Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #132: Why Beef Prices are SO High & Joel Salatin’s Solution

Transcript

Episode #132: Why Beef Prices are SO High & Joel Salatin’s Solution · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: As much as you want to blame somebody, there's no bogeyman.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the drought.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've had this unprecedented drought from basically California all the way over to Georgia, the southern tier of the U.S., for the last two years.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, last fall, fall of 22 in October, I was in Mississippi and I met farmers there.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're losing cows stepping in the soil has opened up so wide in their fields from the cracks from the drought that the cracks are big enough, cows are stepping in the cracks and breaking their legs.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome to Beyond Labels.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Stina McCullough, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have a very special and lively topic for you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Joel is going to talk about a farm topic that is really hot right now in the news.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the rising beef prices and the low cattle numbers.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: They are the lowest since before 1950.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, Joel, can you walk us through this?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Cena, and I'm really tickled to bring this topic to our folks because what they're hearing in the mainstream media is definitely um it's not being helpful.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is fueling the victimization idea.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, if there's one thing that I promote, I I actually believe that we can whatever, you know, participate with nature, with ecology, uh, as stewards, as caretakers, and actually um leverage and imbue nature with more abundance than than it would have otherwise.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so that this cattle thing has come out and and um it's interesting how the different news programs have have have played it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, they've had ranchers on that um that some of them blame the drought.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um interestingly, uh uh uh just a week ago I came within within a hair's breadth of being on a one of the top um conservative uh news programs.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was I didn't make the cut because I wasn't willing to blame Biden.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, so everybody has a blame.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: They uh they they they some of them are blaming the drought.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Some the the conservatives tend to blame blame uh imports, fake meat, bugs, uh, all sorts of things at Biden, um, you know, that Biden won't won't uh help the farmer, you know, forgive loans and and pay mortgages and blah blah blah.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I haven't heard anybody anywhere um actually hit it head on and say, what can we learn from this and how how can we respond to it?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh instead of just you know crawling in our corner and whimpering and whimpering and complaining about it, uh, from from either liberal or conservative you know uh uh branches.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so the thing is the cattle numbers are extremely low.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh prices in the supermarket have risen 10% in the last just uh about six weeks.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're escalating and plan to go higher.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: We have fewer cattle in America than we've had since 1950.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me, it is not um here are some of the things that are being blamed for.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's John Kerry.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: John Kerry's out here saying, you know, burps and farts are, you know, bad.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but listen, trust me, there is not a rancher or farmer in the country that goes out and looks at his cows and cow herd and says, Hmm, you know, John Kerry says these guys are gonna kill us all.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think I better drop my herd by 20% so that you know there's a planet for my grandchildren to live on.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know a farmer or rancher that even believes John Kerry, okay?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So so it's not that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not um it's not imports.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some of you may know that Biden just kind of opened the door for Paraguay to uh start in uh exporting beef to the U.S.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the problem is that Paraguay has has some disease issues, and so the the ranching community is is paranoid that they're gonna bring foot and mouth, hoof and mouth, and and different things.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but that that door hasn't really completely opened yet.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and even if it were open and we were being flooded with cheap imports, well, the prices would be going down, you know, but they're not going down.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um some people say, well, it's all this cell cultured, it's just you know, fake meat, cell culture, be impossible burger, blah, blah, blah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not that because if it were, we'd see that all over the place.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact is, all those, you know, those cell-cultured companies, we've talked about them seeing it, you know, on on the program here, that that that uh practically uh from a from a scientific standpoint, they can't make it work.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: They can't make a bioreactor bigger than a five-gallon bucket even function because it's really uh uh it's really hard to duplicate blood vessels and hearts and livers and kidneys and and digestive tracts, you know, with with uh with bubbles and and mechanical filters.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so so they just haven't been able to make it work.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and and we're seeing all those companies go bankrupt now.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not happening.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Bugs are saying, oh, because we're gonna eat crickets, all this stuff.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there again, um, you know, no, nobody, again, that's not that's not taking over the market.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're not seeing that in the marketplace.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the truth is we just need to need to fess up.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's no bogeyman here.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's as much as you want to blame somebody, there's no bogeyman.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just the drought.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've had this unprecedented drought from basically uh, you know, from California uh all the way over to Georgia, the southern tier of the U.S.