Episodes
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Farming the River’s Edge: Food, wine and biodiversity on Portugal’s Floodplains
On the floodplains between the Tagus and Sorraia rivers, just outside Lisbon, lies one of Portugal’s most remarkable agricultural landscapes, Companhia das Lezírias. In this episode of The Science Behind your Salad, Jane Craigie steps into a living, breathing system where cork oak forests, rice...
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From Roadside to Runway: How Kenya Feeds Itself… and the World
Before sunrise in central Kenya, green beans are packed for European supermarkets while, on the same morning, women carry leafy greens to sell by the roadside. In this episode, Jane Craigie explores Kenya’s dual food systems — one feeding global markets with precision and scale, the other...
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The Next Billion Plates: World Food Prize Conversations
In this special episode of The Science Behind Your Salad, we take you inside the World Food Prize and the Borlaug Dialogue, the gathering inspired by the grandfather of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug’s and his inherent belief that hunger is a challenge humanity can solve. Recorded in Iowa,...
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The Future of Food
Food is also what connects farming to human health and our natural environment. In this episode of The Science Behind Your Salad, we ask you to close your eyes and listen: the steady hum of bees, the deep boom of a rare bittern, and the people creating the future of the food on your plate. Host,...
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Celebrating Farmers
Social media has given farmers the perfect way to share the many joys, challenges and the daily realities of farming with people interested in how their food is produced. A growing number of influencers have gained millions of followers who welcome their regular and honest posts and the insights...
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Feeding the Future
Feeding humanity in the future brings a complex set of interconnected challenges. What’s abundantly clear is that, over the coming decades, farming isn’t just about producing more, it’s about doing it differently, with the environment and society’s needs central to the task in hand. In this…
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The Impact of Climate Change on Olives
This episode of The Science Behind Your Salad from BASF visits Spain, Portugal and Egypt in a quest to discover how olive crops will be affected by climate change. Jane Craigie meets the farmers busily harvesting their crops, ready to take them off to the mill to be pressed into delicious golden...
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Carbon conscious cooking for the future
Our volatile climate will impact the way we cook and the way we eat. And so, farming needs to adapt, eating needs to adapt, and how we cook, will also need to adapt. In this episode of the Science Behind Your Salad, Jane Craigie explores the world of carbon farming: how can we grow better? How…
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Food Safety
Whether we’re buying a punnet of fruit, a freshly made burrito or a can of tomatoes, we take it for granted that the food is safe and free of any biological or chemical contamination. There are a host of food laws, regulatory bodies and food inspection schemes, as well as guidance on food...
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Sustainable Cereals
There is a huge variety of grains, from quinoa to spelt, from bulgur wheat to pearl barley, from barley to rye. Barley used to feed livestock and used in whisky distilling are found right on Jane Craigie’s doorstep in Aberdeenshire. In this episode of the Science Behind Your Salad, Jane meets the...
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Water security
The wettest country in the world is Columbia, which receives over 3200 ml of rain annually and the driest nation, Egypt, receives just 18 ml. Agriculture uses around 70% of the world's freshwater, and irrigated farmland is crucial in delivering, on average, double the production of rainfed…
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Coffee
More than 3 billion cups of coffee are drunk every day but how did the bean inside a fruit become synonymous with kick starting our mornings with a caffeine hit to wake us up? Jane Craigie speaks to growers and traders who explore the history and culture of coffee and look to the future when the...
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Weeds
Weeds are plants that are growing in the wrong place. Certain species can totally devastate farmers crops, resulting in huge losses of both productivity and income for the farmers. They can be the difference between survival and failure of a farm. But are they all bad? Tom Radford is a forager…
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Sustainable Agriculture
Improving the sustainability of agriculture extends far beyond the production of food, as farmers share the global challenges of climate change mitigation, increasing space for nature and protecting resources. In this episode of The Science Behind your Salad, we explore the sustainability of…
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Fruit
Sweet and juicy, plump and delicious: In this episode of The Science Behind Your Salad we’re telling the story behind the production and innovation of fruit salad! Apples, peaches and watermelons come under the spotlight in our whistle stop tour of the sweeter crops we love to eat. We’ll hear…
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Food Loss and Food Waste
If food waste could be represented as its own country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the United States, according to the UN's environment program. Each year around 2.5 billion tons of food is lost or wasted each year, leaving roughly 3.1 billion people...
