Latest / The Future Herd / 10: Rebels, Radicals, and the Future of Agriculture with Jamie Reaume

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10: Rebels, Radicals, and the Future of Agriculture with Jamie Reaume · The Future Herd

0:00
Jesse Hirsh: Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsh.
0:03
Welcome to the Future Herd.
0:08
Early on in this episode's discussion, Jamie Reaume describes himself this way.
0:15
I'm a rebel.
0:16
I'm a radical, I'm a free thinker and not a lemming.
0:21
After nearly three decades working around Canada's AgriFood sector,
0:26
that's the identity he embraces.
0:29
And it's an important one because the future heard isn't just about celebrating
0:34
leadership inside the AgriFood system.
0:37
It's also about creating space for the voices that challenge it.
0:41
The people willing to question assumptions, push institutions,
0:46
and insist that the sector confront difficult realities about its future.
0:52
Jamie is one of those voices.
0:54
In our conversation, he reflects on what he has learned from decades
0:58
inside the agricultural sector, why so many of the conversations feel
1:03
stuck, why longstanding problems remain unresolved, and why independent
1:10
thinking matters if agriculture is going to navigate the decades ahead.
1:16
At one point, he sums up the motivation that has driven his work for so long.
1:21
I fight for farmers and for a food system that I want to see
1:25
just and fair for everyone.
1:29
That tension between loyalty to the sector and a willingness to challenge
1:34
it runs throughout this episode.
1:37
Because if the future herd is going to think seriously about leadership and the
1:42
future of food, it also needs to listen to the rebels sitting at the table.
1:49
Hi Jamie and welcome to Future Herd.
1:52
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Thank you, Jesse.
1:53
I'm really happy to be here with you.
1:56
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Jamie, ' I invited you to be part
1:57
of the future herd in no small part to recognize the leadership
2:02
that you've been providing to the agricultural sector for decades now.
2:07
also because you, I think you deserve a space here in the origins of this
2:12
podcast because this podcast came out of an event put on by the Agricultural
2:18
Adaptation Council in September of 2025.
2:22
On AgriFood 2050.
2:25
And at this event I was on the stage insisting that the leadership of
2:31
the sector needs to spend more time listening to dissidents sitting
2:37
at the same table with dissidents.
2:40
And lo and behold, you were one of those dissidents in the room.
2:45
that's part of how you and I met how you and I got along.
2:48
I think we've fast become friends.
2:51
So I wanna start today's conversation with a two-parter, a Jamie, why don't you
2:57
give us a brief one sentence introduction.
3:00
And do you identify, do, are you offended that I've identified you as a dissident
3:06
within the agricultural food sector?
3:10
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Real quickly, I've been doing
3:12
this for nearly three decades.
3:14
In a simple sentence.
3:15
I fight for farmers and for a food system that I wanna see just and
3:19
fair for everyone, including the fact that, i'm a parent and a grandparent.
3:24
And that really is important to me because the conversation as I've found out for
3:29
some time now not changed since I started.
3:32
And that shows me a definitive lack of any kind of clarity or plan.
3:37
Would I identify.
3:37
I as a look, I'm a rebel.
3:40
I'm a radical.
3:41
I have been called all kinds of stuff since I started the industry and it's
3:45
all appropriate because I'm a a free thinker and not a lemming, and I think
3:50
that's what gets people is that at some point in my history I was never
3:56
somebody that followed the pack.
3:58
I just chose to do what was I thought was in the best interest and more importantly
4:04
based on knowledge and information, what was right and appropriate at the time.
4:09
Yeah.
4:10
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And this is where one of the purposes
4:12
of this podcast is not just to speak to leaders in the sector, but to speak to
4:16
the public to speak to people who want to know where their food comes from, and.
4:21
You are a model of a leader that quite frankly, rarely exists
4:26
outside of the agricultural sector.
4:28
'cause on the one hand, your bonafides are undeniable.
4:32
You've literally been the executive in major key organizations, certainly
4:38
within Ontario's, AgriFood system, but arguably within Canada's as well.
4:42
And to your point, you are radical.
4:45
You are a rebel.
4:46
You are someone who speaks your mind.
4:49
this is a dynamic of leadership within the agricultural sector that
4:53
I know outsiders don't understand.
4:55
But I think leaders within the sector themselves, perhaps take for granted,
5:01
which is just how combative, just how free spirited the agricultural sector is.
5:08
And that is how someone like yourself could end up ironically, in a position
5:12
of power and still be a shit disturber, still be someone who, generally
5:17
speaking both inspires confidence from people like me, but also maybe
5:21
inspires fear and irritation from other leaders within the sector.
5:26
How has that been for you in, in, in terms of, your experience as a leader but to
5:31
your point, your experience as a radical?
5:35
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Interesting because, I took the opportunity for a
5:38
decade or so when I was I was the CEO of a, a not-for-profit agricultural society
5:44
because I believe the education of
5:46
My fellow citizens, my fellow Ontarians, was vitally important.
5:50
Particularly in light of the fact that
5:52
Most people are three to four generations removed from a farm.
5:56
I put this out there when, and,
5:58
With without a moment's hesitation,
6:00
I am actually a city.
6:01
I have no farming background.
6:03
My heritage has zero farming background.
6:06
None of my
6:07
Ancestors from
6:08
basically a hundred plus years ago,
6:11
, They weren't farmers.
6:12
They were salesman merchants, murderers, horse thieves, the entire thing.
6:15
But they were not farmers.
6:17
And I always thought that the sector required a voice
6:20
that needed to be able to be heard.
6:22
Crystal clear,
6:23
My.
6:24
Starting of my career, I was a journalist an editor.
6:28
And
6:28
You learn to, at that point you learn very much that,
6:32
reality is how you can position it.
6:35
I always learned that reality, what was the line I used to use?
6:38
Perception is reality, and that's the ugly truth about dealing with an industry that
6:43
has over 250 crops and livestock raised.
6:47
Everybody's crop in livestock is vitally important to them,
6:51
Without looking at the bigger picture of what needs to be done.
6:54
Being a radical No, I'm just being a, I'm just a free voice inside a
6:59
I'm a free voice in a realm that is very.
7:02
Difficult for people to understand that,
7:05
fundamentally these are the roots of everything.
7:07
And that's pun not intended, but they're the roots of everything that go through.
7:11
Farmers are the greatest innovators that are out there.
7:14
We don't acknowledge that farmers are the last bastion
7:17
of human communication because
7:19
Don't do this very much.
7:20
It's, this is not something that is in their bailiwick.
7:24
They're the ones that still phone call shows and complain about things that
7:28
are going on, but they do it quietly.
7:30
And they are the coffee house guys that,
7:33
They wanna see what the, their neighbors are doing.
7:35
But at the same time, they're they're an entire group of individuals and that don't
7:40
like change and change frightens 'em.
7:43
And change is the one thing that I believe is a necessity to be able
7:48
to break through to that next side.
7:50
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And let me push back on one thing you
7:52
said there, which is that they're quiet.
7:53
I don't think they're quiet anymore.
7:55
I think the power of social media, the power, quite frankly, of the
8:00
smartphone, that, they're able to have access to a global audience.
8:05
And in particular, because there are so many farmers online they have access to
8:12
an audience of like minds, an audience of people who work in the kind of same field,
8:16
perhaps even I shouldn't say field in the literal sense, but the same industry.