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um here for the last two years.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, last fall, fall of 22 in October, I was in Mississippi and I met farmers there who are losing cows.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna like this, Cena, because I know how you like animals.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't like it either, but they're losing cows stepping in the the soil has opened up so wide in their fields from the cracks from the drought that the cracks are big enough, cows are stepping in the cracks and breaking their legs.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then they have to and then they have to put the cow down.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so this is so so this this has never happened before.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is this is like worse than Dust Bowl, okay?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um and and and now, you know, in the last whatever, 10 days, we're having all these wildfires in Texas.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Here it's spring in Texas, and so we got all this spring, and and suddenly already uh one third of tech of Texas's spring grass has burned up again now, uh, with fire, not drought, but fire.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, so the the question I I want to bring to a news program if they'll have me on, is let let let's appreciate that it is drought.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Droughts happen in various stages of severity.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, on our farm here in Virginia, we can pretty much count on a drought four out of five years of various you know amount.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're in the spring, sometimes they're in the fall, but generally at some point in the year, we'll have a drought that is that is significant, uh, four out of five years.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's routine enough to say, well, what can we do to mitigate group drought?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can can we can we mitigate this this thing?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I have a I have a a kind of a three-part recipe, uh a regimen, a ingredient list, if you will.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what I would like some platform to to you know to share, and you guys can share this as you hear this, but um it's it's it's elementary, but it's basic.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's basic ecology.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is ponds, all right.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it sounds silly.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ponds, yeah, ponds.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: 500 years ago, North America was eight percent covered in water.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Today, we're less than four percent, and that's with all the you know, dams and tva and and and uh uh you know lake mead and shasta and all these man-made lakes, uh, we're still at less than half of what the beavers did 500 years ago.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when you have a landscape that is eight percent water, you have a tremendous amount of of what's called base flow.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So springs and aquifers, um water uh percolates, it it percolates through.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty amazing thing.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: This whole, you know, I don't want to bore you with the I'll tell you what.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: My my favorite water story was we had a drought.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is year years back.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: We had a drought, big serious drought, and in one night, we got three inches of rain in one night.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've we've got we've got these ponds.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: We've built ponds up in the up in the mountain here behind the on the farm, and we've got we've built more than 20 ponds actually here.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so I jump on a four-wheeler and I go running up to see water going in the pond, and nothing.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: We had three inches of rain in in one night.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I had the gauge out in the back porch, three inches of rain one night, there wasn't a drop of water up there, and I thought, good grief, what in the world?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I went up the next day, no water, next day, no water, the morning of the third day, Cena, water's running.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Waters running in in the deep mountain uh ravines, you know, it took three days for that three inches of rain to percolate down into the base flow that created that that that springs and wet spots could come out.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I mean just when you just can imagine, imagine those little drops of water, and they're they're they're moving sideways and and and down, or they don't go up, but but but they're they're they're dancing through that that substrata of soil and rocks and then substrata and and and encountering friends and neighbors collecting, okay, into these little trickles, and those trickles become little spurts and spurts, and they gradually coalesce down in there, um uh 20 feet below the ground, 50 feet below the ground, and and and and they and they finally then start expressing themselves in springs and things like that.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm getting at is I mean it it's it's it's it's truly a fantasy land.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: It it it's like it's like magic.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna say, listening to you, that's a children's book right there.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's the most fascinating, beautiful description I've ever heard.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, learning about waterways is somewhat boring to me, but that was actually fascinating.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was actually seeing them meet each other and going through all these different levels and becoming purified, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Clean and structured.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, I I'm gonna have my kids listen to that one little segment of you be talking on this podcast today.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You should write a book about that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, uh, okay, I'll put I'll put that in a bag of tricks.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, but but but it but it truly is, you know, we we we don't think you know, we open a faucet and we just don't think about water like that, you know.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: But but we when you start actually thinking, how does this hydraulic hydrology work?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: How does that water cycle work?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: It truly is it's just uh it's overwhelming almost that you know, it it just can overwhelm you it to tears, even to how magnificent and and almost mysterious it is as water seeks its, seeks its little crevice and this little, oh, I'll I got a pocket here I can go to, and I got a pocket there, and it starts to fill these little cavities.