Across Canada’s agri-food sector, leadership often happens inside institutions — boards, associations, policy tables. But some of the most important voices are the ones willing to challenge those institutions and ask harder questions about the future.

Jamie Reaume has spent nearly three decades inside the conversations that shape Canadian agriculture. In this episode of Future Herd, he reflects on what that vantage point has taught him: why certain debates in the sector never seem to move forward, how institutional culture shapes decision-making, and why independent thinking remains essential if agriculture is going to navigate the decades ahead.

Early in the conversation Jamie describes himself plainly: a rebel, a radical, and a free thinker. That perspective drives a wide-ranging discussion about leadership, honesty inside the sector, and the tension between supporting agriculture and challenging the assumptions that hold it back.

This episode explores:

• Why dissent matters inside the agri-food sector

• The institutional habits that slow change in agriculture

• Leadership, independence, and the future of sector dialogue

• What it means to fight for a food system that is fair and resilient

If the Future Herd is about imagining leadership toward 2050, then voices like Jamie’s are essential — people willing to speak plainly about the path ahead.

Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsh.

Welcome to the Future Herd.

Early on in this episode's discussion, Jamie Reaume describes himself this way.

I'm a rebel.

I'm a radical, I'm a free thinker and not a lemming.

After nearly three decades working around Canada's AgriFood sector,

that's the identity he embraces.

And it's an important one because the future heard isn't just about celebrating

leadership inside the AgriFood system.

It's also about creating space for the voices that challenge it.

The people willing to question assumptions, push institutions,

and insist that the sector confront difficult realities about its future.

Jamie is one of those voices.

In our conversation, he reflects on what he has learned from decades

inside the agricultural sector, why so many of the conversations feel

stuck, why longstanding problems remain unresolved, and why independent

thinking matters if agriculture is going to navigate the decades ahead.

At one point, he sums up the motivation that has driven his work for so long.

I fight for farmers and for a food system that I want to see

just and fair for everyone.

That tension between loyalty to the sector and a willingness to challenge

it runs throughout this episode.

Because if the future herd is going to think seriously about leadership and the

future of food, it also needs to listen to the rebels sitting at the table.

Hi Jamie and welcome to Future Herd.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Thank you, Jesse.

I'm really happy to be here with you.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Jamie, ' I invited you to be part

of the future herd in no small part to recognize the leadership

that you've been providing to the agricultural sector for decades now.

also because you, I think you deserve a space here in the origins of this

podcast because this podcast came out of an event put on by the Agricultural

Adaptation Council in September of 2025.

On AgriFood 2050.

And at this event I was on the stage insisting that the leadership of

the sector needs to spend more time listening to dissidents sitting

at the same table with dissidents.

And lo and behold, you were one of those dissidents in the room.

that's part of how you and I met how you and I got along.

I think we've fast become friends.

So I wanna start today's conversation with a two-parter, a Jamie, why don't you

give us a brief one sentence introduction.

And do you identify, do, are you offended that I've identified you as a dissident

within the agricultural food sector?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Real quickly, I've been doing

this for nearly three decades.

In a simple sentence.

I fight for farmers and for a food system that I wanna see just and

fair for everyone, including the fact that, i'm a parent and a grandparent.

And that really is important to me because the conversation as I've found out for

some time now not changed since I started.

And that shows me a definitive lack of any kind of clarity or plan.

Would I identify.

I as a look, I'm a rebel.

I'm a radical.

I have been called all kinds of stuff since I started the industry and it's

all appropriate because I'm a a free thinker and not a lemming, and I think

that's what gets people is that at some point in my history I was never

somebody that followed the pack.

I just chose to do what was I thought was in the best interest and more importantly

based on knowledge and information, what was right and appropriate at the time.

Yeah.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And this is where one of the purposes

of this podcast is not just to speak to leaders in the sector, but to speak to

the public to speak to people who want to know where their food comes from, and.

You are a model of a leader that quite frankly, rarely exists

outside of the agricultural sector.

'cause on the one hand, your bonafides are undeniable.

You've literally been the executive in major key organizations, certainly

within Ontario's, AgriFood system, but arguably within Canada's as well.

And to your point, you are radical.

You are a rebel.

You are someone who speaks your mind.

this is a dynamic of leadership within the agricultural sector that

I know outsiders don't understand.

But I think leaders within the sector themselves, perhaps take for granted,

which is just how combative, just how free spirited the agricultural sector is.

And that is how someone like yourself could end up ironically, in a position

of power and still be a shit disturber, still be someone who, generally

speaking both inspires confidence from people like me, but also maybe

inspires fear and irritation from other leaders within the sector.

How has that been for you in, in, in terms of, your experience as a leader but to

your point, your experience as a radical?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Interesting because, I took the opportunity for a

decade or so when I was I was the CEO of a, a not-for-profit agricultural society

because I believe the education of

My fellow citizens, my fellow Ontarians, was vitally important.

Particularly in light of the fact that

Most people are three to four generations removed from a farm.

I put this out there when, and,

With without a moment's hesitation,

I am actually a city.

I have no farming background.

My heritage has zero farming background.

None of my

Ancestors from

basically a hundred plus years ago,

, They weren't farmers.

They were salesman merchants, murderers, horse thieves, the entire thing.

But they were not farmers.

And I always thought that the sector required a voice

that needed to be able to be heard.

Crystal clear,

My.

Starting of my career, I was a journalist an editor.

And

You learn to, at that point you learn very much that,

reality is how you can position it.

I always learned that reality, what was the line I used to use?

Perception is reality, and that's the ugly truth about dealing with an industry that

has over 250 crops and livestock raised.

Everybody's crop in livestock is vitally important to them,

Without looking at the bigger picture of what needs to be done.

Being a radical No, I'm just being a, I'm just a free voice inside a

I'm a free voice in a realm that is very.

Difficult for people to understand that,

fundamentally these are the roots of everything.

And that's pun not intended, but they're the roots of everything that go through.

Farmers are the greatest innovators that are out there.

We don't acknowledge that farmers are the last bastion

of human communication because

Don't do this very much.

