Agrarian Futures

Our guest today - Judith Schwartz - has spent her career showing us that the natural world is more resilient than we think, and that we have more power to restore it than we have been led to believe.

Judith is a journalist and author whose books, Cows Save the Planet, Water in Plain Sight, and The Reindeer Chronicles, have taken readers from the degraded hillsides of China's Loess Plateau to the Arctic tundra of Norway.

In this conversation, Judith shares stories from around the world of people healing land, rebuilding community, and rediscovering a sense of meaning in the process. It was lovely to sit with Judith  and remember that restoration is closer than we think.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Why the climate crisis is, at its root, a people problem and what that means for how we respond to it
• The Loess Plateau in China: how an area the size of the Netherlands was brought back from ecological collapse, lifting 2 million people out of poverty
• Common Land and the "four returns" model, and what a business designed to serve the land actually looks like
• The Sami reindeer herders of Norway, and what their ancient practice reveals about the intelligence hidden in animal and land relationships
• Why photosynthesis, not money, may be the truest measure of wealth
• The rights of nature movement and the stop ecocide movement as legal pathways toward a different relationship with the living world
• What it means to slow down as a communicator, and why listening has become more central to Judith's work than publishing

More about Judith (check out her substack!):

Judith D. Schwartz is an author and speaker who looks at our environmental crises, including climate change, through the lens of nature. Not nature as a “thing”, but how natural systems “work”, creating the conditions for life to thrive. Her books include The Reindeer Chronicles, Water In Plain Sight, and Cows Save the Planet. Home base is a gentle mountain slope in southwest Vermont.

Find more of Judith at the links below:

www.judithdschwartz.com

https://judithdschwartz.substack.com/

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Many of us have lost the thread that connects us to our food. Glenn Elzinga is spending his life trying to pick it back up.

Glenn is the founder of Alderspring Ranch, a certified organic grass-fed beef operation in the remote Salmon River country of central Idaho. But describing it as a beef operation barely scratches the surface. Each summer, Glenn and his family, along with a rotating crew of interns, ride on horseback across 70 square miles of mountain range, living alongside their cattle for months at a time, following the melting snow and the greening grass. It is, as Glenn describes it, an ancient practice of shepherding that modern agriculture has all but forgotten.

In this conversation, Glenn challenges some of the deepest assumptions embedded in how we raise animals and grow food. What does it mean to be a caregiver rather than a caretaker? What happens when we let a cow be a cow? And what is lost when we reduce agriculture to a production equation?

In this episode, we dive into:

• How Glenn's model revives an ancient, nearly lost practice of herdsmanship
• The difference between productivity and profitability, and why it matters for the land
• What cows can teach us when we actually pay attention to them
• Why 400 young people applied for unpaid, grueling ranch internships, and what they found there
• The caregiver versus caretaker distinction, and what it reveals about our relationship to animals, land, and each other
• Why Wendell Berry's diagnosis of American agriculture is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago
• Why getting people to cook again might be one of the most radical things we can do

More about Glenn and Aldersping:

Glenn Elzinga is the head guy (aka CEO), and with Caryl, co-founder of Alderspring. Twenty-four years ago, he left his 9-5 forestry job, bought 7 cows and a small ranch, and began producing beef with his wife Caryl. Today, he owns and manages Alderspring (1650 deeded acres and 46,000 rangeland acres) while raising his 7 daughters and producing grass fed organic beef. His passion for wellness as an interconnected web of soil, land, animal, and human health led him and Caryl to create their "inherding" grazing paradigm. Glenn also currently speaks as a guest in both podcasts and regenerative agriculture conferences.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Steve Gabriel joins us to unpack one of the most consequential myths shaping how we grow food in America: the separation between forest and field.

As a co-steward of Wellspring Forest Farm in Mecklenburg, New York, author of Silvopasture, and researcher at the Cornell Small Farms Program, Steve has been listening. Through a SARE-funded project called Farming with Trees, he's been in conversation with over 120 farmers, from Bronx-raised beginners to multi-generational stewards, exploring not just how to plant trees, but why it matters and what gets in the way.

What he's found is that the barriers to agroforestry aren't just technical. They're cultural, historical, and deeply personal, rooted in a Eurocentric agricultural paradigm that told farmers to clear the land and never look back.

