picturing like knitted gloves. Like why? Brooke Sorry, no, like medical gloves. Casandra That makes much more sense. Brooke Just get your grandma's to start knitting, and it'll be okay. Casandra Yep. Brooke Also, testing supplies are in short supply for medical providers. And specifically, it was like the equipment used to collect samples, store samples, transport samples, for medical tests, that portion of it. And then I guess, ventilator parts are still in short supply, as well. Margaret I guess that makes sense, since everyone wants that. Brooke Yeah. So that's the medical side of things. And then other things out in the real world, this is one I hadn't heard about, but tampons, I guess I've been in short supply. So it's good time to learn menstrual extraction. If you know somebody that can teach you that if you want to learn, or looking for other options, if you haven't previously been open to trying things like menstrual cups, might be a time to do that. Margaret, this is a fun throwback to our first one, there was this thing that was in short supply that you mentioned, and that each of us have two have on our respective homes. Margaret Um, wind...I'm trying to come up with something clever, I know the actual answer, but trying to come up with something funny. Casandra Garage doors? Margaret Yeah, it's garage doors. Brooke To the point where like, if you're a contractor, and you're going to build a house, they're recommending that before you start with anything related to the building of your house, the very first thing you do is order the garage doors, because it will take basically the whole time for them to get there. Like the last thing that will arrive and that you will install in the house is the garage door because of how long they taking. Casandra I knew it! Casandra Okay, I feel like every, like it's a running joke, and you all will always bring up garage doors. And every time I'm like, But, why is there a shortage? And then every time I forget, so I'm gonna ask again. Why? Brooke I don't think we talked about why last time. Margaret I don't think we have a 'why.' I think that there's just a lot of shit that is like, my guess is because it's so specialized that they make a certain amount. And then I don't know, but it might be something more about new homes? I don't know, The answer is I don't know, Brooke Part of it is lumber. Because remember, lumber was in short supply, like lumber mills shut down early in the pandemic. And so there was like a lot of lumber that was not being produced. And then when they started up again, because the price of lumber has gone up the price of garage doors are like two or three times higher, depending on where you live than they were pre pandemic. And part of that's because the lumber is so much more expensive. Margaret Okay, but hear me out. It'd be prettier anyway, it's instead of having the kind that rolls up above, just have like big old barn doors that swing open, and just make them out of two by fours. And it will totally work. And I'm sure there's no specific reason that people have developed a much more specialized solution. Brooke Yeah, definitely not. Casandra And there can just be like a rope from the door to your fence. So when you drive up to your fence, you can just grab the rope and pull it. Margaret Yeah, totally. Casandra And that will open the garage door. Margaret Yeah, or some sort of like system where you like knock something over as you're driving up towards your house. It like knocks over the ball, that rolls down the hill and it hits the thing and then it does the thing. And then the garage door swings open and then hits something that it shouldn't have and then starts another chain reaction and then the whole neighborhoods on fire. Casandra Yeah, totally secure Brooke I was with you till the end. So a real nice Rube Goldberg type of garage door opening. Margaret Yeah, I think that is the solution for most of these things that we're missing. Like for example, lack of gloves. Have doctors considered using knit gloves? Brooke Really great point, Margaret. Really great point. Moving on. Computer chips continue to be in short supply.That was an issue like this time last year. It got a little better. Casandra Wait, what news? Brooke Computer chips, Casandra Computer ships? I'm sorry, I... Brooke The ones that go into like everything, like not just computers, but like they go into cars now, they go into your television, they go you know... Casandra My contribution today is going to be to mishear everything. Brooke That's alright, it's going to be way more fun that way. Margaret Okay, so tortilla chips, also chips conduct electricity, probably if you put enough electricity into them. Brooke I don't know if they have any conductive materials in them, Margaret. Maybe we need to add some metal to our tortilla chips. Brooke And then they can do this. Margaret Yeah. Margaret It's good for everyone. And just mark it for anyone who has braces that they should avoid them. Brooke Okay, yeah. Excellent. Renewable too because corn. Margaret That's not something I'm going to talk about later about. Anyway. Brooke Sadly, baby formula continues to be in shortage. Again, that's not making the headlines like it was when it first started. But, that is still a major issue. So, check on your people. Do what you can to help out there. Unfortunately, that's ongoing and doesn't still doesn't have a solution in sight right now. They've been...like they ramped up production on it and stuff, but it's just still not enough. And then the raw ingredients that go into make it too, of course, have continued to have problems. Here's a really sad one for you, Margaret. It's it's one of your favorite things. And the concept of this item tends to be a sponsor of one of those other podcasts. Casandra Guns. Margaret Oh no, smiling children? Brooke No, there's plenty of them. You only really need one. So that's, that's okay. Margaret Don't tell me that there's no potatoes. Brooke Potatoes are in short supply. Margaret This has gone historically badly for my people. Brooke There was like a whole famine or something. Except there wasn't. Casandra Something. Brooke Yeah, sorry. potatoes, potatoes in short supply. Okay. Casandra But it's like harvest potato season right now? Are they just already anticipating that there won't be enough potatoes? Brooke Yeah, that's part of it. Again, we've talked about in previous episodes, how like, there have been really weird climate shit happening, especially like in the US that's affected the growth and production of things. Like here where we live, our Spring was way long and cold and wet. And it really fucked up the growing cycles of things. So, loss. Casandra Yeah, my potatoes didn't do great. Brooke Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there were losses due to that early in the season of like potato plants. And then they're not anticipating, you know, what they are getting out of the ground to be, excuse me, as plentiful as it might otherwise be. Or normally be. Yeah, that's sad. Less sad, Christmas trees are probably going to be in short supply again, this year, they're not sure. But, they were last year, and the conditions that cause that are looking to be much the same. So yeah, living things that get chopped down in order to decorate your house for a month, fewer of