8:21
I think your point about perception is even more important today, when
8:27
it comes to issues like policies, especially when it comes to leadership.
8:32
And point about having a background in journalism, is not
8:36
something we should gloss over.
8:38
'cause on the one hand, I think it does teach critical thinking skills.
8:42
It's also given you a kind of media literacy where yes, I'm saying a lot
8:47
of people in the sector use social media to communicate, to talk.
8:52
You also watch the news in a way that I think not a lot of people still do.
8:57
And I'm curious whether you think that the leadership in this sector
9:03
to, to use a Bob Dylan line there, there's something happening here
9:07
and you don't know what it is.
9:08
Do you, Mr. Jones, the ballad of a thin man, that apply to
9:13
the leadership sector today?
9:15
Does that kind of speak to the way, to, to my point, I'm saying farmers
9:18
are getting louder and they are afraid of change and it's causing
9:23
I think a. of crisis of leadership, certainly a crisis of legitimacy.
9:28
That's a bit of a rambling setup for you there, Jamie, but I'm curious
9:32
to hear your thoughts as someone who's not only been on the ground
9:36
in the sector, but who a journalist, recovering journalist can see the
9:41
media sphere in a critical perspective.
9:45
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah you know what
9:46
Like everything else in society we tend get our.
9:48
And I'm gonna put it this way.
9:50
We tend to fall into the algorithms that we want to.
9:52
I don't, because I can't base an opinion that I'm working towards or
9:57
a fundamental fact that I'm working towards only on my own perception.
10:02
I need to be able to look at everything that goes through and I need to be able
10:05
to connect the dots that go through it.
10:07
Then that's from a historical all the way through to a future perspective.
10:10
That's the thing that leadership.
10:12
Forgets about is that
10:13
There are, there are those that actually looked at the past.
10:16
There are solutions all the way through.
10:18
They just don't wanna do it because they're trying to make their mark.
10:21
The one thing I learned really an awkward for me to say, given the introduction
10:25
you'd thrown at me, is that, as a journalist, I don't have much of an ego.
10:29
I'm not,
10:30
i'll be a shit disturber.
10:32
I have no problems admitting that I'll be a radical, I'll be anything along
10:37
the way, but I don't have much of an ego because I'm not looking for a legacy.
10:41
I'm not
10:41
To make myself something that I'm not.
10:43
I've always been like this and
10:45
People found that they don't need to go back
10:47
five years and realize I haven't changed.
10:49
I haven't changed in the entire time that I was here.
10:52
Because
10:52
fundamentally I think the evolution of what I was supposed to be was that I
10:57
was supposed to be somebody that was.
10:59
One that said
11:00
statement in the room.
11:01
And there's always people that
11:02
always wanna, say it, but they never do.
11:04
They're afraid.
11:05
They're scared that their funding's gonna go.
11:07
They're afraid that they're not gonna be able to have a, an appropriate response.
11:11
And,
11:11
I again, I'll reflect this back as a journalist,
11:14
Used to give people lots of rope to hang themselves because it's more fun to do it
11:18
that way, to let them do it to themselves than for me to point out the obvious.
11:23
And by having somebody
11:25
Take as much rope as they want,
11:26
you know what, that tree branch, it's sitting there for a reason.
11:29
And that's how I used to reflect upon what was there.
11:32
So when I look at what needs to be done
11:35
And what's happened, and where the realities are, is that a lot of people
11:38
talk about scale big, everything like
11:40
Doesn't work.
11:41
And it's not going to work because
11:43
You've got, i'll pick on our southern neighbors.
11:45
You've got a nation that is clearly in.
11:49
Turmoil right now, their farming population they lost over
11:52
300,000 farms in 2025 alone.
11:56
That's a huge number
11:57
About.
11:58
And when you're 4% of the world's population, which I think they're
12:01
running around four or 4.1%,
12:03
and that's a, that's not a big chunk of the population that have a conversation.
12:07
They use somewhere, and I'm looking at this when they use an excess of 25
12:12
to 30% of all the pesticides that are
12:15
Constructed or built around.
12:17
This is why there's a big push right now to
12:19
reinvigorate the pesticide industry in the US is because they're big users of it.
12:23
But if they don't have it,
12:25
their entire society fails.
12:26
These are the leadership things that we don't look at.
12:29
We don't look at how they position it.
12:32
We don't wanna have that conversation because we've been able to ride the tail,
12:35
the coattails of this for so long that
12:38
Forgotten that we're a pretty independent nation ourself.
12:41
And
12:41
we're not just draws of water.
12:43
Here is a wood.
12:44
We are actually a really innovative regional based country.
12:49
And I think that's where, you go back long enough and you can see
12:53
that there were huge differences.
12:55
And that's why I keep pushing the way that I do because.
12:58
I don't wanna be an agrarian society, Jess.
13:00
I really don't.
13:01
I like the fact that we are diversified enough to be able to have it, but
13:05
I don't think we're diverse enough.
13:07
And I'll let the big boys play what they want.
13:09
But I like my small and mid-sized farms.
13:12
I like the people that are out there.
13:13
And I am more encouraged now than ever
13:15
See young people coming on, but they're not being given that opportunity.
13:19
And that's what stresses me out the most, is the fact that we as a
13:23
industry aren't looking at how we make succession happen, how we make
13:28
The role of
13:29
People coming into the sector a reality.
13:32
And the more importantly that there is nothing out there
13:34
because it's all based around land.
13:37
It's all based around the ideas that they can't.
13:41
And I put this in air quotes, that they can't
13:43
The ability to
13:45
buy into
13:45
A hundred acre farm at say $30 million.
13:48
And who can blame them?
13:50
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: You raise a bunch there.
13:51
And I am particular want to come back to the succession issue
13:54
and the youth empowerment issue.
13:56
'cause I think that also has to be a recurring mandate of this podcast.
14:01
you also highlighted something I want to tease out in terms of a podcast sorry,
14:05
a paradox also here on this podcast.
14:08
And that's the idea that on the one hand there is a culture of
14:11
innovation, especially in the prairies.
14:14
It's remarkable how, as I've started to really learn ab about not just
14:18
the history of agriculture, but the history of innovation in agriculture.
14:22
The extent to which Canada has consistently been a global leader.
14:27
And there is a desire, certainly within the sector to continue to
14:30
embrace change, the execution of that.
14:34
It seems to be where the dysfunction is, to your earlier provocation
14:38
that you've been here for decades.
14:40
People are having the same conversation but they're not actually implementing
14:43
the change that they claim they want.
14:46
Of course that might be tied to our point about young people and are our point
14:51
about getting new people into the system.
14:54
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: No, Jess.
14:55
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: hold on I wanna throw you a hardball
14:57
or a fast ball, and I want to throw it right down the middle of the plate and
15:00
you can decide whether you wanna swing and miss or whether you want to hit it.
15:04
But it, it strikes me that the paradox that people aren't really
15:07
talking about, but that you seem to be getting closest to.
15:12
It's the conflict that exists within the sector everybody tries to present
15:18
a kind of narrative of unity, right?
15:21
A narrative of, yeah, we all get along, we're all on the same page, but you
15:27
scratch the surface and you actually have a lot of legitimate disagreement.
15:32
A lot of legitimate differences.
15:34
And I think those things are growing and I think they're
15:36
becoming even more pronounced.
