The AgStacker Community
September Edition
Welcome back to the AgStacker Community Newsletter - a monthly space to spotlight our community’s work, ideas, and experiences. Each issue will feature one standout AgStacker, highlights from our discussion thread, and occasional thought-provoking reads from beyond Substack.
If you’ve ever tried to find a home for your writing on Substack and found there’s no category for farming, gardening, or food production, you’re not alone.
The AgStacker thread will always be open to free subscribers. Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or simply passionate about food and farming, you’re invited to join in and help shape this space.
If this work resonates and you want to help it grow, please consider subscribing to my publication. Your support helps keep this space independent and visible - and brings more good farming writing to more readers.
Take your time to enjoy the work shared here, and if you feel inspired, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.
Featured AgStacker of the Month:
This month, I’m proud to feature Adam - one of the clearest, boldest voices writing about agriculture on Substack. His work cuts against the grain, it’s raw, poetic, and unflinchingly honest about the parts of farming we rarely say out loud. For me personally, Adam’s publication was one of the first agriculture newsletters I found when I arrived on Substack; in a sea of “how to win on Substack” advice, his writing felt like a lifeline back to the real work and the real people. Our first conversation was about farmer protests and the pressures of imports/exports in the UK and still rings in my head. “We’re fighting the same fight from different sides of the Atlantic.”
Here are a few pieces from Adam and other community voices that resonated with me this month:
Adam doesn’t post notes often, but when he does they land like a punch to the gut. Raw and unvarnished truth from the shop floor. This one is a reminder that agriculture isn’t a metaphor or a brand story; it’s blood, risk, grit, and the people who keep showing up anyway. Read it, then tell someone why an agriculture category on Substack matters.
“I was 14, working my third farm job, when I learned how farming can kill you in ways you'd never expect… The rounds started cooking off like popcorn in hell. I dove behind a rusted '75 Chevy…
…I know guys who've been crushed by cultivators, sucked into grain bins. Most of these stories never made it past the obituary column… And nobody sees it. When it's invisible, it's easy to ignore.
That's why we need an agriculture category on Substack. A place. A voice. These aren't just farmers in bibs who ‘come to town once in a while.’ These are intelligent, hard-working people. People with stories. Families with scars… It’s about telling the truth, from the dirt floor up. Because agriculture matters.”
Adam’s piece rips the varnish off corporate platitudes and names the brutal math at the heart of commodity ag, efficiency without a floor for farmers or communities becomes collapse. This is a must-read if you want the unvarnished view from the shop floor, not the boardroom.
“The cruel mathematics of modern agriculture: the better we get at growing food, the worse we get at making a living growing food. It’s like being the world’s best MP3 player company in 2025. …That’s the business model: the American farmer makes money when the world burns and loses his ass when it rains. Profit through apocalypse, bankruptcy through abundance. It’s the sign of a broken system, and we’re all standing in the rubble pretending it’s still a barn.”
From the archives, but still razor-true: Adam names the kind of season that strips the paint where “grit” isn’t heroics, it’s not punching drywall, keeping coffee in the cup, and showing up tomorrow. If you’ve been white‑knuckling it, this one will meet you where you are.
“Because this year is testing us, and grit isn’t always about charging forward.
Sometimes, it’s just keeping your coffee in the cup when your hands won’t quit trembling.
Sometimes, it’s just showing up tomorrow.
Sometimes, it's writing this drivel instead of punching drywall.
…Just remember—grit’s not about winning. It’s about staying in the goddamn game.”
From the Community:
A rich, place-rooted walk through Edale that threads archaeology, oral history, and on-the-ground farming changes from haymaking and horses to tractors, silage, and shrinking birdlife. Luke captures how centuries of “productivity” reshaped both livelihoods and the living landscape.
“There are 26,000 miles of drystone wall in the Peak District National Park… Every stone placed, by hand, with a purpose. It is incredible to think of graft on this scale.
…For generations, hay fields all over the Peak District were fantastic for birds… But as farming changed, Corncrakes were the first to suffer… later Curlews, Skylarks and Lapwings. One change driven by the new mantra of productivity was to switch from haymaking to silage… ‘We were rapidly destroying wildlife.’
Kate puts her finger on a quiet emergency as access to everyday nature shrinks, the “basic facts” of ecology slip from lived knowledge to specialist trivia. This is a clear, compassionate call to restore daily contact with the living world, at home and in schools, before the baseline disappears.
“What frightens me… is loss of knowledge and how this, too, is normalised and goes unnoticed.