In this episode, we dive into:

• How personal relationships with trees in childhood shape a farmer's vision for the land
• The paradigm shift required to move from stark field or stark forest toward something in between
• How indigenous land stewardship modeled a working tree landscape long before "agroforestry" was a word
• What livestock farmers, vegetable growers, and flower farmers each need from trees and why those needs are so different
• Why starting with willow and poplar might matter more than starting with chestnuts and apples
• The role of community, craft traditions, and living fences in rebuilding our relationship with trees

More about Steve (links below):

Steve Gabriel is an ecologist, farmer, and educator from the Finger Lakes Region of New York. Throughout his career spanning 20 years, Gabriel has taught thousands of farmers and land stewards about land planning, mushroom growing, and agroforestry. His experience working in academic research and extension, as a teacher and lecturer, and managing several working farm landscapes has built a unique balance of knowledge and practice which he brings to his work.

With his family, Gabriel co-stewards Wellspring Forest Farm, which is an agroforestry demonstration farm that produces mushrooms, nursery trees, pastured lamb, maple syrup, and elderberry in Mecklenburg, New York. He also collaborates with diverse individuals and organizations through the Farming with Trees Collective.

Gabriel previously served for 12 years as Extension Specialist for the Cornell Small Farm Program, focused on research and education on agroforestry and mushroom production. Steve co-authored Farming the Woods with Ken Mudge (2014) and is the author of Silvopasture (2019).

www.MycenaTrees.org -- his new non profit working on social aspects of agroforestry

www.FarmingWithTrees.org -- report on listening sessions with farmers and nursery stewards

www.WellspringForestFarm.com -- Steve's farm website

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Regenerative agriculture isn’t just about how we raise animals. It’s about whether the entire system around them makes sense.

Smaller, regenerative producers with meat businesses, have traditionally lacked an economic outlet for hides and other byproducts. That missing piece can be the difference between a system that works for regenerative farmers and one that doesn’t.

Jim and Mark Kleinschmit are working to rebuild that piece. Through Other Half Processing, they’re creating new pathways for regenerative hides and reconnecting ranchers to a leather economy that reflects the full value of the animal.

In this episode, we dive into:
• Why whole-animal thinking is essential to regenerative systems
• How value from hides and byproducts has been pulled out of local economies
• What that means for the economics of regenerative ranching
• What it takes to rebuild regional leather and processing infrastructure
• The role of tanneries, brands, and partnerships in closing the loop
• Where they see real opportunity to make these systems work again

More about Other Half Processing:

Jim & Mark Kleinschmit. Brothers that grew up on a family farm in Northeast Nebraska. Raised by parents who were early adopters and champions for sustainable and regenerative agriculture.

​OHP works directly with farmers/ranchers and small and medium sized meat processors to verify and buy traceable hides and other meat processing byproducts from regeneratively raised, organic, grassfed and other ethically raised animals. We aggregate and sell raw and finished products to apparel, food and pet sector companies.

Their business model is centered on providing shared economic returns to producer and other value chain partners, and fair pricing for customers and market partners.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

We walk into our local grocery store and most likely barely consider what’s on display in front of us. Forty thousand items. Stacked, uniform, produce. Cuisine from around the globe. Open often 24 hours.

As author Benjamin Lorr points out, that can be considered a miracle.

In The Secret Life of Groceries, Ben dives deep into the hidden machinery behind that miracle. He spent years inside the system, working behind a Whole Foods fish counter, riding cross-country with long-haul truckers, and tracing supply chains all the way to shrimp boats in Thailand. What he found is a system that delivers abundance, convenience, and quality at historically unprecedented levels. But it does so by squeezing every inefficiency out of the chain, and often squeezing workers and ecosystems along with it.

In this episode, we dive into:
• Why the modern supermarket truly is miraculous
• How deregulation reshaped trucking and the invisible logistics backbone of food
• What “just-in-time” efficiency means for grocery workers
• The hidden labor dynamics behind ultra-cheap shrimp and other commodities
• Why certifications and labels often can’t fix systemic incentives
• The tension between convenience, price, and ethics
• Whether we actually have the food system we’ve chosen

More about Benjamin:

Benjamin Lorr is the author of Hell-Bent, a critically acclaimed exploration of the Bikram Yoga community that first detailed patterns of abuse and sexual misconduct by guru Bikram Choudhury, and The Secret Life of Groceries, called “a titanic achievement of reportage, insight, humor, and humanity” examining the American supermarket from all angles. Lorr is a graduate of Montgomery County, Maryland public schools and Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

You can buy Benjamin’s books online here or for audiobooks, here.