15:38
So before we skate off into the, the feel good stuff of, saying all the
15:42
things that we'd like to see would love to hear your thoughts on how do
15:46
we deal with conflict the sector and how do we convene conversations amongst
15:53
people who despise each other, who have difficulty respecting each other.
15:59
But I, I would assume you agree with this.
16:02
If you don't, I'd love to hear that.
16:04
That we do need to be talking to each other, that we do need to find
16:07
a way to have the either ends of the polarized society, the, divided
16:13
practices of how to pursue agriculture and how to prepare food, sitting
16:17
down and having a conversation.
16:19
'cause OO otherwise we just get the dysfunction.
16:23
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Okay, so you wanted the
16:25
you put a fastball over there.
16:26
I like the baseball analogy.
16:27
I love the game.
16:28
I coached and did that for years.
16:30
So here's your hardball fastball response and it's going over the fence.
16:34
Agriculture lacks a plan.
16:35
Agriculture lacks a plan because everybody's commodity is just as
16:39
important as everybody else's commodity.
16:40
It doesn't matter how you look at it, everybody is scratching for fewer dollars.
16:44
Being handed out by governments to be able to take a look at it,
16:47
Is struggling to be able to figure out what their own niche
16:51
is or how they're able to do it.
16:52
And we've done this for decades.
16:54
It's not something that's new.
16:56
This is something that is problematic all the way through.
16:59
Back in 2003, 2004,
17:01
an irritation came up
17:03
And we had the one voice in Ontario where we rallied 20,000 plus farmers
17:08
and brought tractors down to Queens Park and had all kinds of chaos for the
17:12
then newly elected liberal government.
17:15
The organization that took the lead on it.
17:17
I won't say which one.
17:19
Presented.
17:20
The minister then Minister Steve Peters with the de the demands
17:24
that they were looking at.
17:25
One voice, Jess, one voice.
17:27
We're supposed to speak with one voice.
17:29
There are universal issues
17:30
that impact livestock crops,
17:32
Grains and oil seeds.
17:33
It doesn't matter.
17:34
There are lots of universal issues
17:36
That look at this, and this is how far back it goes for
17:39
me, that there's a source of
17:40
Issues because they presented him with nine individual commodity driven problems.
17:47
They didn't do one voice.
17:50
They broke it down into sectors.
17:51
Maybe it was eight,
17:52
Eight or nine different
17:53
things that they wanted resolved.
17:55
And I was with,
17:57
I happened to be good friends at the time with the minister and
18:00
we're sitting there with a couple of his cabinet colleagues and.
18:03
I'm not gonna burst anybody's bubble, we're having a drink in the, a smoke
18:07
inside one of the offices on the second level of Queens Park, and he's what
18:11
the hell am I supposed to do with this?
18:13
And I said, I don't know.
18:15
Because that's not one voice.
18:17
We didn't speak with one voice and that was really a problem.
18:20
When you have food system developments, when you see new websites that are
18:24
going out, when you see answering the question and you're ex exempting
18:28
other things along the way, when you only talk about things that are
18:31
problematic for you, IE Livestock.
18:33
Oh this is a big one that comes up because people are always looking
18:36
at the big stuff along the way.
18:38
But funny thing is that.
18:40
Food systems require fruits and vegetables.
18:42
That's what Canada's national food guide states is.
18:45
It's not the us.
18:46
We're not putting livestock and protein at the top.
18:49
We are actually doing the right thing and doing it on a health benefit.
18:52
So we disagree on health
18:53
because they aren't smart enough to look at what the realities are.
18:56
And I think that's where everything links back to.
18:58
We were to look at this properly, they would've developed a 30
19:02
year plan or a 20 year plan.
19:04
Instead, they do things based around electoral cycles, just like government.
19:08
And that's why inevitably we fail is because every four years we're
19:12
looking at who the next party is.
19:14
That's gonna be the one that's there, what are gonna be the
19:16
mandates or coming into it.
19:18
And inevitably that's why they fails because they don't look beyond it.
19:22
And because they don't look beyond, they don't care.
19:26
And because they don't care.
19:27
It's only about what they want in the terms of their, if I hear one
19:32
more organization say they need four or $500 million to satisfy
19:36
their farmers, I'm gonna pu.
19:38
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: so let that, that begs two, two follow up
19:40
questions and I'll give you the latter one first and then ask the one that I
19:44
want you to answer first, and the latter one, is how does the agricultural sector
19:50
and the food sector become recognized as the basis for society itself?
19:57
And not an afterthought when we think about government funding,
20:01
let alone cabinet priorities.
20:03
before you answer that question, Jamie, I gotta push back and
20:08
say, do you really think it's possible to speak with one voice?
20:13
I hear everybody say that, and I don't dispute with you the
20:16
political power in doing so.
20:19
in today's day and age, how would you achieve that?
20:23
E assuming you had the mandated resources to attempt it?
20:29
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: I'll throw that right back at you.
20:30
Not a problem.
20:31
You wanna speak with one voice.
20:32
What's the biggest problem that they list all the time?
20:34
Red tape regulations.
20:35
They talked about this
20:36
For 30 years.
20:37
They've talked about this.
20:39
You wanna go at this one as one voice scenario,
20:42
You put in a rural secretariat.
20:43
You find a way that looks at it as a means of
20:47
it through the lens.
20:47
That's how you get that first,
20:49
That answers the first question of
20:51
How do you get effective within cabinet.
20:53
We won't be effective in cabinet.
20:54
It won't even depend.
20:56
Look let's play political colors 1 0 1.
21:00
Liberals know that
21:00
The farmers aren't gonna vote for them.
21:02
There'll be a small percentage, but that's it.
21:04
So they don't need to worry about the rural countryside.
21:07
'cause that's conservative.
21:08
The conservatives don't look at it as being important because they
21:10
already know they've got that vote.
21:12
That's the reality of politics that you play in.
21:14
So now you have to move that step beyond and say, can you make
21:17
effecti opportunities to do it.
21:19
And the one thing that I'll throw out there
21:21
Is, it goes back two questions ago where you said, should we
21:24
have the opinions of everybody?
21:25
Yes.
21:26
But we now live in a world and you the one that threw this at me, we now live
21:30
in a world where you're saying, Hey, how can we talk with the one voice?
21:33
As I said, a rural secretariat works because they look at the lens
21:37
of everything that goes through.
21:38
Every piece of policy, every piece of regulation would be looked at in the
21:42
view of how it impacts the farming community and the rural countryside.
21:46
This isn't 2024, that's the last year in Canada that we were 50% rural, 50% urban.
21:53
That was the very last year that we had, that
21:56
2026. They do the census and they realize that it's now starting to shift.
22:00
It's 50 51 0.3, and that's.
22:03
The last year that we had an equal even opportunity to do it.
22:07
Now it's 9% of the countryside is rural and the rest of it's urban.
22:11
So now we have to have the conversations with the city folk because they are
22:16
the ones that are driving policy and they're the ones that are getting the
22:19
attention of all of the politicians because everybody knows that the 144,000
22:25
voters that are sitting in whatever x, y, Z riding don't matter if you're
22:30
sitting in the middle of Saskatchewan.
22:33
That's not taken seriously.
22:35
So first you take the look at the rural secretariat
22:38
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: If I'm hearing you correctly.
22:41
The ability to speak with one voice is literally a requirement of leadership.
