Reaping What She Sows

A James Beard Award winner celebrates the women heroes who are fighting against the Big Food system—and asks the question: How should we eat?

When the Covid-19 pandemic ripped through global food supply chains, it threatened the livelihoods of farmers, created shortages in supermarkets, and revealed a startling truth to consumers: the food system is broken, and large corporations did the breaking. An idea began to take hold–what if we could return to a time when our needs were met by the farmers in our own communities, rather than a commodity, Big Food system that favors profit above all else?

With in-depth, on-the-ground reporting, Nancy Matsumoto introduces readers to the women changemakers who are building local and regional supply chains, from the maverick farmers, millers, and bakers bringing back local grain economies; the brewers, distillers, and winemakers who are regenerating land and ecosystems; indigenous and diasporic seed savers, and many more changemakers. 

Reaping What She Sows offers a blueprint for what eating enjoyably, sustainably, and ethically looks like today. Essential for those who are concerned about climate change, their own health, and the lack of choice and transparency in the global food supply chain.2025 Porchlight Business Book Awards Longlist: Current Events & Public Affairs

"Matsumoto’s authoritative, eye-opening writing provides readers with important, actionable information for everyone who eats." —Booklist

“Matsumoto situates her work within an intersectional framework, and shares with eaters and food activists everywhere valuable lessons from the women at the forefront of agriculture system change. There’s no better time than now for this book… and there is no better person to write about this topic.” —Dan Barber, chef and author, The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

"Women play enormously important roles in food systems and in the food movement, but are often overlooked. Matsumoto brings women out of the shadows and highlights the efforts of a wide diversity of women to create food systems healthier for people and the planet." —Marion Nestle, nutritionist and author, What to Eat

"Behind words like 'organic' and 'regenerative' is a vast network of women who are reimagining agriculture through a rugged mix of ingenuity and sweat equity. Nancy Matsumoto introduces us to these fascinating leaders and the urgent movement they are building for a more just and sustainable food system." —Liz Carlisle, author of Healing Grounds Nancy Matsumoto is a Toronto- and New York City-based writer and editor who covers food, agriculture, and the environment.  With Michael Tremblay, she is the author of the book Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth, which won a James Beard Media Award. Her articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Saveur, Food & Wine, and Civil Eats.INTRODUCTION

ON AN EARLY SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON, I stand with Noreen
Thomas on the edge of the pancake-flat, twelve-hundred-acre Moorhead,
Minnesota, farm that has been in the Thomas family for close to one
hundred fifty years. Since being certified organic in 1997, it has produced
high-quality organic grains, garden produce, and pasture-raised eggs.

Thomas points to the bird habitat buffer she is encouraging with a late-Au-
gust hay cutting, which will provide ample protection for ground-nesting
meadowlarks.

The bright-yellow-bellied birds’ numbers had for years been in steep
decline due to loss of habitat and mortality caused by intensive sin-
gle-crop farming of corn, soy, or sugar beets, and the chemical fertilizers
and pesticides that mode of farming relies on. Today, the birds’ resurgent
presence on Doubting Thomas Farms is a sign of ecosystem health. Not
only do they add beautiful color and song to the landscape, they are also
the first defense against pests such as caterpillars and grasshoppers, keep-
ing their numbers in check. In another part of the farm, Thomas shows
me a trial field of perennial sunflowers, part of a set of practices that are
making the surrounding land and waters healthier and more climate re-
silient, and filling a gap in the market after the Russia–Ukraine war made
sunflower oil harder to come by.

Doubting Thomas is an outlier in Clay County and in Minnesota,
where only one percent of farms are certified organic. It is a tiny island
of biodiversity in a vast golden sea of genetically modified, chemically
treated monocrops that ripple out as far as the eye can see. Going against
the tide has not been easy, but Thomas says, “It’s about providing really
good food for my family, my grandchildren, and the community. If peo-
ple didn’t discern a difference in flavor, I wouldn’t bother. But they do,
and it’s something we’ve forgotten, how food should taste.”