The Future Herd
A podcast exploring how collective wisdom and adaptive leadership can help us navigate the profound transformations reshaping our food and agriculture systems.
The Future Herd is a podcast about leadership, adaptation, and collective intelligence in an age of uncertainty.
Each episode is a conversation with people working inside food systems, agriculture, policy, technology, and community—people navigating long-term change without a script. Rather than focusing on prediction, the show explores how futures are shaped through collaboration, negotiation, and lived experience.
The name reflects the premise: the future is not led by a single authority, but by many independent actors adapting together.
Future Herd salon
The End of the Cow
A live salon on Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević's The End of the Cow: And Other Emerging Issues: five emerging issues, from cellular agriculture to the anticipatory city, and why food systems sit at the centre of them.
Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 2:00 p.m. Eastern · Facilitated by Jesse Hirsh · On the Future Herd Discord server
Latest episode
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.
Latest knowledge
We celebrate the tent and ignore the truck — and that blind spot is quietly deciding which markets live and which don't.
Latest intelligence
Innovation is moving from seed breeding and feedlot surveillance to machine learning and low-tech equipment, but producers are weighing those tools against traceability, repair autonomy, and...
AI in Canadian Agriculture
How can artificial intelligence support the people who grow our food? Explore seven Future Herd conversations on farm data, crop research, animal welfare, and producer autonomy—with human judgment at the centre. This listening guide connects practical uses of AI with the skills, infrastructure, and governance needed to shape its role in Canadian agriculture.
As food systems, institutions, and communities face accelerating disruption, simple narratives and centralized solutions increasingly fail. The Future Herd creates space for slower thinking, critical reflection, and dialogue across disciplines—grounded in practice rather than hype.
If you are interested in how decisions are made under pressure, how authority is earned rather than assumed, and how collaboration becomes a form of leadership, this podcast is for you.
Many independent actors. Adapting together.