Podcast
100+ episodes
What if you could tell the history of the world through the food we grow?
The History of Fresh Produce explores the extraordinary stories of the fruits, vegetables and crops that have shaped human history.
Join John Paap and Patrick Kelly as they uncover the surprising connections between fresh produce and some of history’s biggest events, most fascinating people and strangest moments.
From the potato priests who helped transform Europe and the rabbit plague that overran Australia, to the cacao that financed revolutions, the plant that gave us the gin and tonic, and the farmer who became one of the most recognizable faces in the world — John and Patrick reveal the history hiding in plain sight in our fruit bowls, grocery stores and fields.
Along the way, expect empires, exploration, science, politics, war, religion, trade, agriculture — and more than a few stories that sound far too ridiculous to be true.
Because the history of fresh produce isn’t really just the history of food.
It’s the history of us.
Copyright 2026 The Produce Industry Network
10th Nov 2026The Bounty: Paradise and the Captain (Part 2)Why did William Bligh spend 33 punishing days trying to force a passage around Cape Horn, before finally turning his ship halfway around the world? How did a Tahitian chief come to help the British55m3rd Nov 2026The Bounty: The Fruit That Launched a Voyage (Part 1)Why did the British government convert a captain’s cabin into a floating greenhouse? What was it about a starchy Pacific fruit that so captivated Joseph Banks and the planters of the Caribbean? And48m27th Oct 2026Fighting Witches to Save the HarvestWho were the benandanti, the “good walkers” of sixteenth-century Italy who claimed their spirits left their bodies at night to battle witches, armed with stalks of fennel, in order to save the56m20th Oct 2026The History of GarlicWhere did the world’s most pungent bulb actually come from? What does a 4,000-year-old Babylonian clay tablet reveal about how people cooked with it? And how did a humble kitchen ingredient end up as1h 13m13th Oct 2026The Farmer Everyone Wanted DeadWho was Edgar J. Watson, the Florida farmer shot dead by his own neighbours in 1910? Was he really the serial killer of Everglades legend, suspected in the murder of the outlaw Belle Starr and1h 2m6th Oct 2026Six Hundred Years of Farmer RevoltWhy did rural labourers burn tax records during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381? How did American wheat farmers try to seize control of the railroads in the 1890s? And why, in 1962, did French growers1h 18m29th Sep 2026Johnny Appleseed: The Man Behind the MythWho was John Chapman, the barefoot, tin-pot-wearing nurseryman who became one of America's most beloved folk heroes? Why were his millions of apple trees destined not for eating, but for cider and48m22nd Sep 2026Death by ProduceWhy did the Suda insist a Greek comic playwright died after being struck by a pear? How did the Emperor Augustus's own precautions against poison get defeated by figs still hanging on the tree? And39m15th Sep 2026The History of QuinoaHow did a plant that Victorian botanists dismissed as something you'd find growing on a rubbish heap become the sacred mother grain of the Inca Empire — and how did the Spanish nearly stamp it out of58m8th Sep 2026Finland's Great Hunger: The Last Famine of Western EuropeHow did a single night's frost in September 1867 kill nearly one tenth of Finland's population — proportionally worse than the Irish Famine — and why has almost nobody heard of it? Why did a44m1st Sep 2026The History of WatermelonsHow did a fruit that began as an ancient Egyptian burial canteen — a self-contained water supply buried with pharaohs — end up starting an American military intervention in Panama, getting farmers35m25th Aug 2026In a PickleHow did a jar of pickles keep Julius Caesar's legions marching, Cleopatra beautiful, Captain Cook's sailors alive, and Napoleon's armies fed — and why does the same basic technology of salt water and57m18th Aug 2026The History of PeasHow did a green vegetable reduce the court of Louis XIV to what contemporaries called "a fashion and a madness" — with ladies smuggling peas to their bedrooms and the Sun King himself eating so many49m11th Aug 2026The 1944 Water TreatyHow did a treaty signed in the middle of the Second World War end up with farmers seizing a dam at gunpoint, a woman shot dead by her own country's National Guard, and American lettuce growers in31m4th Aug 2026The Parasite in the Salad DrawerHow did five farms in the highlands of Guatemala end up sickening nearly a thousand people across fifteen American states and two countries — and why did California's strawberry industry lose forty28m