It's, this is not something that is in their bailiwick.

They're the ones that still phone call shows and complain about things that

are going on, but they do it quietly.

And they are the coffee house guys that,

They wanna see what the, their neighbors are doing.

But at the same time, they're they're an entire group of individuals and that don't

like change and change frightens 'em.

And change is the one thing that I believe is a necessity to be able

to break through to that next side.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And let me push back on one thing you

said there, which is that they're quiet.

I don't think they're quiet anymore.

I think the power of social media, the power, quite frankly, of the

smartphone, that, they're able to have access to a global audience.

And in particular, because there are so many farmers online they have access to

an audience of like minds, an audience of people who work in the kind of same field,

perhaps even I shouldn't say field in the literal sense, but the same industry.

I think your point about perception is even more important today, when

it comes to issues like policies, especially when it comes to leadership.

And point about having a background in journalism, is not

something we should gloss over.

'cause on the one hand, I think it does teach critical thinking skills.

It's also given you a kind of media literacy where yes, I'm saying a lot

of people in the sector use social media to communicate, to talk.

You also watch the news in a way that I think not a lot of people still do.

And I'm curious whether you think that the leadership in this sector

to, to use a Bob Dylan line there, there's something happening here

and you don't know what it is.

Do you, Mr. Jones, the ballad of a thin man, that apply to

the leadership sector today?

Does that kind of speak to the way, to, to my point, I'm saying farmers

are getting louder and they are afraid of change and it's causing

I think a. of crisis of leadership, certainly a crisis of legitimacy.

That's a bit of a rambling setup for you there, Jamie, but I'm curious

to hear your thoughts as someone who's not only been on the ground

in the sector, but who a journalist, recovering journalist can see the

media sphere in a critical perspective.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah you know what

Like everything else in society we tend get our.

And I'm gonna put it this way.

We tend to fall into the algorithms that we want to.

I don't, because I can't base an opinion that I'm working towards or

a fundamental fact that I'm working towards only on my own perception.

I need to be able to look at everything that goes through and I need to be able

to connect the dots that go through it.

Then that's from a historical all the way through to a future perspective.

That's the thing that leadership.

Forgets about is that

There are, there are those that actually looked at the past.

There are solutions all the way through.

They just don't wanna do it because they're trying to make their mark.

The one thing I learned really an awkward for me to say, given the introduction

you'd thrown at me, is that, as a journalist, I don't have much of an ego.

I'm not,

i'll be a shit disturber.

I have no problems admitting that I'll be a radical, I'll be anything along

the way, but I don't have much of an ego because I'm not looking for a legacy.

I'm not

To make myself something that I'm not.

I've always been like this and

People found that they don't need to go back

five years and realize I haven't changed.

I haven't changed in the entire time that I was here.

Because

fundamentally I think the evolution of what I was supposed to be was that I

was supposed to be somebody that was.

One that said

statement in the room.

And there's always people that

always wanna, say it, but they never do.

They're afraid.

They're scared that their funding's gonna go.

They're afraid that they're not gonna be able to have a, an appropriate response.

And,

I again, I'll reflect this back as a journalist,

Used to give people lots of rope to hang themselves because it's more fun to do it

that way, to let them do it to themselves than for me to point out the obvious.

And by having somebody

Take as much rope as they want,

you know what, that tree branch, it's sitting there for a reason.

And that's how I used to reflect upon what was there.

So when I look at what needs to be done

And what's happened, and where the realities are, is that a lot of people

talk about scale big, everything like

Doesn't work.

And it's not going to work because

You've got, i'll pick on our southern neighbors.

You've got a nation that is clearly in.

Turmoil right now, their farming population they lost over

300,000 farms in 2025 alone.

That's a huge number

About.

And when you're 4% of the world's population, which I think they're

running around four or 4.1%,

and that's a, that's not a big chunk of the population that have a conversation.

They use somewhere, and I'm looking at this when they use an excess of 25

to 30% of all the pesticides that are

Constructed or built around.

This is why there's a big push right now to

reinvigorate the pesticide industry in the US is because they're big users of it.

But if they don't have it,

their entire society fails.

These are the leadership things that we don't look at.

We don't look at how they position it.

We don't wanna have that conversation because we've been able to ride the tail,

the coattails of this for so long that

Forgotten that we're a pretty independent nation ourself.

And

we're not just draws of water.

Here is a wood.

We are actually a really innovative regional based country.

And I think that's where, you go back long enough and you can see

that there were huge differences.

And that's why I keep pushing the way that I do because.

I don't wanna be an agrarian society, Jess.

I really don't.

I like the fact that we are diversified enough to be able to have it, but

I don't think we're diverse enough.

And I'll let the big boys play what they want.

But I like my small and mid-sized farms.

I like the people that are out there.

And I am more encouraged now than ever

See young people coming on, but they're not being given that opportunity.

And that's what stresses me out the most, is the fact that we as a

industry aren't looking at how we make succession happen, how we make

The role of

People coming into the sector a reality.

And the more importantly that there is nothing out there

because it's all based around land.

It's all based around the ideas that they can't.

And I put this in air quotes, that they can't

The ability to

buy into

A hundred acre farm at say $30 million.

And who can blame them?

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: You raise a bunch there.

And I am particular want to come back to the succession issue

and the youth empowerment issue.

'cause I think that also has to be a recurring mandate of this podcast.

you also highlighted something I want to tease out in terms of a podcast sorry,

a paradox also here on this podcast.

And that's the idea that on the one hand there is a culture of

innovation, especially in the prairies.

It's remarkable how, as I've started to really learn ab about not just

the history of agriculture, but the history of innovation in agriculture.

The extent to which Canada has consistently been a global leader.

And there is a desire, certainly within the sector to continue to

embrace change, the execution of that.

It seems to be where the dysfunction is, to your earlier provocation

that you've been here for decades.

People are having the same conversation but they're not actually implementing

the change that they claim they want.

