The Future Herd

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 the resources and authority to act.

Show notes:

In this milestone 50th episode, host Jesse Hirsh steps back from individual interviews to connect threads from across The...

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 new farmers through cooperatives, and bridge food security with fair returns for producers. The conversation explores what it would take for municipalities to plan for markets on a long-term cycle, from truck access and washrooms to cold chain and pricing psychology.

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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 the cash flow it needs to survive.

Show notes:

Caylie Corvinelli farms beef, pork and eggs with her husband on 80 acres in Ontario, and she is the rare fi...

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 eroded. She makes the case for public, not-for-profit grocery stores and neighbourhood food hubs as a genuine alternative that treats food less as a consumer transaction and more as a vehicle for community.

Show notes:

Re...

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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.

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The agri-food sector often treats organic loss as an inevitable cost of doing business, but what if processing facilities were designed from the ground up to capture that value? In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined...

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 prohibitive costs and high emissions of conventional diesel machinery.

Show notes:

In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Stanley Baer, mechanical engineer and founder of Worker Tractor, to...

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 resilience, human relationships, and alternative exchange models can challenge hyper-capitalist defaults in modern agriculture. The conversation highlights the tensions between transactional commerce and relational farming, and asks what it takes to cultivate true belonging.<...

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 away from centralized mass production toward community-driven processing can build a more resilient Canadian food system.

Show notes:

In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Chris Hildreth, founder of AgriKit.ca, to explore a fundamental...

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 contrasts the lived realities of agricultural risk and market competition with academic punditry, exploring alternative frameworks like Indigenous governance and dynamic food pricing. Together, they unpack how moving past simplistic binaries is essential for a resilient Canadian agri-food sector.

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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 economic ROI with operational viability. The conversation explores everything from municipal zero-waste policies and backhaul transportation efficiencies to the evolving role of food banks in a circular economy.

https://foodmesh.ca/

Food waste in the modern agri-food syst...

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 of radical collaboration, peer-to-peer connection, and reimagined engagement.

Show notes:

The agri-food sector is navigating an unprecedented era of overlapping turbulence, from supply chain disruptions and climate volatility to shifting trade dynamics. Yet beneath these operational pressures lies a...

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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.

Show notes:

In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh sits down with Dr. Suresh Neethirajan, an agricultural engineer and research chair in digital livestock farming, to examine how cutting-edge technology intersects with animal agriculture. The central question...

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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 system.

Show notes:

In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh sits down with chef-farmer Joel Gray, co-founder of Down Home Restaurant in Grey County, Ontario, to explore how grassroots culinary models are reshaping the future of Canadian agri-food. Joel shares his...

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 episode of The Future Herd, hosts Jesse Hirsh and Jenn MacTavish bring together two of Canada's leading voices on technology and agriculture—Donald Killorn and Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi—to examine how artificial intelligence intersects with the...

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 episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by food scholars and advocates Alissa Overend, Charles Levkoe, and Elaine Power for a rigorous examination of the Canadian agri-food sector. The conversation cuts past...

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: [email protected]

The salon uses the book as a shared starting point for a Canadian conversation about the systems that feed people, how they change, and how public narratives shape what is possible...

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 faces an urgent demographic and labor crunch, yet the traditional pipeline of talent relies exclusively on youth migrating out of rural areas. In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh sits down with Dan...

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, where biomass inputs from Canadian farms can replace petroleum-derived plastics, food colourants, and industrial chemicals. The episode is a call to action for policymakers, farmers, and investors to treat biomanufacturing not as a science project but as Ca...

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 for Animal Health and her background with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Brand shows how that principle unlocks genuine agency in contested spaces — from zoonotic disease preparedness to farmer resistance to regulation. The conversation traces a path fr...

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 bodies but a property that exists across socioecological systems. The conversation traces her intellectual journey from covering the local food movement to situating the human colon inside the food system itself.

Show notes:

Sarah Elton is a rese...

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 unused research and field observations sitting dormant in breeding programs and farm records—arguing it represents an untapped foundation for training custom agricultural AI models. Donald Killorn reveals that choosing between cloud-scale processing and...

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 together while extracting the least reward from it. Her analysis connects feminist political economy, the ultra-processed food industry, and ecological crisis into a single, unflinching diagnosis of what is broken and why.

Show notes:

Elai...

