A podcast exploring the many stories that make up our food system

Co-hosts Ali Berlow and Hannah Semler take you from Nogales, AZ port of entry, to Northeast apple orchards, discovering the boundaries of the stories we know and tell that define the food we eat.

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About the Podcast

What is American Food?
Stories that illustrate the value of the food we eat, don?t eat and why.
What is American Food? is a podcast exploring the many stories that make up our food system. Through storytelling, we reveal how our U.S. food system is designed - identifying where we can most impact hunger relief, climate change, and economic stability for families everywhere.

Co-hosts Hannah Semler and Ali Berlow take a broad and deep dive into food systems, in a format that questions, informs, and discusses the nature of how we understand where our food comes from in the U.S. The first four episodes focuse on produce production in Mexico, developed over the last century to feed the U.S., and the food bank efforts that support millions of families who are food insecure in the U.S. We speak with business owners, nonprofits and funding institutions, as well as food systems practitioners in different sectors. Our focus is on lesser known stories about where the food we eat comes from and why, and the value of food for people and planet, in order to inform our future food systems design.

What Is American Food? is grateful for the financial support from the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation.

About your hosts

Ali Berlow

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Ali Berlow is the former founding executive director of Island Grown Initiative, a non-profit that supports the small family farms and farmers of Martha’s Vineyard. She is also the former co-host of The Local Food Report out of NPR member station, WCAI, in Woods Hole, MA, and in 2009 along with her husband, launched Edible Vineyard magazine which they still own today. She has a Master of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy from Vermont Law School and is the author of two books: ‘The Food Activist Handbook: Big & Small Things You Can Do to Help Provide Fresh, Healthy Food for Your Community‘ and ‘The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse: Building a Humane Chicken Processing Unit to Strengthen Your Local Food System.'

Hannah Semler

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Hannah Semler is co-founder of FarmDrop.us, a woman-owned online farmer’s market tool for small-scale producers, and principal of WholeCrops, a consulting firm specialized in food rescue. She is a Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation Fellow, and has been working for Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona as such for the past three years.