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First Aired - 11/08/2009 12:00PM
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On a very special episode of The Main Course, Katy Keiffer talks with acclaimed author Peter Pringle about new book "The Murder Of Nikolai Vavilov". Also on the show, David Grotenstein of Garden Of Eden.
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The Main Course Introduction (3:02)
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The Main Course, Katy Keiffer, Hearst Ranch, David Grotenstein, Peter Pringle, world renowned journalist from Britain, Heritage Foods USA, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, Norman Borlaug, Nikolai worked to promote plant genetics, NKVD, Stalin, food chains in New York, Peter Pringle is the author of nine previous books including Food Inc, New York Times notable book, Day of the Dandilion, The Observer, The Independant, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Nation,Peter Pringle Dicusses His Latest Novel: "The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov" (12:55)
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Peter Pringle, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, came out last May, Bureau Chief in Moscow, Peter was a corresponded for The Independent in Moscow, he lived on a street named after Lenin's brother, most streets in Moscow were named after famous communists, who is Vavilov?, geneticist, Stalin hated him, bourgeois, Nikolai tried to feed the world, he went on expeditions all over the world, he collected wild seeds to breed them into the staple crop plants, he started a seed bank in St. Petersburg, he had 250,000 seeds by the end of the 1930's, some genes skip a generation, pea breeding, different color flowers, Stalin decided Nikolai's process would take too long, Trofim Lysenko failed to produce, Lenin knew not to get rid of the bourgeois, when Stalin took over in 1925 he decided to get rid of the bourgeois specialist, intense paranoia, Nikolai was a victim of this, Russian agriculture, this story reads like a thriller,Questions For Peter (10:25)
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how did Peter get access to this information?, after Stalin fell Nikolai became a hero, his son Uri is still alive in Moscow, direct relatives of KGB victims get access to the files, Uri gave Peter Pringle access to these files, did Nikolai have any chance at all?, class prejudice, would his work have come into play if not for the KGB?, Stalin created famine through collectivization, Lysenko lived on, Russian science, by 1939 Americans developed a hybrid corn with a high yield, this technology was shared with The Soviet Union?, Vavilov knew about it, ideology played into the science, all academic events were at the command of the czar, they created red specialists who were rushed through universities with politicized agendas,The Grocery Business With David Grotenstein (32:07)
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David is Director of Operations for The Garden Of Eden, Fairway Market, gourmet has become a very overused term, food enthusiast, Fresh Direct, massive carbon footprint, more people are cooking at home than eating out, smaller businesses in New York, high quality for a slightly higher price, expensive products vs overpriced products, Costco, Wegmans, buying power, distributors, Baldor, United Nationals, Steiner, New York State cheese, cloth bound cheddars, why are American cheeses more expensive than imports, small batch productions, finding new milk sources, the story of the cheese is secondary to the actual product, specialty foods, Jasper Hill, green market movement, working with local farmers, many distributors have the same line of goods, price, recession, there has been a record number of cheeses this year, dairy farms, commodity market, 500,000 dairy cattle were slaughtered in the Northeast, farmstead and artisanal cheeses,To comment on this episode click here. There are currently Comments
