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Agrarian Futures: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Agrarian Futures
Join hosts Emma Ractliffe and Austin Unruh as they explore what’s broken in our food system, and what it looks like to build something better. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.
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- 2 days ago48 min
The Big Lessons from Agrarian Futures with Emma and Austin
Hi all! This time, we're doing something a bit different. In this episode, Emma and Austin - hosts of Agrarian Futures - sit down to tell their own story, and share some of their key takeaways of 2.5 years of talking with brilliant farmers and thinkers about the future of our food system. Enjoy! ————- Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- 2 weeks ago50 min
Permaculture and the Case for Hope with Geoff Lawton
In this conversation, Geoff Lawton offers us something rare: a genuinely hopeful and rigorously grounded vision of how humanity can become a reparative rather than destructive force on this planet. As one of the world's leading permaculture designers and educators, Geoff has built demonstration sites and trained practitioners across six continents, from the Jordan Valley to the Australian bush. At Zaytuna Farm in New South Wales, he has spent over two decades transforming bare, degraded land into a thriving food forest with 32 bodies of water, hundreds of tree species, and a model for what regenerative living can look like at every scale. In this episode, we dive into: * How permaculture redefines wealth, from money to clean air, clean water, clean food, and community * Why the biggest missing element in modern agriculture is trees * How soil organic matter holds the key to our water crisis * What Zaytuna Farm looks like today after 25 years of regeneration * Why our economy needs to shift from extraction to deposition * How permaculture projects in Jordan, Hungary, and Spain are proving this works at scale * Why Geoff believes humanity may be on the verge of a new kind of consciousness More about Geoff Lawton, Zaytuna Farm [https://geoff%20lawton%20is%20a%20world%20renowned%20permaculture%20consultant,%20designer%20and%20teacher.xn--%20he%20took%20his%20pdc%20in%201983%20with%20bill%20mollison,%20widely%20considered%20the%20father%20of%20permaculture-x060f.%20geoff%20has%20specialized%20in%20permaculture%20education,%20design,%20implementation,%20system%20establishment,%20administration%20and%20community%20development%20since%201985.xn--%20working%20in%20over%2050%20countries,%20geoff%20has%20taught%20more%20than%2015,000%20students,%20he%20established%20the%20permaculture%20research%20institute%20of%20australia%20and%20zaytuna%20farm%20which%20is%20geoff%20and%20nadias%20family%20home-1o19n.xn--%20as%20an%20award%20winning%20permaculture%20designer,%20geoffs%20main%20aim%20is%20to%20drive%20the%20establishment%20of%20self-replicating%20educational%20demonstration%20sites%20across%20the%20globe-9r45k./], and Discover Permaculture [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_r1ELEvAuN0peKUxI0Umw]: Geoff Lawton is a world renowned permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. He took his PDC in 1983 with Bill Mollison, widely considered the "father of permaculture." Geoff has specialized in permaculture education, design, implementation, system establishment, administration and community development since 1985. Working in over 50 countries, Geoff has taught more than 15,000 students, he established the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia and Zaytuna Farm which is Geoff and Nadia's family home. As an award winning Permaculture Designer, Geoff's main aim is to drive the establishment of self-replicating educational demonstration sites across the globe. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- Jun 26, 202643 min
The Future of Regenerative Agriculture with Gabe Brown
Gabe Brown didn't set out to revolutionize agriculture. He set out to survive it. After four consecutive years of crop disasters left him $1.5 million in debt, he had no choice but to question everything he'd been taught. What emerged from that reckoning became one of the most influential farms in the regenerative agriculture movement, and eventually two organizations working to spread those lessons globally: Understanding Ag [https://understandingag.com/], now consulting on over 37 million acres worldwide, and Regenified [https://regenified.com/], a verification company built to cut through the greenwashing. In this episode, we look forward. Where is regenerative agriculture headed? Who's driving it, and what's standing in the way? In this episode, we dive into: * How four years of disaster became the foundation of a regenerative farming philosophy * What it actually means to farm in synchrony with nature, and why it works anywhere * Why farmers care more about the land than they're given credit for * How to become a price maker instead of a price taker * The role of banks, insurers, and major brands in accelerating the regenerative transition * Why Gabe thinks regenerative will be the norm within 25 years * What the next generation of farmers looks like, and where they're coming from More about Gabe Brown: Gabe, along with his wife Shelly, and son Paul, own and operate Brown's Ranch, a diversified 5,000 acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota. The ranch consists of several thousand acres of native perennial rangeland along with perennial pastureland and cropland. Their ranch focuses on farming and ranching in nature's image. Over 2,000 people visit the Brown's Ranch annually to see this unique operation. They have had visitors from all fifty states and twenty-four foreign countries. Gabe and Brown's Ranch have received many forms of recognition for their work, including a Growing Green award from the Natural Resource Defense Council, an Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and a Zero-Till Producer of the Year Award, to name a few. Gabe has also been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States. Gabe recently authored the book, "Dirt to Soil, One Family's Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture." Links to Gabe's Work: Brown's Ranch [https://brownsranch.us/] Regenified [https://regenified.com/] Understanding Ag [https://understandingag.com/] Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- Jun 12, 202642 min
The Farm Bill Explained with Judith McGeary
You can't understand the modern food system without understanding the policy that shaped it. And you can't understand US food policy without understanding the Farm Bill. Judith McGeary is an attorney, farmer, and the founder of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance [https://farmandranchfreedom.org/], a national organization that supports independent family farmers and fights corporate consolidation of the food system. In this conversation, Judith breaks down what's actually in the Farm Bill, adds some needed nuance to the subsidy debate, and explains what's at stake as the bill moves through the US Senate right now - and how you - yes you! - can help shape it. In this episode, we dive into: * What the Farm Bill actually is and why it touches nearly every aspect of our food system * Why the Fam Bill has become a divisive political issue after years of bipartisan support * The pesticide liability shield and what corporate overreach looks like in practice * Opportunities for regenerative funding through direct farmer advocacy * Where the Farm Bill stands right now and what's at stake in the Senate * Concrete ways you can show up and influence the outcome before it's too late More about Judith McGeary and Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance [https://farmandranchfreedom.org/]: Judith McGeary is an attorney, activist, and sustainable farmer. After earning her BS from Stanford University and her law degree with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin, she clerked for a Federal Appeals Court and went on to private law practice. After seeing how government regulations benefit industrial agriculture at the expense of family farms, she founded the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance to promote common-sense policies for local, diversified agricultural systems. She and her husband raise sheep, chickens, and cattle on their farm outside of Austin, Texas. Find more and take action at the links below: * Farm Bill Action Hour Toolkit — get involved now [https://farmandranchfreedom.org/toolkit-virtual-action-hour/] * News about the House-passed version of the Farm Bill: Farm Bill UPDATE: A Major Win & Setbacks - Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance [https://farmandranchfreedom.org/farm-bill-2026-win-setbacks/] * Deep dive into the issue of fair prices/ price supports for farmers from National Family Farm Coalition: Fair Prices for Farmers - National Family Farm Coalition [https://nffc.net/what-we-do/fair-prices-for-farmers/] * IATP for deep dives into several Farm Bill topics: Agriculture & Food Systems | IATP [https://www.iatp.org/agriculture] Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- May 26, 20261h 5m
What Animals Teach Us About Caring for the Land with Fred Provenza
