Chip Carter has been a fixture in American media since the 1990s as a writer, musician, producer, host and – increasingly these days – as a speaker, lecturer, podcast guest, food/farming/culture SME and even educator.

He’s the creator, writer, producer, director and host of Where The Food Comes From. With 65 episodes to-date, the show airs on The RFD-TV Network, multiple other regional and international networks and even on airlines inflight. The new YouTube channel is growing rapidly. And now WTFCF has partnered up with USDA to provide a new core component for the National Ag In The Classroom program.

Born the son of a farmtown minister and grandson of farmers in rural Georgia, Chip didn’t get much of a chance to settle in. With his family on the move every couple of years, he discovered the itchy feet that would eventually take him… well, everywhere. He raised a son by himself in Georgia before relocating to Tampa Bay in the mid-’90s, where he lives and works with his blended family of five kids, five grandkids, two granddogs and 11 fish.

He first appeared as an internationally syndicated columnist with The Chicago Tribune in 1990, a post that lasted 19 years. Amazingly, that work had nothing to do with food or farming. Chip’s column was the first ongoing, mainstream media presence devoted to videogaming in the U.S. He also spent two years as a columnist for The Washington Post. He traveled the world, writing about and reviewing the industry, hobnobbing with celebrities, living in luxury.

So of course he walked away from all that to come home to the farm and start telling the stories of “My People,” as he puts it.

“I knew I was supposed to be doing something else, simple as that,” Chip explains. “That little voice we all both love and fear just wouldn’t shut up. I’d been telling stories my whole life. That little voice kept saying it was time to make those get up off the page and walk around. Oh, and also to come back home and start telling farm stories. That part didn’t make quite as much sense at the time.”

When The Huffington Post offered him a spot that included video production in 2009, Chip jumped on it. At the same time, a national ag industry publication was looking for someone to write stories from farms part-time. That didn’t seem like a coincidence. A couple months doing both new jobs proved a flashpoint: Within weeks Chip had written the first screen treatment for what would become Where The Food Comes From.

Eventually. After learning the ropes, starting a business and battling through a global pandemic, the show finally premiered in January 2022.

“I had so much to learn, both about farming and making a show,” Chip says. “But clearly we got it figured out. And continue to. I’ve had some amazing adventures in my life. But clearly, I saved the best for last.”