And the tour begins. Farm tour #1. 

Regenaissance community! It's been a month since our last episode, and we apologize for the absence. The reason for our pending silence we can finally share... we have have just embarked on a 6-month tour across America, we're visiting regenerative farms to podcast with ranchers, tour their land, document their work, and shake the hand that feeds us.

So, starting from today's episode, we'll be recording and dropping episodes live as we're travelling through each farm. The cadence will be loose (as we go essentially) and the focus will be on telling the stories of these farmers and doing our best to connect our community with them. We're so pumped to begin this journey - so please if you enjoy the content, share it with a friend and let them know about this tour. As far as we know, we don't think a farm podcast tour has been done on this scale before!

The tour begins in northeast Indiana at Gunthorp Farms—a vertically integrated, pasture-based livestock farm run by Greg Gunthorp and his family. Greg has been raising pigs for over four generations, and he’s seen firsthand how industrialization decimated independent hog farming. In this episode, Greg contrasts his approach to animal husbandry and food ethics with the commodified logic of Big Pork. From breed selection to federal corruption, this is a deep dive into the systems behind your food—and what it takes to build something better.

Follow the tour on YouTube

Key Topics Discussed:

• Why Greg breeds “all-purpose” pasture pigs—and how that clashes with industrial pork genetics
• The death of the independent hog farmer and the rise of vertically consolidated meatpackers
• How 37 plants process 96% of U.S. pork—and why that’s both efficient and catastrophically fragile
• Prop 12, public gaslighting, and why most “ethical pork” labels are meaningless
• What it really costs to raise, slaughter, and distribute pork ethically—and why few are willing to do it

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro to the tour & visiting Gunthorp Farms
 00:04:00 Greg's breeding philosophy vs industrial pig genetics
 00:10:00 How vertical integration wiped out small hog farms
 00:16:00 Why 96% of pork runs through 37 plants
 00:20:00 What Prop 12 changed—and didn’t
 00:26:00 The illusion of ethical meat at the supermarket
 00:30:00 True costs of pasture-raised pork
 00:35:00 Corruption inside USDA and meat inspection
 00:45:00 How Greg fought back—with help from Thomas Massie
 00:55:00 Final reflections on reform, resilience, and local food

Connect w Greg & Gunthorp Farms:

Website
X
Instagram
Linkedin

Follow the tour on YouTube