Follow him on Instagram.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

I’m willing to bet that most of our listeners - like us - have traditionally seen acorns as food for squirrels, not people. But as Elspeth Hay points out in this conversation, that assumption says more about our food system than it does about the acorn.

For much of human history, acorns were a staple. They fed communities across North America, Europe, North Africa, and Asia - and in some cases - still do. They were managed, processed, stored, and celebrated. So how did we go from acorns as everyday food to acorns as woodland debris? In her fantastic book Feed Us with Trees, Elspeth traces how enclosure, industrial agriculture, and a narrow definition of “real farming” pushed perennial forest foods to the margins of our imagination.

In this episode, we dive into:
• Why acorns were once reliable staple crops, not novelty ingredients
• The myth that we can only feed ourselves with annual row crops
• How the loss of commons reshaped our relationship to forests and food
• What Indigenous land management, including fire, meant for food abundance
• The false divide between farming and foraging
• How pigs, oaks, and people once formed integrated food systems
• What it would take to bring acorns and other perennial tree foods back into our diets

More about Elspeth:

Elspeth Hay is the creator and host of the Local Food Report, a weekly feature that has aired on the Cape and Islands NPR station since 2008, and the author of Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food.

Deeply immersed in her own local-food system, she writes and reports for print, radio, and online media with a focus on food and the environment. You can learn more about her work at elspethhay.com.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

We’ve spent a lot of time on this show digging into the dire state of modern farming and ranching, and the challenging economics for those trying to build a regenerative future. Our guest today, Cate Havstad, is no stranger to these challenges as a first-generation farmer and rancher. That experience led directly to an innovative solution that could be an important missing piece in this economic puzzle.

As she explains, only about 65 percent of the cattle she sent out to slaughter was actually used, leaving hides and other materials treated as low-value byproducts rather than essential parts of a living system. That waste isn’t just ecological. It’s economic, and it puts real pressure on ranchers trying to do things the right way.

Cate is changing that. As the founder of Range Revolution, she’s building a new market for regenerative hides, turning them into high-quality leather goods while creating an additional revenue stream for ranchers committed to land stewardship. Her work challenges the idea that sustainability and luxury are incompatible, and shows how value-added products can help make regenerative ranching financially viable.

In this episode, we dive into:
• Why hides have been devalued in the modern meat system
• How waste in the supply chain undermines regenerative ranchers
• What it takes to build a leather supply chain aligned with land health
• Why luxury markets can play a role in regenerative economics
• The hidden costs of conventional leather production
• How whole-animal utilization strengthens rural livelihoods
• What a more honest pricing of materials could unlock for agriculture

More about Cate and Range Revolution:

Cate Havstad-Casad is a first-generation farmer/rancher, designer, systems-thinker and agricultural advocate.

At the age of 23 Cate founded Havstad Hat Company and began her career as a designer and maker. She has crafted hats for Post Malone, Shania Twain, Kacey Musgraves among other notable pop-culture icons.

Cate began farming with her husband in 2014, both first generation farmers. Starting on 5 acres of leased land, Cate and her husband now manage 1400 acres of farmland & rangeland at Casad Family Farms in Madras, Oregon. This work on the ranch and in building markets for regenerative meats informed the launch of Range Revolution in 2021; a category-defining regenerative leather goods company which is building 100% of its products out of traceable American cattle hides coming from verifiably regenerative ranches. Range Revolution addresses the 5 million cattle hides that are thrown into the trash each year, rebuilding systems for whole-carcass utilization, increasing margins for processors and producers, and harnessing brand building to tell stories that reconnect citizens to natural fibers and regional supply chains. Range Revolution offers both a collection of finished goods as well as B2B material development.

Cate believes deeply in building businesses that support regional, decentralized systems for agriculture of the middle to thrive, and that human health and ecosystem health are one in the same.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Joel Salatin is one of the most influential voices in the modern regenerative farming movement. As the founder of Polyface Farm in Virginia, he’s become known for building a radically different model of agriculture, one rooted in ecological systems, local markets, and a refusal to accept industrial “efficiency” as the end goal.

In this episode, Joel shares what he’s learned from decades of farming and advocacy, why the middle of the food system is where so many good farms get stuck, and what it will take to move regenerative agriculture to the center of our food system.