28th Jul 2026South Korea: The Cabbage CrisisWhy did the South Korean government fly in emergency cabbage from China in 2010 — and why was that decision experienced as a national humiliation as much as a practical solution? How did a fermented27m
28th Jul 2026Netherlands: Operation MannaHow did a Nazi food embargo, a frozen canal, and a railway strike combine to starve one of the most developed societies in Europe to below 400 calories a day? Why does the Dutch Hunger Winter still26m
21st Jul 2026England: 5,245 Acts of ParliamentWhy did Parliament pass 5,245 individual Acts to enclose 6.8 million acres of English common land — and why does almost nobody in England know it happened? Who were the people who lost the right of24m
21st Jul 2026Uruguay: The Basque VineWhy did a Basque immigrant fleeing the Carlist Wars plant a vine from the Pyrenees on the banks of the Uruguay River in 1870 — and how did that single decision produce what may now be the healthiest22m
21st Jul 2026Ivory Coast: Blood ChocolateWhy does the country that grows 45 percent of the world's cocoa receive between five and seven percent of the value of the chocolate bar it becomes? How did a single crop fund two civil wars23m
16th Jul 2026Panama: Los CanalerosWhy did the President of the United States personally intervene to improve the yam supply of Caribbean labourers on a jungle construction site — and what does that detail reveal about the vast,23m
16th Jul 2026Algeria: The Wine That Made France FrenchWhy was Algeria, a predominantly Muslim country in North Africa, the largest exporter of wine in the world — and why has almost nobody heard of it? How did the phylloxera catastrophe that destroyed20m
16th Jul 2026Switzerland: The Cherry and the StillHow does a fruit with a two-day shelf life become one of Switzerland's great protected exports? Why does the finest kirsch come not from Germany's Black Forest but from a small lake-side canton in16m
14th Jul 2026New Zealand: Without HarakekeWhy did a Māori chief ask a visiting English botanist how it was possible to live without a plant — and what does his bewilderment reveal about a civilisation built entirely around a single organism?23m
14th Jul 2026Türkiye: Social Intercourse and Free DiscussionWhy did two Syrian merchants opening a shop in Istanbul in 1554 inadvertently invent the public sphere — and how did a small copper pot of coffee produce Lloyd's of London, the French Revolution, and22m
14th Jul 2026Saudi Arabia: The Quay of the WorldWhy did the Sumerian gods describe a land on the Persian Gulf coast as paradise — and why does the geological reality of that same land, 4,000 years later, still justify the comparison? Who were the25m
9th Jul 2026Uzbekistan: The Emperor Who Wept Over a MelonWhy did the man who just conquered India weep over a melon — and what does that tell us about the fruit that travelers from Ibn Battuta to Victorian cavalry officers have been stopping their journeys25m
9th Jul 2026Germany: The Purity CommandmentWhy did 27 words buried in a Bavarian price regulation from 1516 become the most famous food law in history — and why did it take 402 years for anyone to give it the name that made it sound ancient21m
9th Jul 2026Ghana: Six Pods in a ToolboxWhy did a blacksmith hide six cocoa pods under his tools to smuggle them past Spanish customs — and how did those six pods become the foundation of an industry that today supplies sixty percent of23m
7th Jul 2026Belgium: The Potato Famine in FlandersWhy did the potato blight begin in Belgium before it reached Ireland — and why has the Flemish famine of 1845, which killed tens of thousands and stunted a generation, been almost entirely forgotten22m
7th Jul 2026Haiti: The Black JacobinsWhy did the most productive colony in the entire world — generating 40 percent of Europe's sugar from an area the size of Maryland — become the site of the only successful slave revolution in human23m
