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, the episode brings together voices shaping the future of food. Jeannie Borlaug Laube reflects on her father’s legacy from his childhood farm. Rattan Lal reminds us why healthy soils still anchor global food security, while Cary Fowler offers the long view on safeguarding crop diversity. Paul Temple grounds the discussion in farm-level realities, and Olivia Marti brings the energy of a new generation. With insights from Neil Bentley on innovation in a climate-stressed world, this episode closes with a simple truth: feeding the future will take science, leadership, and hope.

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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, Jane Craigie, visits the rice fields of Australia, where a grower and an ecologist are working side by side to create habitat for endangered birds while producing food and managing limited access to irrigation water. We hear from a nutritionist about how diets shift through our lives and circumstances, and why nutrient density matters for lifelong health. And we meet innovators transforming agriculture: one listening to bees’ wingbeats to track pollination, another developing biological controls to fight pests, and a tomato breeder working for better flavour, resilience, and shelf life.

This is farming, science, and nature - connected in so many unseen and fascinating ways.

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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 the content gives into their lives.

Many say that they started sharing their stories to play a part in developing society’s interest in food production, land management and in appreciating the trade-offs that are a daily part of profitable and compliant agriculture.

In this episode of the Science Behind your Salad we are celebrating some of these farmers who came together to connect and inspire one another at an AgXplorers’ Influencer Camp in Germany.

Host Jane Craigie caught up with five of the 20 influencers at the event - Marie Hoffman, from Germany, Ally Hunter Blair who farms with his family in England’s Wye Valley, Tonis Soopalu, Estonia’s only farming influencer, Lasma Lapina from Latvia, and Austrian farmer, DJ and restaurateur, Johannes Burchhart, who describes farming as “like a heartbeat”.

Jane also spoke to Thomas Fischer who farms very sustainably at Quellendorf near Berlin, one of the farm’s ecologist partners, Christian Schmidt Egger and BASF’s Anna Lena Hottendorf.

Handles for the influencers:

Ally Hunter Blair @wyefarm

Johannes Burchhart @bauernjohny

Marie Hoffman @marie_hfmn97

Lasma Lapina @lapainaa

Tonis Soopalu @farmer.tonis

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