those. Sorry? Margaret Alternatives include decorating a living tree, or moving into a house that some old weird person left a fake Christmas tree in the attic. Or using last year's tree. Casandra I'm a big fan of rosemary trees, and then you just plant it. Brooke You can also paint a tree on your wall somewhere and then just set out presents. You can make out of cardboard with your children. Margaret Or, you can realize its pagan idols idolatry and realize that a true Christian would never celebrate Christmas. Casandra Or you can convert, and do Hanukkah, because they overlap this year. Brooke Yes, I love it when they overlap. Casandra Menorahs are pretty. Margaret There's so many options. Yeah. Brooke Okay, cool. And then our last supply chain thing, which will be a nice toss is that energy and fuel are in short supply and expected to be in even shorter supply, which means I can toss this to Margaret to talk more about that issue. Margaret Yay, everything's doomed. I mean, everything's gonna be fine. Somewhere in between these two extremes is the truth. Okay, so Europe is having a power crisis. And not the old fashioned kind where people decide they don't want kings anymore, but kinda about natural gas mostly. And, it is the worst energy crisis since World War II. And, there's a lot of causes of it. The most immediate cause, that is absolutely the most immediate cause, and it's, it's not the straw that broke the camel's back, it's like the two by four that broke the camel's back, is the is that Russia has responded...Okay, so no, I'm gonna start at the beginning instead. Okay, so for 20 years or so... Brooke No, start in the middle! Margaret So for 20 years or so, Euroupe has been trying to use fossil fuels...If I was really starting at the beginning it would be like: the economic project that is Europe was caused by stripping all of the natural resources out of the developing world. But, for the last 26 years, Europe has been like, "We want to be the seen as the people who are really good. And so we're going to use fewer fossil fuels." And so, for about 20 years, they've been trying to work on that. However, this has basically increased their dependence on other places, like Russia, primarily Russia, in this case, where natural gas imports cheap, natural gas imports from Russia have been absolutely a mainstay. However, this has been crisis for the past two Winters too, even before the Ukrainian war, basically. Because, if you're going to have renewables as the way that you're trying to make a sustainable world, it has to be coupled with degrowth, instead of just like continuing to have a growing thing, because like, actually, renewables create less power overall at the moment, right. So, increased dependence on Russia, and then Russia has not officially cut off natural gas exports to Europe, what they did instead is they stopped 89% of their natural gas exports. And, they did it by saying, "Oh, we have a leak, and we can't fix it because of the sanctions. So, I guess you have to stop the economic sanctions against us, or you don't get any natural gas." And so they're blackmailing the West, and I don't know, whatever, I mean, I don't expect better of them. They're in the middle of fucking fading and genociding Ukraine, so whatever. But, this is a problem. And also increasing drought that's been hitting Europe really badly, it fucks up a bunch of other things, too. It fucks up their hydroelectric. And then, it even fucks up their coal, because coal is transported by river. And, they can't if the rivers are too low. And so the Right wing wants to blame a lot of this on Germany's shutdown of like the completely safe nuclear power plants or whatever. But, I think that that's worth contrasting with...France is actually at half nuclear power right now, because corrosion, lagging repairs, and general lack of safety have caused the nuclear power plants about to...to have to operate at about half capacity. So nucular, actually, sometimes complicated. And the heatwave has also meant that they can't use river water to cool the plants, because there's the nuclear power plants, and the other, I think other power plants too, because they use river water to cool it. But, I think it's a combination of the river water being much hotter than it usually is. And then also much less of it. Though, the one weird thing that people are like hoping will like pull it through at the last minute is there's now this new micro nucular reactor that's supposed to be safe, because it uses molten salts and fuel rods. And it fits onto a tractor trailer and powers 1000 homes, and is not yet being produced commercially. But, it's like a thing that people say that they've developed. So, the UK has seen energy prices, the energy price increase has doubled since last year's increase. So, it's not like...energy prices aren't double, but they have grown at double the rate, protests are breaking out, people are starting to burn their utility bills. And what's kind of cool is that you'd sort of expect this kind of protest to kind of go in a Right wing direction about like, you know, fuck you, let's go frack or whatever. But, actually, it's, at least what I've seen is that the protests are mostly coming out of a Left wing and a-political position. And, a lot of is like pushing to nationalize gas, and basically say like, "This is fucked up. This is affecting the poor people more than anyone else." Gas being, in this case used for heating, but also is used for power generation, and then a lot of industrial manufacturing. And, this is not just a matter of rising costs, it's literally a potential in the next couple of weeks, there might be blackouts and power rationing. Various places are limiting power use, like businesses are being encouraged to turn off their air conditioners, and all this kind of stuff. And of course, everything happens in a vacuum with this kind of thing. So, there's no way...wait, no, no, this will cause stagnation economically and could easily trigger a recession. Margaret And the other thing that it does, is it creates this awful fucking feedback loop. We talked about last time where like the feedback loop of like, all this flooding, destroying Pakistan, causing them to get IMF loans, which cause more austerity, which cause more, you know, climate change or whatever, you have a very similar feedback cycle, in that it's the...because of this stuff that's happening, more fossil fuel production is happening, coal plants are coming back online. Fracking is no longer banned in the UK. And of course, the pipeline attack that didn't help any of this, that was probably Russia, but Russia blames it on the US, was the largest methane release in documented history. So, even though the pipes weren't even an active use, the fact that they were ruptured caused the largest methane release in documented history. And of course, it was the heatwave the summer that spiked power usage. And so, climate change causes people to get more desperate for power. So, we enter to a vicious cycle, which will definitely not have any effects anywhere but Europe, and we can probably be done with that issue unless someone else has something to say about it affecting elsewhere. Casandra Yeah, I was reading about how the domino effect is impacting the US. It sort of seems self evident, but I'll talk about it anyway. So it looks