Our guest today, Fred Provenza [https://www.amazon.com/Nourishment-Animals-Teach-Rediscovering-Nutritional/dp/1603588027], has spent his career listening to what animals can teach us: about landscapes, about food, about the deep intelligence woven into the living world. Fred is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University, where he directed an award-winning research program that pioneered our understanding of how early experience, family, and landscape shape the foraging wisdom of animals. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers and three books, including Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom, Foraging Behavior: Managing to Survive in a World of Change, and The Art & Science of Shepherding, co-authored with French herder Michel Meuret. In this conversation, Fred draws on a lifetime of ranching, research, and wide-ranging inquiry, taking us from the pastures of Utah to the pre-alps of France. Together we reflect on what we've lost, what endures, and what it might mean to come home to a more intimate relationship with the land. In this episode, we dive into: * His childhood in small town Colorado and how it cultivated a deep sense of community that has since largely vanished from American rural life * Seven years working on Henry De Luca's ranch, and what that experience revealed about the irreplaceable knowledge embedded in intimate relationships with land and animals * What the concept of epigenetics tells us about the deep, inherited intelligence of locally adapted herds * The extended family lives of livestock, and what shepherds in France have long understood about nutritional wisdom, plant diversity, and the art of moving animals across a landscape * What Buddhism, near-death experiences, and quantum physics have in common, and why Fred believes consciousness is our truest nature * The local food economy as a web of interdependence. * And much more… More about Fred: Fred Provenza is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University, where he directed the BEHAVE program — an international network of scientists, ranchers, farmers, and land managers integrating behavioral principles with local knowledge. His books include Nourishment, Foraging Behavior, and The Art & Science of Shepherding. He has published over 300 research papers and spoken at more than 600 conferences around the world. Find more of Fred's work: Nourishment [https://www.amazon.com/Nourishment-Animals-Teach-Rediscovering-Nutritional/dp/1603588027] The Art & Science of Shepherding [https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-art-and-science-of-shepherding/] Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- May 8, 202637 min
How Land Heals with Judith Schwartz
Our guest today - Judith Schwartz [https://www.judithdschwartz.com/] - has spent her career showing us that the natural world is more resilient than we think, and that we have more power to restore it than we have been led to believe. Judith is a journalist and author whose books [https://www.judithdschwartz.com/], Cows Save the Planet, Water in Plain Sight, and The Reindeer Chronicles, have taken readers from the degraded hillsides of China's Loess Plateau to the Arctic tundra of Norway. In this conversation, Judith shares stories from around the world of people healing land, rebuilding community, and rediscovering a sense of meaning in the process. It was lovely to sit with Judith and remember that restoration is closer than we think. In this episode, we dive into: * Why the climate crisis is, at its root, a people problem and what that means for how we respond to it * The Loess Plateau in China: how an area the size of the Netherlands was brought back from ecological collapse, lifting 2 million people out of poverty * Common Land and the "four returns" model, and what a business designed to serve the land actually looks like * The Sami reindeer herders of Norway, and what their ancient practice reveals about the intelligence hidden in animal and land relationships * Why photosynthesis, not money, may be the truest measure of wealth * The rights of nature movement and the stop ecocide movement as legal pathways toward a different relationship with the living world * What it means to slow down as a communicator, and why listening has become more central to Judith's work than publishing More about Judith [https://www.judithdschwartz.com/] (check out her substack! [https://judithdschwartz.substack.com/]): Judith D. Schwartz is an author and speaker who looks at our environmental crises, including climate change, through the lens of nature. Not nature as a "thing", but how natural systems "work", creating the conditions for life to thrive. Her books include The Reindeer Chronicles, Water In Plain Sight, and Cows Save the Planet. Home base is a gentle mountain slope in southwest Vermont. Find more of Judith at the links below: www.judithdschwartz.com [http://www.judithdschwartz.com/] https://judithdschwartz.substack.com/ Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- Apr 20, 202655 min
Life on the Range with Glenn Elzinga
