Tractor Time Episode 27: Jodi Helmer, Author, Protecting Pollinators

Good day and welcome to Tractor Time, brought to you by Acres USA, the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I’m your host, Ryan Slabaugh, and it feels like a spring day here in Greeley, Colorado, where we are recording episode 27 on this 20th day of March in 2019. It’s been a very interesting week in eco-agriculture, and while I don’t want to get too much into the news, it’s worth mentioning that we have a bunch of customers lose buildings to the heavy winds and flooding in the Midwest and out near our offices, we are following another Monsanto trial that decided the behemoth is responsible for informing its users about the potential risks, including cancer, and the European Union has decided to investigate both Monsanto and Exxon’s involvement in climate change denials. So the pressure’s on. A lot of people I’ve talked to think a vacuum is coming, where Roundup will be replaced by something … and we know the toxic race is on, but we sure hope some farmers can find a way to use nutrient-based farming techniques on part of their land. At least, that’s why we are here today. We are going to talk to Jodi Helmer, a journalist, gardener and author of six books, who with Island Press is releasing a new book, Protecting Pollinators (Island Press, available in the Acres U.S.A. bookstore.) We wanted to take this chance to talk bees and butterflies … and even long-nosed bats. We haven’t had an episode dedicated to this topic yet, so we needed one, as we know pollinators are one of the secret ingredients for growing food that we’ve neglected to include in a lot of our commercial agriculture systems. We’ll learn more about where we are with this today, how the protect the bees movement is doing, and what we can do with the land we own, rent and work at to help foster a better environment.