Of course that might be tied to our point about young people and are our point

about getting new people into the system.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: No, Jess.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: hold on I wanna throw you a hardball

or a fast ball, and I want to throw it right down the middle of the plate and

you can decide whether you wanna swing and miss or whether you want to hit it.

But it, it strikes me that the paradox that people aren't really

talking about, but that you seem to be getting closest to.

It's the conflict that exists within the sector everybody tries to present

a kind of narrative of unity, right?

A narrative of, yeah, we all get along, we're all on the same page, but you

scratch the surface and you actually have a lot of legitimate disagreement.

A lot of legitimate differences.

And I think those things are growing and I think they're

becoming even more pronounced.

So before we skate off into the, the feel good stuff of, saying all the

things that we'd like to see would love to hear your thoughts on how do

we deal with conflict the sector and how do we convene conversations amongst

people who despise each other, who have difficulty respecting each other.

But I, I would assume you agree with this.

If you don't, I'd love to hear that.

That we do need to be talking to each other, that we do need to find

a way to have the either ends of the polarized society, the, divided

practices of how to pursue agriculture and how to prepare food, sitting

down and having a conversation.

'cause OO otherwise we just get the dysfunction.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Okay, so you wanted the

you put a fastball over there.

I like the baseball analogy.

I love the game.

I coached and did that for years.

So here's your hardball fastball response and it's going over the fence.

Agriculture lacks a plan.

Agriculture lacks a plan because everybody's commodity is just as

important as everybody else's commodity.

It doesn't matter how you look at it, everybody is scratching for fewer dollars.

Being handed out by governments to be able to take a look at it,

Is struggling to be able to figure out what their own niche

is or how they're able to do it.

And we've done this for decades.

It's not something that's new.

This is something that is problematic all the way through.

Back in 2003, 2004,

an irritation came up

And we had the one voice in Ontario where we rallied 20,000 plus farmers

and brought tractors down to Queens Park and had all kinds of chaos for the

then newly elected liberal government.

The organization that took the lead on it.

I won't say which one.

Presented.

The minister then Minister Steve Peters with the de the demands

that they were looking at.

One voice, Jess, one voice.

We're supposed to speak with one voice.

There are universal issues

that impact livestock crops,

Grains and oil seeds.

It doesn't matter.

There are lots of universal issues

That look at this, and this is how far back it goes for

me, that there's a source of

Issues because they presented him with nine individual commodity driven problems.

They didn't do one voice.

They broke it down into sectors.

Maybe it was eight,

Eight or nine different

things that they wanted resolved.

And I was with,

I happened to be good friends at the time with the minister and

we're sitting there with a couple of his cabinet colleagues and.

I'm not gonna burst anybody's bubble, we're having a drink in the, a smoke

inside one of the offices on the second level of Queens Park, and he's what

the hell am I supposed to do with this?

And I said, I don't know.

Because that's not one voice.

We didn't speak with one voice and that was really a problem.

When you have food system developments, when you see new websites that are

going out, when you see answering the question and you're ex exempting

other things along the way, when you only talk about things that are

problematic for you, IE Livestock.

Oh this is a big one that comes up because people are always looking

at the big stuff along the way.

But funny thing is that.

Food systems require fruits and vegetables.

That's what Canada's national food guide states is.

It's not the us.

We're not putting livestock and protein at the top.

We are actually doing the right thing and doing it on a health benefit.

So we disagree on health

because they aren't smart enough to look at what the realities are.

And I think that's where everything links back to.

We were to look at this properly, they would've developed a 30

year plan or a 20 year plan.

Instead, they do things based around electoral cycles, just like government.

And that's why inevitably we fail is because every four years we're

looking at who the next party is.

That's gonna be the one that's there, what are gonna be the

mandates or coming into it.

And inevitably that's why they fails because they don't look beyond it.

And because they don't look beyond, they don't care.

And because they don't care.

It's only about what they want in the terms of their, if I hear one

more organization say they need four or $500 million to satisfy

their farmers, I'm gonna pu.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: so let that, that begs two, two follow up

questions and I'll give you the latter one first and then ask the one that I

want you to answer first, and the latter one, is how does the agricultural sector

and the food sector become recognized as the basis for society itself?

And not an afterthought when we think about government funding,

let alone cabinet priorities.

before you answer that question, Jamie, I gotta push back and

say, do you really think it's possible to speak with one voice?

I hear everybody say that, and I don't dispute with you the

political power in doing so.

in today's day and age, how would you achieve that?

E assuming you had the mandated resources to attempt it?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: I'll throw that right back at you.

Not a problem.

You wanna speak with one voice.

What's the biggest problem that they list all the time?

Red tape regulations.

They talked about this

For 30 years.

They've talked about this.

You wanna go at this one as one voice scenario,

You put in a rural secretariat.

You find a way that looks at it as a means of

it through the lens.

That's how you get that first,

That answers the first question of

How do you get effective within cabinet.

We won't be effective in cabinet.

It won't even depend.

Look let's play political colors 1 0 1.

Liberals know that

The farmers aren't gonna vote for them.

There'll be a small percentage, but that's it.

So they don't need to worry about the rural countryside.

'cause that's conservative.

The conservatives don't look at it as being important because they

already know they've got that vote.

That's the reality of politics that you play in.

So now you have to move that step beyond and say, can you make

effecti opportunities to do it.

And the one thing that I'll throw out there

Is, it goes back two questions ago where you said, should we

have the opinions of everybody?

Yes.

But we now live in a world and you the one that threw this at me, we now live

in a world where you're saying, Hey, how can we talk with the one voice?

As I said, a rural secretariat works because they look at the lens

of everything that goes through.

Every piece of policy, every piece of regulation would be looked at in the

view of how it impacts the farming community and the rural countryside.

This isn't 2024, that's the last year in Canada that we were 50% rural, 50% urban.

That was the very last year that we had, that

2026. They do the census and they realize that it's now starting to shift.

It's 50 51 0.3, and that's.

The last year that we had an equal even opportunity to do it.

Now it's 9% of the countryside is rural and the rest of it's urban.