22:48
what we require are leaders who either have, to your point about the rural
22:53
secretariat, the organizational capacity, or to what I'm trying to argue, the
23:00
ability to synthesize, necessarily please everybody, but to articulate the
23:08
opportunity, a policy concept, a demand, a need rallies enough people behind it and
23:16
is able to get the desired response from whoever it is that's being directed at it.
23:22
Am I reading you correctly in that?
23:25
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You're reading me correctly because honestly,
23:27
Jesse, what we've got now, we've got a world where you can look at
23:30
artificial intelligence, for example.
23:32
That was a big player that came in.
23:34
I'm not gonna name names inside the ministry or anything like that, but
23:37
AI policy in Canada sucks.
23:39
It blows chunks, and that's a reality.
23:42
But that is how you can fix some of the ongoing issues with inside agriculture
23:47
itself, is because AI can be used to synthesize down, to give a synopsis.
23:52
I see this all the time when I'm looking at a report or
23:55
something, they ask for a synopsis.
23:56
I don't do that because I'm still old school.
23:59
I still print stuff.
24:00
But when it comes to a synopsis or a, a language to be able to do it,
24:04
I'm sitting inside my computer with literally 60 or 70 different reports,
24:09
everything from the spell report, nearly two thousands to the Odyssey report,
24:14
to all these other reports, to the Barton Report, all these reports that
24:18
exist, and we don't use our capacity to be able to fix the stuff that's there
24:22
because we're too stupid to function.
24:24
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Okay, now this isn't fair.
24:25
I'm throwing you fastballs and you're just lobbing 'em over the plate
24:28
for me to hit it over the park.
24:30
These pitchers are too easy if you're gonna set me up with AI so easily with
24:33
that, and I agree with what you're saying.
24:35
Absolutely.
24:37
But again, I gotta come back to something else you said that I thought was brilliant
24:40
and I want you to double down on it because I think this is an example of
24:45
you being a dissident and you don't think you're a dissident, you think you're
24:49
employing common sense, which you are.
24:52
But to employ common sense in a moment of incredible
24:56
dysfunction is to be a dissident.
24:59
Do you believe, dear Jamie, that the urban voting electorate requires a
25:07
far greater literacy and understanding of where their food comes from?
25:13
And I ask it in such a way because I've been rather shocked at how many people
25:20
within the leadership of the AgriFood sector not only have a dim view of
25:25
how you put it, the citiots, but they.
25:29
Don't actually believe that the urban voters should necessarily
25:34
know where their food comes from, nor do they believe that they will.
25:37
I, how, why do you see this differently?
25:40
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You you opened this one up, so I will do this.
25:42
There was a recent conference, won't mention it.
25:45
We're the best of the best.
25:46
The brightest of the brightest were gathered in one room, a thousand people in
25:50
Ottawa, all holding hands singing kumbaya.
25:53
And there were 30 of us farmers that were inside that fucking room at the time.
25:57
You wanna have a conversation about lack of conciseness, lack of intelligence.
26:02
If you're making stuff that wants to go forward, if you're talking about
26:06
investment, if you're talking about the ability to look beyond your own borders in
26:11
the growing season of one year, then you have to have the farmers there themselves.
26:15
And the other reason is they didn't have consumers.
26:18
This was a bunch of people that were all like-minded, that were thinking to
26:22
themselves, they can do all this stuff.
26:24
And the reality is, I heard one statement there from somebody that
26:28
was down in New Zealand, and what they had done is they created an
26:31
apple specifically for a market.
26:34
They created an apple specifically for China.
26:37
It took them 15 years to grow a specific variety of an apple using
26:42
their research and marketing.
26:43
But now they have a market all to themselves that the Chinese love.
26:47
We are that in.
26:49
The only stupid that we don't look at ourselves like that.
26:52
And I've gotta tell you, so this goes back to what I had said.
26:55
The number one killer of creative, innovative concepts on the farming
26:59
community side is usually red tape.
27:02
It's usually something that people don't think about.
27:04
It's usually the idea that, we've got a premier that says the
27:08
province is open for business.
27:10
I would argue it's not.
27:11
I would argue that we put in our own inherent barriers that have
27:15
led to the demise of what we've called this creative concept.
27:18
Great AI is out there, but AI didn't come from Canada.
27:22
We're just going to evolve and rule with it, and we're not gonna get.
27:25
To a point where we should be, where we should be leaders of what's there.
27:28
We used to be leaders and we're not, we don't have that ability anymore.
27:33
When you talk about how we should look at this stuff, 25 years ago I was arguing
27:37
about interprovincial trade barriers and they said, oh yeah, we're gonna fix that.
27:41
They just didn't.
27:42
And they said, we're gonna move all these barriers except for three key areas.
27:47
They're not gonna do it in alcohol, they're not gonna do it in finance,
27:50
and they're not gonna do it in food.
27:52
Then what the hell's the point?
27:53
What the hell is the point of removing the barriers That would instantly free up?
27:58
I think it's around 13% of our GDP to move across, BC wines coming into Ontario.
28:04
And conversely, then we're not talking about all the little
28:07
issues about movement of product.
28:09
We're not talking about country of origin.
28:11
Then now we're talking about opportunities to be able to feed
28:14
a nation regionally with all the stuff that we've got going on.
28:17
But we can't do that because we don't think like that.
28:20
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: so let me come back to
28:22
what essentially I agree.
28:23
You did hit my fast ball out of the park, but I still think
28:27
you struggled with the pitch.
28:28
I think the reason you hit it outta the park is that you just happened
28:31
to be a very talented hitter, but allowed me to try to throw that
28:34
pitch again in a different way.
28:37
'cause what you just did there was very rare both in policy circles,
28:42
but also in leadership circles.
28:45
You spoke without ideology.
28:48
You talked about different policies without couching it into partisan
28:54
rhetoric, without using ideological buzzwords that people often rely upon
29:01
to show that they're on the right side.
29:04
And the first fastball question I asked you is how do you get people who
29:07
don't like each other in the same room?
29:11
So we can work out our differences so we can have these conversations
29:14
and I'll modify that again.
29:17
How can we have creative policy conversations that look at the challenges
29:22
we face that come up with innovative policy solutions without devolving to
29:28
partisans, without devolving to ideology, but instead looking at them as systems?
29:34
Because that's why I love farming and that's why I love farmers, right?
29:38
They think about systems, they look at systems.
29:41
Their lives depend upon systems.
29:43
I would love to be talking about food and farming and all this
29:47
stuff as systems a lot of the extra baggage that comes with it.
29:53
And correct me if I'm wrong, I feel that's what you're doing
29:58
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: That's the direction I've always been going in.
30:00
And again, this is not.
30:02
I used to dress in black for a reason, Jesse I go to Queens Park or Ottawa,
30:07
and I dress for black for a reason.
30:09
You didn't see me with a red or blue tie or a green tie or an orange tie.
30:13
You didn't see me doing that because honestly, at the end of the day,
30:17
you have to be able to be yourself walking into something.
30:20
And that's, I think what we've forgotten about is the it was interesting that
30:24
we're having this conversation today because we can't you and I talked about
30:29
how we would get together on this, and personally, I would rather have sat down
30:33
at your property having a beer and sitting there outside with the dogs running
30:37
around and having that conversation.
30:40
We now have the ability to do what we're doing, but right across the
30:44
country, we now have the ability to set it up and put a question out there
30:47
that a thousand people can respond to,
30:49
Whether they're farmers or whether they're from different sides of the spectrum
30:53
or whether they're from something else.
