The Future Herd

26: Agroecology Is the How-To of Food Sovereignty with Charles Levkoe

Title: Agroecology Is the How-To of Food Sovereignty Summary: Charles Levkoe, food systems researcher at Lakehead University, makes the case that agroecology is not simply a set of farming techniques but the practical expression of food sovereignty — the means by which communities assert democratic control over how food is grown, harvested, and governed. Drawing on his background as an agroecological farmer, nonprofit practitioner, and academic, Levkoe argues that isolating any single dimension of the food system — whether soil science, policy, or indigenous knowledge — guarantees worse outcomes than thinking through their interconnection. The conversation challenges listeners to move beyond individual consumer choices and reckon with the structural, historical, and political forces that shape what kind of food system is even possible. Show notes: Charles Levkoe is a food systems researcher at Lakehead University whose path runs through agroecological farming in Nova Scotia, frontline community food work at The Stop Community Food Centre in Toronto, and years of activist scholarship aimed at understanding food as a lens onto power, economics, and social justice. The central argument of this episode is one Levkoe traces back to the gatherings of peasant and farming movements worldwide: that food sovereignty — the democratic control of food systems by the people who produce and harvest food — needs agroecology as its operational counterpart. Agroecology, in his framing, is the how-to of food sovereignty, and the two concepts only make full sense when held together. Levkoe unpacks agroecology through three interlocking pillars. The first is rigorous science and research — not a retreat from modern knowledge about soil microbes or climate, but a commitment to using that knowledge ethically. The second, and equally weighted, is experiential and traditional knowledge: the accumulated wisdom of farmers, harvesters, and indigenous communities that gets systematically sidelined when technical standards become the only legitimate voice in the room. He draws a pointed contrast with the history of organic certification, arguing that what began as a social movement grounded in values was gradually flattened into a checklist of inputs and prohibitions — a cautionary tale about what is lost when systems thinking gives way to narrow standardisation. The third pillar is movement-building and governance: the recognition that local practise cannot transform food systems without also changing the policy environments at provincial, national, and international scales. A significant thread running through the conversation is the relationship between indigenous knowledge and the future of Canadian agriculture. Levkoe is careful to speak from his own position — a second-generation Canadian, non-indigenous, and relatively new to Northern Ontario — rather than to speak for indigenous communities. But he names the tension directly: Canada's agricultural sector is demographically ageing, and First Nations communities across the country are comparatively young, land-connected, and holders of deep ecological knowledge that mainstream food systems research continues to undervalue. He argues that any honest reckoning with the food system's future has to confront the colonial history that shaped whose knowledge counts, whose land relationships are recognised, and who gets to define what sustainable agriculture actually looks like in a given place and climate. Listeners will come away with a sharper vocabulary for thinking about food systems — and a provocation to use it. Levkoe's insistence that food is an entry point into conversations about capitalism, settler colonialism, and ecological crisis is not rhetorical; it is methodological. For Canada's agri-food sector, where policy silos, competing jurisdictions, and an increasingly concentrated supply chain are real and pressing problems, his systems-level thinking offers both a critique and a direction. This episode is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand not just what a better food system might look like, but where the leverage points for building one actually are. Topics: Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Knowledge, Organic Farming, Food Systems Policy, Settler Colonialism, Community Food Work, Systems Thinking