like 40% of the US of our electricity is generated by natural gas, which I didn't realize. So, you know, in the US, we either heat our homes with natural gas or electric, but natural gas prices impact electricity prices, maybe someone else can explain that to me, because I don't quite get it. But, the moral of the story is that when natural gas prices go up, all of the other prices go up as well. Yeah, they're expecting anything from a 17% increase to a third increase? I don't understand. Yeah, thank you. 33%. So that sucks. It's not as bad as Europe, like I'm looking at...I was looking at Germany in the UK, and it sounds like their prices are way, way, way, way higher, but it's still not gonna be great here. So, I was hoping we could talk about things that people can do. Like ways they can keep their home warm, and insulated and stuff like that. Brooke and I are both in the Pacific Northwest, which is known for its mild winters, but we also get lots of rain and damp and then Margaret is on the East Coast and has much harsher winters. So maybe between the three of us, we can come up with some good ideas. Brooke Let me start with what I tell my kid which is put on some socks and a goddamn sweater. Casandra And a hat. Feet and head. Margaret And then what I tell your kid which is, "If you if you make a...if you build a fire, if you build a man a fire, he's warm for a day, but if you set a man on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life. Brooke Well we do like to set men on fire in this house, so that's that's perfectly acceptable here. If any men come in, you can be set on fire for our warmth. Margaret Yeah, yeah, that's a renewable resource. Casandra Because, I mean, we know that lumber and wood prices have gotten up and you got to use something in your fireplace, Margaret And I hear that they're made out of wood. That's why we throw them in the lake to find out. Cause men are witches. Wait, hold on. Okay, so sweaters and hats, okay. Okay. Casandra Some things I learned. So clothes dryers can be up to 20% of a home's energy bill. I had no idea. And in my head, a dry...like drying racks aren't good idea where we live because it's so damp here. But maybe that's not the case. So, I'm gonna try that this winter. Checking...I've always rented so the the idea of like checking the filters and shit on my whatever way your home is heated has never occurred to me, but apparently that's super important. Right, Brooke? Brooke Absolutely. I'm gonna be totally honest, I don't know if that has anything to do with the, I guess it probably helps the efficiency of the device. Yeah, I do it every six months, because I know it helps the air quality in my house. And that's important. Casandra I don't even know how to do that. So you should come over. Margaret There's both filters in the HVAC. Sorry. Casandra Let me know, tell me more, I don't understand. Margaret As far as I understand, there's both the filters that are like the big screen filters that people are like run out and strap to their fans to do air filter cleaning, right? And then there's like, at least in my house has an oil heater and in an oil heater, there's a filter, an oil filter, and so my presumption is that it just takes more power to push things through a clogged up filter, both air filter and oil filter. That's my guess. The main thing I learned the hard way by moving somewhere with harsh winters and an oil furnace is that if you let your furnace run dry, it breaks. And so you actually have to keep it full, which is cool because my gauge is broken, so I just need to every now and then like call and be like, "Hey, can you fill it up?" And they're like, "How much do you need?" And I'm like, "I don't know. You fill it up." I did learn that heating oil and diesel are functionally the same thing, although you're not allowed to put heating oil in your car, because that they'd like stain it red so that you can get caught if you do that. Casandra Weird. Margaret Yeah, and there are some diff...please don't run out and put diesel in your home oil filter because you heard some girl who lives in the mountains tell you to. I haven't fucking done this. And but, some people I think sometimes like top off, like in a hurry. They'll do that if they keep diesel around for like their tractor or whatever the fuck. Brooke I mean, it's probably better than...may be....I'm guessing, totally guessing, that it might be better than letting it run dry, because that can be an expensive fuckup. Margaret Yeah, if you do that you have to change at very least the oil filter. And then if not the also the fucking spark plugs and all this shit and the parts are cheap, the capacity to do it without exploding things is harder. This is sort of beside the point that only applies to oil. Let's talk about other ways to heat homes. Casandra So, yeah, other ways to heat your homes or more like how to keep heat in. I was researching this anyway, because my house has lots of windows like huge, like walls of windows, which is beautiful, but they're all single pane and none of them seal. Like literally, there's no, I don't even, I still haven't figured out what this type of window's called, but it's like slats of...horizontal slats of glass sort of layered on top of each other, and you can crank it so they tilt open or crank it so they tilt shut, but there's nothing actually...like air just you know, comes in. So using that fun, classy plastic stuff that's temporary to cover your windows. That's one of my plans this year, the few windows that don't have that tilty glass, that's an official term, I'm going around the edges and caulking them. I checked on my door seals. I learned that they're like energy efficient electric blankets. Casandra I'm anticipating that if I set my set my thermostat a lot lower and like use those while I'm working during the day or even at night, maybe that will be helpful. Margaret Oh, that's cool. Brooke Heavy curtains can help too. With Windows. Casandra Yeah! Inulated curtains! Brooke That can be a real trade off if you have any like seasonal effective disorder, light issues, but like they can do a lot to keep the cold back if you have a heavy curtain that you hang over the window. Casandra Totally, yeah, those are super effective. Margaret And then you can play the fun game of opening them when the sun's out and then closing them when the sun's gone. Casandra Though here when the sun's out, it's colder. Margaret Oh, okay. Yeah. Casandra So, that's why we're all sad all winter. Margaret Yeah. Casandra Let's see, did I find anything else exciting? People are on social media right now sharing all of these like wild ideas about how to heat your house. And, I haven't tried these. I'm not going to vouch for them. But some of them are really interesting. So, one is like, when you're baking, you put very, already dry, that's important, bricks in the bottom of your oven, because they hold in heat. So, when you're done baking, you can open your oven and turn your oven off and the bricks will keep your house apparently. People are making a little like tea light and flower pot heaters. Margaret Can I talk shit on those really quick? Casandra Yeah, please do. Margaret They're bullshit. They're absolutely bullshit. Casandra I kind of figured. Also, like open flames? Margaret Yeah, no. And like actually, a lot of them the the