AgStacker Community Newsletter
May Edition
Welcome back to the AgStackers Community Newsletter, a monthly place to spotlight writers sharing thoughtful work about food, farming, and the wider food system.
If you’ve ever tried to find a proper home for farming, gardening, or food system writing on Substack and realised there isn’t really a category for it, you’re in the right place. Whether you write, read, or simply care about how food is grown, you’re invited to join in and help shape what we’re building.
A quick note from me before we get into this month’s links. This newsletter is a little later than usual. I have been in the middle of a fairly intense stretch of life and work, with some big personal loose ends to tie up and a larger project taking up more of my energy than I expected, all while keeping on top of my Farms Not Factories role. The result is that my own Substack rhythm has slipped a bit lately, and I appreciate your patience.
Because of that, I’ve decided to postpone the AgStacker Roundtable until June, so I can get my feet back under me before we dive into the conversation again.
Even when everything else feels slightly chaotic, this community newsletter is one of my favourite posts to write. I love getting to share other people’s work, and I’m grateful to everyone who keeps replying, recommending pieces, and helping make AgStackers feel like a real place.
Take your time with the work shared here, and if you feel inspired, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.
AgStacker of the Month: Jackie Bridgen
This month’s AgStacker of the Month is Jackie Bridgen, who writes Smallholder Journal & Homestead Collective from Wiltshire. Jackie writes about smallholding and working the land, but what I value most is her clarity. She cuts through the fog when farming conversations get crowded with vague claims, fashionable panic, or easy certainty.
She is practical without being cold about it, and honest without turning that into performance. I found Jackie’s writing when I first joined Substack, and it genuinely shaped how I write and what I pay attention to. She has also been a huge support of AgStacker and of my work, and I do not take that lightly. If you have not read Smallholder Journal yet, this is your nudge.
Here are a few pieces from Jackie and other community voices that resonated with me this month:
Jackie at her absolute best, smallholding detail and dry humour, then the gut punch when “help” arrives in the form of a machine that does not understand what it is driving over. It’s also about what it feels like to spend decades building something careful and living, only to watch it get flattened by someone else’s idea of efficiency.
“At this point, it became apparent that there was a complete lack of understanding, the further up the communication chain you travelled, about our ethos, and the work we have done for the last quarter century. My carefully protected sward has been vandalised. It will be damaged for decades.”
And this one does two things we need right now, it names the reality of trying to grow and rear food in weather that feels increasingly unhinged, and it calls out the online hot takes that dismiss self reliance as a “scam” while quietly trying to sell you something. Then she pivots into a deeper point about contentment, and how changing everything can become its own kind of avoidance.
“Self sufficiency is not a scam, it’s not even an illusion. It’s a catch all term used by those of us who espouse it and study its canon, to mean providing as much for oneself as it is possible to do in one’s individual circumstances.”
From the Community:
A really useful, confidence building guide for anyone who has ever bought seeds on hope alone and then wondered why nothing worked. It is practical without being patronising, and it makes a strong case for reading packets properly, and for valuing locally saved seed that has actually adapted to where you live.
Also, a quick personal note, Gardening & Foraging for Life recently told me they felt overlooked by AgStackers, and I’m genuinely sorry for that. This is meant to be a big, welcoming space, not a club, so if you want your work considered and it slips through, please nudge me. I get a lot of submissions and I would always rather fix that than miss good writing.
“Saved seed—from folks who have been growing and saving seeds in your region; and packaged seed from a company whose seed is grown in a different region—can perform very differently in your garden. Plants, and their seeds, adapt over time to where they are growing and how they are cared for.”
This is a clear eyed look at school dinners and ultra processed foods that does not just wag a finger at parents. Patricia Gray ties kids’ health to the boring bits that actually matter, funding, procurement contracts, kitchen skills, and what happens when “cheap” food becomes the default rather than the occasional treat. I also appreciated the practical ending, small acts that are realistic, especially if you are feeding children and trying to keep your head above water.
“Not only is this bad for schools but it’s rubbish for our farmers, especially small-scale producers who cannot possibly compete with Big Food.”
This one will land hard for anyone who has tried to “do regenerative right” by copying the best looking system on Instagram, then felt quietly crushed when it did not translate to their own land, weather, money, or energy. Christine Martin makes a simple, relieving point, there is no universal recipe, because you are working with a living system and a living life. The best bit is how she reframes frustration, not as failure, but as information, and a prompt to come back into relationship with what is actually in front of you.
