Agrarian Futures

Gabe Brown didn't set out to revolutionize agriculture. He set out to survive it.
After four consecutive years of crop disasters left him $1.5 million in debt, he had no choice but to question everything he'd been taught. What emerged from that reckoning became one of the most influential farms in the regenerative agriculture movement, and eventually two organizations working to spread those lessons globally: Understanding Ag, now consulting on over 37 million acres worldwide, and Regenified, a verification company built to cut through the greenwashing.
In this episode, we look forward. Where is regenerative agriculture headed? Who's driving it, and what's standing in the way?
In this episode, we dive into:
How four years of disaster became the foundation of a regenerative farming philosophy
What it actually means to farm in synchrony with nature, and why it works anywhere
Why farmers care more about the land than they're given credit for
How to become a price maker instead of a price taker
The role of banks, insurers, and major brands in accelerating the regenerative transition
Why Gabe thinks regenerative will be the norm within 25 years
What the next generation of farmers looks like, and where they're coming from
More about Gabe Brown:
Gabe, along with his wife Shelly, and son Paul, own and operate Brown's Ranch, a diversified 5,000 acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota. The ranch consists of several thousand acres of native perennial rangeland along with perennial pastureland and cropland. Their ranch focuses on farming and ranching in nature's image.
Over 2,000 people visit the Brown's Ranch annually to see this unique operation. They have had visitors from all fifty states and twenty-four foreign countries.
Gabe and Brown's Ranch have received many forms of recognition for their work, including a Growing Green award from the Natural Resource Defense Council, an Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and a Zero-Till Producer of the Year Award, to name a few. Gabe has also been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States.
Gabe recently authored the book, “Dirt to Soil, One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture.”
Links to Gabe’s Work:
Brown’s Ranch
Regenified
Understanding Ag
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.

You can't understand the modern food system without understanding the policy that shaped it. And you can't understand US food policy without understanding the Farm Bill.
Judith McGeary is an attorney, farmer, and the founder of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a national organization that supports independent family farmers and fights corporate consolidation of the food system. In this conversation, Judith breaks down what's actually in the Farm Bill, adds some needed nuance to the subsidy debate, and explains what's at stake as the bill moves through the US Senate right now - and how you - yes you! - can help shape it.
In this episode, we dive into:
What the Farm Bill actually is and why it touches nearly every aspect of our food system
Why the Fam Bill has become a divisive political issue after years of bipartisan support
The pesticide liability shield and what corporate overreach looks like in practice
Opportunities for regenerative funding through direct farmer advocacy
Where the Farm Bill stands right now and what's at stake in the Senate
Concrete ways you can show up and influence the outcome before it's too late
More about Judith McGeary and Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance:
Judith McGeary is an attorney, activist, and sustainable farmer. After earning her BS from Stanford University and her law degree with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin, she clerked for a Federal Appeals Court and went on to private law practice. After seeing how government regulations benefit industrial agriculture at the expense of family farms, she founded the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance to promote common-sense policies for local, diversified agricultural systems. She and her husband raise sheep, chickens, and cattle on their farm outside of Austin, Texas.
Find more and take action at the links below:
Farm Bill Action Hour Toolkit — get involved now
News about the House-passed version of the Farm Bill: Farm Bill UPDATE: A Major Win & Setbacks - Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
Deep dive into the issue of fair prices/ price supports for farmers from National Family Farm Coalition: Fair Prices for Farmers - National Family Farm Coalition
IATP for deep dives into several Farm Bill topics: Agriculture & Food Systems | IATP
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Our guest today, Fred Provenza, has spent his career listening to what animals can teach us: about landscapes, about food, about the deep intelligence woven into the living world.
Fred is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University, where he directed an award-winning research program that pioneered our understanding of how early experience, family, and landscape shape the foraging wisdom of animals. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers and three books, including Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom, Foraging Behavior: Managing to Survive in a World of Change, and The Art & Science of Shepherding, co-authored with French herder Michel Meuret.
In this conversation, Fred draws on a lifetime of ranching, research, and wide-ranging inquiry, taking us from the pastures of Utah to the pre-alps of France. Together we reflect on what we've lost, what endures, and what it might mean to come home to a more intimate relationship with the land.
In this episode, we dive into:
His childhood in small town Colorado and how it cultivated a deep sense of community that has since largely vanished from American rural life
Seven years working on Henry De Luca's ranch, and what that experience revealed about the irreplaceable knowledge embedded in intimate relationships with land and animals
What the concept of epigenetics tells us about the deep, inherited intelligence of locally adapted herds
The extended family lives of livestock, and what shepherds in France have long understood about nutritional wisdom, plant diversity, and the art of moving animals across a landscape
What Buddhism, near-death experiences, and quantum physics have in common, and why Fred believes consciousness is our truest nature
The local food economy as a web of interdependence.
And much more…
More about Fred:
Fred Provenza is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University, where he directed the BEHAVE program — an international network of scientists, ranchers, farmers, and land managers integrating behavioral principles with local knowledge. His books include Nourishment, Foraging Behavior, and The Art & Science of Shepherding. He has published over 300 research papers and spoken at more than 600 conferences around the world.
Find more of Fred's work: Nourishment The Art & Science of Shepherding
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

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.