30:55
Social media has.
30:56
Showing these algorithms.
30:58
But if we change the algorithm for what we're looking at, if we eliminate the
31:03
concept that, there's gotta be a partisan thing, then you ask the right questions
31:07
and you can get responses based around what their area is reflected with.
31:12
Is there a need for irrigation within an Alberta?
31:15
Yeah, there is.
31:15
But do they have the resources and the water for it?
31:18
No.
31:18
Do they have the infrastructure?
31:19
No.
31:19
They're struggling with this and it's not because they've done things bad,
31:23
it's because they're dealing with issues that we're not dealing with in Ontario.
31:27
Is there a way of finding transportation to justify being able to put
31:32
Local abattoirs throughout the country?
31:34
Yeah, there are, but we don't have the provincials the provincial backbone.
31:39
And I think that's where another thing is that you need to look at
31:42
Is whether or not there's a belief that we do have the backbone to do it.
31:45
I would counter.
31:46
For everything that you're saying
31:47
That there's a lot of armchair warriors out there.
31:50
There's a lot of people that like to hide behind the anonymity of what
31:53
they do, and they have a really good rapport of being able to do that.
31:57
I'm not anonymous.
31:59
People know who I am, based around what I've done, and I'm not happy
32:04
about everything that I've done.
32:05
I'll be honest with you.
32:07
I've got a reputation for what it is, but my reputation is sometimes.
32:12
In error.
32:13
I will fight
32:14
Fights that I need to do,
32:15
But I will not,
32:17
Inflict a partisan rule on anything because I don't believe in that.
32:20
And I believe in the only way that we can resolve stuff is to have that
32:24
broader perspective, that broader ability to bring everything together.
32:27
That's where I see the AI being able to do this, because now you can
32:31
universally take this information and you can put it on a platform and you
32:35
can have everybody take a look at it
32:37
They can sensitize through and you'll get all the responses.
32:40
And it doesn't matter what your leaning is, left center, far left far right,
32:45
it won't matter because key words will be developed outta that algorithm
32:49
that'll look at what the realities are.
32:50
And that's how you do this is you need to be smarter and we're not.
32:55
Quite frankly, as I said to the start this, we don't have a plan.
32:59
We're always reactive in agriculture and it's not agriculture,
33:03
it's farming and food, man.
33:05
That's what we do is farming and food.
33:06
There isn't anything around that.
33:08
Everything else we can figure out.
33:09
But agriculture is now beyond the perspective of what
33:12
most people think it is.
33:13
It is not mom and pop cattle, it is not American Gothic.
33:16
It is not what's there.
33:18
We are talking about farmers that use GPS before GPS was found inside cars.
33:23
We are talking about drone technology and the ability to use infrareds all the way
33:28
through to highlight nutritional values.
33:31
Like we're way beyond the scope and scale of just putting bullshit onto
33:36
a field and hoping something grows.
33:38
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And you also, I think, made a crucial
33:40
point in the sense that you've been a shit disturber for essentially your
33:44
life, certainly your professional career, and you've done it under your own name.
33:48
You're not anonymously posting crap out there.
33:51
You're doing so with your reputation on the line.
33:54
And I find that is generally true of farmers, that while there are a lot of
33:59
people saying nasty things online without using their name, farmers tend to have
34:04
the courage to stand behind that name.
34:07
And I think that's why they are already.
34:10
On social media organizing amongst themselves, amongst issues that are
34:14
important to them on social media.
34:16
And I think it's important to try to create a space to try to,
34:20
find a platform that reinforces the sector rather than reinforces
34:24
Facebook or, reinforces Instagram.
34:28
I do I do wanna come back to two other things that you've brought up earlier.
34:32
And the first, which kind of aligns slightly with what we're talking about
34:37
is young people and empowering young people, because that's another that kind
34:41
of fits into your category of things we've been saying for decades, but
34:45
have not actually done anything about.
34:48
And, you alluded to it that part of it is of course, land which is more
34:52
expensive than it ever has been.
34:55
And that's certainly tied to concentration of the industry, whether in the food
34:59
side or in the agriculture side.
35:01
'cause, it's not just.
35:02
Necessarily young farmers.
35:04
It might be young entrepreneurs who wanna run a restaurant or
35:07
want to create a food company.
35:09
In all cases, if they don't really have the bank of mom and
35:12
dad it may be very difficult for them to get into the industry.
35:18
I suspect this is something that you've probably been thinking about
35:21
for as long as you've been in the sector and have been frustrated with
35:25
the rhetoric without the action.
35:27
I'm really curious to hear your indictments or certainly your
35:31
thoughts in this particular area.
35:34
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah, so this has irritated me forever in the day.
35:38
I think again, this is where,
35:40
for some of the regulatory stuff and succession planning with taxation issues,
35:44
with all of the, capital gains crap and everything else that gets thrown through
35:47
on this stuff, there's, that's where rural secretary would've been able to
35:50
look at it and say, pull this line out and say, that doesn't work for farmers.
35:54
And if you want the farming community to be able to sustain itself and continue,
35:57
these are the areas that you need to do.
35:59
'cause that was a huge thing that came up over the last couple of years.
36:02
That's first, second.
36:04
We are, from a federal government perspective and this is a fun part
36:08
because I never grow tired of somebody that says, oh, with climate change and
36:14
the growing degrees that are gonna be increased in the North for areas like
36:18
Sio St. Marie and Thunder Bay, we're gonna be able to grow all the food that we need.
36:22
And we can get rid of the Southern Ontario Park 'cause that's gonna be too hot.
36:25
And then you look back and you go, are you ever stupid?
36:28
Because, you know what, yeah, the growing degrees the days will change, but
36:32
One thing that we don't have is soil.
36:34
That's something that's not there.
36:35
So now you have to rethink about every.
36:38
And thought that you've had about what farming is.
36:40
And I think that's why we struggle is because everybody thinks farming is just
36:44
a guy sitting in a field on a tractor.
36:47
You and I'll use the analogy of, he plants, he spends eight hours planting
36:51
the crops for a hundred acre field,
36:54
sprays.
36:54
It once goes to Florida or key West to be able to take eight
36:58
months off comes back, harvester, another 16 hours, then that's it.
37:01
And that's the farmer thought.
37:03
That's not, we need to do so much more to be able to think about what's going on
37:06
and make those improvements along the way.
37:09
First off, opening up the federal side of things.
37:11
They've got land.
37:12
Let's get some of the people out there if they wanna learn this stuff.
37:16
Let 'em, the thing I did with where I had worked previously at Country
37:19
Heritage Park was I opened up 11 acres to community farming because there were
37:23
people that wanted to learn of that.
37:25
Say about probably a dozen of them have gone on to do other things,
37:29
including working in Africa to help countries that are outside of Canada
37:34
develop their own agricultural side.
37:36
That's a real that's a real moment that we can look back at and say,
37:40
okay, they hadn't had that experience because they came from Toronto, but
37:43
they wanted to do this and that's where they learned is fried doing it.
37:47
We need mentorship programs and I think that's what's really messing and absent
37:52
is the ability to mentor somebody because it's always changing and mentorship.
37:55
By the way, Jess runs both sides.
37:58
The things I've learned along the way are not just that young
38:01
people can learn from old people.
38:03
Old people can learn more specifically from young people,
38:06
and I saw that time and.