actual clay pot can get hot enough to catch the candle wax on fire. And so, there's been like a bunch of houses, people have like burned down their houses trying to use these fucking things. And it would take like, I think it I looked this up the other day, it would take like hundreds of these to heat a small room. The time in which that this is a reasonably efficient thing to do is an emergency or survival situation. If you make...if you're in a fucking tent, if you're in, if you're in your house, you can do this, you can throw a blanket. If you're trying to heat up the space hidden under a blanket. A candle can be a meaningful part of that. But, if you're trying to heat up even a small room, they're not a meaningful part of it in terms of the trade off, but the stuff about thermal mass like these bricks, sorry, is it okay to just tangent on this? Casandra No please do. These are my like things that people are talking about that kind of sketched me out. Margaret Yeah, and so it's like in that I haven't specifically researched putting the bricks in the oven. What I would probably do, I mean, you want thermal mass thermal mass doesn't heat things. It's like a battery. It's a heat battery, right? And so like for example, what a lot of people do is if you put like...thermal mass is often like clay or something like that. Some people even historically use like stored jugs of water and stuff where the sun comes in and heats it up or wherever your passive heating comes from. Then it radiates out that heat once the heat sources gone. And so, you can keep your house cooler at night by having a lot of thermal mass. This is one reason why cob houses have some advantages in a lot of climates and adobe and all that stuff right. And concrete even, can actually act as thermal mass, although I don't know as much about the efficiency of that. Brick houses have an advantage for this. But yeah, like a lot of the hacks around like, "Oh, light a candle," are like just a really good way to burn your house down. Casandra Well, it's not even just a candle. People are like building...like constructing these like...you take a flower pot. You know what I'm talking about? Margaret Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, so and that doesn't actually amplify...Okay, so this idea where you take the candle and you put the flower pot on top of it and the terracotta flower pot is amplifies the heat, it doesn't amplify shit, you can't amplify heat. That's like one of the laws of thermodynamics. But you can't store the heat and you can centralize the, so it doesn't get lost as much, right? So in some weird ways as maybe like a handwarmer, it would like be maybe a little bit more effective, right? Because Casandra That's an expensive handwarmer. I'm gonna knit gloves. Margaret Yeah, totally. And so it, the, the flower pot itself does get so hot, and especially if you put enough candles under it to make it useful. And you can see there's a bunch of like research that people have done, where they're like, "Oh, the flower pot gets up to 170 degrees with one candle or like 400 something degrees with four candles," or something roughly like that. I don't have the numbers in front of me. But, it doesn't make enough heat to fill a space. It instead is actually specifically preventing that heat from going out into the space, which is... Casandra Which is why it gets so hot. Margaret Yeah, totally. And again, like I mean, I don't know, and there's some advantages to it. But overall, however, I think the alcohol lamps that people make, the like DIY, there's like, like the heater block, and I think it's Philly, I can't remember. Brooke Portland has one. Margaret They like make...you can make alcohol lamps, as little portable heaters. And, and when you're talking about like a tent or something in a survival situation, they are fairly effective. I actually don't know enough about the BTUs that they put out to, to in terms of heating and other spaces. That that's beyond what I know. That what's my rant about candles, sorry. Casandra No, I appreciate the rant. My contribution was gonna be like, people are talking about sketchy shit that I don't know about. So confirming that it's sketchy shit is great. Yeah, I don't know. Do y'all know any other fun ways? I'm trying to think about like, my grandparents live in a really old house, and they have a wood stove, which heats one room. And the house is very long and thin. So, it heats one room on one end of the house and their bedrooms on the other end. So, all of the weird shit I've seen them do over the years to stay warm, like the window plastic, or those like long sock things that you put at the bottom of doors, you know, I'm talking about? Margaret Oh, yeah, totally. My house. I mean, I clearly bought my house with like 'prepper' in mind, but my house has the two different wood burning stoves, or one's a pellet stove, which are more like human energy efficient, but they require electricity, so a little bit more complicated. It's like a wood burning stove, but it's a little pellets of fuel that you can buy super cheap, but you have to buy them. You can make them yourself, but it's super labor intensive and complicated. I looked into it for a while. And then I have a regular wood burning stove in the basement and the wood burning stove is actually hooked into the HVAC like vent system in my house. And so that is something you can do is you can put a wood burning stove and hook it up to...this is not a simple retrofit. Installation in general, just fucking add insulation to your house however you can, which sometimes means like, you know, tearing open the walls and putting in more insulation or putting more insulation in your attic. If you have an attic or Casandra Covering your fireplace when you're not using it, that's one I'm learning. Margaret Oh, really? Oh, that makes sense. Because it just goes up out into the...Yeah, Casandra Yeah, even when it's closed, it can still suck heat out. Not using fans for too long, which sucks. I'm thinking about like bathrooms. You know? Margaret I see Yeah, yeah. Casandra Like, above your kitchen stove. Margaret Yeah, hmm, that makes sense. Brooke One thing I've done for the last several years to conserve energy use is to consolidate where in the house I am located and or with my person, or people are located to a single room or a portion of the house and then closing up the rest of it and closing the vents that go there and all of that and just focusing the heat on wherever I am or I am with my kid or whatever it is. Casandra Oh, closing the vents you're not using as a good idea. Brooke Yeah, so like when she's off at school while I'm working, I close the door to my office, close most of the rest of the house. And then when it's like the two of us, we'll hang out in just her room with the vent open, or just our two bedrooms that are next to each other with vents open. Margaret And it's it's another advantage of people who choose to live communally is that I mean more people in a house is just going to warm things up a lot, like putting a bunch of people into a room with closed...that's like closed off and insulated is a real good way to stay warm. So like, I don't know, use this as an opportunity to get close to someone, I mean, very consensually and stuff. Brooke I was gonna say cuddling. Cuddling is a good way