Many independent actors, adapting together

Food systems are changing faster than most of our institutions can keep up.

The Future Herd is a podcast about understanding where our food actually comes from—how it’s grown, governed, financed, regulated, and lived with—and what it will take to adapt together in the decades ahead.

Hosted by Jesse Hirsh, the show explores leadership through collaboration across agriculture, policy, technology, labour, and climate. Rather than treating food as a sector to be optimized, The Future Herd treats it as infrastructure: ecological, social, economic, and political.

Season One is developed in alignment with the Agri-Food 2050 process, a long-term effort to think beyond short political and market cycles and toward the resilience of Canada’s food system over the next generation. The show’s founding partner is the Agricultural Adaptation Council, whose role is to create space for experimentation, dialogue, and collaboration across parts of the system that rarely speak to each other. Additional partners and perspectives are welcome.

This introductory episode sets the foundation for the season by introducing the core idea behind the “future herd”: food systems are made up of many independent actors—farmers, animals, ecosystems, institutions, technologies, and communities—coordinating without central control. Adaptation emerges from interaction, not command.

Across Season One, conversations return to a set of recurring themes, including long-term thinking and the meaning of 2050, interacting drivers of change, labour and the future of work, climate resilience, digital infrastructure and AI, public trust and narrative, equity and inclusion, governance as coordination, lived experience from the frontlines, and the persistent gap between vision and action.

The Future Herd is for farmers, producers, policymakers, technologists, and anyone who eats—and wants to better understand the system they depend on.

What does it really take to prepare the agri-food sector for the future?

In this episode of The Future Herd, Jesse Hirsh is joined by Ruth Knight, director with the Agriculture Adaptation Council and chair of the Agri-Food 2050 committee, for a wide-ranging conversation on foresight, leadership, and cultural transformation in agriculture.

Rather than treating the future as something to be predicted or controlled, Ruth argues that future readiness is a mindset—one rooted in curiosity, patience, dialogue, and imagination. Together, they explore why resilience emerges from conversation rather than consensus, how play and experimentation can unlock innovation, and why engaging younger generations is essential to the long-term health of the agri-food system.

This episode examines the tension between problem-solving and big-picture thinking, the limits of top-down planning, and the need to shift from systems of control toward systems of emergence. At its core, the conversation asks how leaders can create the conditions for adaptation, learning, and collaboration over the next 25 years.

1. Why foresight is a practice, not a prediction
2. Curiosity and patience as leadership strengths
3. Dialogue versus debate in sector-wide planning
4. Play, imagination, and safe experimentation
5. Intergenerational leadership and youth engagement
6. From control to emergence in agri-food systems
7. Building cultural capacity for long-term resilience

Ruth Knight

Director, Agriculture Adaptation Council

Chair, Agri-Food 2050 Committee

Independent Agronomist and Rural Development Consultant

The Future Herd explores leadership, collaboration, and long-term thinking in agriculture and food systems. Through conversations with sector leaders, policymakers, producers, and innovators, the podcast examines how we adapt together in an era of uncertainty.

In this episode of The Future Herd, Jesse Hirsh speaks with Doug Reddick, Director of the Research and Innovation Branch at Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, about the future of agri-food research in Canada.

Doug offers a rare inside view of how agricultural research is funded, governed, and sustained—and where the system is breaking down. He explains why long-term research momentum matters, how short funding cycles undermine innovation, and why climate change, pests, and trade volatility demand a more coordinated national response.

At the heart of the conversation is a powerful proposal: Canada needs a shared map of its agri-food research and innovation ecosystem. Without visibility into who is researching what, where investments are being made, and where gaps exist, the sector is flying blind. Doug argues that a transparent, system-wide “game board” could align science, innovation, and commercialization, reduce duplication, and strengthen food system resilience.

This episode explores research as risk management, the limits of data sharing, the commercialization bottleneck, and the leadership challenge facing Canada’s food system—offering a practical vision for coordination rather than fragmentation.

Topics covered include:

1. Why agricultural research requires long-term commitment
2. How funding cycles disrupt innovation
3. Climate, pest, and biosecurity risks
4. Data sharing and competitive secrecy
5. Commercialization gaps in agri-food
6. The case for a national research coordination map
7. What leadership looks like in a fragmented system

A policy brief summarizing Doug’s proposal is available as a supplementary document.