The Future Herd

Summary: Joshua Pearce argues that open source is a genuine competitive advantage: his lab at Western University finishes projects before competitors can get NDAs signed. The lab publishes roughly 50 papers a year, and lets an open community improve and re-share everything it releases. He connects that speed to concrete agri-food results — agrivoltaics trials boosting strawberry yields and open-so...

Summary: Marney Isaac argues that Canada has an abundance of evidence for agro-biodiversity, soil health and agroforestry, but almost none of the extension, incentive or seed infrastructure needed to act on it. Drawing on transition research with millions of farmers in India, she shows that reducing agrochemicals can raise net farm income almost immediately — yet Canada's locked-in system of seed,...

Summary: In the 50th episode of The Future Herd, Jesse Hirsh weaves together insights from past guests around a single question: who gets to shape what happens next in agriculture? Drawing on conversations about knowledge, innovation, care, and succession, Hirsh argues that the sector's future depends not just on new ideas but on who is recognized as an expert, whose care is valued, and who has th...

Summary: Laura Smit, executive director of Vancouver Farmers Markets, argues that farmers markets deserve recognition as critical civic infrastructure—what she calls relationship infrastructure—rather than temporary retail events. Drawing on her grandfather's greenhouse background and 15 years managing markets like Trout Lake, she shows how markets build trust across urban-rural divides, support n...

Summary: Caylie Corvinelli, a first-generation farmer and veterinary technician, explains how she and her husband launched the Herd to Harvest Collective, which asks eaters to buy a half or whole cow two years in advance and follow the herd through its life. It is a rethinking of the CSA that treats time, transparency and relationship as the product — and that gives a first-generation beef farm th...

Rebecca MacLeod, leader of the New Grocery Movement, argues that food insecurity in Canada is a policy decision — with roughly one in four people food insecure and income inequality as the main driver — and that fixing it requires both legislative change like a basic income and farmer supports, and bottom-up community organizing that rebuilds the local food infrastructure commercial grocery has er...

Summary: In this episode, Dr. Alexandra Grygorczyk of Vineland Research explores the intricate economic realities of upcycled food manufacturing in Canada. She joins Jesse Hirsh to discuss why treating byproducts as valuable ingredients requires new supply chains, structural shifts in processing, and a careful approach to consumer psychology. Show notes: The agri-food sector often treats organic l...

Summary: Jesse Hirsh sits down with Stanley Baer, founder of Worker Tractor and a veteran of electrifying lawn care equipment, to discuss the acute need for affordable, lighter-duty electric tractors in sustainable agriculture. Baer argues that by distributing power directly to individual wheels and keeping initial price points accessible, smaller-scale and organic farmers can finally bypass the p...

Title: Building Community Resilience Through Inclusive Food Systems and Reciprocity Summary: In this episode, Jesse Hirsh, Jenn MacTavish, RJ Taylor, Sherida Ryan, Elaine Power, and Ruth Knight gather for a podcast book club to discuss the principles of reciprocity, abundance, and gift economies in relation to the agri-food sector. Drawing on a shared reading, the panel explores how community resi...

In this episode, host Jesse Hirsh speaks with Chris Hildreth, founder of AgriKit.ca, about decentralizing agri-food infrastructure through modular, custom-built facilities. Drawing on his background as a social entrepreneur and urban farmer, Hildreth argues that small- and medium-scale producers need better on-the-ground support to foster genuine food sovereignty. Together, they explore how moving...

Reimagining Food Systems Beyond Industrial Scapegoats And Binaries Summary: In this lively salon conversation, Jesse Hirsh, Jeanette Herrle, Sherida Ryan, Barb Scott-Cole, Jennifer MacTavish, Elaine Power, RJ Taylor, and Tianna Brand critique the popular book Feed the People for its American-centric worldview, reductionist view of livestock, and failure to address capitalism head-on. The panel con...

In this episode, Jessica Regan joins the show to explain how FoodMesh tackles Canada's agri-food waste crisis not as a shortage issue, but as a complex logistical and distribution challenge. By building digital infrastructure that connects commercial surplus food to safe alternative outlets—from human donation to animal feed—Regan demonstrates how turning waste into value requires aligning economi...

