The Future Herd
Collaboration and Leadership for a Changing Food System
A podcast exploring how collective wisdom and adaptive leadership can help us navigate the profound transformations reshaping our food and agriculture systems. Join conversations with farmers, innovators, policymakers, and changemakers who are building resilient pathways forward.
Listen to the Podcast
About the Podcast
The Future Herd is a podcast about how we move together in a food system that is constantly changing. Built around the themes of collaboration and leadership, the series explores how farmers, processors, innovators, and policymakers learn to navigate disruption, build trust, and create the future of food—not in isolation, but as a herd with shared purpose and diverse perspectives.
Inspired by the metaphor of the border collie guiding a lively, independent-minded group of goats, the podcast embraces the reality that modern food systems are complex, stubborn, brilliant, and impossible to control. They can only be guided through attention, agility, and collaboration.
Each episode features conversations with people who are shaping the future of food: producers experimenting with new technologies, communities forging new models of resilience, leaders navigating uncertainty, and thinkers helping us all understand what comes next.
This is a podcast for anyone who wants to be part of a food system that can adapt, thrive, and lead—together.
Our Partner: Agricultural Adaptation Council
The Agricultural Adaptation Council (AAC) is a vital partner in shaping a resilient food future. As a non-profit, they champion innovation, foster collaboration, and support adaptive solutions for farmers and agri-businesses. Their initiatives align seamlessly with "The Future Herd's" mission, providing practical strategies and collective action to navigate the evolving food system.
The AAC plays a crucial role in driving sustainability and economic growth, ensuring our agricultural landscape thrives for generations.
Meet Your Host
Jesse Hirsh is a researcher, futurist, and farmer whose work sits at the intersection of technology, agriculture, and public dialogue. He has spent decades helping organizations understand how systems change, how power shifts, and how collaboration becomes a force for resilience.
Jesse brings both practical and analytical experience: running a working farm, building open-source technology, and speaking across the global agri-food sector. His focus is on making complex ideas clear, actionable, and grounded in the lived realities of producers, communities, and institutions.
He created The Future Herd to explore what leadership looks like in a changing food system, and to highlight the people and practices shaping its future.
Each episode is an invitation to think differently about collaboration, leadership, and the future we're building together.
Why "The Future Herd"?
The Metaphor Behind the Name
The name The Future Herd draws on a powerful image from pastoral agriculture: a border collie working with a herd of goats. This isn't just a rural aesthetic—it's a model for understanding how coordination happens in complex, distributed systems.
The herd represents the many actors in our food systems: farmers, researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs, consumers, investors, activists. Each has their own goals, constraints, and ways of moving through the world. They don't always agree on direction or pace.
The border collie symbolizes a particular kind of leadership—one that coordinates without coercion, that responds to the herd's movement rather than forcing compliance, that works from the edges rather than the center. It's leadership as facilitation, as sensing and responding, as creating conditions for collective movement.
In agriculture, effective herding isn't about dominance—it's about understanding animal behavior, reading subtle signals, applying pressure and release at the right moments. The best working dogs don't chase; they position themselves strategically and use minimal intervention to guide collective movement.
This metaphor speaks to how change happens in food systems. Real transformation isn't imposed from above or driven by a single visionary. It emerges from distributed leadership, from many actors finding alignment while maintaining their autonomy, from coordination that respects diversity rather than demanding uniformity.
The Future Herd explores these dynamics—how we move together toward futures we can't fully predict, how leadership manifests in unexpected forms, and how collaboration navigates the tension between individual agency and collective direction.
Featured Episodes
Dive into conversations that challenge assumptions, surface tensions, and illuminate pathways forward. Each episode brings together deep expertise with accessible dialogue.
Leadership, Knowledge, and the Next Generation
Guest: Rene Van Acker, President University of Guelph
In this conversation we explore how universities can strengthen the agri-food sector by fostering interdisciplinary research, practical engagement, and long-term thinking. He argues that the curiosity and capacity of today’s students position them to reshape our food future, provided institutions create the spaces where new forms of leadership and innovation can emerge.
The New Skills Infrastructure for Agriculture
Guest: Jennifer Wright, Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council
In this episode we talk about the skills, training systems, and collaborative structures needed to prepare Canada’s agri-food sector for the decades ahead. The conversation explores how workforce development underpins every technological ambition—from automation to AI—and why collaboration across industry, education, and community is essential to turning long-range visions into concrete action.
Mapping the Future of Agri-Food Research
Guest: Doug Reddick, Director of the Research and Innovation Branch at OMAFA
Jesse Hirsh speaks with Doug Reddick from OMAFA about the future of agri-food research, declining research investment, and why the province needs a unified map of its research and innovation system. They explore how better coordination, data, and long-term planning can strengthen Ontario’s food security and drive agricultural innovation.
The Dance of Foresight: Reimagining Leadership in Agri-Food
Guest: Ruth Knight, Agriculture Adaptation Council Director and Chair of the Agri-Food 2050 committee
How do you build a sector capable of welcoming the unknown? This conversation explores how curiosity, dialogue, patience, and imagination can reshape the culture of Ontario’s agri-food system. Together we examine why future readiness begins with mindset, and why the long-term resilience of the sector depends on creating space for diverse voices, intergenerational exchange, and emergent ways of thinking.
Get Involved
Share Your Story
Are you working on innovative approaches to food system challenges? Do you have insights about collaboration, leadership, or adaptation that could benefit our community? We're always looking for compelling voices and untold stories.
We prioritize conversations that bridge different sectors, challenge conventional thinking, or illuminate overlooked dynamics in food and agriculture systems.
Collaborate with Us
The Future Herd isn't just a podcast—it's part of a broader effort to build capacity for systems thinking and collaborative leadership in food and agriculture. We welcome partnerships with organizations, research institutions, and networks aligned with these goals.
Opportunities include co-hosted episodes, workshop development, speaking engagements, and collaborative research projects that translate podcast insights into practical tools.
Suggest Future Topics
What questions keep you up at night about the future of food systems? What tensions or opportunities aren't getting enough attention? What conversations need to happen but rarely do?
Your suggestions help shape our editorial direction and ensure we're addressing the issues that matter most to practitioners and stakeholders navigating change.
Ready to Collaborate?
Whether you're interested in being a guest, partnering on projects, or simply sharing ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Meaningful dialogue starts with reaching out.
Listen & Subscribe
The Future Herd is available on all major podcast platforms. Choose your preferred listening experience and never miss an episode.
Apple Podcasts
Stream or download episodes directly to your iPhone or iPad.
Spotify
Listen on desktop, mobile, or through your connected devices.
RSS Feed
Subscribe through your preferred podcast app using our direct feed.
YouTube
Watch video versions with enhanced visuals and graphics.
Share The Future Herd
If these conversations resonate with you, share them with colleagues, collaborators, and anyone navigating change in food and agriculture systems. Collective challenges require collective wisdom.
The Future Herd
Collaboration and Leadership for a Changing Food System
Exploring how we navigate transformation together—one conversation at a time.
Produced independently with support from collaborators and partners committed to building adaptive capacity in food and agriculture systems worldwide.
For inquiries, partnerships, or guest suggestions, reach out through our contact page.
© 2024 The Future Herd. All rights reserved.