to provide heat. Margaret Get a dog. Brooke Or fucking Margaret I take back the part about the dog. Okay. Casandra They're also, both in Europe and I know state by state and the US, there're also energy and utility assistance programs and grants that have always been available, but it's seems like more are starting to become available. So, if you live somewhere colder than me, it's a good thing to look into. Margaret Well, and then also in Oregon, starting in 2024, Medicaid is going to cover expenses related to climate change in terms of like, generators and air filters and shit like that. Brooke That's amazing. I haven't heard that. Margaret I just read about it while I was getting ready for this episode. Brooke If you think you may qualify for one of the energy assistance programs, that's something to look into sooner rather than later, like, Now, instead of before the colds get real high, or the bills get real high. I know that one of the programs here in our town, for instance, only has a few days a month in which they accept applications. And we'll even close that, you know, for the next month if they got too many in the previous month kind of a thing. Casandra Yeah. Yeah, then, yeah. The The only other thing I wanted to bring up with all of this is that, you know, we've talked in past episodes about how expensive food is getting and how expensive everything's getting, and with rising energy costs, that's just going to contribute to inflation more because of businesses are having to pay more money to stay open. You know? Margaret Yeah. Brooke But Biden just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, so everything's gonna be fine now. Casandra Right? Brooke He did it. Casandra Okay? Brooke He solved it. Margaret Yeah, thanks, O-Biden. Casandra 'O-Biden?' is that what you said? Brooke Haven't you heard that joke? Margaret Usually, it's because you want to complain about something. The gas prices are high, like, "Thanks, O-Biden," because people always said, "Thanks, Obama." Casandra Okay. Yeah. Thanks for explaining jokes to me. Brooke Well, Biden's just Obama's puppet. I mean, haven't you heard that he's old and senile, and it's actually just secretly Obama still running the country through Biden? Margaret Who's totally not old and senile. Casandra I mean, according to Tulsi this morning, it's it's actually the elite Cabal. So. Brooke There's a whole other conversation I want to have with you about why everyone is so anti--fucking-semetic. But that's like not on our topic list. Casandra Oh, gosh, the French Revolution. Brooke If we want to do a segue I really really want to talk about it. Casandra Now we're gonna segue to talk about the French Revolution. Margaret Welcome to Mediocre People Who Made Lateral Moves, the new podcast about all the revolutions that have happened Casandra and how people blamed it all on the Jews. Margaret The only revolutions accepted are the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican Revolution kinda, yeah. Anyway, Brooke This is the thing I don't understand. Like, why why is anti-semitism been such a global thing for fucking ever? Like, I can't think of another group of people that have had it quite like the Jews. Casandra It's called the coldest hatred for a reason. Margaret I mean, everyone has it different. I think anti-blackness is also real fucking old and anti-indigenous as soon as we find y'all. Casandra There's these interesting accounts of of...We should not go on this tangent. Brooke But it's interesting. Casandra I could talk for too long. Brooke It's topical. Casandra It's always topical. Brooke Exactly. Casandra Oh, what were some of our other fun topics? Margaret Okay, let's talk about hurricanes. Can I talk about hurricanes? Casandra Hurray! Margaret Oh, wait first I wanna talk about about corn really quickly. It's like a short note. Okay, so by 2053, the Corn Belt won't be able to grow corn. Brooke What? Casandra Wow. Margaret Because there will be days 125 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. And of course, corn is already having trouble now. It's not like a switch that will be flipped in 30 years. And also, my cynical ass has been proven right every time someone's like, "All of the X will happen by 2080." I'm like, that's gonna be way sooner. And then like 2020 comes around, they're like, "Yeah, nevermind this is sooner." And then so some of the solutions that people are trying to come up with around this, some of them are like make a lot of sense about like, being a little less monocroppy and like, and people are like getting really into perennial grains. But, of course they're doing it in like weird capitalist ways. So there's like weird named ways to be less monocrappy. And there's also this perennial grain that's like trademarked called Kernza which is a plant name with a little reserved symbol after his name. So that's how you know, it's good. And basically, a lot of the existing perennial grains are actually more like hays and things are for foraging. And so intermediate wheat grass is Kernza. It's a type of intermediate wheat grass, which is not actually wheat, but has a similar grains. However, they're currently trying to hybridize it with wheat and it's hard to bake with because it's not as gluttony. Unfortunately, it still has some gluten, so it's not the solution for that problem, either. But, people are trying to do some weird shit. Then I could talk about hurricanes unless y'all wanna talk about corn. Casandra Most grass seed is edible. That's my contribution. Brooke Also tubers. So plant yourself some day-lilies, dahlias. Casandra Turnips. Brooke They're pretty and then you can eat them. Casandra We should bring back neeps as a instead of mashed potatoes, mashed neeps. Margaret Y'all are just making up things. Casandra We're listening now. Margaret Casandra's always making up plants that don't exist. There's only three plants: corn, potato, and grapes. Casandra I thought it was wheat. Margaret Oh, yeah, and wheat. Brooke I know you've seen apples. And also, I've given you kale. So. Margaret That's just fancy. It's just different forms of...okay to be fair, broccoli, kale...Can you help me list off all of these things that are the same plant? Casandra Brassicas? Margaret Yeah. Brooke Cauliflower? Brussels sprouts, cabbage, mustard. Margaret Everything is already secretly...the the secret cabal that we should be blaming is the brassicas. Casandra Plant families? Margaret No, just brassicas, because they're everything. Everywhere you look, it's brassicas. Casandra Unless it's a nightshade. Brooke I get what you're looking for. And I'm with you. Margaret Okay, so hurricanes. So, there's two things about hurricane survival. And one is like this, like promising thing, although it ties into some bougie shit is that like....cause obviously, people who are listening this...a lot of people are listening to us have dealt with hurricanes more immediately and recently than any of the three of us have. And so I don't mean to be light hearted about like, you know, like, whatever I want to say that, like people are dealing with this shit...I, I'm not trying to...It's a big fucking deal. Okay. One thing is that communities absolutely can be built to survive hurricanes. And it isn't done because people aren't rich enough. And because doing so is incentivized, and because