Summary: In this conversation, Jennifer MacTavish, Kaitlyn Kitzan, RJ Taylor, and Tianna Brand examine the deepening leadership crisis in the agri-food sector against a backdrop of compounding global and economic crises. The panellists explore how systemic risk aversion is paralyzing traditional governance, and argue that building resilience requires abandoning obsolete status-quo models in favor...

Summary: Dr. Suresh Neethirajan joins host Jesse Hirsh to explore how artificial intelligence, bioacoustics, and digital twin technology are transforming livestock farming from a transactional model into biological co-creation. Together, they discuss bridging the gap between traditional farmer intuition and objective data to improve animal welfare, farm resilience, and food security across Canada....

Summary: Chef-farmer Joel Gray of Down Home Restaurant discusses how integrating small-scale farming, live-fire cooking, and intimate agritourism fosters rural economic development and community resilience. In conversation with Jesse Hirsh, Joel explores how moving beyond toxic restaurant cultures and embracing seasonal, 'perfectly imperfect' ingredients creates a transparent, high-empathy food sy...

Summary: This episode explores how artificial intelligence functions in agriculture not as a tool of rigid control, but as a facilitator of human intuition and field-level improvisation. Host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Donald Killorn and Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi to examine the practical, ethical, and computational realities of deploying AI across Canadian agri-food systems. Show notes: In this...

Host Jesse Hirsh sits down with Alissa Overend, Charles Levkoe, and Elaine Power to dismantle the illusion of cheap food, corporate grocery monopolies, and the systemic capture of agricultural policy. Together, they argue that true food sovereignty requires moving past superficial market-driven fixes to reclaim food as a public good and a catalyst for democratic renewal. Show notes: In this episod...

Feed the People! live Future Herd salon - Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 - Time: 2:00 p.m. EDT - Duration: 90 minutes - Book: [*Feed the People!: Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better*](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jan-dutkiewicz/feed-the-people/9781541603783/) by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg - Participant RSVP: hello@thefutureherd.ca The salon uses the...

Summary: Urban-rural divides dissolve when young people experience the agricultural food system firsthand. In this episode, high school educator Dan Kunanec joins host Jesse Hirsh to discuss how Don Mills Collegiate's campus farm and circular food economy are successfully growing the next generation of urban farmers, food system thinkers, and city builders. Show notes: Canada's agri-food sector fa...

John Rafferty, CEO of Ontario Genomics, makes the case that Canada's combination of vast acreage, abundant water, and clean energy positions it to become not just an agricultural superpower but a biomanufacturing one — if it can close the capital gap in scaling infrastructure. Rafferty argues that genomics is moving from a specialised research field into the operating system of a circular economy,...

Title: Meeting People Where Their Futures Already Are Summary: Foresight practitioner Tianna Brand argues that the single most important move a leader or organization can make is to resist arriving with pre-baked futures and instead start by uncovering the visions, assumptions, and lived experiences people already carry. Drawing on her work introducing futures thinking to the World Organisation fo...

Sarah Elton — journalist-turned-academic and author of Locavore — argues that genuine food security requires expanding our definition of 'all' to include not just every human being but every organism and ecosystem that sustains the food system. Drawing on posthumanist theory, microbiology, and years of empirical research, she makes the case that health is not a condition possessed by individual bo...

Summary: This episode brings together Canada's sharpest minds at the intersection of AI and agriculture to make a concrete case: the future of Canadian farm competitiveness will be decided not by whether producers adopt AI, but by how intelligently they manage, govern, and deploy the data they already have. Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi introduces the concept of 'dark data'—the vast archive of unu...

Summary: Elaine Power, a food scholar at Queen's University, argues that the word "AgriFood" itself encodes a fundamental contradiction: the agri side serves corporate capital while the food side is rooted in care, community, and life. In this conversation with Jesse Hirsh, Power traces how invisible and undervalued labour—from racialized farmworkers to domestic cooks—holds the food system togethe...

Title: Throwing Out the Business Textbook to Save the Family Farm Summary: RJ Taylor, second-generation fish farmer and co-owner of a multi-site Ontario aquaculture operation, makes the case that the conventional business-school wisdom of focusing on core competencies nearly sank his family's business — and that deliberate diversification across species, markets, and sales channels is what actuall...