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Vegetables
Vegetables are at the heart of a healthy diet. They are packed with vitamins and minerals and play an essential role in our physical and mental well-being. The global vegetable market is a multi-billion-dollar industry. For the past few decades, globalisation has enabled retailers to supply...
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Wine Grapes
The first traces of wine production date back some 9,000 years to parts of the Middle East. Georgia is known for making some of the earliest wines by burying Kvevris, giant earthenware pots, filling them with grapes and allowing the fruit to ferment. Over the millenia, the production of wine has...
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Holiday Bonus Episode: Celebrate Grapes
In this bonus episode, we’ll explore the meaning of grapes from a seasonal perspective. During the holidays, grapes play an important role – both in liquid and solid form. We talk to a winemaker who is working on non-alcoholic wine. His goal is to approach the same quality and taste levels of the...
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Onions
Loved by Ernest Hemingway in a sandwich, around 4.5 milliion tonnes of onions are grown globally each year. While Hemingway ate his onions raw, the vegetable is truly versatile and is the basis of sauces and stews, and can be a condiment on meats such as hotdogs and burgers and much, much more....
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Cotton
Not every crop relating to what we eat is edible. The table dressing also plays a valuable roll with crisp white tablecloths and beautifully folded napkins. In this episode we focus on the way that sustainability of cotton crops can be traced from the seed to the manufacture and selling of…
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Food Security
We are currently facing significant challenges to our food supply. A global pandemic, a war on the ground in the breadbasket of Europe, a volatile climate, plus a growing population, have all led us to a pinch point. In this episode of The Science Behind Your Salad we examine the threats to our...
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Canola
Waves of golden flowers can currently be seen rippling in the wind across many parts of the world as the oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) harvest is approaching. But it is in Canada that the crop is a real success story. Oilseed rape grown there is a derivative known as canola. Canola oil is a...
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Salad Leaves
In this episode we discover the story behind the sweet, crisp, crunch of the salad leaves. From iceberg to Lollo Rosso, from radicchio to endive, the choice of salad ingredients is extensive. The flavours are equally varied from peppery to pea flavoured and plenty in between. We discover the…
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Soybeans
Every year 350 million tonnes of soybean are grown. More than three-quarters of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Whilst just 7% of soy is used directly as food for us to eat, the crop is packed with...
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Holiday Bonus Episode: Celebrate Wheat
In this surprise bonus episode, we’ll talk about the meaning of wheat from a seasonal perspective: Different Christmas food habits around the world, explained first-hand from BASF Agricultural Solutions employees. Thanks to all colleagues for joining the podcast to share about the meaning of…
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Wheat Part Two
In this, the second episode exploring the importance of wheat as a crop globally, we discover the ways in which farmers can safeguard their crops against a host of challenges such as the weather and crop diseases. The end result of all of the toil spent by the farmers around the globe working on...
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Wheat Part One
The story of wheat begins 10,000 years ago and becomes the tale of the biggest crop on the planet. Wheat covers more of the earth than any other crop and is a leading source of vegetable protein for all of us, wherever we are in the world. From early origins in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ which is...
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Seeds
Seeds are the building blocks of agriculture. You can have the perfect land, the most fertile soil and optimum growing conditions, the perfect climate and all the latest technology, but without good quality seed, you're not going to produce anything. The Science Behind Your Salad explores the…
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Rice Part Two
In the second episode devoted to one of the biggest crops on the planet: rice, Jane Craigie explores the way in which rice production in Australia is producing some of the world’s highest yields whilst using minimal amounts of water, and improving wildlife habitats. Across the globe Erik Andrus…
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Rice Part One
Rice is staple food for over half the world’s population, and when you think of how the crop grows, an image of shimmering paddy fields, with ankle deep water springs to mind. In this episode of The Science Behind Your Salad we discover that this method of rice production is a huge contributor of...
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Tomatoes
Jane Craigie traces the origins of the humble tomato from a small hairy specimen to a juicy plump red fruit, and discovers the science and technology behind the delicious ingredient.
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The Science Behind Your Salad Trailer
The Science Behind Your Salad will shine a spotlight on the innovation, technology, digital and sustainability for healthy food made by BASF in Agriculture.
About this show
The Science Behind Your Salad shines a spotlight on the innovation, technology, digital and sustainability for healthy food made by BASF in Agriculture.
Hosted by
BASF Agricultural Solutions
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