…This ability of children to really notice things about the ecological world around them… These descriptions are the basis of ecological understanding. They are fundamental facts about how our world works, as essential as ‘When you drop something, it falls to the ground.’
What’s worrying is how they would gain this knowledge if they don’t have access to these small patches of green…
Try the reverse… What about if we travelled forward in time by a hundred years… Would it not be terrifyingly dystopian if they did not know that slugs and snails appeared when it rained? If blossom appeared on trees in spring? …The next generation can’t put back what they never knew was there. We can.”
Lucy brings her core mantra to lift, healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people, with a grounded snapshot of regen grazing, home dairying, and nutrient-dense, homegrown meals. It’s a gentle, persuasive case that real health starts underground and shows up on the plate.
“I’ve been writing under this title for many years—‘healthy soils = healthy plants = healthy animals = healthy people’. We evolved to learn that it all starts in the soil! If you’ve got healthy soil, you will get healthy plants—provided it rains occasionally… Regen farming means that your plants can store more moisture in the soil to help carry through the dry periods… Back at our farm, we’re also growing grassfed/finished food—I now have 3 milking cows in milk and so the coming months will be filled with all things dairy.”
Julie makes a persuasive, quietly joyful case for “scruffy” pastures. Diversity feeds animals, balances toxins, supports pollinators and invites us to slow down enough to notice. This is pasture-watching as therapy and lesson plan, with cows as master grazers and weeds as partners, not enemies.
“I think there should be a formal therapy that consists of standing barefoot in a healthy pasture and watching a happy animal graze for an hour. …If a cow wants to eat the grass that is growing entwined around a goldenrod plant, she flips out her 9 inch tongue and somehow manages to sort out the grass from the goldenrod and pull only the grass into her mouth. …That’s why a diverse pasture is going to have better animal performance than a beautiful single species pasture, lush as it might be. …Sometimes a scruffy weedy area is actually healthier and more productive than a clipped, short, monoculture.”
Liz turns a gutting “digital death” into a fierce meditation on impermanence, embodiment, and what people are for arguing that love, place, and lived experience are the antidote to AI’s disembodied pull. This one invites you off-screen and back into real life: soil, song, salt, and the work of being human together.
“Do I even exist if I have no digital presence? Who am I if there’s no algorithmic avatar? Do I matter? …There was nothing to prove my experiences; nothing to validate who I was… Nothing but my own precarious memories of fleeting moments as they arose and passed away.
…The tech empires have colonized our minds… They are artificial representations of what people are for.
You are part of nature. We belong to God and to each other. Love is the power you have over tech, especially AI. Your body is divinely designed to heal itself.
No influencer… and most certainly never AI, can take the place of working with the earth for yourself, or of gathering together in community for your daily nourishment—physical and social. That’s what people are for. That is what our bodies are for. That’s what we have that IT doesn’t have.”
A candid, scale-aware take that cuts through garden aesthetics: if your goal is feeding a family year-round, in-ground often wins on cost, water, and sheer output. Laverne isn’t anti–raised bed—she’s pro-practicality, and her case will resonate with anyone chasing true self-sufficiency.
“Raised beds are neat, tidy, and they feel manageable… But for all the vegetables required for a family of 7 (and I’m not just talking fresh lettuce and tomatoes through the summer, I’m talking ALL the vegetables for ALL the year), I simply can’t justify the hours of initial labor, the money spent purchasing materials, or the back‑breaking work of hauling soil and compost.
…A raised bed is like a giant pot… there’s no vacation mode without automated irrigation.
…This year’s winter squash patch is roughly 25 feet by 50 feet—translating that into raised beds would require about 40 raised beds. For my goal of self‑sufficiency? It’s simply not practical.”
Classic Misfit Farmer - smart, self-deprecating, and laugh-out-loud at the absurd truths of farm life. This one turns the dictionary inside out to reveal the casino economics, Houdini goats, therapy pigs, and the eternal mystery of which hydraulic hose pops next. Click for the full glossary; stay for the punchlines.
“According to Merriam-Webster, a tractor is a powerful motor vehicle with large rear wheels used chiefly on farms for hauling equipment and trailers.
What a terrible definition! … As an English major, who happens to own two tractors (or be owned by two tractors—I’m not sure which), I feel uniquely qualified to offer a slightly more accurate definition. A tractor is a sedentary piece of machinery with large flat rear tires used chiefly on farms to play roulette by guessing which hydraulic hose will burst next.
…A farm is a rural open air casino where people can gamble wholesomely on the propagation of crops, but where Mother Nature and the Banker always win in the end.
…A goat is an animal that trained at Houdini’s School for Escape and Get Away.