So now we have to have the conversations with the city folk because they are

the ones that are driving policy and they're the ones that are getting the

attention of all of the politicians because everybody knows that the 144,000

voters that are sitting in whatever x, y, Z riding don't matter if you're

sitting in the middle of Saskatchewan.

That's not taken seriously.

So first you take the look at the rural secretariat

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: If I'm hearing you correctly.

The ability to speak with one voice is literally a requirement of leadership.

what we require are leaders who either have, to your point about the rural

secretariat, the organizational capacity, or to what I'm trying to argue, the

ability to synthesize, necessarily please everybody, but to articulate the

opportunity, a policy concept, a demand, a need rallies enough people behind it and

is able to get the desired response from whoever it is that's being directed at it.

Am I reading you correctly in that?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You're reading me correctly because honestly,

Jesse, what we've got now, we've got a world where you can look at

artificial intelligence, for example.

That was a big player that came in.

I'm not gonna name names inside the ministry or anything like that, but

AI policy in Canada sucks.

It blows chunks, and that's a reality.

But that is how you can fix some of the ongoing issues with inside agriculture

itself, is because AI can be used to synthesize down, to give a synopsis.

I see this all the time when I'm looking at a report or

something, they ask for a synopsis.

I don't do that because I'm still old school.

I still print stuff.

But when it comes to a synopsis or a, a language to be able to do it,

I'm sitting inside my computer with literally 60 or 70 different reports,

everything from the spell report, nearly two thousands to the Odyssey report,

to all these other reports, to the Barton Report, all these reports that

exist, and we don't use our capacity to be able to fix the stuff that's there

because we're too stupid to function.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Okay, now this isn't fair.

I'm throwing you fastballs and you're just lobbing 'em over the plate

for me to hit it over the park.

These pitchers are too easy if you're gonna set me up with AI so easily with

that, and I agree with what you're saying.

Absolutely.

But again, I gotta come back to something else you said that I thought was brilliant

and I want you to double down on it because I think this is an example of

you being a dissident and you don't think you're a dissident, you think you're

employing common sense, which you are.

But to employ common sense in a moment of incredible

dysfunction is to be a dissident.

Do you believe, dear Jamie, that the urban voting electorate requires a

far greater literacy and understanding of where their food comes from?

And I ask it in such a way because I've been rather shocked at how many people

within the leadership of the AgriFood sector not only have a dim view of

how you put it, the citiots, but they.

Don't actually believe that the urban voters should necessarily

know where their food comes from, nor do they believe that they will.

I, how, why do you see this differently?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You you opened this one up, so I will do this.

There was a recent conference, won't mention it.

We're the best of the best.

The brightest of the brightest were gathered in one room, a thousand people in

Ottawa, all holding hands singing kumbaya.

And there were 30 of us farmers that were inside that fucking room at the time.

You wanna have a conversation about lack of conciseness, lack of intelligence.

If you're making stuff that wants to go forward, if you're talking about

investment, if you're talking about the ability to look beyond your own borders in

the growing season of one year, then you have to have the farmers there themselves.

And the other reason is they didn't have consumers.

This was a bunch of people that were all like-minded, that were thinking to

themselves, they can do all this stuff.

And the reality is, I heard one statement there from somebody that

was down in New Zealand, and what they had done is they created an

apple specifically for a market.

They created an apple specifically for China.

It took them 15 years to grow a specific variety of an apple using

their research and marketing.

But now they have a market all to themselves that the Chinese love.

We are that in.

The only stupid that we don't look at ourselves like that.

And I've gotta tell you, so this goes back to what I had said.

The number one killer of creative, innovative concepts on the farming

community side is usually red tape.

It's usually something that people don't think about.

It's usually the idea that, we've got a premier that says the

province is open for business.

I would argue it's not.

I would argue that we put in our own inherent barriers that have

led to the demise of what we've called this creative concept.

Great AI is out there, but AI didn't come from Canada.

We're just going to evolve and rule with it, and we're not gonna get.

To a point where we should be, where we should be leaders of what's there.

We used to be leaders and we're not, we don't have that ability anymore.

When you talk about how we should look at this stuff, 25 years ago I was arguing

about interprovincial trade barriers and they said, oh yeah, we're gonna fix that.

They just didn't.

And they said, we're gonna move all these barriers except for three key areas.

They're not gonna do it in alcohol, they're not gonna do it in finance,

and they're not gonna do it in food.

Then what the hell's the point?

What the hell is the point of removing the barriers That would instantly free up?

I think it's around 13% of our GDP to move across, BC wines coming into Ontario.

And conversely, then we're not talking about all the little

issues about movement of product.

We're not talking about country of origin.

Then now we're talking about opportunities to be able to feed

a nation regionally with all the stuff that we've got going on.

But we can't do that because we don't think like that.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: so let me come back to

what essentially I agree.

You did hit my fast ball out of the park, but I still think

you struggled with the pitch.

I think the reason you hit it outta the park is that you just happened

to be a very talented hitter, but allowed me to try to throw that

pitch again in a different way.

'cause what you just did there was very rare both in policy circles,

but also in leadership circles.

You spoke without ideology.

You talked about different policies without couching it into partisan

rhetoric, without using ideological buzzwords that people often rely upon

to show that they're on the right side.

And the first fastball question I asked you is how do you get people who

don't like each other in the same room?

So we can work out our differences so we can have these conversations

and I'll modify that again.

How can we have creative policy conversations that look at the challenges

we face that come up with innovative policy solutions without devolving to

partisans, without devolving to ideology, but instead looking at them as systems?

Because that's why I love farming and that's why I love farmers, right?

They think about systems, they look at systems.

Their lives depend upon systems.

I would love to be talking about food and farming and all this

stuff as systems a lot of the extra baggage that comes with it.

And correct me if I'm wrong, I feel that's what you're doing

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: That's the direction I've always been going in.

And again, this is not.

I used to dress in black for a reason, Jesse I go to Queens Park or Ottawa,

and I dress for black for a reason.

You didn't see me with a red or blue tie or a green tie or an orange tie.

You didn't see me doing that because honestly, at the end of the day,

you have to be able to be yourself walking into something.

