Welcome to our 16th episode of Tractor Time podcast, brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the voice of eco-agriculture. My name is Ryan Slabaugh, and we are fired up to bring you another hour of conversation about ecology, agriculture, and this hour, we’re even talking about saving the world.
We have two guests on our show today. One is Mary Battjes, and I have the pleasure of working every day with Mary. She’s our project manager, and recently wrapped up a survey of young farmers around the country and world. We spoke with a lot of them, and found their look at the world and their role in the world so inspiring. Speaking generally, they want the same things most of us want — safety, security, family and a healthy environment. Yet, they see the obstacles very clearly. Climate change. Technology disruption. And an economy that favors the big devouring the small.
Yet, there is hope. And it comes in the form of our second guest, Douglass DeCandia, a young farmer from New York. He grows food using natural methods, but he does so with an even greater purpose – to serve those who are forgotten by our food system, who are systematically discriminated against because of who they are, where they are from or where they live. His “farm,” and he uses quotation marks around that so I will ask him about that later, serves youth and adults who are incarcerated, students at a school for the deaf, and young adults who are part of a residential treatment program. He also supports a number of his area’s food growing products, and when we talked to him today, he was wandering around the gardens at the school for the deaf.
Tractor Time Episode 17: Brendon Rockey, Potato Farmer, Speaker
Tractor Time Episode 15: Dr. Nasha Winters, Author and Health Consultant
Tractor Time Episode 14: Neal Kinsey, Hands-On Agronomy
Tractor Time Episode 13: 2017 Conference Highlights — Dr. Vandana Shiva, André Leu and Ronnie Cummings
Tractor Time Episode 12: Edwin Blosser, Farmer & Founder of Midwest Bio-Systems
Tractor Time Episode 11: John Kempf, Founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture
Tractor Time Episode 10: Mark Shepard, Water Control on the Farm
Tractor Time Episode 9: Ben Hartman, How to Make a Living on One Acre
Tractor Time Episode 8: Andre Leu, Author of The Myths of Safe Pesticides
Tractor Time Episode 7: John Slack and Soils from a Geological Perspective
Tractor Time Episode 6: Joel Salatin, the Most Famous Farmer in the World
Tractor Time Episode 5: Jerry Brunetti, Soil as a Super-Organism
Tractor Time Episode 4: Susan Sink and the American Farmland Trust
Tractor Time Episode 3: Charles Walters and A Return to Intellectualism
Tractor Time Episode 2: Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, The Story of the Green Man
Tractor Time Episode 1: Abbey Smith and Charles Walters
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