“Most land challenges are not technical problems. They are relational. They are shaped by how you observe, how you interpret what you see, and how you make decisions within your unique situation.”
This is a clear, slightly gutting read that asks a question most of us dodge because fish are easy to distance ourselves from. Demi | Why Welfare Matters walks through the science in plain language, then lands on the bit that matters, if there is a decent chance fish feel pain, our current “out of sight, out of mind” approach is not ethically neutral. The section on slaughter methods is especially worth your time, because it turns a philosophical debate into something concrete that policy and industry could actually change.
“Regardless of species differences, ethically, we should be treating all fish as if they have the potential for pain. But this is rarely reflected in real life.”
This is one of those essays that quietly rearranges your thinking. Steph Goodson starts with the way we like farming as a backdrop, then pulls you into what is actually being lost, not just farms, but the everyday knowledge that makes food real. As a dietitian she also refuses the easy binaries, and makes a strong case that health lives in patterns and competence, not perfection or online rules. If you have been feeling that the farming debate is loud but oddly empty, this will explain why.
“Not the performance of it, but the work itself. The long continuity of it. The way knowledge is handed from one generation to the next through repetition and memory.”
If you are tired of livestock debates that collapse everything into one number, this is a refreshing read. ffinlo Costain pulls together a genuinely holistic project that tries to measure sustainability as a whole system, greenhouse gases, nutrition, welfare, and biodiversity, without letting any one metric bully the rest out of the room. The “iceberg indicators” section on welfare is especially interesting, because it shows how you can make something hard to measure more practical on real farms.
“The modelling spans greenhouse gas emissions, nutrition, farm animal welfare and grassland biodiversity — a breadth that reflects the project’s core conviction that sustainability cannot be reduced to any single metric.”
This is farm business reality with a lot of heart and a sharp sense of humour. Alana McLean takes you into dairy benchmarking, the unglamorous but genuinely useful practice of putting your numbers on the table and letting your peers pick through them, kindly, but thoroughly. If you like writing that captures both the data side of farming and the very human feelings behind it, this is a great place to start.
“Benchmarking encourages us to lift the hood on our business, wiping away the dust to get a good look at what is working well and what could do with a bit of attention.”
This is a bracing read because it refuses the easy line that prison food should be grim by design. Katie Engler makes the case that decent food is about stability, health, and rehabilitation, and that the costs of doing it badly do not stay behind prison walls. The most interesting idea is the practical one, growing food on site so meals, skills, and dignity are linked, not treated as separate problems.
“Providing decent meals—food that is nutritious, culturally appropriate, and at least somewhat enjoyable—signals that people are still valued as human beings.”
This is the kind of post I want every new entrant to read before they get pressured into taking a “just be grateful” deal. Anna Bowen lays out contract farming in plain English, then gets very specific about what makes an opportunity viable, financially and relationally, without pretending either part is simple. I also love that she ends with nature and place, because those things do matter when you are building a life around a farm, not just a spreadsheet.
“Within the industry there seems to be a rather unfortunate attitude that as new entrants we should be grateful for any chance to farm and take anything offered.”
This is Slow Food in the UK doing what it does best, making the case through pleasure rather than preaching. It’s practical enough to be useful on a busy weeknight, but still manages to feel like a small permission slip to pay attention, to eat with care, and to keep a few standards even when life is full. Also, the kitchen sponge rant is quietly excellent, because it lands the point without turning into a lecture.
“One of the questions we’re often asked is: Slow Food sounds great, but how does it work for busy lives? The truth is that Slow Food can be “fast” food.”
AgStackers is a community effort, and your voice is what will shape it.
Get involved
Reply to this post with your links, ideas, and anything you want me to see for next month’s AgStacker. If you’ve published something you’re proud of, or you’ve read a piece you think the community would love, drop it in the comments and I’ll pull from there when I’m curating the next newsletter.
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If you find value in this community and want to help it grow, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support keeps AgStackers thriving and independent, and it also gives you access to the monthly AgStacker Roundtable if you’d like a more connected space to talk, swap ideas, and help shape what we build next.
Thanks for being part of the community. Let’s see where we can take this together.
Until next month,
H x
If just 5% of my readers tipped £1/$1 this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.
Thank you so much Helen! I am the one blushing by the muck heap 😂
Your work on holding this non-category together is much appreciated, as ever.
Thank you for the mention ☺️ (I always lose followers on other platforms when I talk about prisons so this made me chuckle - in a good way) x