And that's, I think what we've forgotten about is the it was interesting that

we're having this conversation today because we can't you and I talked about

how we would get together on this, and personally, I would rather have sat down

at your property having a beer and sitting there outside with the dogs running

around and having that conversation.

We now have the ability to do what we're doing, but right across the

country, we now have the ability to set it up and put a question out there

that a thousand people can respond to,

Whether they're farmers or whether they're from different sides of the spectrum

or whether they're from something else.

Social media has.

Showing these algorithms.

But if we change the algorithm for what we're looking at, if we eliminate the

concept that, there's gotta be a partisan thing, then you ask the right questions

and you can get responses based around what their area is reflected with.

Is there a need for irrigation within an Alberta?

Yeah, there is.

But do they have the resources and the water for it?

No.

Do they have the infrastructure?

No.

They're struggling with this and it's not because they've done things bad,

it's because they're dealing with issues that we're not dealing with in Ontario.

Is there a way of finding transportation to justify being able to put

Local abattoirs throughout the country?

Yeah, there are, but we don't have the provincials the provincial backbone.

And I think that's where another thing is that you need to look at

Is whether or not there's a belief that we do have the backbone to do it.

I would counter.

For everything that you're saying

That there's a lot of armchair warriors out there.

There's a lot of people that like to hide behind the anonymity of what

they do, and they have a really good rapport of being able to do that.

I'm not anonymous.

People know who I am, based around what I've done, and I'm not happy

about everything that I've done.

I'll be honest with you.

I've got a reputation for what it is, but my reputation is sometimes.

In error.

I will fight

Fights that I need to do,

But I will not,

Inflict a partisan rule on anything because I don't believe in that.

And I believe in the only way that we can resolve stuff is to have that

broader perspective, that broader ability to bring everything together.

That's where I see the AI being able to do this, because now you can

universally take this information and you can put it on a platform and you

can have everybody take a look at it

They can sensitize through and you'll get all the responses.

And it doesn't matter what your leaning is, left center, far left far right,

it won't matter because key words will be developed outta that algorithm

that'll look at what the realities are.

And that's how you do this is you need to be smarter and we're not.

Quite frankly, as I said to the start this, we don't have a plan.

We're always reactive in agriculture and it's not agriculture,

it's farming and food, man.

That's what we do is farming and food.

There isn't anything around that.

Everything else we can figure out.

But agriculture is now beyond the perspective of what

most people think it is.

It is not mom and pop cattle, it is not American Gothic.

It is not what's there.

We are talking about farmers that use GPS before GPS was found inside cars.

We are talking about drone technology and the ability to use infrareds all the way

through to highlight nutritional values.

Like we're way beyond the scope and scale of just putting bullshit onto

a field and hoping something grows.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And you also, I think, made a crucial

point in the sense that you've been a shit disturber for essentially your

life, certainly your professional career, and you've done it under your own name.

You're not anonymously posting crap out there.

You're doing so with your reputation on the line.

And I find that is generally true of farmers, that while there are a lot of

people saying nasty things online without using their name, farmers tend to have

the courage to stand behind that name.

And I think that's why they are already.

On social media organizing amongst themselves, amongst issues that are

important to them on social media.

And I think it's important to try to create a space to try to,

find a platform that reinforces the sector rather than reinforces

Facebook or, reinforces Instagram.

I do I do wanna come back to two other things that you've brought up earlier.

And the first, which kind of aligns slightly with what we're talking about

is young people and empowering young people, because that's another that kind

of fits into your category of things we've been saying for decades, but

have not actually done anything about.

And, you alluded to it that part of it is of course, land which is more

expensive than it ever has been.

And that's certainly tied to concentration of the industry, whether in the food

side or in the agriculture side.

'cause, it's not just.

Necessarily young farmers.

It might be young entrepreneurs who wanna run a restaurant or

want to create a food company.

In all cases, if they don't really have the bank of mom and

dad it may be very difficult for them to get into the industry.

I suspect this is something that you've probably been thinking about

for as long as you've been in the sector and have been frustrated with

the rhetoric without the action.

I'm really curious to hear your indictments or certainly your

thoughts in this particular area.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah, so this has irritated me forever in the day.

I think again, this is where,

for some of the regulatory stuff and succession planning with taxation issues,

with all of the, capital gains crap and everything else that gets thrown through

on this stuff, there's, that's where rural secretary would've been able to

look at it and say, pull this line out and say, that doesn't work for farmers.

And if you want the farming community to be able to sustain itself and continue,

these are the areas that you need to do.

'cause that was a huge thing that came up over the last couple of years.

That's first, second.

We are, from a federal government perspective and this is a fun part

because I never grow tired of somebody that says, oh, with climate change and

the growing degrees that are gonna be increased in the North for areas like

Sio St. Marie and Thunder Bay, we're gonna be able to grow all the food that we need.

And we can get rid of the Southern Ontario Park 'cause that's gonna be too hot.

And then you look back and you go, are you ever stupid?

Because, you know what, yeah, the growing degrees the days will change, but

One thing that we don't have is soil.

That's something that's not there.

So now you have to rethink about every.

And thought that you've had about what farming is.

And I think that's why we struggle is because everybody thinks farming is just

a guy sitting in a field on a tractor.

You and I'll use the analogy of, he plants, he spends eight hours planting

the crops for a hundred acre field,

sprays.

It once goes to Florida or key West to be able to take eight

months off comes back, harvester, another 16 hours, then that's it.

And that's the farmer thought.

That's not, we need to do so much more to be able to think about what's going on

and make those improvements along the way.

First off, opening up the federal side of things.

They've got land.

Let's get some of the people out there if they wanna learn this stuff.

Let 'em, the thing I did with where I had worked previously at Country

Heritage Park was I opened up 11 acres to community farming because there were

people that wanted to learn of that.

Say about probably a dozen of them have gone on to do other things,

including working in Africa to help countries that are outside of Canada

develop their own agricultural side.

That's a real that's a real moment that we can look back at and say,

okay, they hadn't had that experience because they came from Toronto, but

they wanted to do this and that's where they learned is fried doing it.

