The Food Chain

Staff of Life: Local Grocer V Corporate Giants

Michael Olson with Gary Bascou, Co-Founder, Staff of Life Natural Food Market

Staff of Life is a locally-owned grocery store competing for consumer dollars in a market dominated by corporate giants.  And so we ask:

How does a local grocery store survive in a marketplace of corporate giants?

Topics include the culture that gave rise to “natural” and “organic” food markets; how those foods gave rise to Staff of Life Natural Foods Market; and how Staff of Life survives 56 years of competition with corporate food giants.

Ep 1393 Regenerating Food & Agriculture with Software

There was a time farmers grew food with shovels, hoes and horses.  As technology progressed, they used tractors, fertilizers and pesticides.  Today, farmers grow food by stringing together binary digits of “Yes” and “No.”  That leads us to ask:

Can software sustain and regenerate agriculture?

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Dan Ryan, CEO of CIBO Technologies, for a conversation about how digital software is transforming food and agriculture.

Topics include how technology made it possible to farm our way out of the dire predictions of 1968’s The Population Bomb; how today’s software technology may make it possible to farm our way out of today’s dire predictions for our future; and whether digital technologies might open the door to a new “Green Revolution” in food and agriculture.

Ep. 1392 The Magic Kingdom of Specialty Mushrooms

It lives alone, and mostly hidden, in its magic kingdom.  Its members are said to include the largest living organism on earth.   That so many down-to-earth people become its ardent devotees leads us to ask:

What is the magic of mushrooms?

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Ian Garrone, CEO & Founder Far West Fungi, Moss Landing, CA, for a conversation about the magic kingdom of specialty mushrooms.

Topics include a look into the variety of life in the kingdom of fungi; reasons why so many down-to-earth people become devotees of mushrooms; and how the Garrone Family built a specialty mushroom business by selling person-to-person at farmers markets.

Ep 1391 Up Against the Big Four Meat

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Patrick Montgomery, CEO & Founder, KC Cattle Company & Valor Provisions Cooperative, for a conversation about finding real value when buying meat.

Topics include how a small producer of meat competes against America’s Big Four producers; how a cooperative of like-minded producers can increase the ability of each to survive; and the value that may be found in grass-fed labeled beef.

Ep 1390 Cholesterol Conundrum?

Michael Olson hosts Tobias Yeh – Doctor of Pharmacy, Doctor of Medicine and Author of Clinical Truths: How to Not Be Misled by the FDA, Big Pharma & Your Doctor, for a conversation about the use of statin drugs to manage cholesterol.

Cholesterol is the waxy stuff of life that floats through the rivers of our blood veins. To manage this flow of cholesterol, people take $16 billion of statin drugs every year.  That leads us to ask:

Should we take statin drugs to manage our cholesterol?

Topics include why – upon doctors’ orders – 50% of men and 38% of women over 60 take statin drugs to control cholesterol; what is the net result of statin use on mortality; and what alternatives are there to statins.

 

Ep 1389 Call-of-the-Wild Meat

There is, one hopes, a little call-of-the-wild left in all of us – even those of us who live in a concrete box stacked 40 stories high in a city sky!  That call leads us to ask:

 

Where can one get a good taste of wild meat?

 

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Daniel Laggner, Owner & Butcher, Wild Stag Provisions, for a conversation about food that is as close to the wild as commercially possible.

 

Topics include why one would want to eat wild meat when domestic meat is so readily available; how the business of wild meat works; and the best way for one to get a good taste of call of the wild meat.

Ep. 1388 Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

They live where we can’t see them for a very good reason! They come in the night – and during the day– to steal the precious fruits of our labor. Their unrelenting assault on our good nature leads us to ask:

How can we get that #%*%# gopher?

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Thomas Wittman of Gophers Limited, for a conversation about controlling gophers in the farm and garden.

Topics include why gophers make farmers and gardeners so frustrated; the ways in which gophers are controlled on the farm and in the garden; and reasons why gophers should be managed without poisons.

Food Inflation

Michael Olson hosts

Dr. Jacob Manlove, Assistant Professor of Ag Economics, Arkansas State University

MSN recently served up some news that caught my attention.  The headline read, “Venezuela triples wages but still not enough to buy food.”

 

The writer went on to say that Venezuela’s new minimum wage of seven million bolivares per month is not enough buy two pounds of meat.

 

Shortly after reading this story I enjoyed a leisurely meal with my lady at a nearby sit-down restaurant. 

 

The meal was very good, but nothing special, just a couple of burgers and beers.  What did make the meal special was the check that, with tip, approached a hundred dollars!

Yes!  Almost a hundred bucks for a couple of burgers and beers!

It is becoming increasingly evident that more money is buying less food.  And that leads us to ask:

Can what happened to the price of food in Venezuela happen to the price of food in the US?