6 podcasts, books, and articles to help you start living sustainably

Hi, we’re Jewish, and we LOVE to talk about food.

And we believe our food conversations should go beyond comparing bagel toppings and fine-tuning challah recipes.* We want to invite sustainability to the table.

Build eco-mmunity on February 18 as we hear from 3 local speakers working in the sustainable food industry while partaking in hands-on activities: cooking a locally-grown meal, planting new seeds, and designing eco-kashrut standards. This event is free, and If you sign up by this Friday, you’ll receive seeds (and everything you need to know to plant and care for them) from North Circle Seeds and all the ingredients to make a vegetarian recipe developed by local catering company Chopped and Served.

If you want to dive deeper into sustainability, we asked our panelists to recommend their favorite books, podcasts, and articles on the topic:

Podcasts

This Planet Money report titled So, Should We Recycle gives insight to the things to be mindful of and the things we might just be wasting our time doing.

—Sarah Nathan, Eco-mmunity Panelist and category manager at National Co-op Grocers

The podcast I host and produce is called Seed Stories. I interview seed keepers about a seed variety each week. We also get into seed saving techniques as well as culinary and cultural relevance. I think the Open Source Seed Initiative called 'Free the Seed' podcast is very informative which talks about what progressive plant breeders are doing to limit restrictions on genetics of seed. Another great podcast is the Sustainable Farming Association of MN's 'Dirt Rich' talking a lot about Soil Health as well as many other topics by farmer experts.

—Zachary Paige, Eco-mmunity panelist and proprietor of North Circle Seeds and Food Sovereignty Coordinator for the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

Books

I recently devoured the book The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr. We all interact with groceries every day, and this book does a great job of highlighting some of the key sustainability challenges of our just-in-time food system. My other favorite is The Third Plate by Chef Dan Barber, who writes beautifully about the need for farm driven cuisine. Both are wonderful to read, and perfect for curling up with in mid-winter!

—Ariel Kagan, Eco-munnity panelist and resource economist at the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University

Articles

We can’t wait to take notes at Eco-mmunity, dive into this article, then host the biggest, most sustainable Shabbat dinner once it’s safe.

And on a tangentially related note, we’re charmed by Nick Tobin—aka Jewslovetrees on tiktok.

Eco-mmunity is brought to you by YALA Twin Cities (a program of the Minneapolis and St. Paul Jewish Federations,) Moishe House Twin Cities, and Mount Zion Temple.