38:08
Again, working through a volunteer system through farmers that were coming
38:13
outta Toronto, through six Nations that were doing the work with us, that they
38:17
actually have an impact on older guys that didn't think they could change, that
38:22
didn't think that they learned anything along the way, that didn't understand.
38:26
I remember specific example of a Syrian refugee, a 16-year-old boy telling
38:32
one of the old guys that was sitting in a table crabbing at him because
38:36
he didn't speak English properly.
38:38
He had the grasp of it, but he didn't speak it properly.
38:41
And the guy said this is all I was able to pick up
38:44
I was in an internment camp for four years.
38:47
And that one floored.
38:49
Because they don't think like that outside experience is a huge factor in
38:53
sector is really isolated sometimes.
38:55
Yeah.
38:55
You talk about the fact that farmers are getting a voice, but we've never
38:59
had the kind of voice that's required to be able to go backwards and forwards.
39:03
So we need to talk to, we need to talk to everybody that's not there.
39:07
We need to talk to the youth and say, we have opportunities.
39:10
We need to talk to
39:11
City folk and say, here's what we need to be able to do.
39:14
And we need to educate on the universal side, but more importantly, we need to
39:18
put aside our pre justified concepts and conceit and move forward with an
39:24
idea that, you know what yeah, this isn't how things were thought to be.
39:29
This isn't 1,901 where there's, 2.6 billion people.
39:34
There's nearly nine, 10 billion people on the world right now, so let's figure out
39:39
how to do this properly and go backwards.
39:41
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And this is why I really wanted to get
39:44
you on this podcast in the kind of early part of us building it up, because I
39:49
almost feel that part of what we're doing right now is we're creating KPIs, we're
39:54
creating key performance indicators of whether, the leadership in this country
39:58
has the capability to, to step up to the challenges that, that it faces.
40:03
You highlight, I think, an important role of public education and literacy,
40:07
which I keep bringing back up, which I do want to come back to.
40:10
But you also allow me to bring up I, I think another subject which
40:15
you raised earlier and that I'm quite passionate about, which is
40:19
the role of small farmers, the role of small and medium sized farmers.
40:24
And I am admittedly a newbie when it comes to agriculture, right?
40:29
To your point, none of my parents or grandparents or great grandparents
40:33
were in the agricultural sector.
40:35
And I'm here because I want to be I'm here, 'cause I think it's
40:40
the right place and the right time for artificial intelligence.
40:44
I also come from the kind of startup world, the technology
40:48
world, the entrepreneurial world.
40:50
And the thing you understand about technology, the thing you
40:53
understand about healthy business ecosystems is you need startups.
40:59
You need new entrant, you need new blood, you need new perspectives.
41:03
And they have to be small.
41:06
Yeah, you want them to scale up if they work, but you also want a critical
41:12
mass of really small experimental farms doing crazy stuff they're the ones
41:19
who are gonna come up with new ideas.
41:21
They're the ones who are gonna do research on their own without waiting from
41:25
funding from some ministry or whatnot.
41:28
And this seems to run.
41:30
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that big is better, that we
41:36
shouldn't worry about small farmers and city people don't wanna farm.
41:40
They'd prefer to be safe in, their completely controlled environments.
41:45
yet I know so many people in Toronto who would do anything.
41:50
To become farmers who watch homesteaders on YouTube, with envy
41:55
as if it's almost like farm porn.
41:58
And again, it strikes me that this is a huge policy opportunity that could
42:03
not only give the agricultural industry a kind of vibrancy on the small scale
42:09
that leads to all sorts of positive economic activity, you could also have
42:15
a rural economic development in terms of I go to my local feed store and
42:20
I'm buying hay from local farmers, and I would like to be, sourcing all my
42:25
stuff from local suppliers and having my animals go to a local abattoir.
42:30
Am I being ludicrous here, Jamie, or, is my sense of certainly my generation,
42:36
if not younger members it, does it align with kind of what you've been
42:41
anticipating or desiring in terms of empowering small farmers as a whole?
42:46
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: No, I don't think it's anticipating.
42:49
I think it's not even my.
42:50
I think it's just the right way of approaching it.
42:53
If we're gonna have a, and I use the word sustainability, not in
42:56
the environmental sense in here.
42:58
The word sustainability in an economic sense.
43:00
And the problem is that the big guys have shown, all you need to do is
43:03
look right across the southern border
43:05
see what a exceptionally large livestock operation did.
43:09
US town actually four different towns.
43:12
And it's because the trade imbalance exists, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
43:16
The politics is there, blah, blah, blah.
43:18
But the reality is
43:19
It failed.
43:20
It failed the people that were there.
43:21
It failed the, it failed everybody except for one group.
43:25
And that was the shareholders.
43:27
The share shareholders didn't take a look at anything and
43:30
say, oh, yeah, no, that's okay.
43:32
Because
43:32
When you get all the big problems.
43:35
The big problems are because people didn't see all the things.
43:38
When you're small and mid-size, you can determine where the problems are.
43:43
When I created a hydroponic aquaponic system, it took me 14 months.
43:48
Not because I'm slow, not because I didn't understand the science, but because
43:53
there were mistakes to be made and to be had where I needed to learn from,
43:57
That's how you get better at what you do.
44:00
I never in my entire life as either a coach or player or anything else,
44:04
I never learned from winning.
44:06
I learned from losing.
44:07
Learned from the mistakes that were made along the way, and that's,
44:11
we've done enough mistakes now.
44:13
Yeah.
44:13
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: I think that's a very important point
44:16
and I just want to tease that out because I've been thinking a lot and
44:20
you alluded to this at the start when you were framing the, almost valor,
44:24
the valorous role of the farmer.
44:26
And I personally have been thinking about how farming is the last
44:29
frontier of freedom because you have the room to make mistakes.
44:34
You
44:34
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah.
44:34
Yep.
44:34
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: room to do trial and error.
44:36
Like I taught myself last year how to weld and how to make a robot, which
44:41
when I was doing it, I thought I'd never be able to do this in the city
44:44
'cause there'd be too much shame.
44:46
There'd be too many people telling me I'm doing it wrong and I wouldn't
44:50
have the space to do it, where only my dogs could see me almost kill myself.
44:55
And again, I think farmers take that for granted.
45:00
I think city people don't even understand what that kind of freedom
45:04
is like, the freedom to fail is at the heart of the entrepreneurial process.
45:12
If you look at the success and the mantra of kind of Silicon Valley, it's
45:16
fail early, fail often, and yet most people don't get that social license.
45:21
And I think you hit it on the nose in terms of, this is how we learn.
45:26
So a, allow me to dig in into, my crazy pitches and throw you another fastball.
45:31
How do we do that in the policy space?
45:34
Because if there's.
45:34
Anywhere that people are afraid of failure, let alone afraid of looking
45:39
like a fool or saying something dumb.
45:41
It's the policy space.
45:43
And yet, I think what you're arguing, what I'm hearing is we gotta say
45:46
some dumb stuff before we actually are able to, get to the point of
45:50
having really smart things to say,
45:53
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You know what?
45:54
Policy failure has been around for a thousand years.
45:58
What policy failure hasn't failed along the way.
46:01
Everybody thinks they have great ideas, and this goes to the point
46:04
of being reactive, not proactive.
46:07
They're afraid to put stuff out that they think would be functional and work.