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 actually builds resilience. In this episode, RJ walks Jesse through the geography and culture of Ontario aquaculture, explains why over 75% of the province's net-pen farms operate on First Nations territory, and argues that Indigenous partnerships aren't a policy as...

The Politics of Standing Up for Farmers

Why governments need to actually listen before they regulate

Canadian agriculture has enormous potential. The land, producers, knowledge, innovation, and markets are there. But too often, the people who grow and raise our food are treated as an afterthought in the decisions that shape their future.

In this episode of The Future Herd, Jesse Hirsh speaks with John Barlow, Member of Parliament for Foothills and a long-time voice on agricultural issues in Ottawa, about what it means to stand up for farmers in Canadian politics.

Summary:

Donald Killorn, Executive Director of the PEI Federation of Agriculture, makes the case that ecological thinking — not agronomic expertise — is exactly what Canada's food system needs from its leaders right now. Drawing on two decades spent working in rainforests, coral reefs, and Bay of Fundy fisheries before arriving in agriculture, Killorn argues that systems thinking and multi-stakeholder partnership-building are the core competencies for navigating an era of climate volatility, trade disruption, and accelerating technological change. This episode unpacks how Killorn applies that lens to one of Canada's most agriculturally dense provinces, where potatoes, dairy, and a coop...

Title: Agroecology Is the How-To of Food Sovereignty

Summary:

Charles Levkoe, food systems researcher at Lakehead University, makes the case that agroecology is not simply a set of farming techniques but the practical expression of food sovereignty — the means by which communities assert democratic control over how food is grown, harvested, and governed. Drawing on his background as an agroecological farmer, nonprofit practitioner, and academic, Levkoe argues that isolating any single dimension of the food system — whether soil science, policy, or indigenous knowledge — guarantees worse outcomes than thinking through their interconnection. The conversation challe...

Title: Leaving Every Organisation Better Than You Found It

Summary:

Kaitlyn Kitzan, Saskatchewan farmer, entrepreneur, and sectoral leader, argues that lasting leadership means improving every organisation you touch and passing it on stronger than you found it. Drawing on lessons from her family farm, her early entrepreneurial ventures, and the volunteer ethic instilled by her parents in a rural community, Kaitlyn makes the case that the foundation of great leadership is not ambition alone but the habits, values, and emotional intelligence cultivated from childhood. In this conversation with Jesse Hirsh, she offers a candid, grounded...

Title: The Grocery Store Is a Media Environment: What Sociology Reveals About Food, Power, and Choice

Summary:

Alissa Overend of MacEwan University argues that the food choices Canadians make every day are shaped by forces most of us never consciously examine — from curated grocery store layouts and deceptive package labelling to the deep social meanings we attach to what we eat. Drawing on her research into undiagnosed illness, food politics, and media, Overend shows how industry, advertising, and cultural norms work together to define what counts as healthy, who gets to eat well, and whose kn...

Measuring What Matters: Transforming Canada’s Agri-Food System

What does a resilient agri-food system actually look like — and how would we know if we were building one?

In this Future Herd panel episode, guest host Jen MacTavish brings three previous guests back to the table for a wide-ranging conversation on food resilience, food waste, infrastructure, capital, policy, and the measurements that shape Canada’s agri-food future.

The discussion features Camden Lawrence of First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario, Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, and Tyler McCann, Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Instit...

Where Food Becomes Community

Rethinking Rural Food Security with Rob Rainer

In this episode of The Future Herd, Jesse Hirsh speaks with Rob Rainer about food insecurity from a rural perspective. Rob brings a rare combination of experience: he is the executive director of The Table Community Food Centre in Perth, Ontario, and the reeve of Tay Valley Township. That gives him a view of food insecurity that is both deeply local and structurally political.

The conversation explores why rural food insecurity is often harder to see than urban poverty, even when the...

Summary:

Mohamad Yaghi from Farm Credit Canada explores how technology can democratize and transform the agricultural sector. He discusses the unique challenges farmers face and how innovative solutions can help address complex operational needs.

Mohamad brings a unique perspective on technology in agriculture, rooted in his experiences growing up in Lebanon and understanding technological resilience. His work at Farm Credit Canada's innovation hub focuses on developing solutions that directly address farmer needs, particularly around knowledge transfer and operational complexity. By leveraging extensive agricultural data and user insights, Mohamad and his team are creating tools that...