…A chicken is the smartest animal in the barnyard kingdom, due primarily to its ability to scam farmers into building elaborate coops and enclosures in exchange for a few fresh eggs.”
A clear-eyed, hopeful manifesto for building the future we actually want, one that braids indigenous stewardship with modern know‑how, and a reminder that failure isn’t a detour, it’s the path. This is permission to experiment in public, feed the flops to the pigs, and keep creating anyway.
“We can’t continue as we are, but we can’t go back in time either. Instead, we need to take what we’ve learned… and build something new… that revitalizes Indigenous land stewardship practices, enhanced by modern technological ability and our constantly expanding biological understanding of what’s happening within the soil.
Here’s the thing about making something new–not everything we try is going to work… We are all going to have to get real cozy with failure. We need to invite failure into our homes… and thank her for the lessons. We must share our failures publicly, so that others can learn from our mistakes, too…
The future is full of promise, beauty, and hope… just because something failed… doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying, or that we aren’t closer to where we want to be than before we started.”
Carrie makes a compelling case that conservation won’t thrive without “wild cards” and unicorns. People who bridge farm and field, data and humans, and who didn’t grow up knowing a linnet from a lark. It’s a candid, funny, and urgent call to widen the gates, hire for spark, and train for the rest.
“I rocked up to my National Trust Peak District interview with bright red hair, a sunshine yellow jumper, proudly wearing my LGBTQ+ pin… I knew I was the weakest candidate on paper, so I leaned hard into the strengths I had: people… ‘You’re our wild card. We need someone to shake things up.’
…Conservation has a skills gap… We need people who can bridge worlds. The farm advisor who can navigate an RPA portal without crying, but also hear a skylark and know what it means… We need charisma… And there just aren’t enough of them.
…Maybe the antidote to the unicorn hunt is to stop expecting people to arrive fully formed, and instead create the space, training, and trust that lets them grow… Every decision we make about recruitment either reinforces the wall or chips a small piece away.”
Charlie distills farm-earned wisdom into three truths that cut through modern noise: people over things, grief as proof of love, and nature as a steadying balm. It’s tender, unsentimental, and deeply relatable whether you live in the countryside or in a high-rise.
“That's when it hit me how much energy I'd been wasting on things that don't actually matter… Those things might affect my day, but Henry—and the people I love—they affect my life.
…On a farm, you can't avoid death… sometimes the kindest thing you can do is end the suffering… Before farming, I thought strength meant avoiding pain. Now I know it means feeling it fully, honoring what was lost, and still choosing to love again.
…When I'm feeling broken… a walk through the pasture… the sound of rain on the barn roof… bring me back to myself. Our world is loud… But nature whispers something different: You are here, and that is enough.”
John’s essay is a gentle but uncompromising invitation to close the distance between eater and eaten. Naming the deaths behind all diets, and replacing squeamishness with reciprocity, skill, and gratitude. From wild greens to brook trout, he models a foodway that’s slower, more intentional, and more honest: meet your meal where it lives, ask permission, give thanks, give back.
“We have normalized the disconnection between eating food and the life of food… You can choose foodways that limit the kinds of life that end for your nourishment, but no paths to nourishment are free of death.
…I introduced myself, facing them, and asked for permission to harvest. I only took what I needed. I thanked them for nourishing me… I accepted my role in [the trout’s] death and respected the nourishment it gave me.
What do you do to create reciprocity in return for the nourishment you receive? …It is important to be at peace with what you eat… Build relationships with your food. Don’t let someone else own the relationship.”
Beginner-friendly without dumbing it down, this is a crisp starter map for resilient, multipurpose breeds that fit real lives and scruffy acres. Paul and Abby keep the bar humane and practical with hardy genetics over hype, forage over feed bags, and small, steady wins that teach partnership instead of perfection.
“Farming doesn’t have to be all or nothing… Animals have always lived beside us; as co‑workers, scrap‑eaters, and survival partners.
…Icelandics… hardy as hell, lamb easily, forage on brush and weeds most sheep ignore…
Gloucestershire Old Spots… slower‑growing, thrive on pasture, excellent foragers… raised in orchards, cleaning up windfallen fruit and fertilizing the soil.
Dexters… smaller size (easy to handle), efficient grazers, and thrive on rough pasture… enough for a household.
Welsh Harlequin… calm, weatherproof… eggs up to 300 a year.
Rabbits… quiet, efficient… manure is ‘cold,’ meaning it can go straight into the garden.
…Choose breeds that have already done the hard work of surviving centuries of weird weather, scarcity, and human neglect… Farming doesn’t belong to experts and corporations. It belongs to anyone willing to pick up a shovel, learn from mistakes, and start a life with animals again.”