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that three-inch rain took three days to finally get to where it could express itself at at these at these ravine uh ravine uh uh surface points, okay, and then come into a little trickle and start filling our pond.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so my point is that ponds uh truly do fundamentally change the hydrol, the hydrology of a landscape.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and you know, back in the in the 40s and 50s, post Dust Bowl, the old soil conservation service, it was called the the SCS, Soil Conservation Service, they actually cost-shared pond building for farmers.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: They understood how important ponds were.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if you if you you know uh wanted to build a pond, they would come in and they would pay like you know, 60% of the pond building, farmer pays 40%, government pays 60%, and now we have ponds.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was part of a hydration, you know, a major, you know, uh agriculture hydration effort.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Today, the the official position of the USDA is all those ponds are now liabilities, not assets, because they're landing places for wild ducks and geese who supposedly bring in high path avian influenza and destroy the poultry industry.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that all of this hydration uh has now become a in the in the seats of power and academia uh and policy decisions have become you know a liability.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, that's a that's a real problem.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so pods, number one.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, number two is organic matter, okay.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um organic matter, of course, is is anything, anything brown, anything that's been living brown that's in some sort of a state of decomposition.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be old roots, it can be leaves, it can be manure, it can be uh uh fallen over tree, it can be leaves, pine needles, all sorts of so organic matter, all right.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now listen to this.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: One pound of organic matter is so spongy that it can hold four pounds of water.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you know, a sponge, then think about how light, like on your kitchen sink, okay?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Think how light a sponge, a dry sponge.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's really light, okay?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's doesn't weigh anything.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But when you saturate it with water, how heavy is it?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: It it's a lot heavier than it was, you know, when it was dry.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing, that's just the way organic matter is.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Organic matter is is is it has many functions.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: One is it's the sponge, it gives the the tilth, the structure, the the sponginess of the soil.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so every so um if you if you can increase your organic matter one percent, you have just increased your water holding capacity by 20,000 gallons an acre.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: 20,000 gallons an acre.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So on our farm, we've gone in 1961 when we came and took our first soil test, we averaged 1% organic matter.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: 1% organic matter today.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: We average a little over 8% organic matter.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's seven percentage points, seven, you know, seven clicks of that of that wheel.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Seven clicks, seven times 20,000 gallons is 140,000 gallons of water per acre today that our land can hold that it couldn't hold in 1961.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying to brag, I'm just I'm saying it to empower people to realize wow, this can change.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just imagine if that were done not just on our farm, but the neighbor's farm and the neighbor's neighbor's farm and the entire county, the entire state, and the entire country.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly, the the water retentive capacity of our of our soils would be you know astronomically better than they are.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and what that means is as you go into a drought, the drought doesn't happen as fast for you because you've got more water in the soil bank.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So the, you know, so for example, on our farm, we typically stay green going into a drought.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: We stay green a month longer than anybody else around because of our organic matter.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: We've just got more water in the soil.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then coming out of it, when you do finally get that three inch rain overnight, um things things green up way faster because the the because the water retentive capacity is so much greater uh and and it responds so much faster.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So organic matter.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get organic matter?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you you start looking at how you get um how you get decomposing material, you know, on the soil.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So so comp compost instead of chemical fertilizer, for example.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, cover crops, you never leave the soil naked, you never leave it bare.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're always, you know, you're always growing something.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Polycultures, uh, perennial polycultures, especially.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so there are ways to increase organic matter.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the third part of the the ingredient list, if you will.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we got we got ponds, we got organic matter.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: The third part is simply vegetation, growing more vegetation.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um as as as you're well aware, uh, you know, we we move the cows every day to a to a new paddock here, but most cattle in the world are not handled that way.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're in a they're in a field, they stay there all the time, and that field by late summer, uh, it's grazed, you know, it's grazed right to the to the ground.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so there's no vegetation there.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Australian scientist, I know we've we've uh mentioned him on the on the podcast before, Walter Yenny, and spelled J-E-N-N-E, uh, he is probably the foremost um and most articulate scientist in the space where he says the problem with climate and global whatever, whatever's if if if climate change is happening and uh well I mean it is happening, but but the thing that accelerates it, the the radiator of the planet, this is his his his lingo, the radiator of the planet is water condensation.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: It takes he says the whole greenhouse gas ghg thing is um is is bogus.