25: Leaving Every Organisation Better Than You Found It with Kaitlyn Kitzan

Title: Leaving Every Organisation Better Than You Found It Summary: Kaitlyn Kitzan, Saskatchewan farmer, entrepreneur, and sectoral leader, argues that lasting leadership means improving every organisation you touch and passing it on stronger than you found it. Drawing on lessons from her family farm, her early entrepreneurial ventures, and the volunteer ethic instilled by her parents in a rural community, Kaitlyn makes the case that the foundation of great leadership is not ambition alone but the habits, values, and emotional intelligence cultivated from childhood. In this conversation with Jesse Hirsh, she offers a candid, grounded look at what it actually costs — and what it gives back — to lead in Canada's agri-food sector today. Show notes: Kaitlyn Kitzan grew up on a Saskatchewan farm forty miles from the nearest city, and that distance shaped everything: her work ethic, her entrepreneurial instincts, and her conviction that a leader's job is to leave every organisation better than she found it. That guiding principle, borrowed from a phrase she heard growing up under Premier Wall, runs through this entire conversation — from how she approaches board work and farm succession to how she thinks about stress, sleep, and the volunteers who hold rural communities together. Jesse Hirsh invites Kaitlyn to unpack what that commitment actually looks like in practice for someone managing a seven-person business, sitting on multiple boards, and navigating the emotional complexity of a family farming operation all at once. One of the most striking threads in the conversation is Kaitlyn's reframing of mental health and stress in the agricultural sector. Rather than asking people where they're at emotionally — a question that still carries stigma in many farm communities — she asks them about their battery level. Are you at fifty percent? Seventy-five? And crucially, what do you need to do to recharge? She applies the same framework to herself, describing the discipline she has built around sleep, her deliberate practice of leaving weekends unscheduled when event season piles up, and her ongoing struggle to say no to opportunities she genuinely wants to take. The honesty here is notable: she is not offering a tidy wellness program but describing an active, imperfect negotiation between her drive and her limits. Kaitlyn is equally direct about the cultural divide she sees among her peers when it comes to volunteerism and community contribution. She traces her own volunteer ethic back to selling chocolate bars at a hockey canteen at age three, and to parents who modelled the idea that you give back to the community that raised you. What frustrates her is watching friends and new employees ask what's in it for them before committing even an hour of their time — a mindset she connects not to geography or generation but to how people were raised. That argument cuts against easy rural-urban or east-west narratives and lands somewhere more uncomfortable and more specific: that the values transmitted in childhood are the single biggest determinant of whether someone grows into a leader who builds things up or someone who waits for things to be handed to them. Listeners will come away with a clearer picture of what it actually takes to sustain leadership in Canada's agri-food sector over the long run — not the highlight-reel version, but the daily arithmetic of energy management, emotional intelligence, community investment, and knowing when to walk away and go for a walk. For anyone working in Saskatchewan agriculture, in rural entrepreneurship, or in the volunteer and board structures that hold the sector together, Kaitlyn's perspective is both a practical resource and a reminder that the future of the herd depends on people who are committed to leaving things better than they found them. Topics: Farm Leadership, Mental Health & Stress, Rural Entrepreneurship, Volunteerism, Farm Succession, Saskatchewan Agriculture, Emotional Intelligence, Work-Life Balance

24: The Grocery Store Is a Media Environment: What Sociology Reveals About Food, Power, and Choice with Alissa Overend

Title: The Grocery Store Is a Media Environment: What Sociology Reveals About Food, Power, and Choice Summary: Alissa Overend of MacEwan University argues that the food choices Canadians make every day are shaped by forces most of us never consciously examine — from curated grocery store layouts and deceptive package labelling to the deep social meanings we attach to what we eat. Drawing on her research into undiagnosed illness, food politics, and media, Overend shows how industry, advertising, and cultural norms work together to define what counts as healthy, who gets to eat well, and whose knowledge about food gets taken seriously. This episode makes the case that understanding food requires more than biochemistry — it requires a sociological lens. Show notes: Alissa Overend is a health sociologist at MacEwan University in Edmonton whose research sits at the intersection of food, media, power, and identity. She came to food studies not by design but by following her evidence: when she was interviewing people with undiagnosed chronic illnesses for her PhD, nearly every subject spontaneously described using food to manage their condition — a pattern that redirected her entire research focus. In this episode, Overend makes a compelling case that the agri-food sector needs to reckon with sociology's core insight: food is never just biochemical. It is social, political, cultural, and deeply personal, and the stories told about it — by industry, by media, by the grocery store itself — quietly determine what Canadians believe is true about what they eat. One of Overend's sharpest contributions to this conversation is her argument that the grocery store is itself a media environment. Far from a neutral space, the modern box store is a carefully engineered experience: oversized carts designed to be filled, produce placed at the entrance to trigger a sense of healthy intent before shoppers move into the processed-food aisles, eye-level shelving calibrated to catch children's attention, and end-cap pairings that nudge complementary purchases. Overend extends this analysis to packaging, arguing that front-of-box health claims — 'made with whole grain oats,' 'nature's valley,' 'honey and oats' — function as advertising that exploits consumer trust. Her rule of thumb is pointed: when a product is working that hard to convince you it's healthy, that effort itself should raise a flag. A second distinct tension Overend surfaces is the gap between how food is officially understood — through a narrow scientific and nutritional lens — and how people actually experience and use it. Her chronic illness research revealed that ordinary people were developing sophisticated, embodied knowledge about food and health that had no place in a medical system oriented toward diagnosis and biochemical markers. This epistemological gap matters for the agri-food sector because it means that consumer behaviour around food is far more complex than price sensitivity or label-reading. Food carries identity — cultural pride, gender assumptions, class position, and memory — and those meanings shape purchasing decisions in ways that market research built on nutritional categories will consistently miss. Overend also flags the blurring of Canadian and American food culture, noting that Canada's heavy consumption of American television and the post-NAFTA entry of American products has made the boundary between the two food landscapes much thinner than most Canadians assume. For leaders and practitioners in Canada's agri-food sector, this episode offers something genuinely difficult to find: a critical outside perspective that names the structural forces shaping the food system from the consumer's side. Overend's work is a reminder that food security, consolidation, and the trust between producers and eaters are not only economic or logistical problems — they are social ones. Understanding why people eat what they eat, and what the system is quietly doing to their choices, is not a soft concern at the margins of the industry. It is central to building a food future that actually serves Canadians. Topics: food sociology, grocery store design, food media and advertising, food politics, food and identity, chronic illness and food, Canadian food culture, food security