Sam lays out a calm, confidence-building roadmap for transitioning to regen. Phased, measurable, and financially sane. If you’ve been dithering at the starting line, this turns “someday” into a concrete first acre, with clear priorities, cost logic, and what to track so you know it’s working.
“The transition to regenerative agriculture doesn't have to be overwhelming. While the benefits are compelling—80% higher profitability and dramatic input cost reductions—success depends on strategic, gradual implementation that fits your unique operation.
…Start with cover crops on just 10–20% of your acreage… simultaneously, begin reducing tillage intensity on your most manageable fields.
…Expand cover crops to 40–60% and diversify rotations… then integrate livestock or intensify rotational grazing, add windbreaks or riparian buffers, and, after five years of data, optimize based on your conditions.
…Monitor soil organic matter (target: +0.5% annually), water infiltration, earthworms; track input reductions, yield stability, and cash flow. Don’t transition alone—build your network. The question isn’t whether to transition, but how quickly you can begin building the foundation for long-term success.”
A practical, hopeful field note from Tamzin in coastal NSW. Smaller Jerseys, once‑a‑day milking, chickens and pigs cycling nutrients, and multi‑species oversowing that keeps soil “skinned” even after floods. Tamzin shows how diversity lightens grazing pressure, boosts forage quality, and gives farmers their lives back.
“Our summer season growth rate is insane and there’s opportunity to make hay without any detriment to being regenerative… Chris Eggert has a new way of farming since introducing MS into his pasture.
These are the guidelines he uses:
• Use smaller cows (Jerseys)
• Milk them once a day—giving Chris and his family his life back
• Grow other animals to utilise their natural fertiliser inputs (chickens and pigs)
• Sell direct from on‑farm—market to the city slickers in Sydney ($11 per litre)
…As we walked through Chris’s paddocks it was noticeable how the MS were encouraging the pasture species to return… I didn’t see competition, I saw diversity… The feed load… gives the really palatable species… a chance to reintroduce themselves… The most important part of managing land is to maintain a layer of ‘skin’ on the surface and planting MS mixes is such a fantastic way of benefiting from this.”
I’m in awe of how much Jackie gets done: ram shopping, patching tunnels, digging spuds, then spinning up YouTube, soap, meat boxes, and VA work on top. This is the real blueprint so many of us are chasing: multiple small streams, honest updates, and a workflow that keeps the farm profitable and fun without pretending it’s easy. If you’re 60+ and still grafting, her mix of practicality, humour, and diversification is exactly the kind of inspiration, and permission, we need.
“It’s rarely one great big achievement… It’s the bazillion little jobs, the half-finished projects, sudden emergency rescues, and the determination to keep going anyway.
…For all of us the biggest deal is getting by; figuring out the ways to add income, make life easier, create simpler systems, get started, keep going, wind down!
…YouTube… Substack… Eggs, veg, meat boxes… Crafts… VA/Freelance Admin—this is my other business that doesn’t require more land or weather-cooperation… I’m holding out for diversifying, and creating streams of income that make smallholding into my sixties profitable and fun.”
A tender, quietly triumphant glimpse of a compact, hand‑built CSA farm. Carved from nettles and brambles into a place worth preserving. Brett’s tour celebrates craft, teamwork, and the magic of making beauty and food in a small valley on the edge of Prague.
“I hope you get a sense of just how compact our farm is, and that with this space, plus our young orchard, we run a 50 member Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)… We found a jungle of blackberries and stinging nettles and made it into a beautiful and productive place.
…There is joy, beauty, and meaning in labor, in a job well done… The historic buildings are monuments to the love of craftsmanship… Unlike the strip malls and monoculture fields that plague our landscapes, it’s a place worth preserving. We need to make more places worth preserving.
Let’s not forget, our origin story tells us we come from a garden. If you can find a little patch of earth, you can head on home.”
Debbie’s piece is also a nudge to meat producers to stop giving offal away. Sell it, tell the story, and turn “spare parts” into signature products. It’s exactly what Agstack is about - food produced with care, sold directly to the eater, with nose‑to‑tail respect and flavour leading the pitch. If we market pâté, tongue, oxtail, and skirts with the same pride as steaks, we keep value on the farm and win over palates one honest bite at a time.
“Brits have a very strange attitude towards offal… As far as I’m concerned, if sweetbreads are on the menu… it’s food of the gods… My almost favourite food is oxtail—cooked long and slow… The inner skirt… can be flash fried and served like a steak… It makes sense… making use of every last bit of a carcase. Environmentally, philosophically and financially.”