people don't value this, right. It's like a combination of these things. Have you heard of this small town called Babcock Ranch that survived Hurricane Ian? Brooke Nope. Margaret Okay, there's this. It was built in 2015 People started moving into in 2018. It's a 2000 home community. And it's, it's sort of like actually mixed class a little bit. The houses start at 200,000 and go up to a million dollars. And it's, and they're like working on building condos and stuff. And it is meant to survive hurricanes. This is in fucking Florida. And it got hit by Ian. And so it makes sense to build things are meant to survive hurricanes. The streets are designed to absorb water. I think that they're designed to absorb water into like, basically almost a French drain system that runs underneath where there's like pipes or whatever. I know that they are capable of making this like some kind of concrete that water can just like flow right through. And I think that's what's happening. Yeah, Brooke Yeah, pervious concrete. yeah. Casandra What is that not everywhere? Brooke More expensive, Margaret Because people don't value infrastructure in this country. And and then there's, they use native landscaping everywhere to like limit flooding. They do all this stuff to like, make sure that...because flooding kills more people in hurricanes than wind. And so they do all of this stuff with native landscaping to limit flooding. The power and all the communication lines are buried, which is another thing that should just be happening everywhere, but isn't. Like where I live, I lose power all the fucking time, because like, "Oh, sorry, a tree fell on a power plant. Power Pole." Casandra Are you laughing at me Brooke? Brooke I'm picturing your backyard right now where you could like, garrote yourself with your power lines in your back yard. Casandra That my landlord is like, "This is not a problem." Yeah. Margaret Yeah, no, totally. And like, every...where I live like a tree falls on...it's like, it's like once a month, I lose power for a day, because I'm in the fucking mountains with really shallow soil, and so the trees fall over every time there's a windstorm, but we're in the fucking mountain. So there's wind storms all the time. Anyway, so they bury their power and internet lines. And the whole town has it's own solar array that powers like all of it, and 8000 other nearby homes. And so, to that 2.6 million people lost power during Hurricane Ian but not Babcock Ranch. And this was its first like trial by fire. And to be and to be fair to them they weren't total assholes about it. It wasn't like "I've got mine fuck you." They turned their school into a shelter for all the nearby folks, because it still had power even though, it like I think I think it couldn't be registered as an official storm shelter because didn't have a generator. But, it didn't need one. Casandra Cause it didn't need one? Margaret Because it had its own fucking micro grid. Casandra Wow, amazing. Bureaucracy. Margaret Yeah. So that's like, what we could be doing, right? We could have a society that like, prepares for these things, you know, and like there are ways to build things if people are able, if people are able to have the resources or like institutions are willing to give resources to make things that are appropriate to their area you know, you can have fire resistant homes you can have...I mean everything would just be concrete domes if I had my way as of the past six months, but then I'm sure get over this particular infatuation with concrete domes, but they're like everything proof. Okay, anyway. Except aesthetic proof. Okay, so actually, okay, whatever. The other thing that's... Brooke Also concrete is not great for the environment and climate change. It's really bad, actually. Margaret Yeah, but it has actually weirdly, I haven't looked in this little while, there's the embedded greenhouse gases and in terms of how long it lasts are like, compare favorably in a lot of ways. And also in terms of its insulating...Well, its insulating properties because of thickness. The way it's constructed is...the way it's made is not nice. You can you can also disagree with me about this. Brooke No, that's fair. And there's been recent research and work into putting cellulose into concrete mixtures that actually helps. I can't remember all the beneficial properties of it, but some really cool research that's out there about about mixing wood fibers. Margaret That's cool. Plus brutalism is way cooler than...anyways Okay, whatever. Now everyone's gonna hate me if I start talking about liking brutalism. Alright, so hurricanes, I have never survived a hurricane, just to be really clear. And so I'm not trying to tell everyone....okay, but I it's my disclaimer, I researched... Brooke You've also never not survived a hurricane. Margaret That's true. Oh, I see what you're saying. Every time I'm in a hurricane, I die. I've been playing this...I want...this video game I've been playing called...Okay. So, God, what if I was...the ultimate prepper would be Groundhog Day guy. That's what he really should have done. Margaret You ever seen that movie "Hurricane Day" where the person has no...groundhog, whatever, as a movie,... Casandra What? Casandra What does Groundhog Day have to do with hurricanes? Margaret Okay, but if you died and came back every single day, you could do so much research. The ultimate scientist Casandra No one can see me putting my head in my hands. Brooke They just heard the thunk of your skull on the table there. Margaret Alright, so what to do if you live in the path of a hurricane and you don't live in a little weird prepper neighborhood. First of all, if you live in a mobile home, I'm sure you already know that life sucks, because classism is real and awful, but mobile homes are in a really bad situation. And I'm sure you already know that. Hurricane timing is forcastable, but its course is less predictable. So, you can start knowing that a hurricane is possible, but you won't necessarily know where it exactly where it's going and exactly what kind of power it will have by the time it lands. Flooding kills more people than wind. And basically the best that I've been able to read and find different people have researched this is that like overall evacuating if the instructions say you should evacuate is probably the best move. And, voluntary evac happens before mandatory evac. Voluntary often comes earlier to basically give people to get a head start, because when everyone tries to leave an area all at once it fucking sucks. I'd love to at some point, talk to someone who has done more work into evac, and like talk about like what it means to transport oneself over a roads during those kinds of crises. But, and to be clear, mandatory evacuation doesn't mean they come around at gunpoint to force you out, it means that no one will help you while you stay. At least that's the official version of it. If you're going to stay or rather, if you like think that you might be stuck, consider being able to survive two weeks without outside help or without the grid. And the grid in this case means water. And it means probably the ability to heat food if you run on a municipal gas line or power, right. And that also means electricity. And so you want like for example 15 gallons of water per person in storage containers. You