23: Measuring What Matters: Transforming Canada's Agri-Food System

Measuring What Matters: Transforming Canada’s Agri-Food System What does a resilient agri-food system actually look like — and how would we know if we were building one? In this Future Herd panel episode, guest host Jen MacTavish brings three previous guests back to the table for a wide-ranging conversation on food resilience, food waste, infrastructure, capital, policy, and the measurements that shape Canada’s agri-food future. The discussion features Camden Lawrence of First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario, Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, and Tyler McCann, Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Together, they explore the gap between producing food and building a system capable of feeding people reliably, affordably, and with less waste. The conversation begins with a deceptively simple question: what does resilience mean in agri-food? For Camden, resilience means producing more food closer to home, while also building the processing, storage, transportation, and community infrastructure needed to keep value local. For Lori, resilience requires confronting the scale of food waste in Canada and treating prevention as central to any serious food strategy. For Tyler, resilience means a system that can absorb shocks, maintain its core function, and recover without losing sight of the people it is meant to serve. From there, the panel moves into the “messy middle” of the food system: cold storage, logistics, transportation, data, processing, and the infrastructure that often determines whether food reaches people or becomes waste. The conversation also wrestles with capital access, especially for First Nations communities and new farmers, and asks whether Canada’s food policy frameworks are ready to support the kinds of experimentation and risk-taking the moment demands. A recurring theme throughout the episode is measurement. What we measure determines what we see. Food waste was long treated as a cost of doing business until organizations like Second Harvest helped make it visible. Once waste can be measured, it can be managed, prevented, redirected, and understood as an economic, environmental, and social problem. But the panel also warns that measurement must be consistent, useful, and tied to action. The episode closes with a practical challenge for the sector: stop waiting for perfect conditions. Some problems need study, but others need movement. Policy, business, and community leaders may need to become more willing to try, learn, correct, and continue. GUESTS Jen MacTavish Guest host for this Future Herd panel discussion. Camden Lawrence First Nations Agriculture & Finance Ontario. Camden brings a perspective rooted in First Nations agriculture, access to capital, community food systems, and the opportunity to build food production capacity in Indigenous communities. Lori Nikkel CEO of Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization. Lori speaks to the scale of food waste, the importance of food rescue and prevention, and the need for better data across the food system. Tyler McCann Managing Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Tyler brings a policy lens to resilience, infrastructure, food affordability, and the challenge of designing systems that can respond to shocks. KEY THEMES Resilience requires more than emergency response The panel explores resilience as the capacity to prepare, respond, recover, and adapt. In agri-food, that means thinking beyond crisis management toward systems that can keep functioning through climate disruption, trade volatility, disease outbreaks, supply chain shocks, and affordability pressures. Food waste is a resilience issue Lori argues that Canada cannot build a resilient food system while wasting so much food. Food waste prevention, rescue, redistribution, and measurement need to be part of any serious food security strategy. The “messy middle” matters Cold storage, transportation, processing, warehousing, data systems, and logistics often determine whether food stays in the system or falls out of it. These less visible parts of the supply chain are essential to resilience. Capital shapes who gets to farm Camden highlights the challenge of financing farms and agri-food infrastructure, especially when startup costs can reach millions of dollars and agricultural lending does not behave like ordinary commercial borrowing. Longer amortization, lower interest rates, and better capital access could help more people and communities enter the sector. Land ownership is not the only path The conversation points to emerging models where farmers rent land, build local agreements, or focus on equipment and market relationships rather than land ownership. This opens up new ways to think about farm entry, especially for younger and first-generation farmers. Food systems need better knowledge transfer Agriculture faces a generational knowledge gap. Camden describes communities where older farmers hold practical knowledge that younger people urgently need. The question becomes how to move expertise from elders and experienced producers into the hands of new entrants. Policy needs more courage Tyler challenges the tendency to over-study problems or pilot every change before acting. Sometimes the sector can move, test, adjust, and correct course without waiting for perfect certainty. The farm gate is too narrow a boundary The episode pushes against the idea that agri-food policy ends at production. Food has to move through many hands, systems, and institutions before it reaches people. A stronger food system requires collaboration across agriculture, food rescue, processing, retail, policy, community organizations, and consumers. EPISODE FLOW / APPROXIMATE CHAPTERS 00:00 — Introduction Jen McTavish introduces the panel and frames the conversation around resilience in Canada’s agri-food system. 00:51 — What does a resilient agri-food sector look like? Camden, Lori, and Tyler offer different definitions of resilience, from local production and processing to waste prevention and shock recovery. 05:22 — Food waste as an urgent gap Lori’s work at Second Harvest anchors a discussion about how waste prevention belongs at the centre of food resilience. 08:27 — The messy middle of the supply chain The panel turns to infrastructure, cold storage, transportation, data, and the practical systems needed to move food effectively. 11:18 — National food security strategy and policy gaps The conversation looks at government commitments and asks whether current strategies are enough to move the needle. 15:05 — Capital, lending, and farm viability Camden explains why access to capital is one of the biggest barriers to building farms, infrastructure, and food production capacity. 17:42 — Rethinking the economics of farming The panel explores whether there are different ways to finance food production and support people who want to farm. 24:55 — Diversity in agriculture The conversation turns to diversified farming, changing business models, and whether the current system can support more nimble forms of production. 27:34 — Measuring complexity Jesse joins the conversation to reflect on measurement, chaos, complexity, and the double-edged nature of quantifying food systems. 36:44 — Policy frameworks and risk The panel discusses Canada’s agricultural policy process and the need to bring more voices and more creativity into policy design. 49:33 — “We can just fix things” Tyler argues that some problems require action more than another pilot project. 51:52 — What should policymakers just do? Each guest identifies practical priorities, from First Nations agricultural capital to logistics, food waste prevention, and policy courage. LISTENER TAKEAWAYS A resilient food system is built through infrastructure, capital, knowledge, and coordination — not production alone. Food waste is one of Canada’s clearest opportunities for immediate improvement, especially when prevention and redistribution are treated as economic tools rather than charitable afterthoughts. First Nations agriculture deserves greater investment, not only as community food security, but as a major opportunity for leadership, production, and economic development. Better measurement can reveal hidden problems, but measurement only matters when it leads to action. Canada’s agri-food future will require more collaboration across sectors, more comfort with experimentation, and a stronger willingness to act before every answer is perfectly settled.