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um that only has about five percent to do with with the climate, you know, uh weather pattern.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: 95 of the planetary cooling is water condensation, and it takes it takes a lot of energy to condense water from vapor to to uh liquid.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Takes a lot of energy.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem, Cena.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot condense water will not condense out of vapor into liquid except on some sort of little um node, uh uh bacteria.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: It it needs it needs a little uh seed, if you will, to to to condense around, to coalesce around.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're talking about you know microscopic, microscopic, microscopic, okay.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So so where where do these little bacteria, mainly it's bacteria, where do these little bacteria come from?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, they come as exudates from vegetation.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right, and so when you have a lot of vegetation, you have really healthy evapotranspiration and and cloud formation and rain cycles.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when you don't have good vegetation, then you impair the ability of this condensation rain you know, cycle to happen.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so this is one reason why he says that we're seeing such violent, um, more violent, we're seeing more rain inside.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some places while we have less rain in others because as the planet tries to regulate itself, the rains are gonna are gonna develop where there's vegetation.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So over the tropics and over, you know, places.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I just was a couple of weeks ago uh speaking at a at a soil health conference in Utah and got to meet a guy that I've read about for years and years and never have met him, Alejandro Caliente from uh Chihuahua, Mexico.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And his family, he owns, get ready for this, 30,000 acres.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like 45 square miles.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here in Virginia at our farm, you know, we have a fairly large acreage, but it's you know, it's it's only a thousand acres, all right, which is not really enough to affect weather patterns.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: But down there with 45 square miles, that's actually enough.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he's been he's been doing this um, you know, controlled grazing mob, what we call mob stocking, herbivorous, solar conversion, lignified carbon, sequestration, fertilization for now for now 15 years.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember, we we've been doing this now for you know 50 years.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's been doing it for 15 in a nine-inch rainfall, high desert of Chihuahua, Mexico, and and he's growing, he's growing grass, he's growing vegetation five feet tall.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and it has actually affected evapotranspiration and cloud formation.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's got UN scientists coming, measuring the fact that he's getting more rain than the neighbors, and he's he's he's just become uh uh an evangelist in the area to where people are starting to, he's not now the weirdo, he's actually the you know, the angel.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they're coming to him for advice on how to do this with their ranches uh to refurbish them and and and you know um rehabilitate them.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so you know, when when he took over the ranch from his father, they were averaging 100 acres per cow.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right, just imagine that.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: 100 acres per cow.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Today, they're down to 28 acres per cow.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's how much more vegetation they're producing, and it and it's affecting the dew point, it's affecting this whole condensation dew uh uh thing.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so so veget vegetation in and of itself is a catalyst for for good evapotranspiration, cloud formation cycles.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: So when you when you add up ponds, organic matter, vegetation, and you realize that that right now American agriculture is anti-all three of these.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're anti all three of them.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're not building ponds.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: Government policy is opposed to ponds.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you want water, you got to drill in an aquifer.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and then you're pumping water out, you're depleting the water cycle.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're anti-pond and we're we're anti-organic matter.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: The quickest way to eliminate organic matter is with tillage and chemical fertilizer.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we're anti-organic matter, and then we're anti-vegetation with our overgrazing.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so so you so you you you get all three of those, and we are um we are practicing a drought incentivizing agriculture in America.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're going to learn anything, now now will what I what I've just suggested, does it eliminate drought?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, I just said, yeah, we have droughts, but with these three things, our strategy is that our ponds allow us to trap surface runoff when we have extra water in the winter, and then we can irrigate with that in the summer.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're not pumping from an aquifer, we're not depleting us a river or a stream, we're actually reducing flooding.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and think about this.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times, these places with drought, they have they have floods for one month a year, and then and then they're suddenly the ground is baked out, you know, five months later.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we can, if we can put the attention on on a water savings account, a water savings account with this surface runoff that becomes a flood problem downstream, down uh uh yeah, downstream, then um we can actually be neighbor friendly to reduce flooding downstream.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the appropriate time when we need that water, we can use it, and that'll maintain base flow, cloud formation, uh, and and you have uh a generally better thing.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we see we have we are so far away now, not only in in time uh or memory, but also in just capacity, we're so far away now from that original 8% water that the beavers bequeathed to us 500 years ago, that we can't even imagine what a policy, a strategy like this would do.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: There will always be drought.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: There will always be drought, but if you can, if you can mitigate, you can fundamentally change the attitude and the uh and the effect.