Agrarian Futures Agrarian Futures

In this conversation, Peter Allen of Mastadon Valley Farm [https://www.mastodonvalleyfarm.com/] challenges everything you think you know about climate change, eating beef, and the potential for food abundance grown regeneratively on the land. He brings a unique perspective as both a seasoned academic ecologist and someone with practical experience creating a profitable regenerative farming business.

In this episode, we cover:

- How Peter made the jump from academia into full time regenerative farming

- How management and stewardship of the land by indigenous people brought about the rich topsoil in the midwest - and how we're quickly destroying that

- The environmental value of a savanna ecosystem, and how they're going about restoring it

- The short term challenges - and long term advantages - of farming regeneratively

- Why eating regenerative beef is actually good for you and the environment

- How each of us can restore our land through our diet and purchasing choices

- The potential for layered commercial enterprises on the land for greater profitability and efficiency

- How the conversation around climate change disempowers people to make change, and why we should talk more about ecosystem restoration.

- And much more...

More about Peter:

Peter is an ecologist-turned-farmer and applies his background researching and teaching ecology and complex systems science towards the design, restoration, and management of diverse and agriculturally productive ecosystems. He owns and operates Mastodon Valley Farm [https://mastodonvalleyfarm.com/], a 220-acre regenerative farm in Southwestern Wisconsin where he has built a timber-frame homestead from the farm's trees, planted thousands of fruit and nut trees, and grazes cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry across their fertile valleys, steep hillsides, and restored native prairie pastures. Peter and his wife Maureen grow their family's food on their homestead where they are homeschooling their children nestled in a grove of oak trees. Peter combines his background with over a decade researching and teaching ecology and complexity science together with over a decade of experience farming regeneratively to provide unique and effective consulting and educational opportunities, helping people design, build, and manage diverse, ecologically functional, and economically profitable agroecosystems.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller [https://www.alexmillercomposing.com/], who also wrote our theme song.

In our increasingly technology-driven and urbanized culture, who hasn't fantasized from time to time about getting out of the hustle and bustle, moving to the woods, and reconnecting with the natural world? Today we're joined by Daphné Rose Courtés a horse logger in rural Quebec who has done exactly that.

In this conversation, Daphné gave us a picture into the day to day life of her and her horse, Fred, which showcases a true agrarian lifestyle in 2024. She is an inspiring example of someone who has followed their own intuition and embraced difficult, but fulfilling work back on the land.

In this episode, we cover:

- How Daphné found her way from Paris to working as a horse logger in Quebec

- Finding the beauty in both rural and urban life

- Exploring her close bond with her horse, Fred

- The importance of finding a good mentor

- The ecological benefits of horse logging vs conventional

- The challenges of being one of the few woman horse loggers

- The horse logging community and how they welcomed in Daphné into their ranks

- How someone could get into horse logging themselves

- And much more...

More about Daphné:

Daphné was born and raised in Paris and she started riding horses at a very young age. After moving to Quebec, she did a three year program in growing organic fruits and this is how she met Paul Chaperon and his family during an internship. He became her mentor and gave her the opportunity to use horses everywhere on a farm. From doing loose hay, logging, seeding, plowing and much more, it revealed her passion for working horses. She started her own small-scale logging business after buying one of her mentor's horses, Fred. Using a single horse, the goal of her new project is to harvest wood in an ecological and thoughtful way.

Interested in learning more about horse logging? Check out the Draft Animal Power Network's podcast here [https://www.draftanimalpower.org/dapcast].

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.

Today we are joined by Kristina Villa of the Farmers Land Trust [https://www.thefarmerslandtrust.org/] who is confronting one of the most intractable challenges and deepest inequities within our food system today: Land access and tenure.

Kristina shares her remarkable journey that has culminated in launching her own organic farming business and founding an organization that enables emerging regenerative farmers to gain access to arable land that then can be held in community for generations rather than going back into a commodity market that favors traditional development.

In this episode, we cover:

- Kristina's story and how her childhood reliance on food banks led her to organic farming and launching the Farmers Land Trust

- The importance of thinking about land transition to help aging farmers pass on their legacy

- Why we're meant to farm in community

- Layering enterprises to get more people back on the land

- Crowd-sourcing land acquisition

- Addressing inequity in land access, ownership, and tenure through a farmland commons strategy

- How anyone can start their own community land trust

- Kristina's advice for getting into farming from a non-farming background

- And much more...

More about Kristina and the Farmers Land Trust [https://www.thefarmerslandtrust.org/]:

Kristina Villa is the Co-Executive Director of The Farmers Land Trust, and is a farmer, communicator, and community coordinator who believes that our connection to the soil is directly related to the health of our bodies, economy, and society. With over a decade of farming, communication, and fundraising experience, Kristina enjoys using her skill sets to share photos, stories, and information in engaging ways which help to inspire change in human habits and mindsets, causing the food system, climate, and overall well-being of the world to improve. Kristina has spent the last several years of her professional career saving farmland from development and securing it in nonprofit land holding structures that give farmers, stewards and ranchers long-term and affordable access and tenure to it. Most of her work in the land access space has focused on equitable land security for BIPOC growers, addressing the inequities and disparities in how land is owned and accessed in this country.

Find the Famers Land Trust on social media at: Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Farmers-Land-Trust/100093197624819/], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/thefarmerslandtrust/?hl=en], TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@thefarmerslandtrust], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-farmers-land-trust/], X [https://twitter.com/FarmersLT?t=R_3g1swgiF_G8NcvWvGn3g&s=09], Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/@TheFarmersLandTrust]

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.

It's no secret that conventional farming is wreaking havoc on America's farmland, but is it really economically possible to convert conventional row crop farms to a regenerative approach that heals our planet? And how can the concept of an agrarian help foster stronger ties between rural farming communities and the cities they feed?

In this first episode, we dig into the answer with someone who's done it: Josh Payne of Rusted Plowshare Farm [https://www.rustedplowshare.com/] shares the story of how he and his sister Larin transformed their grandfather's corn and soy row crop operation into regenerative pastureland complete with sheep and cattle, microgreens, and over 30 acres of chestnuts.

In this episode, we cover:

- What it means to be an Agrarian

- How they transformed their farm from conventional row crops to regenerative

- Caring for each other through disagreement

- The concept of the "hinterland," and how to create stronger ties between urban and farming communities

- Keys to establishing regenerative pastureland

- And much more...

Learn more about Josh, Larin, and their farm here [https://www.rustedplowshare.com/].

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller [https://open.spotify.com/artist/0WvWTz5TPYOuoZ77e2iIX8?si=UNVJVNZxR32olf9WOfbf3A], who also wrote our theme song.

Welcome to Agrarian Futures, a podcast exploring a future centered around land, community, and connection to place.

Join hosts Emma Ractliffe and Austin Unruh as they chat with farmers, philosophers, and entrepreneurs reimagining our relationship to the land - and to each other - to showcase real hope and solutions for the future.