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 Serviceberry
A live salon on Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry — gift economies, abundance, and what it would mean to organize a food system around them.
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 · 2:00 p.m. Eastern · Facilitated by Jesse Hirsh · On the Future Herd Discord server
Latest episode
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.
Latest knowledge
By reframing edible surplus as a vital node in the supply chain rather than an inevitable cost of doing business, the agri-food sector can reconcile economic reality with systemic equity.
Latest intelligence
As Canada pushes to diversify agricultural trade, weak infrastructure strategy and rising global food prices expose sector vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, livestock operations grapple with vaccination...
The Commons
The Future Herd is the starting point for a larger project: open participation infrastructure for food-system decisions. The Commons is an early-stage pilot where producers, eaters, workers, policy people, and anyone who cares about food can submit perspectives, respond to others, and help surface where common ground exists.
The first topic is food security. No institutional affiliation required.
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.