Shuswap Food Conversations

Episode 133 - Shuswap Food Action Society - Mary Rodriguez and Melanie Bennett

In this episode Warren's guests are Melanie Bennett and Mary Rodriguez with the Shuswap Food Action Society. Melanie will outline the spring and summer programs for SFAS including what's going on at the John McLean Community Garden, the Community Teaching Garden and with Project Grow, the youth gardening contest. Mary oversees the School Food program for School District 83 and will update us on the successes of the past year and how the School Food program is having a positive impact on the health of children in our community.

Episode 132 - Dr. Navin Ramankutty - Director - UBC Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability

In this episode listen to Warren's interview with Dr. Navin Ramankutty, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Data Science for Sustainable Global Food Systems at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Ramankutty's research program aims to understand how humans use and modify the Earth’s land surface for agriculture and to determine the implications of these modifications for the global environment. His research aims to find solutions to the problem of feeding humanity with minimal global environmental impact. Navin and Warren will talk about his life growing up in India, how he came to Canada, and how he hopes his research will help to improve the way we grow food and feed the planet.

Episode 131 - Christine Tether - Salmon Arm Farmers Market

This week Warren welcomes Christine Tether, Manager of the Downtown Salmon Arm Farmers Market. Christine will share her experience coordinating this weekly event and working with the many vendors who attend the market. She and Warren will talk about Christine's past roles as a Biologist and her life raising three (soon to be four) children with her partner on their homestead in Notch Hill.

Episode 130 - Dr. Keith Williams - Athabasca University

Warren welcomes back Dr. Keith Williams of Athabasca University to talk more about indigenous agriculture practices and returning to the theories of land stewardship that our first peoples have followed for centuries.

Episode 129 - Dr. Cary Fowler and the World Food Prize

In this episode you will hear Warren's interview with Dr. Cary Fowler, an American agriculturalist who served as the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security from 2022 to 2025. He was previously executive director of the Crop Trust, which has a mandate to ensure "the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide." Dr. Fowler is known as the father of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault], which currently houses samples of more than one million distinct crop varieties. In 2024 Cary Fowler received the World Food Prize for his work on seed genetics and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.