We need mentorship programs and I think that's what's really messing and absent

is the ability to mentor somebody because it's always changing and mentorship.

By the way, Jess runs both sides.

The things I've learned along the way are not just that young

people can learn from old people.

Old people can learn more specifically from young people,

and I saw that time and.

Again, working through a volunteer system through farmers that were coming

outta Toronto, through six Nations that were doing the work with us, that they

actually have an impact on older guys that didn't think they could change, that

didn't think that they learned anything along the way, that didn't understand.

I remember specific example of a Syrian refugee, a 16-year-old boy telling

one of the old guys that was sitting in a table crabbing at him because

he didn't speak English properly.

He had the grasp of it, but he didn't speak it properly.

And the guy said this is all I was able to pick up

I was in an internment camp for four years.

And that one floored.

Because they don't think like that outside experience is a huge factor in

sector is really isolated sometimes.

Yeah.

You talk about the fact that farmers are getting a voice, but we've never

had the kind of voice that's required to be able to go backwards and forwards.

So we need to talk to, we need to talk to everybody that's not there.

We need to talk to the youth and say, we have opportunities.

We need to talk to

City folk and say, here's what we need to be able to do.

And we need to educate on the universal side, but more importantly, we need to

put aside our pre justified concepts and conceit and move forward with an

idea that, you know what yeah, this isn't how things were thought to be.

This isn't 1,901 where there's, 2.6 billion people.

There's nearly nine, 10 billion people on the world right now, so let's figure out

how to do this properly and go backwards.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: And this is why I really wanted to get

you on this podcast in the kind of early part of us building it up, because I

almost feel that part of what we're doing right now is we're creating KPIs, we're

creating key performance indicators of whether, the leadership in this country

has the capability to, to step up to the challenges that, that it faces.

You highlight, I think, an important role of public education and literacy,

which I keep bringing back up, which I do want to come back to.

But you also allow me to bring up I, I think another subject which

you raised earlier and that I'm quite passionate about, which is

the role of small farmers, the role of small and medium sized farmers.

And I am admittedly a newbie when it comes to agriculture, right?

To your point, none of my parents or grandparents or great grandparents

were in the agricultural sector.

And I'm here because I want to be I'm here, 'cause I think it's

the right place and the right time for artificial intelligence.

I also come from the kind of startup world, the technology

world, the entrepreneurial world.

And the thing you understand about technology, the thing you

understand about healthy business ecosystems is you need startups.

You need new entrant, you need new blood, you need new perspectives.

And they have to be small.

Yeah, you want them to scale up if they work, but you also want a critical

mass of really small experimental farms doing crazy stuff they're the ones

who are gonna come up with new ideas.

They're the ones who are gonna do research on their own without waiting from

funding from some ministry or whatnot.

And this seems to run.

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that big is better, that we

shouldn't worry about small farmers and city people don't wanna farm.

They'd prefer to be safe in, their completely controlled environments.

yet I know so many people in Toronto who would do anything.

To become farmers who watch homesteaders on YouTube, with envy

as if it's almost like farm porn.

And again, it strikes me that this is a huge policy opportunity that could

not only give the agricultural industry a kind of vibrancy on the small scale

that leads to all sorts of positive economic activity, you could also have

a rural economic development in terms of I go to my local feed store and

I'm buying hay from local farmers, and I would like to be, sourcing all my

stuff from local suppliers and having my animals go to a local abattoir.

Am I being ludicrous here, Jamie, or, is my sense of certainly my generation,

if not younger members it, does it align with kind of what you've been

anticipating or desiring in terms of empowering small farmers as a whole?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: No, I don't think it's anticipating.

I think it's not even my.

I think it's just the right way of approaching it.

If we're gonna have a, and I use the word sustainability, not in

the environmental sense in here.

The word sustainability in an economic sense.

And the problem is that the big guys have shown, all you need to do is

look right across the southern border

see what a exceptionally large livestock operation did.

US town actually four different towns.

And it's because the trade imbalance exists, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The politics is there, blah, blah, blah.

But the reality is

It failed.

It failed the people that were there.

It failed the, it failed everybody except for one group.

And that was the shareholders.

The share shareholders didn't take a look at anything and

say, oh, yeah, no, that's okay.

Because

When you get all the big problems.

The big problems are because people didn't see all the things.

When you're small and mid-size, you can determine where the problems are.

When I created a hydroponic aquaponic system, it took me 14 months.

Not because I'm slow, not because I didn't understand the science, but because

there were mistakes to be made and to be had where I needed to learn from,

That's how you get better at what you do.

I never in my entire life as either a coach or player or anything else,

I never learned from winning.

I learned from losing.

Learned from the mistakes that were made along the way, and that's,

we've done enough mistakes now.

Yeah.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: I think that's a very important point

and I just want to tease that out because I've been thinking a lot and

you alluded to this at the start when you were framing the, almost valor,

the valorous role of the farmer.

And I personally have been thinking about how farming is the last

frontier of freedom because you have the room to make mistakes.

You

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah.

Yep.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: room to do trial and error.

Like I taught myself last year how to weld and how to make a robot, which

when I was doing it, I thought I'd never be able to do this in the city

'cause there'd be too much shame.

There'd be too many people telling me I'm doing it wrong and I wouldn't

have the space to do it, where only my dogs could see me almost kill myself.

And again, I think farmers take that for granted.

I think city people don't even understand what that kind of freedom

is like, the freedom to fail is at the heart of the entrepreneurial process.

If you look at the success and the mantra of kind of Silicon Valley, it's

fail early, fail often, and yet most people don't get that social license.

And I think you hit it on the nose in terms of, this is how we learn.

So a, allow me to dig in into, my crazy pitches and throw you another fastball.

How do we do that in the policy space?

Because if there's.

Anywhere that people are afraid of failure, let alone afraid of looking

like a fool or saying something dumb.

It's the policy space.

And yet, I think what you're arguing, what I'm hearing is we gotta say

some dumb stuff before we actually are able to, get to the point of

having really smart things to say,

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You know what?