7th Jul 2026Brazil: Rubber and RuinWhy does the most extravagant opera house in the history of South America sit in the middle of the Amazon rainforest — and how did a wild tree, a Connecticut hardware merchant's accident, and a debt22m
2nd Jul 2026Bosnia & Herzegovina: The Soul of a PlumWhy do Bosnian Muslims make and celebrate a plum brandy that Islamic law technically forbids — and what does their answer to that question reveal about four centuries of Ottoman rule, Balkan26m
2nd Jul 2026Cape Verde: The Grogue TrailWhy did a Portuguese colonial sugar ban inadvertently create Cape Verde's national spirit — and what does it reveal about how cultures find ways through every door that's closed to them? How did ten30m
2nd Jul 2026Egypt: The Sacred OnionWhy did a Greek historian standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid in 450 BC record that its builders were fed on onions, garlic, and radishes — and what does the archaeology say about whether he27m
30th Jun 2026Iraq: How Irrigation Destroyed the Civilization That Invented ItWhy did the civilisation that invented writing, cities, and law destroy the very soil that made it possible — and why are sixty to seventy percent of those same fields still poisoned by salt today?29m
30th Jun 2026Japan: The Emperor's Sacred PaddyWhy does the Emperor of Japan — head of state of one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth — wade into a rice paddy every year to plant seedlings by hand, and harvest them in autumn28m
30th Jun 2026Sweden: The Swede Who Named the Natural WorldWhy did a restless boy from a rural Swedish parsonage end up giving a name to every living thing on Earth — and how did he build a system so durable that it still runs as the operating system of33m
25th Jun 2026Spain: The Red Gold of La ManchaWhy does it take between 150,000 and 200,000 flowers — and up to 470 hours of human labour — to produce a single kilogram of saffron, and why has the plateau of La Mancha been the place where that37m
25th Jun 2026DR Congo: The King Who Owned a CountryHow did a shipping clerk in Antwerp discover one of the greatest crimes of the nineteenth century simply by paying attention to which ships were carrying what — and why did it take a decade of22m
25th Jun 2026Paraguay: The Yerba Mate Jesuit EmpireWhy did a Jesuit republic of 140,000 people in the subtropical forests of South America — with its own armed militia, its own printing presses, its own Baroque composers, and the only successful mate29m
23rd Jun 2026Austria: Styrian Identity in Pumpkin SeedsWhy does a single spontaneous genetic mutation in a Styrian pumpkin field — sometime in the nineteenth century — matter enough to trigger diplomatic rows, European Parliament debates, and a forensic33m
23rd Jun 2026Iran: The Garden That Became HeavenWhy does the word "paradise" — as used in every European language, in Arabic, in Urdu — simply mean "walled garden" in Old Persian, and what does that tell us about the civilisation that turned a22m
23rd Jun 2026Colombia: The Coffee Farmer Who Never ExistedWhy was the most famous coffee farmer in the world a Cuban-American opera singer from Havana who had never visited Colombia — and how did a fictional man with a mule named Conchita become one of the20m
18th Jun 2026Czechia: Gregor Mendel's Peas and the Birth of GeneticsWhy did a monk in a Moravian monastery spend eight years counting 30,000 pea plants — and how did the number three to one unlock the secret of heredity that Charles Darwin couldn't solve? Why did22m
18th Jun 2026Qatar: The Locust and the DesertBefore the gas flares and the glass towers, before the air conditioning and the sovereign wealth fund, what did Qatar actually have? Why was a single tree the difference between survival and21m
18th Jun 2026South Africa: The Rooibos DisputeWhy did the Khoisan people of South Africa spend nine years in legal negotiations to receive 1.5 percent of an industry built entirely on knowledge they had held for three centuries — and what does22m
16th Jun 2026Tunisia: Olive Oil and the Roman BreadbasketWhy does a town of 20,000 people in central Tunisia contain the third largest Roman amphitheatre ever built - and what does a structure that seated 35,000 people tell us about what olive oil money21m
16th Jun 2026Scotland: Dundee Marmalade and the Keiller FamilyHow did a storm-battered Spanish ship, a Dundee harbour, and a grocer's wife with a pan full of unsaleable bitter oranges accidentally create one of the first registered trademarks in British history25m
