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Deconstructing Dinner

Nature as Our Guide

Podcast: 'Deconstructing Dinner' looks at how science may mismanage our food supply

Jon Steinman 29 Feb 2008TheTyee.ca

Jon Steinman is producer and host of Kootenay Co-op Radio's program Deconstructing Dinner. A new podcast with notes is posted here every Friday afternoon, and all Deconstructing Dinner podcasts can be found here.

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Our most recent Part 1 of the multi-part series "A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda" has assisted in inspiring the collection of individuals lending their voices to this show.

Of greatest relevance in tying the pesticide series to today, is reintroducing the very ideology that drives the conventional food system of which we are all mostly a part, and that is one founded upon science. Farmer and Poet Wendell Berry has some important thoughts on this 'scientific' relationship with nature and food.

Also lending his voice is author Michael Pollan, who presents his unique and provocative thoughts on an alternative approach to viewing nature and our food -- from the plants' and insects' point of view!

Rounding off the show is an episode of Peak Moment Television, a weekly broadcast produced in Nevada County, California. Judy Alexander has been experimenting with growing as much food as she possibly can around her Port Townsend home. This tour of her garden will present an on-the-ground example of how engaging in localized food production can unveil an alternative ideology to how our food is produced. Instead of relying on science and its reductionist and limiting theories, the wisdom of natural systems are instead allowed to guide what seems to be a far more responsible approach to our sustenance.

Voices

Michael Pollan, journalist and author of The Omnivore's Dilema and In Defense of Food (Berkeley, CA) -- Omnivore's Dilemma was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award for best food writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001).

Wendell Berry, farmer/poet, Lane's Landing Farm (Port Royal, KY) -- An American academic, cultural and economic critic and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. Berry writes and works the land on Lane's Landing Farm, five miles from his birthplace in northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Madison, Indiana.

Other Featured Audio

Peak Moment: Community Responses for a Changing Energy Future are weekly 28-minute programs featuring host Janaia Donaldson's conversations and on-site tours with guests. It highlights practical solutions and responses towards a lower-energy, more-connected, sustainable life. How can we thrive, build stronger communities, and help one another in this time of transition? The show is cablecast on community-access TV stations throughout the U,S.A. (Episode 87 with Judy Alexander)

Judy Alexander, (Port Townshend, WA) -- In summer 2006, Judy Alexander embarked on an experiment to see how much food she could grow, and how many neighbors could benefit, from the garden around her house. Check out her homegrown rainwater collection and irrigation system that is watering her 60-plus edible crops. Meet the bees, the chickens and the worms. And catch her joy in producing so much food for so little effort.

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