Policy failure has been around for a thousand years.

What policy failure hasn't failed along the way.

Everybody thinks they have great ideas, and this goes to the point

of being reactive, not proactive.

They're afraid to put stuff out that they think would be functional and work.

I know you stopped me about the youth, but you know what?

We're gonna be sitting there with youth unemployment,

probably hovering around 15, 16%.

So I'm back in 1981 for me looking at, 17% 17% unemployment 23% on my

first loan for a car interest rate and realizing that I have to do all

of these things just to continue on.

And there's no freebies.

There's no gimmes anymore, there's no what they used to call entry level.

You have to be smart enough to be able to look at where everything is.

Policies are going to fail.

But my biggest problem is the fact that government continues to this day.

It doesn't matter whether you're municipal, provincial,

or federal, they continue to try and pick winners and losers and.

Government is not the intelligent body that is, should be the one doing this.

I think what should be done

Is that we need to be able to have an opportunity to be able to

continue to make the mistakes that are out there to continue to do.

It would not, with a safety net, so much as an ability to look at it

with a clear eye and present that as knowledge, that's knowledge gained.

You make a mistake that should go out there and people should

be able to talk about that.

And yet the one thing I learned about farmers, and this was

really early, is that they don't wanna talk about their mistakes.

That's not something that they wanna deal with because they've made the mistake

and they clearly don't wanna do it.

And they're not gonna tell their neighbors that they just blew $20,000

on a packer that went bankrupt and started up across the street.

They're not gonna say anything like that.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: I think that also is why the small

farmer ends up playing an outsized role because if the stakes are low, there's

less shame in admitting that mistake.

And this is why, again, there is this phenomena on YouTube, this

phenomena of social media of the smaller farmer becoming popular.

It's because they're transparent about their mistakes.

They admit their mistakes, part of their role is educational.

So I suspect there may be a culture change going on.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: There is, but

No, but I'll jump into this one.

There is,

The smaller guys.

Are small and have done what they're doing because

They look at it as a lifestyle and they made choices along the way as well.

They're usually backed.

This is the one

Thing that we've always learned is that

Farming in Canada means that you need a second job off farm,

Is usually your wife who's a teacher, or a professor a nurse,

anything along the way, because

Supplements the ability of the farmer to be able to do the job of growing.

And at the same time, the farmer often has a second job.

These are the educational opportunities to be able to take that real life thing.

Do it as a, an opportunity to look at career, right?

It's not a lifestyle.

This is not

I got small acreage.

You got small acreage, you're doing what you're doing because you're having fun.

I'm planting trees because,

We're environmental in our bend.

We,

We see the inherent value of having trees to be able to repopulate, but

policy change needs to reflect an educational component as well, and

not just within the scholastic system.

This Jess, they took away farming as a career option.

That's not inside.

You go to a counselor and say, I wanna be a farmer.

They're not gonna let you do it.

There's nothing that's there for 'em.

And yet farming is the one

Jack of all trades opportunity to be able to showcase that.

Excuse me.

You don't need to, you don't need to follow everything by the book.

And that speaks to that freedom.

And it's you don't set your, you'll never set your own hours then not

somebody there that's got a punch clock.

When you're farming, you do what you wanna do.

You wanna get up at four in the morning and feed the animals?

Go for it.

You wanna get up at seven?

Do it.

Do it.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: I do think that you're speaking both out

of a sense of frustration, the same time, perhaps even yourself being corrupted

by the larger narrative of framing.

'cause I'm not so sure about that lifestyle argument.

I agree.

A lot of people tell themselves that.

I agree.

The affordability crisis that affects everybody compels

people to get other work.

The only reason that I have a small acreage is that's all that I could

afford, and we are certainly working this small acreage as intensely

as we can so that we can grow our agricultural operation the same way.

I suspect that any farmer wants to grow their agricultural operation.

But also we want to do so in a way that doesn't kill us, that doesn't

make us beholden to, hostile interests.

is where I see technology playing a very unique role in

empowering that small farmer.

to your point, it also requires less regulations.

It requires a more favorable policy environment.

And of course as a newbie to the ag sector, I find it hilarious that you'll

see, for example, the grain farmers and the supply management farmers pick and

fights with each other, but both benefit tremendously from the existing policy

environment, either through the supply management or through crop insurance.

And.

Again, these are things that I think the general public doesn't really

understand, but once you start coming into the sector, it's complicated

and the policy environment is fraught with all sorts of different agendas,

different interests, which is why I find this whole speaking with one

voice thing, a daunting challenge.

Also why I find these narratives to be so entrenched and why it is so difficult to

have these conversations about leadership.

A, as we start to wrap o only because my back teeth are starting

to ing sing anchors away due to the size of my growing bladder.

How do you I see the kind of landscape ahead?

What do you think is the tactics, the strategy for the

leader who desires change?

Who really wants to see the action happen in spite of the talk that

we've seen go around in circles?

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You know what what did you call me?

A dissident?

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Yes.

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Dissidents don't write policy yet.

I do.

Because I think that's the only correct way to do it.

I also believe that, and I stepped away from it, and I probably shouldn't have.

I stayed in touch with a lot, but

You have to have a passion for it as well, Jesse.

And

The passion is not just about, it's not just about the farmers.

Not,

it's not looking at that legacy side.

It's not trying to do anything that built it.

It's trying to find solutions.

And not many people are solution driven anymore.

There are a lot of them that just like the status quo.

There's a lot of them that I call lunch pail warriors.

They just, they come in, they punch the clock, they're there for, seven

and a half hours, they get their pay and they go home and that's it.

And they don't think about this stuff.

I think about this stuff,

I think about this stuff all the time because, there's four things

that people need and one of them's food, air, water, shelter, food.

It's not that complicated to figure out.

Then you look at,

The farm politics get in the way and then the real life politics get in the way, and

then the farmers themselves get in their own way because you've got a 63-year-old

farmer that his sons wanna take over.

But he's out there saying this is the way they,

You do it.