want two weeks of non refrigerated food that doesn't require utility cooking gas, because maybe you have a separate gas stove you know, or you're planning a cold cans of chili or whatever. You want a battery or hand crank radio, you want to get medical kit. If you're trained, you want a chainsaw, but one of the main ways that people kill themselves in the wake of disasters is using chainsaws incorrectly to try and like move down trees and stuff. One of the other main ways is like propane and propane accessories, and people trying to use like shit that you shouldn't use inside inside. Don't run a fucking generator in your house or your garage. Make sure everyone has a flashlight. When you're prepping your house. You want to bring in everything in your yard like furniture and tools. You want to get directions to local evacuation shelters and you want to have them printed out and or like saved offline in Google's maps. You want to prepare your house for internal flooding by moving shit up off the floor, and like getting everything that you don't want to get wet available. Make sure it's able to stay dry. You want to know how to shut off your utility gas, water and electric in your house. You do want to fill up your bathtubs for extra water, but don't fucking rely on this. This isn't the like "Haha," everyone's like , "Oh it's cool I got like you know this bathtub filled with water." You usually want to use bathtub water more for sanitation water. You want to turn your fridge and freezer to the coldest settings and make sure they're packed full of thermal mass like we were talking about. Thermal mass is also a battery for cold as well as heat. So for example, your freezer works way less hard if it's full of frozen bottles of water. And so, if you feel plastic water bottles like 90% full, and this is true generally speaking, right? A full fridge or freezer works way less hard. And, because you know it's not stuff that disappears every time you open the fucking door whatever. In general, your fridge or freezer can last about two days without power if they're like real packed full of thermal mass and set to the coldest. In terms of long term preparation for your house, if you live somewhere and you're trying to retrofit shit, you kind of want to go through and make sure that there's hurricane ties attaching your roof to your house. And do the same with your deck and shit, which are just basically these like metal straps that attach one piece of wood to another piece of wood. If you look up hurricane ties, you'll see pictures of them. And then you can go up to your attic or whatever and look to see if you have them. And you can you can retro actively add this, because what happens, the way that wind destroys a house, first, it like pulls off like shingles and siding and stuff that only sort of matter. And then it starts breaking out windows with debris, and doors flying open because of wind, and stuff like that. But then eventually you get to the point where the fucking roof rips off your house is like one of the main things, and then once the roof rips off your house, then the walls have nothing supporting them, so then they fall over. And so you can do a lot of stuff with your doors also to help protect them, especially if you have like double doors, you can add bolts to the inactive door, the door that doesn't open, or the door that doesn't have the handle or whatever, and you had bolts that go up into the ceiling and through the floor. It's also stuff that makes your house harder to break into, which is like cool bonus, right? And garage doors, our old friend garage doors. Casandra Why we're really talking about this. Margaret I know Margaret They they can be storm proofed, but it means you buy a new one. And, I have a feeling that they are expensive and hard to get right now. Like old articles are like "Oh, they cost between $1,000 and $5,000 for a storm proof garage door and I assume that that is not easily the case right now. Okay, and in terms of covering your windows, you want to cover all the windows in your house, not just the ones facing the water. And ideally, if you live there like long term, you want to actually get storm shutters, but those can be expensive. Worst case scenario, you can screw plywood or metal roofing over the windows and glass doors. With plywood you want to aim for about a half inch thick at least, half inch to five eighths. And particle board, don't use particle board or MDF, because probably not strong enough. I don't know and there's just like other shit right like you keep your car packed and facing outward with gas in it. However also, you might want to keep it in a garage and or at least next to a solid building, so that it doesn't fucking blow away or get destroyed by things. Fill up an extra gas can or two because fuck it there's often gonna be gas shortages after these sorts of things. Don't fucking drive through floodwater, that is another way that people die all the fucking time. Like it's about a foot or something of flood that will move a car that will like take a car away. It's way less than you think. Don't fucking drink floodwater. Most of the ways that people water filter don't filter out like gasoline and all kinds of other shit. With a generator, don't fucking run it inside. During the storm, don't go outside during the Eye of the Storm, it'll come back suddenly. Stay away from your windows and glass doors and such. Don't take a shower or a bath because of electrical risk. Kill the power of the main breaker if flooding is coming. And that is what I learned not through direct experience, because again I've died every time I've tried these...I've never been in a hurricane. I've been on the coast rain some storms, right, some tropical storms and shit. But I've never personally been through a hurricane. Brooke Full circle. Casandra We should add like Hurricane Preparedness Guide to our list along with the First Aid Guide. That'd be cool. We should talk to like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief folks or someone. Margaret Yeah. Agreed. Casandra Cool. But this isn't a Strangers meeting, so... Margaret No. Welcome to our Strangers meeting. Brooke You hurri-'can' survive. Margaret Hurri-'can't.' It's a hurri-'can', not a hurri-'can't.' But, that's...the hurricane itself can destroy houses. It can't...It's a hurri-'can' destroy houses not a hurric-'can't' destroy houses. Got it. You see what I'm getting at. It's a funny joke. Brooke You're hurri-canceled. Love it. Casandra When Margaret makes jokes... Brooke Margaret makes great dad jokes and I love it. So does my kid. Casandra It's us, not you. Margaret I say a few short things with our last five minutes. Margaret No, no, it's fine. It's fine. I mean, I'm trying to make you laugh, so you all laughing works. Okay, so I don't know, what other what other shit? I got. I got like some like little short things. Is anyone else have a major topic? We should talk about it? Should we go into short things? Margaret Okay, here's the ones I've got. Other people add them at the end. Monkeypox transmission is slowing. There's a small chance it's gonna go endemic, but like overall. monkeypox transmission is slowing. And that's cool. You should still go get fucking vaccinated, though. I should go get vaccinated. LA is installing water restrictors in houses of people