Jennifer MacTavish's career path in agriculture demonstrates the power of curiosity and saying 'yes' to opportunities. Starting with an international development degree and transitioning through animal science, she discovered her passion for the agricultural sector by embracing diverse experiences and learning from her mistakes. Her journey highlights the importance of supportive environments that allow young professionals to develop leadership skills without fear of failure.

Currently serving as the interim executive director of the Agricultural Adaptation Council, MacTavish is deeply committed to addressing generational challenges in the agricultural workforce. She emphasizes the need for mentorship, flexible work arrangements...

What happens when an emergency response becomes a permanent feature of the system?

In this conversation, Neil Hetherington, CEO of Daily Bread Food Bank, offers a clear-eyed view from inside one of Canada’s most critical—yet least understood—institutions. What emerges is not a story about charity, but about infrastructure. Daily Bread operates at scale: forecasting demand, coordinating complex logistics, and increasingly using data to understand how food insecurity moves through the city. The result is a system that works—efficient, adaptive, and deeply embedded.

And that’s the tension.

Because the more effec...

The Rise of the Computational Breeder: Rethinking How We Grow Food

What happens when crop science becomes computational

In this episode, Jesse Hirsh sits down with Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi, Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph, to explore the emergence of the computational breeder: a new kind of agricultural scientist working at the intersection of plant breeding, data science, and artificial intelligence.

Grounded in his work on dry beans, Mohsen walks through how breeding is evolving from a largely intuitive, experience-driven practice into a high-dimensional process shaped by genomics, phenomics, and multi-omics data...

Can We Eliminate Food Waste

Or are we just managing a system designed to waste

Canada produces more than enough food to feed everyone, yet millions remain food insecure while enormous volumes of perfectly good food are lost. In this conversation, Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, reframes the issue away from scarcity and toward systems failure—how food is produced, priced, moved, and ultimately left behind.

What emerges is a picture of food rescue not as charity, but as infrastructure. Second Harvest operates a parallel supply chain, using data, logistics, and coordination to...

Colin Hornby from Keystone Agricultural Producers joins The Future Herd for a conversation grounded in Manitoba, where agriculture operates with little insulation from volatility.

We explore how risk is managed in real time—across weather, markets, and rising input costs—and how those pressures move through a system that depends on coordination but rarely speaks with one voice. The discussion also looks at how policy travels from Ottawa into the province, and where it begins to lose coherence on the ground.

At its core, this is a conversation about representation: what it means to advocate for...

Jordyn Domio reframes a familiar concern in agriculture—the question of the “next generation”—by shifting attention to something more immediate and less discussed: proximity.

Who gets close enough to the industry to understand it? To see themselves in it? To be taken seriously before they’ve earned it on paper?

This episode moves away from abstract conversations about labour shortages and recruitment, and instead examines the everyday conditions that shape participation. The informal exposures, early invitations, and small acts of recognition that determine whether someone is brought in—or never considers agriculture at all.

What em...

This conversation with Barb Scott-Cole explores something easy to overlook and difficult to rebuild: the social systems that make agriculture possible.

Before innovation strategies, before policy frameworks, before the language of productivity and efficiency, there were communities that taught themselves. Learning was embedded in participation. People developed skills, judgment, and leadership by being part of something—by showing up, contributing, and gradually taking on more responsibility. It wasn’t formalized, and it didn’t need to be. It worked because it was shared.

Barb reflects on that world with clarity and precision, not as nostalgia, but as...

Canada feeds the world—so why are thousands of people in our own communities facing food insecurity every day?

In this episode of The Future Herd, I sit down with Treska Watson, who leads food security initiatives at The Mustard Seed Street Church in Victoria, BC. Treska operates on the front lines of a broken system, managing a food rescue programme that diverted 3.1 million pounds of food last year alone. But this isn't just a story about logistics—it's about dignity, collaboration, and reimagining what a food system rooted in hope could look like.

We unpa...

Raj Thandhi brings the conversation back to something the agri-food sector often treats as secondary, but that quietly determines everything: culture.

This episode explores the space between what is grown and what is actually lived. Not in abstract terms, but in the practical realities of kitchens, habits, and identity. Raj makes a clear point—food doesn’t move because it exists. It moves when it belongs. When people recognize it, understand it, and know how to work with it in their own lives.

Her work sits inside that process. Through recipes, storytelling, and education, she tran...