A gorgeous, big‑canvas ode to American fruit diversity and a practical map for finding it again. Andrew braids homesteaders, field artists, plant explorers, and today’s apple sleuths into one through‑line: pay attention, then resurrect. The USDA watercolors aren’t just pretty; they’re working field guides, living baselines, and a rebuke to uniformity. Landrace cider as thesis: place, people, and stubborn variety over marketing gloss.
“Can you call it resurrection when nothing has died? …Amid the ruins of the Burns homestead he found a century‑old scraggly tree still bearing fruit. The apple he bit into was the Nero… confirmed against historical descriptions and nine watercolors spanning thirty years, the first painted by Passmore in 1894.
…The watercolors are the fruit equivalent of Dominican kids who grew up hurling ragballs and swinging mango tree branches… a visual baseline of what American agricultural diversity once looked like, and what it could become again.
Maybe to practice resurrection means only to start paying attention.”
Beyond Substack
There’s a wide world of agriculture, food production, and farming journalism beyond this platform. Here are a few standout pieces I read this month that are worth your time.
I was quietly surprised by this piece from Abby. I usually see her building, not blasting but here she names the hollowness head‑on and still points to the work that actually matters: farmer‑led supply chains, measurable outcomes, and accountability with teeth. Her vision for a joined‑up, health‑, nature‑ and community‑first food system is one I align with—and this felt like a necessary escalation to defend it. When the strategy is slogans, someone has to say so. Abby did, and it lands.
“What actually is the plan? …There is simply no guidance, no leadership on how things are going to change. There are no tools to measure outcomes. And zero concrete details on how any of this will be funded.
…We are reporting one of the worst harvests ever… dairy farmers quitting… skills shortages… BPS reduction coupled with closure of SFI… while greedy corporations buy up land, exploit contracts, import cheaper, poorer alternatives.
…While the solutions are there staring us all in the face, what’s entirely lacking is bold decisive leadership to make the tough calls and support those who deliver the benefits.”
The UK’s New Food Strategy Leaves Farmers Hungry for Real Change
This is exactly the kind of cross‑sector fix we need after a hot, dry summer. Turning required margin cuttings into winter feed keeps SFI habitats on track, eases livestock shortages, and builds neighbour‑to‑neighbour resilience. Clear caveat on ragwort; otherwise, those legume‑rich strips are literally designed for nutrition. Win‑win for nature and the bottom line.
“There’s a great opportunity for [arable farmers] to offer this material to their neighbours keeping livestock. This could be a lifeline for farmers still looking for their winter rations. It’s a win‑win: we strengthen relationships with each other, while still delivering the environmental outcomes we’re paid for and managing habitat for nature.”
Field margin cuttings can help livestock farmers facing feed shortages
Solid, accessible explainer on the soil‑biology end of regen farming. Microscopes, compost bioreactors, and cover‑crop management tied to real‑world economics. I like that it holds the tension, promising early results on compost extracts, but no silver bullets; change the environment first or most microbes die. Padwick’s yield dip → cost‑cutting + premium markets is the pragmatic takeaway policymakers and farmers both need to hear.
“Having worked on this topic for decades… a more complex soil food web can only be a good thing for plant growth and resilience.
…My own view would be that it’s better to change the soil environment first… Otherwise, most [introduced microbes] will simply die.
…After eliminating chemical inputs, [wheat] production plunged from more than 7t/ha to 1.5t/ha, before rising again to more than 3t/ha. Yet the business remains profitable because input costs have been slashed and products sell at a premium… ‘It’s going to be another five years before we really start seeing how things can change.’
…Boosting soil health is ‘the absolute front and centre of battling climate change’… ‘This needs to be seen as a national security issue, every bit as much as dealing with Putin.’”
Down and dirty: how regenerative farming is digging into microscopic soil life
Call to Action
AgStackers is a community effort, and your voice is what will shape it.
Get involved: Share your thoughts, stories, or links in the AgStackers thread for a chance to be featured next month.
Spread the word: Know someone who’d love this space? Share this newsletter or invite them to join.
Have your say: What topics matter most to you? Leave a comment or jump into the thread with your suggestions.
If you find value in this community and want to help it grow, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Every contribution helps keep this space thriving and independent. As AgStackers grows, paid members will get early access to the discussion and priority for feature sections in future newsletters.
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.
Thanks, Helen, for highlighting my post and putting all of these together. Do you know if anybody tried emailing or reaching out to someone at Substack to see if they could add a farming category?
Thank you for compiling all these posts, must have taken you ages. Now if we also had a Farming category on Substack......