Many of us have lost the thread that connects us to our food. Glenn Elzinga is spending his life trying to pick it back up. Glenn is the founder of Alderspring Ranch, a certified organic grass-fed beef operation in the remote Salmon River country of central Idaho. But describing it as a beef operation barely scratches the surface. Each summer, Glenn and his family, along with a rotating crew of interns, ride on horseback across 70 square miles of mountain range, living alongside their cattle for months at a time, following the melting snow and the greening grass. It is, as Glenn describes it, an ancient practice of shepherding that modern agriculture has all but forgotten. In this conversation, Glenn challenges some of the deepest assumptions embedded in how we raise animals and grow food. What does it mean to be a caregiver rather than a caretaker? What happens when we let a cow be a cow? And what is lost when we reduce agriculture to a production equation? In this episode, we dive into: * How Glenn's model revives an ancient, nearly lost practice of herdsmanship * The difference between productivity and profitability, and why it matters for the land * What cows can teach us when we actually pay attention to them * Why 400 young people applied for unpaid, grueling ranch internships, and what they found there * The caregiver versus caretaker distinction, and what it reveals about our relationship to animals, land, and each other * Why Wendell Berry's diagnosis of American agriculture is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago * Why getting people to cook again might be one of the most radical things we can do More about Glenn and Aldersping [https://www.alderspring.com/]: Glenn Elzinga is the head guy (aka CEO), and with Caryl, co-founder of Alderspring. Twenty-four years ago, he left his 9-5 forestry job, bought 7 cows and a small ranch, and began producing beef with his wife Caryl. Today, he owns and manages Alderspring (1650 deeded acres and 46,000 rangeland acres) while raising his 7 daughters and producing grass fed organic beef. His passion for wellness as an interconnected web of soil, land, animal, and human health led him and Caryl to create their "inherding" grazing paradigm. Glenn also currently speaks as a guest in both podcasts and regenerative agriculture conferences. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
- Apr 1, 202629 min
Blending Forest and Field with Steve Gabriel
Steve Gabriel joins us to unpack one of the most consequential myths shaping how we grow food in America: the separation between forest and field. As a co-steward of Wellspring Forest Farm in Mecklenburg, New York, author of Silvopasture, and researcher at the Cornell Small Farms Program, Steve has been listening. Through a SARE-funded project called Farming with Trees, he's been in conversation with over 120 farmers, from Bronx-raised beginners to multi-generational stewards, exploring not just how to plant trees, but why it matters and what gets in the way. What he's found is that the barriers to agroforestry aren't just technical. They're cultural, historical, and deeply personal, rooted in a Eurocentric agricultural paradigm that told farmers to clear the land and never look back. In this episode, we dive into: * How personal relationships with trees in childhood shape a farmer's vision for the land * The paradigm shift required to move from stark field or stark forest toward something in between * How indigenous land stewardship modeled a working tree landscape long before "agroforestry" was a word * What livestock farmers, vegetable growers, and flower farmers each need from trees and why those needs are so different * Why starting with willow and poplar might matter more than starting with chestnuts and apples * The role of community, craft traditions, and living fences in rebuilding our relationship with trees More about Steve (links below): Steve Gabriel is an ecologist, farmer, and educator from the Finger Lakes Region of New York. Throughout his career spanning 20 years, Gabriel has taught thousands of farmers and land stewards about land planning, mushroom growing, and agroforestry. His experience working in academic research and extension, as a teacher and lecturer, and managing several working farm landscapes has built a unique balance of knowledge and practice which he brings to his work. With his family, Gabriel co-stewards Wellspring Forest Farm, which is an agroforestry demonstration farm that produces mushrooms, nursery trees, pastured lamb, maple syrup, and elderberry in Mecklenburg, New York. He also collaborates with diverse individuals and organizations through the Farming with Trees Collective. Gabriel previously served for 12 years as Extension Specialist for the Cornell Small Farm Program, focused on research and education on agroforestry and mushroom production. Steve co-authored Farming the Woods with Ken Mudge (2014) and is the author of Silvopasture (2019). www.MycenaTrees.org [http://www.mycenatrees.org/] -- his new non profit working on social aspects of agroforestry www.FarmingWithTrees.org [http://www.farmingwithtrees.org/] -- report on listening sessions with farmers and nursery stewards www.WellspringForestFarm.com [http://www.wellspringforestfarm.com/] -- Steve's farm website Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
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About Agrarian Futures
Join hosts Emma Ractliffe and Austin Unruh as they explore what’s broken in our food system, and what it looks like to build something better. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.
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