46:11
I know you stopped me about the youth, but you know what?
46:14
We're gonna be sitting there with youth unemployment,
46:16
probably hovering around 15, 16%.
46:19
So I'm back in 1981 for me looking at, 17% 17% unemployment 23% on my
46:27
first loan for a car interest rate and realizing that I have to do all
46:33
of these things just to continue on.
46:35
And there's no freebies.
46:37
There's no gimmes anymore, there's no what they used to call entry level.
46:40
You have to be smart enough to be able to look at where everything is.
46:44
Policies are going to fail.
46:46
But my biggest problem is the fact that government continues to this day.
46:49
It doesn't matter whether you're municipal, provincial,
46:52
or federal, they continue to try and pick winners and losers and.
46:56
Government is not the intelligent body that is, should be the one doing this.
47:00
I think what should be done
47:02
Is that we need to be able to have an opportunity to be able to
47:05
continue to make the mistakes that are out there to continue to do.
47:10
It would not, with a safety net, so much as an ability to look at it
47:14
with a clear eye and present that as knowledge, that's knowledge gained.
47:17
You make a mistake that should go out there and people should
47:20
be able to talk about that.
47:22
And yet the one thing I learned about farmers, and this was
47:25
really early, is that they don't wanna talk about their mistakes.
47:28
That's not something that they wanna deal with because they've made the mistake
47:32
and they clearly don't wanna do it.
47:34
And they're not gonna tell their neighbors that they just blew $20,000
47:38
on a packer that went bankrupt and started up across the street.
47:42
They're not gonna say anything like that.
47:44
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: I think that also is why the small
47:46
farmer ends up playing an outsized role because if the stakes are low, there's
47:52
less shame in admitting that mistake.
47:55
And this is why, again, there is this phenomena on YouTube, this
47:59
phenomena of social media of the smaller farmer becoming popular.
48:05
It's because they're transparent about their mistakes.
48:07
They admit their mistakes, part of their role is educational.
48:11
So I suspect there may be a culture change going on.
48:15
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: There is, but
48:16
No, but I'll jump into this one.
48:18
There is,
48:18
The smaller guys.
48:19
Are small and have done what they're doing because
48:22
They look at it as a lifestyle and they made choices along the way as well.
48:26
They're usually backed.
48:27
This is the one
48:28
Thing that we've always learned is that
48:30
Farming in Canada means that you need a second job off farm,
48:35
Is usually your wife who's a teacher, or a professor a nurse,
48:39
anything along the way, because
48:40
Supplements the ability of the farmer to be able to do the job of growing.
48:46
And at the same time, the farmer often has a second job.
48:49
These are the educational opportunities to be able to take that real life thing.
48:55
Do it as a, an opportunity to look at career, right?
48:58
It's not a lifestyle.
49:00
This is not
49:00
I got small acreage.
49:02
You got small acreage, you're doing what you're doing because you're having fun.
49:05
I'm planting trees because,
49:07
We're environmental in our bend.
49:09
We,
49:09
We see the inherent value of having trees to be able to repopulate, but
49:14
policy change needs to reflect an educational component as well, and
49:18
not just within the scholastic system.
49:20
This Jess, they took away farming as a career option.
49:24
That's not inside.
49:25
You go to a counselor and say, I wanna be a farmer.
49:27
They're not gonna let you do it.
49:29
There's nothing that's there for 'em.
49:30
And yet farming is the one
49:32
Jack of all trades opportunity to be able to showcase that.
49:35
Excuse me.
49:36
You don't need to, you don't need to follow everything by the book.
49:40
And that speaks to that freedom.
49:42
And it's you don't set your, you'll never set your own hours then not
49:45
somebody there that's got a punch clock.
49:46
When you're farming, you do what you wanna do.
49:48
You wanna get up at four in the morning and feed the animals?
49:51
Go for it.
49:52
You wanna get up at seven?
49:54
Do it.
49:54
Do it.
49:55
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: I do think that you're speaking both out
49:58
of a sense of frustration, the same time, perhaps even yourself being corrupted
50:05
by the larger narrative of framing.
50:08
'cause I'm not so sure about that lifestyle argument.
50:11
I agree.
50:11
A lot of people tell themselves that.
50:13
I agree.
50:14
The affordability crisis that affects everybody compels
50:18
people to get other work.
50:21
The only reason that I have a small acreage is that's all that I could
50:25
afford, and we are certainly working this small acreage as intensely
50:30
as we can so that we can grow our agricultural operation the same way.
50:36
I suspect that any farmer wants to grow their agricultural operation.
50:42
But also we want to do so in a way that doesn't kill us, that doesn't
50:46
make us beholden to, hostile interests.
50:51
is where I see technology playing a very unique role in
50:54
empowering that small farmer.
50:57
to your point, it also requires less regulations.
51:00
It requires a more favorable policy environment.
51:04
And of course as a newbie to the ag sector, I find it hilarious that you'll
51:09
see, for example, the grain farmers and the supply management farmers pick and
51:14
fights with each other, but both benefit tremendously from the existing policy
51:21
environment, either through the supply management or through crop insurance.
51:26
And.
51:27
Again, these are things that I think the general public doesn't really
51:30
understand, but once you start coming into the sector, it's complicated
51:35
and the policy environment is fraught with all sorts of different agendas,
51:41
different interests, which is why I find this whole speaking with one
51:45
voice thing, a daunting challenge.
51:48
Also why I find these narratives to be so entrenched and why it is so difficult to
51:54
have these conversations about leadership.
51:57
A, as we start to wrap o only because my back teeth are starting
52:02
to ing sing anchors away due to the size of my growing bladder.
52:07
How do you I see the kind of landscape ahead?
52:11
What do you think is the tactics, the strategy for the
52:15
leader who desires change?
52:17
Who really wants to see the action happen in spite of the talk that
52:22
we've seen go around in circles?
52:27
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You know what what did you call me?
52:28
A dissident?
52:29
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Yes.
52:31
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Dissidents don't write policy yet.
52:33
I do.
52:34
Because I think that's the only correct way to do it.
52:39
I also believe that, and I stepped away from it, and I probably shouldn't have.
52:44
I stayed in touch with a lot, but
52:45
You have to have a passion for it as well, Jesse.
52:48
And
52:48
The passion is not just about, it's not just about the farmers.
52:54
Not,
52:54
it's not looking at that legacy side.
52:57
It's not trying to do anything that built it.
52:59
It's trying to find solutions.
53:01
And not many people are solution driven anymore.
53:04
There are a lot of them that just like the status quo.
53:07
There's a lot of them that I call lunch pail warriors.
53:09
They just, they come in, they punch the clock, they're there for, seven
53:13
and a half hours, they get their pay and they go home and that's it.
53:15
And they don't think about this stuff.
53:17
I think about this stuff,
53:19
I think about this stuff all the time because, there's four things
53:22
that people need and one of them's food, air, water, shelter, food.
53:26
It's not that complicated to figure out.
53:28
Then you look at,
53:29
The farm politics get in the way and then the real life politics get in the way, and
53:33
then the farmers themselves get in their own way because you've got a 63-year-old
53:38
farmer that his sons wanna take over.
53:42
But he's out there saying this is the way they,
53:45
You do it.
53:45
And I know this because I had all these examples in my face
53:48
when I was working with the guys.
53:50
And still to this day, you look back and they go look at the young ones.
53:54
That's why they get frustrated.