16th Jun 2026Portugal: Spices, Empire, and the Pepper That Built LisbonWhy did the Visigoths demand three thousand pounds of black pepper as the ransom for Rome — and what does that tell us about a climbing vine in Kerala that reshaped the entire history of the western21m
11th Jun 2026Norway: The Potato Priest Who Fed NorwayWhy did Norwegian farmers believe that eating potatoes would give them leprosy — and who were the potato priests who spent fifty years smuggling tubers home from Copenhagen in their hats to prove23m
11th Jun 2026Australia: The War on RabbitsHow did twenty-four rabbits released by one man for a "spot of hunting" in 1859 colonise an entire continent within thirty-five years — and why did a three-thousand-kilometre fence, a campaign of25m
11th Jun 2026Jordan: The Dead Sea, Balsam, and Cleopatra's MonopolyWhy did Cleopatra demand the balsam groves of Jericho as the price of financing Marc Antony's wars — and what does it mean that a plant worth twice its weight in gold was guarded day and night by25m
9th Jun 2026Morocco: The Argan Tree and the Women Who Saved ItWhy has the argan tree — which grows nowhere else on Earth — survived for 65 million years in the mountains of Morocco, and why are the women who have tended it for centuries now earning two euros28m
9th Jun 2026Curaçao: The Orange That Named a LiqueurWhy did a Valencia orange, abandoned on a tiny arid Caribbean island, transform into a new species that nobody could eat — and how did that inedible fruit end up in cocktail bars on every continent?25m
9th Jun 2026Croatia: The Maraschino Cherry and the Republic of RagusaHow did a city of 30,000 people survive for 450 years between Venice and the Ottoman Empire — and what does the Republic of Ragusa have to do with the cherry on top of your cocktail? Why does the26m
4th Jun 2026France: The Truffle UndergroundWhy did France's black truffle — once produced in the thousands of tonnes — collapse to near-extinction in a century, and what does its revival reveal about the country's relationship with luxury,32m
4th Jun 2026Ecuador: The Cinchona Tree and the Cure for MalariaWhy did the cloud forests of Ecuador produce the only cure for a disease that killed popes, hollowed out armies, and blocked European expansion into the tropics — and what did the people whose26m
4th Jun 2026Senegal: How Peanuts Built and Broke a NationWhy did a South American legume become the foundation of French imperial power in West Africa — and what did it cost the people who grew it? Who was Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the Sufi mystic the French29m
2nd Jun 2026USA: The Tobacco Lords and the Founding of AmericaWhy did tobacco, and not gold or glory, save the first permanent English colony in America? How did the Founding Fathers' tobacco debts to British merchants help light the fuse of the American27m
2nd Jun 2026Canada: The Great Maple Syrup HeistFrom Indigenous sugar shacks to the Supreme Court of Canada… how did maple syrup become one of the world’s most tightly controlled commodities? Why does Quebec maintain a vast strategic maple syrup31m
2nd Jun 2026Mexico: The Aztec Origins of ChocolateWhy did the Aztecs drink their currency — and what does it mean that the most global food in the world began as a bitter, frothy, sacred drink consumed by warriors and kings in the rainforests of28m26th May 2026Monsanto: The Peach Farmer's Revenge (Part 6)Who was Dewayne Lee Johnson, the school groundskeeper soaked in Roundup who took on the most legally powerful agricultural company in the world — and what did his trial finally expose about what48m19th May 2026Monsanto: Playing God (Part 5)Who was Bob Shapiro, the guitar-playing Vietnam protester turned Monsanto CEO who genuinely believed genetically modified seeds could save the planet — and how did the same man who preached51m12th May 2026Monsanto: The Pesticide That "Feeds the World" (Part 4)What was Roundup, the herbicide born from a soap crisis in a radioactive Idaho slag heap, that became the most widely used weed-killer in human history — and how did the shy, introverted chemist who45m5th May 2026Monsanto: Agent Orange and the Fields of Vietnam (Part 3)What was Agent Orange, the herbicide that fell like mist on the jungles of Vietnam — and how did a chemical born in a West Virginia factory end up destroying the food systems, forests, and