New Worlder

I want to you to try to imagine an ancient lakebed where the decomposing aquatic life at its bottom was piled up within the lake and mixed with branches and other organic material to form islands. Now imagine farming on those islands. Imagine these farms being incredibly productive. So productive that the crops grown on them could feed hundreds of thousands of people. Not only do they feed at an incredible scale without depleting the nutrients in the soil, but they encourage additional life. With intervention, by humans becoming part of the ecosystem rather than dominating it, they actually encourage biodiversity. It sounds like the future, right? Right? Would it blow your mind to know that these farm islands were actually created 2,000 years ago in what is present day Mexico City? It’s shocking, right? Would it blow your mind even more if you know they still exist to this very day?These farms are called chinampas and the knowledge that was developed here and expanded on throughout the past 2,000 years continues in a place called Xochimilco, within the limits of Mexico City. Today’s guests are the brothers Lucio and Pablo Usobiaga, who founded Arca Tierra, a farm network that includes chinampas farmers, as well as their own farm, and farms from other traditional agricultural systems in and around Mexico City. They also opened the zero-waste restaurant Baldío in 2024, alongside the British chef Douglas McMaster of Silo.What these guys are doing and how they are doing it should not be underestimated. They are trying to change the conversation around words like peasant and campesino and turn them into the role models we should all look up to. They are creating a vibrant, alternative network of farmers and collaborators that places value on ancestral agricultural systems and those that are protecting them.What’s important to take away from this and I want you all to think about it into the new year, is how hopeful they are. They are blunt about the challenges ahead and all the awful things that will happen, but they believe in what they are doing. They believe in these farmers and ancient agricultural systems. They understand what it’s going to take to bring them back. I hope that by listening to people like Lucio and Pablo, you do as well. We really can do this, all of us, together.--Host: Nicholas GillCo-host: Juliana DuqueProduced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana DuqueRecording & Editing by New Worlder Email: [email protected] more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Gregg Moore is a ceramic artist who is best known for his work with Dan Barber at the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns. The Glenside, Pennsylvania based artist is a professor of ceramic art at Arcadia University and also co-owns the ceramic studio Heirloom alongside his wife Jackie, which sells plateware influenced by agriculture and farmers’ markets.Why don’t we think of the plate with as much depth as we think of the food that sits on top of them? Not just how it holds the food on top or within it, but the materials they are made from and what they represent?  This discussion really made me think a lot about the vessels we use to communicate food. It’s not every restaurant that can have a ceramicist like Gregg and give them the space to be creative, but for many that strive for something different it could be a missed opportunity.One of the signature elements he works with is bone, using mostly the femurs of cattle that live at Stone Barns. Using a late 1700s recipe by Josiah Spode, he breaks down the bones into a powder, which gets remade into plates and cups. What’s fascinating is they have done tests about the quality of the bones and it is directly related to how the cows live. A healthier, grass fed cow not injected with hormones has purer bones that result in better plateware. It really makes you think about what we are putting in our bodies.--Host: Nicholas GillCo-host: Juliana DuqueProduced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana DuqueRecording & Editing by New Worlder Email: [email protected] more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Shava Cueva is the Baja California, Mexico born photographer who created the book and platform Bebidas de Oaxaca. The self-published book, now in its second edition, and available in English and Spanish, documents an incredible 87 traditional drinks from the eight regions of the state of Oaxaca. They are drinks made from “fruits, seeds, rinds, leafs, sap, flowers, crusts, [and] stems,” and prepared “raw, roasted, cooked, fermented, distilled, boiled, ground, mixed by mortar and pestle, foamed, cold or hot.” The book is filled with beautiful imagery that show the time and care Shava takes when visiting these often remote, rural communities and it shows the richness of these drinks, which are often left out of conversations of Oaxacan food and are gradually disappearing.What’s especially fascinating is that Shava has no culinary background. In the interview we discuss how the Baja born photographer, who now lives in Australia, first became intrigued by Oaxaca’s traditional beverages. He had a vague idea of a project during the pandemic, but once he arrived to the state and started shooting, he realized how substantial the project could become. There was so many drinks that weren’t archived anywhere and he continues to document them. His website and YouTube channel continue where the books leave off, and the material just keeps coming. It’s an endless source of inspiration for him. I hope more people follow his lead.