AgStacker Community Newsletter
Introduction
Welcome back to the AgStackers Community Newsletter, our monthly place to share 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. Take your time with this month’s edition and hopefully discover some great writers and publications along the way.
I’m also really excited that the AgStacker Roundtable is tomorrow on Zoom, and for the first time it’s open to anyone subscribed to my publication. I’d love you to join us if you can.
When: Sunday 23rd August at 1pm (UK time). That’s 8am Eastern, 7am Central.
I’ll send the Zoom link out by email, so keep an eye on your inbox. I’ll also post a recording and recap on Substack next week, so if you can’t make it live, you won’t miss out.
AgStackers is free to read, and it will stay that way. If you enjoy what I’m building here and want to help me keep it going, a paid subscription is simply a way to support the time that goes into it.
And as always, if something catches your attention, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.
AgStacker of the Month: Hugo Harrison
This month’s AgStacker of the Month is Hugo Harrison, who writes Salt and the Earth. Hugo is a chef and hobby farmer, and I first met him in person at a pastured pigs event at FarmEd, back when he was working at a restaurant in Hampshire not far from me. He’s one of those people who makes you feel, very quietly, that farming and hospitality don’t have to be two separate worlds, not as a “farm experience”, but as a practical way of taking responsibility for what ends up on the plate.
This post is a good example of why his writing sticks. It’s about visiting the abattoir, but it’s really about the emotional weight of raising animals, cooking them, and living honestly inside that contradiction. Hugo doesn’t perform certainty, he writes the moment where the books stop helping and you’re left with your own heart, your own choices, and the work still waiting when you get home.
“Nowhere details the weight of a man’s heart after parting with an animal he’s raised since their first moments in this world. There is no recipe for how to roast remorse.”
This is Hugo doing what he does best, making seasonality feel real again, not a label, not a vibe, but an actual rhythm you can cook with. He’s launching Farm Post, a simple idea that I genuinely love, seasonal ingredients posted to your door with a recipe and a bit of context, so you can taste what’s happening on farms even if you don’t live near one. It’s practical, generous, and quietly radical in a world where most of our food shopping is designed to feel the same in May as it does in November.
“This is a not-for-profit project and is being sold at cost price, with the aim of connecting as many kitchens as possible in the British Isles with these glorious seasonal flavours, all while supporting small-scale growers and their families.”
Hugo on true seasonality through the lens of herbs, written from the reality of cooking on a farm when the beds are empty and the menu still needs building.
“We opened in mid-May when the days had grown warm and golden but the ground was someway behind. For the most part it was cool and wet and the herbs had many weeks of waking to do before even the most timid of harvests could be made. There was nothing, not even flat leaf parsley.”
From the Community:
Abey’s been on The Market Gardener Podcast for a full two-hour conversation about why animal agriculture still matters, and she doesn’t dodge the hard bits. If you like your food system thinking practical, grounded, and properly argued, this is a great listen.
“In June, I flew all the way to Quebec for the opportunity to chat with JM and Chris. Their show is one of my favourite podcasts and I really admire what they do and what they stand for. It was an honour to be invited!”
A love letter to heritage apples that turns into something bigger, about place, labour, and the “extensive pleasures” you only get when food is rooted in real farms and real communities.
“When I bite into a local heritage variety from the orchard, I am able to sample what Sedbergh tastes like. It is a sensory experience of my place inaccessible to the vast majority of day-tripping tourists, most of whom are unaware of Sedbergh’s little orchard.”
This is what rich really looks like, and it has nothing to do with what’s in your account. It’s warm bread cooling on the rack, callused hands that can keep things running, and a life built on skills, pride, and people who trade what they have instead of pretending they don’t need anyone.
“Rust is creeping around the edges of my truck, but it’s paid off. This is not the season for vacations, but we did manage to replace all our windows for our home last year. Everything seems to be in a perpetual fix, break cycle.
Our boots are worn and dirty, like fine lines around my eyes, the leather is cracking, telling of its well lived life. When it makes sense, we buy something new, but more often than not, we give something old a second life.”
This is the kind of reporting that makes you look twice at the word “commitment”. Supermarkets and chains can talk about welfare while the industry uses that language to push through new factory farm planning applications, and the public is left assuming standards are improving when the reality is murkier. If you care about livestock welfare, pollution, and the direction of the UK food system, read this one.
