Agrarian Futures

If we're serious about building a better food system, we have to start with land.
Across the world, land is getting more and more expensive. In the United States, farmland values have nearly doubled since 2011. What we're witnessing is an unprecedented land rush — one that's driving prices to levels simply unattainable by farmers and ranchers and the people we're actually asking to grow our food. As land is sold to development, we are losing an estimated 2000 acres of farmland every single day.
But the bigger story is what's coming. More than 40% of American farmland is owned by people over the age of 65. What this means is that roughly 370 million acres, an area larger than Texas and California combined, is expected to change hands over the next twenty years. Who ends up owning it will shape our food system for decades.
This mini-series is about what a food system built on cooperative principles could actually look like. In a world where land is becoming a speculative asset owned by distant investors, what would it look like to take land back - to hold it in common, to make sure the people actually farming it can afford to be there?
We need alternatives. And one of the clearest working answers I've come across is Fordhall Community Farm. It’s an almost unbelievable underdog tale that has a lot to teach us about the future of land access in our food system.
More about Charlotte and Fordhall Community Farm:
After having fought hard to save their family home from development, Charlotte settled into her dream job managing the FCLI as their General Manager.
Charlotte is passionate about communities connecting with nature, our landscape and the nutritious food it provides. Her work guiding the Fordhall Community Land Initiative as the General Manager, supports this journey for us all. In-line with the FCLI's commitment to inspire others, Charlotte offers consultancy to other land-based community groups across the country who want to learn from Fordhall and follow in our footsteps.
With this in mind, Charlotte and Ben published a book in 2007, The Fight for Fordhall Farm, which charts their lives at Fordhall from childhood to community-ownership. The book was sold in bookstores across the country and there was even a musical based on it, which toured Shropshire in 2008.
Charlotte is also one of the Community Leaders driving forward the campaign for a Community Power Act.
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Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

We often talk about how the food system is broken, but what would it look like to build one that is better?
In Season 3 of Agrarian Futures, we reimagine a food system rooted in cooperative principles. What if we didn't live in a winner-takes-all economy, but one where cooperatively owned enterprises worked in partnership with each other across the food supply chain?
Through deep dives into examples on the ground, we'll chart a path from our present moment to a better food future. Launching October 2nd!

Hi everyone - Emma here. We're deep in prep for our new miniseries on Agrarian Futures where we will be exploring the potential for a better food system rooted in cooperative principles.
In the meantime, we’ve got a special announcement: Agrarian Futures is joining the World Within Studios Podcast Network!
World Within is a non-profit that invests in solutions and stories that are building an economy that's owned by the many, not just the few. We are delighted to be adding Agrarian Futures to that effort!
Today, we’re cross-posting an episode of our fellow World Within Studios show: the How to Change the World Podcast.
In this episode, my friend Rostam Zafari sits down with Cooper Hibbert, co-founder of Old Salt Co-Op - a cooperative of Montana ranchers pushing back against big beef. His co-founder Cole Mannix was on a previous episode of Agrarian Futures and I think this conversation today adds even more to the picture of what it will take to build a better food system.
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Agrarian Futures and the How to Change the World Podcast is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Eve Weston and Martin McGreevy.

Our guest today Will Potter’s new book, Little Red Barns, started as a tale about censorship in journalism around industrial agriculture, but became something much bigger: a 10 year investigation look at how factory farming, an ages old mythos of family farms, and the rise of authoritarian politics have all worked in tandem to produce social, economic, and ecological disaster.
Will is an investigative journalist and author of Green Is the New Red. In this conversation, we talk about what he found writing Little Red Barns, from the industry's efforts to keep cameras out of factory farms to what that secrecy is really protecting.
In this episode, we explore:
The story of the “little red barn” that masks a darker truth about industrial agriculture
What led Will to spend a decade investigating factory farms and how the project grew beyond ag gag laws
How ag gag laws work, and how they've been used to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers
Competing visions for what comes next: What role animals play, and should play, in our food system
How Will connects factory farming to the broader rise of authoritarian politics
More about Will:
Will Potter is an award-winning investigative journalist and TED Senior Fellow who exposes political repression and the erosion of civil liberties.
His reporting and commentary have appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Rolling Stone, and has helped overturn prosecutions and challenge censorship laws. He has been invited to testify before the U.S. Congress, the Australian Parliament, and the Council of Europe, advocating for protest rights and press freedom.

His landmark book Green Is the New Red revealed how governments and corporations have labeled nonviolent activists as “terrorists.” Counter Terrorism Unit surveillance documents described it as “compelling and well-written.” His new book, Little Red Barns, is the result of a 10-year investigation into factory farms and rising fascism, and was recently named one of Publishers Weekly’s most-anticipated releases and a starred review.
Will’s journalism and scholarship have been heavily influenced by growing up in the hardcore punk scene, and he has collaborated with bands including Rise Against. He was previously a Knight-Wallace Fellow and visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and was named the distinguished journalist-in-residence at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas.
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Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.

Enjoy Part 2 of Emma and Austin's reflections on 2.5 years of Agrarian Futures. In this episode, they highlight the commonalities they see in the big success stories of the regenerative movement, including cooperative economics, finding the right niche in the food system, learning to tell your story, and much much more.
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Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.