--Host: Nicholas GillCo-host: Juliana DuqueProduced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana DuqueRecording & Editing by New Worlder Email: [email protected] more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Peter Tempelhoff is a chef and restauranteur in Cape Town, South Africa. While Pete lived and worked in Europe and the US, and worked with Marco Pierre White and several other well-known chefs, hell fell in love with Japanese cooking many years ago and it changed how he saw South African ingredients, which is an ongoing evolution. His fine dining restaurant Fyn combines Japanese techniques with South African ingredients, though he also the more casual restaurants Sushiya and Ramenhead, and a vineyard restaurant in Constantia named Beyond. Another restaurant at the historic Boschendal Estate, called Arum, will open in November.Last year on a bit of a whim, while I was waiting on paperwork for my next book, I went to South Africa. Pete told me about a paleobotanist named Jan De Vynck that he was working with that was researching the cognitive development of homo sapiens in South Africa more than 100,000 years ago. The story was of particular interest to me, and Pete for that matter, because the story had everything to do with what homo sapiens ate. The species was near extinction, but the particular biodiversity of the Western Cape allowed the survive and then thrive to become the dominant species on the planet. I found it to be incredibly hopeful and a powerful reason why we need to protect biodiversity and I wrote a 10,000 word three part story on the New Worlder newsletter about it.This was my only time in South Africa. My only time south of Morocco on the African continent, and it was nothing like I expected. Aside of the straight up physical beauty of the Cape Town area, the extreme level of biodiversity and how it resulted in all sorts of ingredients new to modern kitchens was quite the surprise. Many of them don’t look, smell or taste like anything I’ve ever tried before. Pete’s restaurants are a good place to find them and he’s been building different gardens to support his needs and encouraging other farmers to grow them to take the pressure off of wild resources. I see South Africa as a place we’ll talk much more about in terms of gastronomy and restaurants in the years to come and it’s because of what’s native. --Host: Nicholas GillCo-host: Juliana DuqueProduced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana DuqueRecording & Editing by New Worlder Email: [email protected] more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Nancy Matsumoto is the author of Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System, which will be released in October but is available for pre-order now. The book is a collection of stories about women that are creating alternative food networks. They are building out local and regional supply chains in the face of overwhelming odds and the destructiveness of industrial agriculture. While the book traces how broken our global food system is, it’s quite hopeful. All of the women featured are doing something about it. They are making changes. They are building something.We talk a lot about supply chains, how long they are and the work that it takes to shorten them. We talk about how an obscure Eurasian grass called kernza is having a positive impact on landscapes in the north central US while being used to create beer. How cacao producers in Belize and Guatemala are getting organized to better their situation. If you want to be inspired in making the changes you want to see in the world, read this book. We also talk with Nancy about the art of writing. We actually have the same agent and have faced a lot of the same challenges in the media industry, which has become nearly impossible to navigate. Putting non-fiction narrative books like this together require tremendous amounts of time and patience, yet we do it because these are important stories to tell. Nancy has also written the books Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake and By the Shore of Lake Michigan, a translation of WWII-era Japanese concentration camp poetry. Again, the latest book is Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System. Order a copy or follow Nancy on her just launched Substack, Reaping, which follows some of the stories from the book. --Host: Nicholas GillCo-host: Juliana DuqueProduced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque Recording & Editing by New Worlder https://www.newworlder.com Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com--Host: Nicholas GillCo-host: Juliana DuqueProduced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana DuqueRecording & Editing by New Worlder Email: [email protected] more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com