Food & Climate

"What is your role in stewarding the Earth for the next seven generations?” Last fall in Vienna, I asked this of investor Felix Porsche. Descendant of the car inventor, this wonderful young leader is now helping drive sustainability in transportation.

“When you start to recognize the gifts from the landscape, you then begin to feel an inherent obligation to help share gifts back to the landscape," said Indigenous food sovereignty leader Mariah Gladstone, when we spoke as part of the Montana Free Press Fest.

Welcome to Food, Montana.

I'm pulled off on the side of the road near the end of a road trip with my daughter to see friends in Blackfeet Country. Here's what I've been learning: Reciprocity is like a flow of giving, rather than a transaction.

Bears Lodge. Devils Tower. Names and words matter. The history of American Colonialism continues to unfold at a national monument in northeastern Wyoming. Reported for Mountain Outlaw in 2017, and still relevant today.

Photographer Jason Thompson's perspective on our fall garden and yard chores, shot on spec for Patagonia.

After 23 years of asking questions for a living, I did it live for the first time in a panel highlighting three leaders in the Montana food system.

In 2020, I helped Blue Bean Coffee develop a strategy for growth—their way. Three years later, after the Yellowstone River flood lapped their doorstep, the family-owned roaster has used our plan to source the "most eco-friendly packaging on the planet."

Nate Powell-Palm has been working to advance organic ag for most of his life, starting with raising his first 4-H steer at age 9. This fall, he brought the US Undersecretary of Ag to Gallatin Valley for a field day.

We set a goal for the morning and assessed what's moving this team forward and what's holding them back. Then the reframe. Always the reframe. This is where they figured out if the place they think they’re going is *actually* where they’re going.

"At Patagonia, we make our important decisions based on wanting to be here 100 years from now." Looking back on a story I wrote for Esquire about Chouinard in 2019.

“Corporations have so much power and influence," said Amy Fonte, Big Sky Resort's sustainability specialist. "How do you use that to make a positive impact?

Lessons in vision and leadership from Kris Tompkins, who's protected 13 million acres (and counting). A profile I wrote for Mountain Outlaw in 2019, plus previously unpublished insights on the imperative of changing our agricultural system.

How organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies. A three-part, award-winning series I wrote for Montana Free Press in 2021 and 2022.

Finding connections between food systems, wild adventure and community on a trip from Yosemite to Chattanooga and back home to Montana.

As part of my ongoing study of regenerative food systems, I spent a day with my 6-year-old, Eloise, shadowing soil scientists Latrice Tatsey and Tony Hartshorn at Blackfeet Community College and on a nearby ranch.

People come from all over the country and the world to work at Big Sky Resort's restaurants, each in search of something a little different. And they wind up contributing far more than just their labor: new and diverse ideas, energy, and perspectives.

“Every one of these farms is a business and a family and a community and an ecosystem. And it's so complex to look at all of those pieces, and it's so necessary. We're not just one giant industrial machine that produces food for the world.”

Fuke mixes the Hawaiian culture of his youth and his military training to create family in the banquet kitchen. His is a story of incredible sacrifice, and of finding friendship and home in unlikely places.

My daughter's "caring for the Earth" list

While reporting this story in 2018, I learned a basic premise that I operate under now: By focusing on inclusion, you broaden the diversity of perspectives and knowledge among teams and leaders, which is key to our future on this planet.

How small food processors are building a more resilient Montana Food System. A two-part series I reported for Montana Free Press.

Interviewing Chouinard, combined with the love of gardening and food I inherited from my parents, launched my exploration food and agricultural systems in Montana.