bodies of49m28th Apr 2026Monsanto: A Chemical War Comes Home (Part 2)Who was Edgar Queeny, the cold-eyed social Darwinist who inherited a chemical company from his father and turned it into one of the most powerful industrial forces in American history? Why did the52m21st Apr 2026Monsanto: The Sweetener and the Salesman (Part 1)Who was John Francis Queeny, the broke Irish-American salesman who founded one of the most powerful and controversial companies in the history of modern agriculture - without knowing the first thing50m14th Apr 2026The Green Revolution 2.0: Bill Gates and the Remaking of AgricultureWho is Bill Gates, the college dropout from Seattle who built the operating system of global capitalism - and then turned his restless, problem-solving mind to the oldest human activity of all:55m7th Apr 2026Huitlacoche: Corn Smut or Sacred Gift?What is huitlacoche, the fungus that Indigenous farmers in Mexico gave thanks for at harvest - and that American agronomists spent a century trying to burn, quarantine, and breed out of existence?38m31st Mar 2026The Rise of Plastic in Fresh ProduceWhat is plastic, and how did a shortage of billiard balls accidentally give birth to the material that would feed the modern world? Why did a Belgian chemist rummaging through coal tar waste end up1h 5m24th Mar 2026The Tree of Life: Empires, War, and the Modern Date (Part 2)How did the humble date palm become entangled in the great age of empire? Why did steamships, railways, and the opening of the Suez Canal transform an ancient oasis crop into a global commodity? And38m17th Mar 2026The Tree of Life: How Dates Built the Ancient World (Part 1)How did a humble desert fruit help build some of the world’s earliest civilizations? Why did ancient farmers in Mesopotamia become master matchmakers for palm trees? And how did the date palm come to52m10th Mar 2026From Hot Houses to High Tech: The Rise of the GreenhouseWhat does a Roman emperor’s craving for cucumbers have to do with feeding eight billion people? How did a 15th-century Korean cookbook quietly invent heated agriculture centuries before Europe’s1h 9m3rd Mar 2026Wheels, Plates and Pyramids: Produce & U.S. Dietary GuidelinesWhat was the United States government’s first move, when it decided that what Americans ate was a matter of national concern? Why, from the depths of the Civil War to the height of the culture wars,1h 3m24th Feb 2026The History of AvocadosWhat kind of fruit was designed to be swallowed whole by giant sloths? How did a sacred Mesoamerican tree become the green badge of millennial brunch culture? And how did a humble postman’s backyard1h 29m
17th Feb 2026Joseph Banks: The End of the Journey, Not the Influence (Part 7)What becomes of a man who spent his life moving plants, people, and power across the globe - when his own body finally begins to fail? How did Joseph Banks face his final years: in pain, in38m
10th Feb 2026Joseph Banks: Kew and the Power of Plants (Part 6)What happens when exploration gives way to administration - and adventure turns into power? How did a royal garden become the beating heart of a global botanical empire? And how did Joseph Banks,1h 10m
3rd Feb 2026Joseph Banks: The Birth of Australia (Part 5)How did a gentleman botanist turn a vague imperial idea into a functioning colony on the far side of the world? Why did Joseph Banks’s quiet influence matter as much as any act of Parliament or naval1h 13m
27th Jan 2026Joseph Banks: Fame, Tantrums, and the Seeds of Empire (Part 4)Fresh from fame and flush with ambition, Joseph Banks sets out to remake the world in his own image. But what happens when celebrity curdles into entitlement, when science collides with the Navy, and1h 7m
20th Jan 2026Joseph Banks: Death and Survival (Part 3)What happens when discovery turns to disaster — and survival hangs on a sliver of luck? How close did Joseph Banks come to losing everything he had collected, and his life with it? And how did coral,58m
13th Jan 2026Joseph Banks: The Endeavour Sets Sail (Part 2)What happened when Joseph Banks finally put to sea - and discovery left the comfort of gardens behind? How would a voyage meant to advance science collide with storms, suspicion, imperial rivalries,59m