who break their water limit, including like including rich people, which is great. Like basically if anyone is using more than 150% of their limit like they're going around and just like literally being like, "You get less water now." The Mississippi River is currently so low that grain and fertilizer transports are halted. Brooke And that's contributing to supply chain shortages in all kinds of ways, because they can't get stuff up here. Margaret It also fucks up China. They apparently...a lot of them...They get a lot of soybeans from the US, and 40% of the US soybean export to China comes through the Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineers, don't worry as dredging the river to deepen it. Brooke Great. Margaret So that they can still ship things there. Brooke I'm sure that no part of the Mississippi River is a Superfund site or anything like that, and highly toxic. Margaret Nah, it's fine. I'm sure it's good. I bet everyone who's working that job will be treated well. And a British Columbia river has dried up, and I think a bunch of British Columbia rivers have dried up. They're facing like one of the worst fucking droughts ever, which has killed 65,000 salmon, and has cut spawning by 70%, at least in this area. Bird flu in California is killing a ton of birds. I saw this thing, I was like reading oh, it's like a bird flu again. Goddamnit. And then I'm like, Oh, it's just killing birds...Wait, no, birds are good. Casandra Yeah, we need birds. Margaret Yeah. Oil prices might go up again, because OPEC countries are cutting oil production more. Thanks. O-Biden. Inflation is causing manufacturers to start using cheaper ingredients. That's like one of the main ways that like manufacturers are getting around this. And so like a lot of shit they're used to using and trust might now be made like shit. Casandra I've read about new homes they're building as well. Margaret Oh, great, because that's what we need is cheaper designed homes. Casandra Yeah, they're like, A) don't buy a home right now. But B) when you can buy a home in the future, maybe someday don't buy homes built right now. Brooke I hear that. Margaret That makes sense. Brooke But Biden passed the inflation Reduction Act, you guys, so it's gonna be fine. Margaret Yeah, the fine print is like, "Now use refined," I don't know, whatever, "corn syrup instead of..." Brooke And the Federal Reserve is raising the target interest rate. So, it's gonna be fine. Casandra Have you all seen the new like COVID antivax study that just came out? Margaret No. Brooke Nope. Oh, we were supposed to die yesterday. Casandra Apparently, I'm using air quotes, a study came out linking the risk of like heart disease with COVID vaccines in 'men' in particular, something like that. And so, you know, anti vaxxers are like, "See!" Margaret I wonder if it came out because...the the one that I had heard was that there was a study that came out and I don't have these numbers in front of me, and I'm sorry, audience. I think it's, I think that the the rate of death among Republicans is 18% higher than the rate of death among Democrats, with all other factors considered, as soon as the vaccine came out. And like, yeah, exactly just the vaccine came out people who didn't get it just fucking die more. Brooke Comparative Study. Margaret Conspiracy, to try and kill all the Republicans, by the Republican leaders. No, no, wait, go ahead, Brooke. Sorry. Brooke No, I was gonna give more details on the study. But y'all can y'all can look it up. It was definitely aninteresting study. And it's not like 100% due to COVID for sure. At least they can't like rule out... because it was like measure of excess deaths. And they don't have all the specifics on that. But yeah, a large portion of that is due to vaccine versus not vaccine. Than also there was some tweet that made the rounds that that we were all going to die on October 10 because something was gonna get activated in the vaccine. Y'all see this on Twitter at all? Margaret That explains why I died in the hurricane. Casandra I want to back up to the study I mentioned because I didn't clarify that there were like major issues with it. That's all. I didn't want. I didn't want to bring up like this study antivaxxers are using without saying like there were major issues with the study. Margaret Yeah. That makes sense. Casandra Yeah, that tracks. Margaret Well, does that do it for us this month? Casandra That was a lot. It really was a lot of bad things. Margaret Oh, one good final thing. Tankers that go around with like, all the stuff that they ship around, are starting to add sails back, and it saves about 10% of their fuel. This is a really minor thing. Brooke Sailing sails? Margaret Yeah, yeah. Brooke Math. Nice. Margaret Like all the container ships and shit. Not all of them, but they're starting to add sails to container ships to help alleviate the cost of fuel to move everything around. Whatever it is a really minor thing. I just thought was neat. This is my final note. Casandra Yay, sailboats. Margaret Yeah. The global economy that got us into this mess in the first place trudging along. Casandra Ohhhh. Well, stay warm out there, everyone. Margaret Brooke, you want to lead us out? Brooke Yeah, I do. So, I took your outro from from the last episode and transcribed it. I'm just gonna I'm gonna read it word for word, Margaret. Margaret Oh, God. Brooke Are you ready for how great this is gonna be? Margaret Yeah, let me hold on to something. Alright. Brooke And then maybe I'll do a real one after I do this. Thanks so much for listening. Algorithms suck, but if you like this podcast, please like comment, review, blah, blah, blah. It makes the algorithms give our show to more people. It's kind of the only way people end up hearing about our shows is word of mouth. All of that stuff's true. I'm not just saying it cynically, it's just that I have said it, like, whatever, I'm on Episode 50, or whatever. So I've said it like 50 times, and you can support us on Patreon by supporting our publisher, our publisher is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. The three of us are collective members of a collectively run publisher called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. It's been around for like 20 years, but it's like getting new mega forces Voltron combines version of itself lately, and it's primarily supported by Patreon. Brooke I think that was perfect. Flawless. And also, that means that Inmn doesn't have to transcribe it again. Margaret Yeah. Brooke You're welcome, Inmn. Just copy/paste. But more seriously, this podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And you can connect with us on Twitter at Tangledwild. And I think we have like Instagram and stuff too. But I don't do Instagram and I think Instagram's

James and Steve taste a beer from Ivory Bill Brewing in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, brewed with Kernza – the world's first perennial grain.

As the climate heats up, farmers will need to find a new crop that can handle extreme temperatures. Some farmers believe a grain called kernza could revolutionize farming.

Casey Letellier of Ivory Bill Brewing in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, talks about brewing with Kernza – the first perennial grain. Casey also talks about his recipe development strategy.