“The commitment is voluntary and carries no enforcement mechanism. Once a farm is built, there is no way to ensure the welfare standards that justified its construction are actually maintained.”
A really honest look at cow-calf dairying in the UK, told through the actual daily reality of it, not the brochure version. If you’ve ever felt uneasy about the standard dairy model but also know farming has to pay its way, Becca lays out the trade-offs with a lot of care.
“We started a micro-dairy (a small dairy with up to 20 cows), where we keep the calves with their mums and sell our milk directly to our local community, milking only 4-5 days a week or to demand. A system designed to work with us, our farm and what we value most.”
This is a cracking reminder that “being prepared” doesn’t have to mean hoarding packets of beige carbs you don’t even want to eat. It’s practical, opinionated, and rooted in old-school common sense. Stock the simple things that help you preserve real food, then build the skills to use them. Even if you’re not a full-on homesteader, it’ll make you look at your pantry differently.
“Salt and vinegar turn seasonal, local, nutrient dense food into year-round sustenance. Both of these items store well long term. Salt needs a bucket. Vinegar needs Jars. And suddenly the food you can hunt, grow, or trade doesn’t spoil.”
Jackie writes drought and wildfire haze in a way that’s physical, then turns that same heat into rage about who gets listened to, who gets funded, and how quickly “agroecology” becomes a badge for people who spent decades laughing at it. It’s furious, funny in places, and stubbornly hopeful, the kind of piece you read when you need reminding that grit is a farming skill too.
“This morning, the westerly wind brought smoke from the wildfires in South Wales across the vale, and for the first hour or two the sun lost the battle, and it felt like farming after war. The splits and craters of the drought, the lingering smoke, the coughing animals.”
This is a smart, slightly spiky take on why farmer’s markets get written off so easily, and why that dismissal suits the big retailers just fine. Trinity doesn’t pretend markets are perfect, she names the real problems, hours, access, price, the “boutique” vibe, and the depressing amount of resold produce, then still argues they’re one of our best shots at rebuilding a more local food economy. It’s part love letter, part kick up the arse, and it’ll make you look at your own market with clearer eyes.
“Food deserts are not a natural consequence of poverty. They are a downstream outcome from the prioritization of enterprise profits in the food system.”
This is a properly useful piece for anyone who’s ever said “small farms matter” and then got stuck trying to explain how without drifting into nostalgia. Paul makes the case for microfarms as a practical modern tool, but he’s also clear-eyed about the risks, small and rural doesn’t automatically mean better, and without good design and planning they just become expensive houses in fields. I love that he names that tension head-on, because it’s exactly where so many well-meaning ideas fall apart.
“Microfarms do not automatically help the environment because they are small, green-looking or built in the countryside. To provide genuine environmental benefits, they must be designed as part of the ecological system they inhabit – not just as normal houses dropped into a field.”
This starts with pears, but it’s really about whether a food-producing country can adapt fast enough to keep growing food as the climate shifts and pests move. Fenton shows how New Zealand’s plant import rules have quietly made it close to impossible to trial new fruit varieties, not because anyone voted for “no innovation”, but because the system is so slow it defaults to “no”. If you care about food resilience, local production, and not getting stuck with yesterday’s crops while the world changes around us, this is worth your time.
“You cannot licence a variety you have never been allowed to evaluate. The trial block comes first. Always. And here the trial block is illegal.”
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’d like me to see for next month’s AgStacker. If you’ve written something you’re proud of, or read a piece you think others here would enjoy, drop it in the comments. It’s where I’ll be looking when I put together the next newsletter.
Spread the word
Please share this post and help the brilliant work featured here reach more readers, while helping other food and farming writers find this community too.
Support AgStackers and join the Roundtable
Everything I publish is free, and I want to keep it that way. If you enjoy being part of this community and want to help me keep building it, a paid subscription is simply a way to support the work behind it.
The Roundtable is open to all subscribers, so if you’d like to meet other AgStackers, swap ideas and have a say in where we take this next, I’d love to see you there.
Thanks for being part of AgStackers. I’m really enjoying seeing this community take shape and I’m excited to see where we can take it 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.
What an honour, and what a magnificent resource - unbelievable work, Helen! Thank you so, so much.