Sep 22, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
Industrialization has undoubtedly and profoundly shifted our relationship with food globally, and it can be hard to remember the work being done outside of commercialized growing to remain connected…
Ali FrancisGuest
Sarah DuignanHost
I love those pages because it kind of just shows you this like little cast of characters and how they relate.
So you kind of hinted at this already, but given your background as a reporter, I was curious how you navigated some of the more bureaucratic elements when tackling vegetable biodiversity in the book, because there are some pieces that can, you know, be quite dry and it's not at all dry in your book.
And pretty much how it worked was I wrote drafts that were five times the length and then cut out the boring stuff.
Like, I think it's a matter of always being accurate while not being superfluous, you know? And so I think for some of the really bureaucratic stuff, I was like, to somebody who is a consumer of vegetables you know what is like the most interesting end point of this so say there was some very heady legislation around seed patenting in a certain country that that could take up a thousand words in itself just trying to explain like why do companies patent seeds why in this country was that so damaging etc but the overarching point with that particular example is a company owns a seed which means a farmer cannot save their own seeds it's actually illegal to do so And they are locked into this kind of subscription model with these giant companies.
And also those giant companies then are the ones who are shaping our palates, our food system, what ends up on our plate more than we are.
And that's the main difference between today's food system and that of like our great, great grandparents you know like they were selecting their own plants they were determining their own fruit systems and we are very much by and large in in especially westernized countries it's a top-down approach you know it's this is what you will eat this is what we can grow at scale and so that's what's happening in my situation like that it was really like that is the most important takeaway for the reader they don't really need to follow me through like two centuries of seed patent laws you know They haven't been around for that long, but you know what I mean? They don't need to go down that rabbit hole to understand the main point.
How do I summarize this without dumbing it down, but also like reducing it to its most salient point?
Like you're leading with those narratives of things that have actually happened to people to situate these much more complex systems in a way that's... not daunting because it is a quite daunting concept thinking about how much we've lost.
And definitely wherever possible, obviously attaching something very theoretical and very bureaucratic to your point, to a real life situation, I think is always much easier and more entertaining to comprehend.
I love those pages because it kind of just shows you this like little cast of characters and how they relate.
So you kind of hinted at this already, but given your background as a reporter, I was curious how you navigated some of the more bureaucratic elements when tackling vegetable biodiversity in the book, because there are some pieces that can, you know, be quite dry and it's not at all dry in your book.
And pretty much how it worked was I wrote drafts that were five times the length and then cut out the boring stuff.
Like, I think it's a matter of always being accurate while not being superfluous, you know? And so I think for some of the really bureaucratic stuff, I was like, to somebody who is a consumer of vegetables you know what is like the most interesting end point of this so say there was some very heady legislation around seed patenting in a certain country that that could take up a thousand words in itself just trying to explain like why do companies patent seeds why in this country was that so damaging etc but the overarching point with that particular example is a company owns a seed which means a farmer cannot save their own seeds it's actually illegal to do so And they are locked into this kind of subscription model with these giant companies.
And also those giant companies then are the ones who are shaping our palates, our food system, what ends up on our plate more than we are.
And that's the main difference between today's food system and that of like our great, great grandparents you know like they were selecting their own plants they were determining their own fruit systems and we are very much by and large in in especially westernized countries it's a top-down approach you know it's this is what you will eat this is what we can grow at scale and so that's what's happening in my situation like that it was really like that is the most important takeaway for the reader they don't really need to follow me through like two centuries of seed patent laws you know They haven't been around for that long, but you know what I mean? They don't need to go down that rabbit hole to understand the main point.
How do I summarize this without dumbing it down, but also like reducing it to its most salient point?
Like you're leading with those narratives of things that have actually happened to people to situate these much more complex systems in a way that's... not daunting because it is a quite daunting concept thinking about how much we've lost.
And definitely wherever possible, obviously attaching something very theoretical and very bureaucratic to your point, to a real life situation, I think is always much easier and more entertaining to comprehend.
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