Q: Introduce yourself! Who are you and where are you located?

I’m Amanda Koehler, Greener Pastures’ Board Chair. I’ve been involved in the development of Greener Pastures since 2018 and a founding board member and chair since 2021. I live in Saint Paul and work for the Land Stewardship Project as the Policy Manager. 

Why did you choose to serve with GP?

As an organizer who has won factory farm fights, changed state policy, and engaged in shaping a just federal farm bill, I know firsthand that Greener Pastures fills a major hole in the fight for a humane, just, and sustainable farm and food system. All of us depend on our food system, but not all of us are engaged in strengthening it. Farmers, farm and food system workers, and eaters are more powerful together. Greener Pastures really bridges the gap by organizing, educating, and building solidarity between eaters, regenerative farmers, and everyone in between. It moves people from individual action to collective action.

What is your food story? How/when did your interest in food become prominent for you?

My best childhood memories center around food, whether that was eating cake batter on the floor with my brother, tending to the garden, or cooking a big meal for a holiday with my mom. I didn’t fully connect food with effecting change until I studied food systems in Costa Rica and saw the detriment of our industrial, colonized farm and food system first-hand. Nicaraguan immigrant farm workers, unique landscapes, local Costa Rican economies, Indigenous communities, and livestock are exploited by corporations from the U.S. and Canada, who rake in record profits without any local stake. My childhood-instilled values around food, stewarding the land, and caring for people felt violated and I felt like I had a personal stake in transforming our farm and food system to be racially, economically, and environmentally just.

What do you hope to change through your work in food activism?

One of my top priorities in transforming our farm and food system is ending factory farming. Factory farming is inhumane, disastrous for our water and climate, and exploitative of workers and rural communities. The alternative – a regenerative, pasture-based livestock system run by small and mid-sized farms and local processing and marketing businesses – is both possible and beautiful. My primary way of realizing this vision is by organizing farmers and rural Minnesotans to stop factory farm proposals, win public investments in soil-healthy farming practices like managed rotational grazing, and ending public subsidies for corporate agriculture at the Land Stewardship Project. I truly believe we are on track to build the people power we need to be wildly successful, especially as Greener Pastures brings more and more eaters into this movement.

What are four fun facts about yourself? 

1. I’m raising 3 backyard chickens named Nugget, Dumpling, and Soup who provide all my eggs, and then some.

2. I grow 46 kinds of vegetables, fruits, and herbs and am transitioning my grass to perennial pollinator habitat.

3. My partner and I have four cats: Charlotte, Olivia, Yams, and Winnifred.

4. I aspire to have a hobby farm in the driftless region someday.

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