The Future Herd is a podcast about how people across the agri-food system think, adapt, and lead together in the face of long-term change.
Through conversations with farmers, researchers, policymakers, innovators, and sector leaders, the show explores how complex systems actually evolve: not through isolated decisions or single breakthroughs, but through collaboration, negotiation, and shared learning over time.
What the show does
Each episode is a working conversation rather than a scripted interview. Guests are invited to reason in public—connecting immediate challenges to longer-term pressures shaping food, agriculture, and rural life.
- We focus on real-world constraints, not abstract predictions.
- We privilege dialogue over debate.
- We treat uncertainty as something to work with, not eliminate.
The result is a growing archive of how leaders make sense of disruption as it unfolds—and how collective intelligence forms across institutions and roles.
Why “The Future Herd”
The name comes from a familiar dynamic in pastoral agriculture: a herd made up of many independent actors, coordinated through light-touch leadership rather than command and control.
Food systems work the same way. Farmers, processors, researchers, policymakers, investors, and communities all move according to different incentives and constraints. Alignment is rarely total, and progress is rarely linear.
The Future Herd is interested in how coordination actually happens in these conditions—how leadership emerges at the edges, how trust is built through practice, and how shared direction forms without requiring uniformity.
Why 2050
2050 isn’t a prediction target. It’s a horizon that forces long-term thinking.
Decisions made today—about land use, infrastructure, research priorities, labour, and technology—will shape what food systems can support decades from now. Looking ahead creates space for different questions: not just what is efficient now, but what remains viable over time.
The show is closely connected to the Agri-Food 2050 process led by the Agricultural Adaptation Council, which uses foresight and collaboration to help the sector prepare for long-term change.
Host
Jesse Hirsh is a researcher, futurist, and farmer working at the intersection of technology, agriculture, and public dialogue.
His work spans practical farming, open-source technology, and strategic research across the agri-food sector. He focuses on helping organizations understand how systems change, how power and authority shift, and how collaboration becomes a practical tool rather than an abstract value. As a public speaker Jesse is unique both in his approach, and his enthusiasm.
The Commons
The Future Herd is the starting point for something larger: open participation infrastructure for food-system decisions. The Commons is an early-stage pilot — a structured space for producers, eaters, workers, policy people, and the broader public to submit perspectives, respond to each other, and map where common ground exists on the questions that shape the food system.
It draws on established tools for participatory governance and opinion-mapping, extended with an AI agent layer and a peer-driven trust system. The goal is to discover statements that can hold the centre: ideas that participants across groups can recognize, support, and potentially act on together.
The first topic is food security. No institutional affiliation required to participate. → commons.thefutureherd.ca
How to engage
You can listen to episodes directly on the site or follow the show on your preferred podcast platform.