6th Jan 2026Joseph Banks: Weeds Over Greek (Part 1)Who was Joseph Banks before he became the most powerful botanist in the British Empire? How did a wealthy, restless young man turn a childhood fascination with weeds into a scientific obsession that48m30th Dec 2025The Swiss War on Fruit TreesOnce, Switzerland was a land of pears.When we picture the Swiss countryside today, we imagine tidy fields, precision farming, and alpine order. But not so long ago, vast stretches of eastern58m23rd Dec 2025What Will History Remember: 2020s [so far] in Review (Livestream)As 2025 draws to a close, we also reach the midpoint of the decade. Looking back on an eventful first half of the 2020s, we’re left with a big question: what will history remember about this era in45m16th Dec 2025The Three Wise MenWhat do gold, frankincense, and myrrh really tell us about the world into which Jesus was born? Who were the Magi - kings, mystics, scientists, or traders - and why did they travel vast distances52m9th Dec 2025The History of FigsFrom incestuous wasps and prehistoric forests to sacred enlightenment, revolutionary resistance, and a certain square-shaped snack aisle icon - what if the fig is the most powerful fruit in human1h2nd Dec 2025Space Films, Produce and History (Livestream)"They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So technically, I colonized Mars. In your face , Neil Armstrong!"As Mark Watney's line from the book and film The Martian47m25th Nov 2025The Artichoke KingWhat does a thorny Mediterranean thistle have to do with the American Mafia? How did a humble vegetable — adored by Romans, cultivated by Renaissance queens, and grown lovingly by Italian immigrants43m18th Nov 2025The Guano Wars: When Poop Became PowerWhat if the most valuable substance on Earth wasn’t gold, or oil, or diamonds… but bird droppings?In the mid-19th century, guano—yes, seabird excrement—fueled an agricultural and geopolitical1h11th Nov 2025Produce in Space: The Story of Intergalactic AgricultureWhat happens when humanity takes its most basic need - food -beyond Earth’s atmosphere? From John Glenn’s applesauce tubes to the first lettuce grown aboard the International Space Station, the story1h 2m4th Nov 2025Tanaka Farms: A Japanese-American Farming LegacyWhat is the legacy of Japanese American farmers in shaping California’s agricultural landscape? How did a community once barred from owning land become pioneers in strawberry and vegetable farming?52m30th Oct 2025Cornellian Chats: Van Gogh, Organics, Tomatoes on Trial, and Freeze!Join John and Patrick for a special bonus episode recorded live from Anaheim, California, at the International Fresh Produce Association’s Global Produce & Floral Show! Surrounded by the sights,16m28th Oct 2025Produce Poisons and CursesWhat do garlic, blackberries, cucumbers, eggplants, mushrooms, and pumpkins have in common? More than you might think. Across history and folklore, fruits and vegetables have not only nourished51m
21st Oct 2025The History of Apples: Modern Fragility (Part 5)From myth and legend to cider-fuelled revolutions, from Johnny Appleseed’s frontier orchards to the Victorians’ quest for the perfect pippin, the story of the apple has been anything but ordinary. In57m
14th Oct 2025The History of Apples: The Colorful Victorian (Part 4)From the barefoot wanderings of Johnny Appleseed to the fiery kick of applejack on Civil War battlefields, the apple’s story in America takes a dramatic turn in this fourth episode of our series.45m
7th Oct 2025The History of Apples: America's Dependence (Part 3)John and Patrick journey into the seventeenth century, when cider wasn’t just a drink - it was a matter of national survival. From John Evelyn’s bold call for apple orchards to secure England’s navy47m30th Sep 2025The Tales Behind Apple Names (Livestream)Apples are one of those rare fruits that you can actually recognize by name. Honeycrisp, Gala, Fuji… the list seems endless.But have you ever wondered where these names came from?Is there an actual47m
23rd Sep 2025The History of Apples: Medieval Times (Part 2)From the kitchens of medieval Europe to the orchards of Anglo-Saxon England, the apple became far more than just a fruit. It was medicine, it was myth, it was ritual. In part two of our apple series,46m
16th Sep 2025The History of Apples: Nomads, Gods and Emperors (Part 1)Where did the apple come from, and how did it go from a sour, berry-sized wild fruit to the sweet, plump star of our fruit bowls today? Was it really bears (and their sweet tooth) that shaped its52m