53:55
If you've got a succession plan, work it through or buy them out or do whatever.
53:59
And I happen to bump into an old, a really old friend of mine a couple of days ago,
54:06
and he had bought his dad out 13 years ago, and it almost broke him at the time.
54:11
Now he's very successful again because he did things the way that he
54:14
thought was in the best interest and.
54:18
Honestly, Jesse, that's the kind of inspiration that gets me
54:21
through on any of those days that
54:23
Sunny and, warm and everything else.
54:24
It's because there are people that still want to make a difference out there.
54:29
He's got a lovely operation down in Townsville area.
54:32
He's happy, he's got a family, he's got everything that.
54:36
That you talk about for a small acre or a small mid-size acre property
54:40
for a guy that wants to do this,
54:42
And yet he still contributes to his local federation.
54:45
He still contributes to the conversations that are out there, and we keep the
54:50
politics out of it, because at the end of the day, he's still looking
54:54
at how to find solutions, not just on his farm, but on other farms.
54:59
He looks at the agritourism side that is rife with regulations
55:02
that just screw you up.
55:04
The, up the Yahoo.
55:06
He looks at the,
55:07
The pick your own where theft is now the number one issue out there
55:11
You want to, as a farmer, have enough.
55:15
Hope that people aren't gonna rob you blind, and yet that's what the number
55:19
one problem now for pick your owns are.
55:21
And I can see a day when we're not going to have pick your owns, which
55:24
then actually causes more problems because now you don't have an
55:28
educational basis to prove to people that potatoes grow in the ground.
55:32
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: You got the solution earlier in the episode.
55:34
It's called ai, right?
55:36
You,
55:36
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah.
55:37
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: You could have someone leaving the
55:38
field and it says, thank you for paying for the basket in your front.
55:43
The strawberries in your backpack will be an additional $50 automatically
55:48
deducted from your debit card.
55:50
being facetious, but your point is valid.
55:54
I wanna ask you a kind of selfish question.
55:58
As I move forward with this podcast, is there a particular question
56:03
you would have me asking leaders,
56:12
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Oh, that's wide open man.
56:14
And ask why they like the status quo.
56:16
You could ask why they don't listen to others.
56:19
Why they say that they're there for the entire sector, but
56:23
they're not they're very much involved with only their own side.
56:26
And
56:26
Lot of the farm leadership are only in it for themselves
56:31
on their own farm operation.
56:34
And that's something I've known forever.
56:38
So they're doing stuff that'll favor their own operations along the way.
56:42
And they lack that perspective of being able to.
56:46
The entirety of the sector, the entirety of the country.
56:51
And I can tell you that
56:53
They stymie themselves because they're stuck back in the 1970s, early
56:58
1980s, just before they had the farm crisis, because those were good days.
57:02
And that's what you talk to a farmer that's been doing this long enough.
57:05
Their line, Jesse, isn't,
57:07
I wanna look about what's changed.
57:09
Their line is always, God, I wish it was 1978.
57:12
That was the best year that I had for for apples.
57:15
The price was phenomenal, my crop was spectacular, and
57:19
my neighbor's crop failed.
57:22
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Nostalgia is a very intoxicating drug.
57:24
I think much of contemporary politics is with it.
57:28
But before we conclude anything else you'd like to say that you feel
57:32
we haven't got to in this podcast
57:35
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: No man, I'm going to hell anyway, so I
57:38
don't worry about any of this stuff.
57:39
Now I'm an un express elevator, so you know, I'm just speaking exactly
57:45
what we had talked about before.
57:46
'cause when I heard you speak Niagara, you said things that
57:50
made sense and resonated with me.
57:52
Whereas the rest of the room, and I say this without a shred
57:55
Of issue, the rest of the room sometimes gets caught in their
57:59
own status quo, so to speak.
58:02
When they talked about 2050, they said the labor issue was there.
58:05
And I remember this specifically, their labor hasn't been born yet for 2050.
58:11
Their labor's gonna be the 18 to 21-year-old.
58:14
We're 25 years away from 2050.
58:16
We're 24 now.
58:18
But this is a problem that they don't recognize their own finite inability to
58:23
look beyond what they're thinking about.
58:26
Like where are you gonna find that 60-year-old that they want to go
58:30
harvest strawberries in the field?
58:33
Go find them.
58:34
But they ain't gonna do it.
58:35
And this is why they fail, is because they don't look at their own,
58:38
Don't look at their quagmires, that they create themselves by getting
58:42
stuck into a principle that they don't look beyond their own thing.
58:45
They didn't look at AI or the ability to mechanize or to be able to do it.
58:49
These are still people that.
58:51
It's 1911 for me, maybe 1913, where the tractors are now just starting to come in.
58:57
But everybody's fighting it because they like their horses and they understand
59:00
that they can do it with a single furrow plow and they understand how they've
59:04
done it, and this is how change works.
59:06
And then 20 years go by and their tractor is now a bigger tractor, and
59:11
their neighbors are using a far bigger tractor and they're still on a horse
59:15
and wondering why they're failing.
59:16
. squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: families.
59:17
Thank you, Jamie.
59:17
That's been a phenomenal talk.
59:19
Our automated audience here has been enthralled with every step.
59:25
I feel that one of the key takeaways from all of this is that leadership requires
59:30
a certain amount of courage, both to call things the way you see it, but
59:34
also to hear things that you don't like.
59:36
And that certainly many of the leaders who are in the positions of power, they are.
59:41
If they're not willing to do those things, they're gonna have a very difficult time.
59:46
So thanks again, Jamie.
59:49
You're very welcome,
59:50
jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You're absolutely right.
59:51
It's the people don't wanna hear.
59:53
I think it goes back, I'll do this real quick for, but I think
59:56
it goes back to what you said.
59:58
We need to hear all voices in the, even the ones that we disagree with.
1:00:02
squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: right on.
1:00:04
Speaker: What I love about conversations like this is that they refuse the polite
1:00:08
fiction that everything in the AgriFood sector is working the way it should.
1:00:13
Jamie has spent decades close enough to the system to understand how it
1:00:18
really operates, the good intentions, the institutional inertia, the quiet
1:00:23
frustrations, and the moments when someone finally decides to say what others
1:00:28
are thinking, but won't say out loud.
1:00:32
And that's the energy this episode carries because the future of agriculture
1:00:36
will not be decided by the people who are comfortable with the status quo.
1:00:41
It will, however, be shaped by the people willing to question it.
1:00:45
The ones who challenge institutions disrupt stale conversations and
1:00:51
insist that the sector be honest with itself about the road ahead.
1:00:56
That kind of leadership is not always tidy.
1:00:59
It's not always popular, but it sure is necessary.
1:01:04
And if the future heard has a purpose, it's to bring those voices into the open,
1:01:10
the rebels, the sceptics, the builders, and the people who care enough about
1:01:14
agriculture to fight for something better.
1:01:18
So if this conversation sparked ideas for you, share it with someone else who
1:01:23
should also be part of this discussion.
1:01:26
And I don't just mean people in the sector, I mean people who eat food too.
1:01:31
'cause that's really the point that we shouldn't be making food in isolation.
1:01:36
We should be making food with the people we share it with.
1:01:40
'cause that's the future of Canada.
1:01:42
That's the future of Canadian food and farming.
1:01:45
And it's not something we inherit.
1:01:47
It's something we decide and build together.