Category Archives: Podcasts

Podcast #13 – Notes and Links for “Turning the Tables: Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto”

December 19, 2011 by The Manic Gardener

The “upcoming” podcast mentioned a few days ago is now up. You can listen to or download the show, “Turning the Tables: Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto,” to get part of the back story about why 83 organic seed growers, farmers, and organizations are suing GMO seed giant (and manufacturer of RoundUp) Monsanto.

You can also check out my original post on the suit, written a couple of days after it was filed last spring, for some background.

In the course of the show, many sins are laid at Monsanto’s feet: that genetically modified crops don’t increase yields as promised, that they may give rise to an organism that causes miscarriages in cattle, that they have fostered a race of super weeds, that Monsanto routinely engages in intimidating tactics, that it has sued thousands of farmers.

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Upcoming podcast: Organics vs. Monsanto

December 16, 2011 by The Manic Gardener

Yesterday I came off a marathon podcast editing session–about 20 hours straight, tacked onto the end of a work day.

It’s not the first time I’ve stayed up all night putting the podcast to bed; this fall I’ve probably been up more Tuesday nights than I’ve slept. But this was a bigger deal than most. This was a show about the suit brought by organic farmers, seed growers, and organizations against Monsanto, the seed company that keeps suing farmers whose fields become contaminated with its genetically modified–and patented–seeds. Continue reading →

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The Manic Gardener PODCAST

October 24, 2011 by The Manic Gardener

Want to know where I’ve been? I’ll tell you: podcasting. Yes, the Manic has gone live, and it’s been a steep learning curve. Hence my utter absence from the blog.

The show is an hour a week on organic and sustainable gardening, (you can find it here) interviewing everyone from a neighbor to Linda Chalker-Scott, one of the esteemed Garden Professors and former science editor of the alas now defunct Master Gardener Magazine. No one’s safe: not the local organic potato farmer, not his wife, not a Bokashi blogger in Switzerland.

And yet, I like to pretend, at least to myself, that there is some sort of organization behind it all, or underneath. After a certain amount of delving, here are the five major foci I’ve unearthed:
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Podcast #3— Steps Towards Sustainability

October 10, 2011 by The Manic Gardener

Windrower and tractor, Wada Farms, Idaho

The Show

What first took me out to the Kimm’s farm was the fact that they grow organic seed potatoes. That operation, run by Yvonne Kimm, became the topic of “No Small Potatoes,” my second podcast.

But at least as interesting to me was what her husband, Jason, has done on the conventional fields to make them more sustainable. After all, no large operation can go organic overnight, and so the question arises: what can a conventional farm do to move away from the overuse of pesticides, herbicides, and even water? Continue reading →

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Podcast #2 – No Small Potatoes

October 3, 2011 by The Manic Gardener

Yvonne Kimm lives surrounded by potato fields and potato farmers. A native of Manitoba, she married a potato farmer who’s the son, grandson, and brother of potato farmers.

So what did Yvonne do? She became a potato farmer. With a difference: she became an organic potato farmer and one of a handful of certified organic seed potato producers in Montana. I interviewed her at her farm, ten or fifteen miles west of my town Bozeman; you can listen to or download the show, No Small Potatoes, by following that link, or by navigating from the webtalkradio.net. logo in the right sidebar. Continue reading →

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