In this episode, we dive into:
• Why the industrial food system prioritizes scale and uniformity over real stewardship
• What we lose when farming becomes a commodity business instead of a community livelihood
• The biggest barriers that keep good farms from reaching more people
• Why local processing and local markets matter more than most people realize
• How Polyface built an alternative model that actually works economically
• What it would take for regenerative agriculture to become “normal” again
• Why Joel thinks the story we tell about food is just as important as the practices
• Where he sees real hope, and what he thinks we need to stop pretending will fix things

More about Joel:

Joel Salatin co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 10 restaurants, and 5 retail outlets with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. The farm ships nationwide to your doorstep.

Salatin is the editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, granddaddy catalyst for the grass farming movement. He writes the “Confessions of a Steward” column for Plain Values magazine, the “Homestead Abundance” column for Homestead Living magazine, columns for Homesteaders of America, and a column a month for the e-magazine Manward. His blog is Musings from the Lunatic Farmer and he co-hosts a podcast titled BEYOND LABELS with co-author Dr. Sina McCullough.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Fish have long been one of the last wild foods, a source of nourishment that connects us to the powerful ecology of the planet’s waters. But as journalist and author Paul Greenberg chronicles in his award-winning book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, our relationship with the sea has dramatically changed over the past century. Once nearly all of the seafood we ate was wild; today, nearly half is farmed and the pressures on both wild and farmed systems are intensifying.

In this conversation, Paul doesn’t simply lament loss nor offer blind optimism. Instead, he helps us see where wild fisheries and aquaculture have faltered, where they remain strong, and how our choices today will shape the future of seafood and the oceans that feed us. Viewed through the lens of regenerative agriculture, his insights show that healthy waters and healthy land are part of the same story, and that ecological regeneration on farms must be paired with thoughtful stewardship of our rivers, estuaries, and oceans.

In this episode, we get into:

• What history teaches us about the human-ocean relationship and how it changed as we tamed the sea
• How modern fishing and seafood production mirror some of the same challenges in industrial agriculture
• Why some wild fisheries can still be models of careful management
• Where aquaculture offers real promise and where it deepens existing problems
• How ecological health, species diversity, and regional systems are essential for both land and sea
• What eating fish in ways that support long-term abundance actually looks like
• Why regenerative principles belong in discussions about oceans as much as soil

More about Paul:

Paul writes at the intersection of the environment and technology, seeking to help his readers find emotional and ecological balance with their planet. He is the author of seven books including the New York Times bestseller Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. His other books are The Climate Diet, Goodbye Phone, Hello World, The Omega Principle, American Catch, A Third Term and the novel, Leaving Katya.

Paul’s writing on oceans, climate change, health, technology, and the environment appears regularly in The New York Times and many other publications. He’s the recipient of a James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and many other grants and awards.

A frequent guest on national television and radio including Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the co-creator of the podcast Fish Talk, Paul also works in film, television and documentary. His PBS Frontline documentary The Fish on My Plate was among the most viewed Frontline films of the 2017 season and his TED Talk has reached over 1.5 million viewers to date. He has lectured widely at institutions around the world ranging from Harvard to Google to the United States Senate. A graduate in Russian Studies from Brown University, Paul speaks Russian and French. He currently teaches within New York University’s Animals Studies program and lives at Ground Zero in Manhattan where he maintains a family and a terrace garden and produces, to his knowledge, the only wine grown south of 14th Street.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

If you want to understand what it takes to build a healthier local food system and bring rural communities back to life, you talk to someone who’s actually done it. Bob Quinn has spent decades farming in Montana, rebuilding soil, creating local markets, and pushing back against the idea that small towns and small farms are destined to disappear.

Through his farm and the Quinn Institute, Bob is exploring what a healthier rural economy - and a healthier food system - could look like. That includes everything from improving soil health and growing better food to rethinking how we organize our communities, our businesses, and even our underlying values.

In this episode, we get into:
• Why rebuilding rural America starts with rebuilding soil
• How regenerative practices can revive both land and local economies
• What we’ve lost as rural communities hollow out
• The mission behind the Quinn Institute and why Bob created it
• Why scale isn’t the only measure of agricultural success
• How local markets, local relationships, and local identity shape rural futures
• The deeper cultural values we need to restore if regeneration is going to last

More about Bob and the Quinn Institute:

Bob Quinn's roots run deep into the rich soil of Big Sandy, Montana, where he returned after earning a PhD in plant biochemistry from UC Davis to apply his scientific knowledge to the family farm. From his return in 1978, Bob embarked on a transformative journey that led him to convert his entire farm of over 3000 acres to a regenerative organic system in just three years, from 1986 to 1988. At the same time he pioneered Kamut International, a thriving business that turned an ancient grain into a global superfood synonymous with health and community.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.