The Future is Rural: Reclaiming Food Sovereignty through Farming Clubs? with Jason Bradford
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2026
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With grocery prices skyrocketing and supply chain disruptions becoming more frequent, the average person has more and more incentive to get involved in growing their own food – but how does one even get started? For most people, the time, money, knowledge, and land remain out of reach in order to learn even the basics of agriculture. What kind of options are available for individuals who want to reclaim their food sovereignty – and subsequently become more connected with the Earth and like-minded people?
In this episode, Nate is joined by biologist and farmer Jason Bradford, to discuss his 'Farming Club,' which offers hands-on learning for ecologically based agriculture, where members also get to take home food and build a relationship with the land. Jason explains why industrial agriculture, optimized for financial returns and machine efficiency while ignoring ecological costs, makes it almost impossible to become a successful small-scale farmer in today's economy. The Farming Club's model provides a way for people to maintain their jobs while building the knowledge, skills, and community connections needed for a lower-throughput future.
How could reinvigorating farming culture provide an avenue to real skills and purpose to the next generation, especially for young men? How could the farming club model be replicated across the country, sparking small rural movements everywhere? And how could thousands of ideas and initiatives like these act as safety nets for individuals and communities as we transition to a more simplified society?
(Conversation recorded on December 4th, 2025)
About Jason Bradford:
Jason co-manages a Community Supported Agriculture program with the Organic Growers Club at Oregon State University, where he practices land stewardship methods and cultivates community rooted in ecologically-based agricultural practices. Prior to his switch to agriculture, he was a research biologist studying evolution, ecology, and global change.
Additionally, Jason has been affiliated with the Post Carbon Institute since 2004, first as a Fellow and then as Board President. He is currently a co-host of the Crazy Town podcast, as well as a writer for Resilience.org. Additionally, in 2019, he authored The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification.
Watch this video episode on YouTube
Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.
---
Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future
Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Are we going to starve if we have human labor and organic methods? |
| 0:05.0 | If people are skillful, no. |
| 0:07.4 | Overproduction of horrific, ecologically destructive farming is the real problem, |
| 0:12.4 | not small farmers figuring out how to grow food ecologically. |
| 0:16.3 | So the problem is that most of the stuff we're actually producing on these conventional farms. |
| 0:20.5 | It's not even feeding people. |
| 0:22.1 | It's like we had to create whole industries for almost the waste product of overproduction. |
| 0:26.5 | In an agro-ecological system with people doing a really good job and internalizing a lot |
| 0:32.1 | of cycling of nutrients and integrating livestock and having a diversity of crops that are |
| 0:37.1 | adapted to your place, |
| 0:38.3 | you're going to have a lot of food abundance. |
| 0:43.6 | You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how |
| 0:49.5 | energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:56.8 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play |
| 1:02.8 | emergent roles in the coming great simplification. |
| 1:10.7 | Today I re-welcome my friend Jason Bradford to the program. |
| 1:15.1 | He was on here two years ago or so. |
| 1:17.9 | Jason is a farmer, a community organizer, |
| 1:20.7 | and today we discuss small-scale, |
| 1:23.4 | ecological agriculture, |
| 1:24.6 | and community building and potential future farming schools. |
| 1:29.7 | Jason currently co-manages a community-supported agricultural program with the Oregon Growers Club |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nate Hagens, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Nate Hagens and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.