22: Rethinking Rural Food Security with Rob Rainer

Where Food Becomes Community Rethinking Rural Food Security with Rob Rainer In this episode of The Future Herd, Jesse Hirsh speaks with Rob Rainer about food insecurity from a rural perspective. Rob brings a rare combination of experience: he is the executive director of The Table Community Food Centre in Perth, Ontario, and the reeve of Tay Valley Township. That gives him a view of food insecurity that is both deeply local and structurally political. The conversation explores why rural food insecurity is often harder to see than urban poverty, even when the need is just as urgent. Food access in rural communities is shaped by transportation, housing, income, isolation, aging, volunteer capacity, and the absence of services that larger cities may take for granted. Rob explains how organizations like The Table are doing more than distributing food. They are creating spaces of dignity, connection, learning, and mutual support. A meal can become a social lifeline. A food bank can become a community hub. A conversation about hunger can open into a larger discussion about income security, public policy, climate resilience, and what rural communities need to thrive. This episode continues The Future Herd’s exploration of food insecurity by asking a deeper question: what kind of infrastructure do communities need when food is the visible symptom, but poverty, isolation, and inequality are the underlying conditions? Guest: Rob Rainer Episode title: Where Food Becomes Community Subtitle: Rethinking Rural Food Security with Rob Rainer Themes: rural food insecurity, community food centres, poverty, dignity, transportation, social isolation, basic income, rural resilience, public policy, food as care. https://thefutureherd.ca https://commons.thefutureherd.ca