Agriculture isn’t just vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate; it’s also a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Figuring out how to make how we farm and what we eat more climate-friendly can be good for everyone.
Fort Collins-based ecologist Mark Easter explores these challenges in his new book, The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos.
In it, he discusses how we can make our food systems more sustainable, and how farms in the West can be a blueprint for regenerative agriculture everywhere.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes spoke with Easter to hear more about his work.
Editor’s note: This interview and this transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Caroline Llanes: So let's get started. I’d love for you to tell me a little bit about what inspired you to write this book.
Mark Easter: What spawned me to write this book… I started the work in about 2014. I realized that, at the time, the world, the scientific community, but in particular, the stakeholders, the taxpayers, citizens of the world, were starting to understand that when you burn stuff, it creates pollution. When you burn coal, natural gas, oil, it creates pollution that could warm the climate, that was (and is) warming the climate. But they didn't really understand that carbon emissions that were coming from growing food were not coming from burning stuff. They were coming from microbes. It was just fascinating to me that the ecosystems were such a source of carbon emissions, but also that the ecosystem could play a role in actually taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I thought it was just an important and such a compelling story that needed to be told. And so that's when I set out to write the book.
Llanes: So you have been an ecologist and a greenhouse gas accountant for many, many years. And this book was in progress for quite some time. Was there anything that really surprised you or stood out to you as you were researching?
Easter: Some of the most interesting things I found were that the solutions that we're looking for in agriculture and forestry to reduce carbon emissions and to reverse the flow of carbon, to draw carbon from the atmosphere down back into the soil and into plants to try to alleviate the climate crisis, that the solutions were already being done by farmers on millions of acres around the world. The solutions had been—in many places—in play for decades already. It's just a matter of scale.
We found farmers throughout the U.S., and I've been really fortunate to work internationally on every continent except Antarctica, doing greenhouse gas inventories and working with farmers and ranchers and pastoralists, scientists, extension specialists, policy people, and all of those places, the solutions are there. They just need the right types of incentives, and also the type of technical support in order to help bring those about, and also opportunities to create peer networks so that farmers can support each other in extending these practices. So that was probably the most exciting and, I think, wonderful sort of revelation through this process.
Llanes: Yeah, absolutely. Could you give me an example of one of these solutions?
Easter: One of them, for example, is growing what we call cover crops. Rather than leaving the soil bare for most of the year, which is the most common practice in growing crops like corn and wheat, soybeans, cotton, rather than doing that, you actually, as soon as you harvest a crop, you plant another crop, it's called a cover crop, and it can be a number of different things that hold the soil. These crops grow up, they produce biomass, they put down roots, they feed the soil. They capture nutrients that are in the soil, they also capture carbon as organic matter, and then that can then decompose in the following season before planting the next crop. That builds organic matter and carbon in the soil—essentially that's the process of drawing that carbon down out of the atmosphere back into the soil which is so important right now. We find that this is a particularly popular practice with farmers. They really respond to incentives around that. And there's a direct correlation between when the incentives, along with the technical support and the peer networks are made available, that the practices really pick up.
Llanes: So the Western United States as a region plays a really big role in this book, especially Colorado. There are three farms here in the state that you write about specifically, and I really want to know what makes this region such fertile ground for agriculture-based solutions to the climate crisis.
Easter: Farming in Colorado and in the Rocky Mountains, in the Intermountain West is tough. And also, not just there, but out on the Eastern Plains. There's three farmers profiled in the book. Besides Ela Family Farms in Hotchkiss, also Indian Ridge Farm outside Norwood, they raise pasture raised poultry, as well as they have a CSA (community supported agriculture) operating on their farm for vegetables, and they also have some other pasture raised meats. And then Curtis Sayles and his family out in eastern Colorado out near the Kansas border, they're growing grains out in that area.
These are all really tough parts of the world to grow crops, whether it's high elevation where you have a short growing season, or the far western edge of the Great Plains… (it’s) pretty dry, moisture comes in fits and starts, and can be kind of unreliable. It's one of the most difficult places to grow, to raise food in the world, I think.
And so that drives innovation. And people are constantly looking for ways to work within their system, within their climate, to grow what the soil, what the climate is capable of producing in that area. You know, farmers and ranchers are among the greatest innovators in the world. And I think particularly in these areas, that are on the edge of where it's actually possible to grow crops, it drives even more innovation and experimentation.
Llanes: So a big question that you introduce in this book is, ‘can we eat our way out of the climate crisis?’ Without giving away too much, could you talk to me a little bit about how this question really shaped your thinking as you were writing this book, and the role that agriculture can play in this bigger climate landscape?
Easter: This is this question, ‘can we eat our way out of the climate crisis?’ This is the central question that the scientific community that I've been working in has been trying to answer for about 30 years now. What is the extent of carbon emissions and what can be done about them? In particular, what can be done about them in agriculture?
What we find is that regenerative agriculture—besides being such a good set of solutions for climate mitigation—is essentially something that is really mandatory in order to help draw down carbon emissions from the atmosphere back into the soil. And the reason for that is, if we're going to keep the climate from warming to even more dangerous levels, we have to draw down out of the atmosphere, (put) carbon dioxide back into the soil, back into plants, whether it's forests or crops, orchards, whatever it might be. And the reason for that is we can't just get there by reducing fossil fuel emissions. All the indications are in the climate models that we have to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
Llanes: Is there anything else that you want to share?
Easter: One of the most personal connections to the climate crisis is through the plates of food that we sit down to three times a day. And when I ponder those, when I sit down to a meal these days, I really try to focus on the gratitude for the hands that produce that food and for all the different things that made it possible. I just really try to focus on being grateful for the food that's there and for the connections that it makes between me and the planet and for everybody that I'm sitting at the table with every day.
Llanes: That was Mark Easter. He's an ecologist who recently retired from Colorado State University and the author of the new book, The Blue Plate, The Food Lover's Guide to Climate Chaos. Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
Easter: You bet.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including KSJD.
