• Mangaroa Farms
• Future Whenua
• Ground Truth NZ
• The Future Is Rural
• Joel Salatin

What happens when an 800-hectare sheep and beef farm in Aotearoa New Zealand starts asking what the land wants to be? At Mangaroa Farms, just north of Wellington in the Mangaroa Valley, chief regenerative officer Zebulon Horrell and his team are exploring that question through what they call a living laboratory for regeneration — an integrated operation where forestry, pastoralism, market gardening, and community gathering weave together under a single guiding directive: community nourishment.

In this Learning Lab session, Zeb walks through the farm's evolving experiments, from a permaculture orchard planted with 105 fruit trees — every single one a different variety — to a farm shop supplying the valley with year-round produce, to a composting system built on relationships with local breweries and peanut butter makers. He explores how permaculture principles scale beyond the backyard, how syntropic agroforestry is shaping their approach to transitioning radiata pine back toward native forest, and why their newest initiative is a potato-growing co-op designed to make regenerative food accessible, not just aspirational.

What comes through in the conversation is something harder to summarize: a way of thinking about land stewardship where profitability and reciprocity aren't at odds, where international volunteers and local school kids and neighboring contractors all find their way into the same living project. Zeb shares openly about the challenges, the trade-offs, and the slow, patient work of designing for a future that lasts. Hosted by Sophia Rokhlin, with live Q&A.