And I know this because I had all these examples in my face

when I was working with the guys.

And still to this day, you look back and they go look at the young ones.

That's why they get frustrated.

If you've got a succession plan, work it through or buy them out or do whatever.

And I happen to bump into an old, a really old friend of mine a couple of days ago,

and he had bought his dad out 13 years ago, and it almost broke him at the time.

Now he's very successful again because he did things the way that he

thought was in the best interest and.

Honestly, Jesse, that's the kind of inspiration that gets me

through on any of those days that

Sunny and, warm and everything else.

It's because there are people that still want to make a difference out there.

He's got a lovely operation down in Townsville area.

He's happy, he's got a family, he's got everything that.

That you talk about for a small acre or a small mid-size acre property

for a guy that wants to do this,

And yet he still contributes to his local federation.

He still contributes to the conversations that are out there, and we keep the

politics out of it, because at the end of the day, he's still looking

at how to find solutions, not just on his farm, but on other farms.

He looks at the agritourism side that is rife with regulations

that just screw you up.

The, up the Yahoo.

He looks at the,

The pick your own where theft is now the number one issue out there

You want to, as a farmer, have enough.

Hope that people aren't gonna rob you blind, and yet that's what the number

one problem now for pick your owns are.

And I can see a day when we're not going to have pick your owns, which

then actually causes more problems because now you don't have an

educational basis to prove to people that potatoes grow in the ground.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: You got the solution earlier in the episode.

It's called ai, right?

You,

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Yeah.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: You could have someone leaving the

field and it says, thank you for paying for the basket in your front.

The strawberries in your backpack will be an additional $50 automatically

deducted from your debit card.

being facetious, but your point is valid.

I wanna ask you a kind of selfish question.

As I move forward with this podcast, is there a particular question

you would have me asking leaders,

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: Oh, that's wide open man.

And ask why they like the status quo.

You could ask why they don't listen to others.

Why they say that they're there for the entire sector, but

they're not they're very much involved with only their own side.

And

Lot of the farm leadership are only in it for themselves

on their own farm operation.

And that's something I've known forever.

So they're doing stuff that'll favor their own operations along the way.

And they lack that perspective of being able to.

The entirety of the sector, the entirety of the country.

And I can tell you that

They stymie themselves because they're stuck back in the 1970s, early

1980s, just before they had the farm crisis, because those were good days.

And that's what you talk to a farmer that's been doing this long enough.

Their line, Jesse, isn't,

I wanna look about what's changed.

Their line is always, God, I wish it was 1978.

That was the best year that I had for for apples.

The price was phenomenal, my crop was spectacular, and

my neighbor's crop failed.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: Nostalgia is a very intoxicating drug.

I think much of contemporary politics is with it.

But before we conclude anything else you'd like to say that you feel

we haven't got to in this podcast

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: No man, I'm going to hell anyway, so I

don't worry about any of this stuff.

Now I'm an un express elevator, so you know, I'm just speaking exactly

what we had talked about before.

'cause when I heard you speak Niagara, you said things that

made sense and resonated with me.

Whereas the rest of the room, and I say this without a shred

Of issue, the rest of the room sometimes gets caught in their

own status quo, so to speak.

When they talked about 2050, they said the labor issue was there.

And I remember this specifically, their labor hasn't been born yet for 2050.

Their labor's gonna be the 18 to 21-year-old.

We're 25 years away from 2050.

We're 24 now.

But this is a problem that they don't recognize their own finite inability to

look beyond what they're thinking about.

Like where are you gonna find that 60-year-old that they want to go

harvest strawberries in the field?

Go find them.

But they ain't gonna do it.

And this is why they fail, is because they don't look at their own,

Don't look at their quagmires, that they create themselves by getting

stuck into a principle that they don't look beyond their own thing.

They didn't look at AI or the ability to mechanize or to be able to do it.

These are still people that.

It's 1911 for me, maybe 1913, where the tractors are now just starting to come in.

But everybody's fighting it because they like their horses and they understand

that they can do it with a single furrow plow and they understand how they've

done it, and this is how change works.

And then 20 years go by and their tractor is now a bigger tractor, and

their neighbors are using a far bigger tractor and they're still on a horse

and wondering why they're failing.

. squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: families.

Thank you, Jamie.

That's been a phenomenal talk.

Our automated audience here has been enthralled with every step.

I feel that one of the key takeaways from all of this is that leadership requires

a certain amount of courage, both to call things the way you see it, but

also to hear things that you don't like.

And that certainly many of the leaders who are in the positions of power, they are.

If they're not willing to do those things, they're gonna have a very difficult time.

So thanks again, Jamie.

You're very welcome,

jamie_1_02-23-2026_132053: You're absolutely right.

It's the people don't wanna hear.

I think it goes back, I'll do this real quick for, but I think

it goes back to what you said.

We need to hear all voices in the, even the ones that we disagree with.

squadcaster-jdgg_1_02-23-2026_131812: right on.

What I love about conversations like this is that they refuse the polite

fiction that everything in the AgriFood sector is working the way it should.

Jamie has spent decades close enough to the system to understand how it

really operates, the good intentions, the institutional inertia, the quiet

frustrations, and the moments when someone finally decides to say what others

are thinking, but won't say out loud.

And that's the energy this episode carries because the future of agriculture

will not be decided by the people who are comfortable with the status quo.

It will, however, be shaped by the people willing to question it.

The ones who challenge institutions disrupt stale conversations and

insist that the sector be honest with itself about the road ahead.

That kind of leadership is not always tidy.

It's not always popular, but it sure is necessary.

And if the future heard has a purpose, it's to bring those voices into the open,

the rebels, the sceptics, the builders, and the people who care enough about

agriculture to fight for something better.

So if this conversation sparked ideas for you, share it with someone else who

should also be part of this discussion.

And I don't just mean people in the sector, I mean people who eat food too.

'cause that's really the point that we shouldn't be making food in isolation.

We should be making food with the people we share it with.

'cause that's the future of Canada.

That's the future of Canadian food and farming.

And it's not something we inherit.

It's something we decide and build together.