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's that's the discussion that's not happening in in anywhere that I see.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody is saying, can we can we help ourselves?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody is coming forward either blaming some good bogeyman or saying we're helpless.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's a shame.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's a shame, and I think is a bigger tragedy than the drought itself.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is such a theme, right?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: This this is such a theme that we see in our culture and now, sadly in the world, is that you know, like you talk about that victim mentality, there's nothing I can do about it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: This somebody else did this, and so now all I can do is repeat the narrative of the blame instead of feeling empowered by it.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that has really struck me in hearing this three-step recipe is that, you know, we talk a lot about how we're in general, people are so far removed from the food supply, right?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then all the consequences behind that decision.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And until you walked through this and gave these examples, I didn't actually realize how far I am removed from the water cycle, the water supply.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I'm all about, oh, what filtration systems do we need?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because what are all these chemicals that are in the water?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: But not really understanding the connection between um, you know, these simple steps and the weather in general, and then the power, the impact that one person can have, you know, I and this, so this is where it goes into my question for you is you mentioned so you have the thousand acres not large enough to really impact the weather, but your newly your new friend in in Mexico can.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you're talking particularly about vegetation, I was thinking, wow, you know, talk about being um, you know, anti all these things.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: What we're told, you know, I was born and raised in California and drought is a chronic problem there, you know, and what we're taught is um stop watering the yards and basically stop having vegetation in the yard.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's looked upon highly, like favorably, if you're not growing plants in your front yard or your backyard, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you replace it with things like rocks, right?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: That don't require water.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: But as you're talking, I'm thinking, okay, so one house doing that probably not really going to affect the weather, the weather, the water cycle very much.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what if, because it is incentivized under the guise of you're helping in the drought situation by not growing these plants in your home, front or front and or backyard?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: What if that continues to spread and there's lots of people now all up and down the state who don't have any vegetation?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Will that actually affect the the weather and the water cycle in that area to make it worse?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so my bigger this this goes into my bigger thought of not only just how what can a farmer do, right?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking a lot about farmers, like having ponds, growing organic matter, having vegetation, you know, um, as the cows are grazing rotations.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so not only what can the farmer do, but what can a consumer do to actually help improve, maybe decrease the amount of droughts that we might have.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the key is to try to eliminate surface runoff from whatever land you have, because we we do get extra rain.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, right now, uh worldwide, one third, I mean, this is the this is the average, one third of all raindrops come either too fast or too much at one time, and they become surface runoff.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, they come fast, they can't all be absorbed on site in the soil.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of the one of the permaculture concepts is every raindrop should stay where it falls for as long as possible, rather, you know, because to keep it from running running downhill.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the ways to do that is of course with you know um roof catchment systems, cisterns to catch roof runoff, uh, you know, a pond, uh, even a fish pond in a backyard to catch surface runoff, uh, that then you can use to to uh water some plants so that you so that the the problem with the you know with the watered lawns in California is that that water is not coming from excess water stored on site seasonally, it's coming from um from municipal systems from far away that have nothing to do with the you know the local ecology.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh there are tons of of people who have gone to very dry areas.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, three and four inch rainfalls, five inch rain, you know, Arizona, um, uh New Mexico and Southern California, uh who have who have turned into an oasis simply by putting in swales, so that so those are on contour swales so that when water starts running off instead of running off, it it collects in a swale, and you can you can essentially create a um a rainfall zone on that on that two foot that two-foot berm, uh, you can create the effect of three times the rainfall that you normally have because water runs in into this kind of a shallow gutter and then gradually you know percolates into the plant.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you can put in you know some plants that you wouldn't normally grow on this, you know, on this uh swale ridge ridgeline.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Those kind of things are done.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Mike, the the the you know, the the place to really go with this is permaculture.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you look at permaculture, you'll see you know all sorts of these, because water is a huge deal.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was developed in Australia, which is a water-starved place, and um and and and the the designs and the landscape features and things uh are fantastic.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So rather than going to uh a rock, uh a non-plant, um, a non-plant environment, what we need to do is be aggressive about capturing all the raindrops that fall on our yard, on our house roof, capturing those and then releasing them strategically um on onto whatever square footage we have, you know, during the you know, during the uh during the dry time.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so as I'm listening to you today, we're about out of time.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm realizing more and more why you didn't make the cut onto that mainstream news show, right?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is such an empowering message here, right?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: That we don't have to go around blaming people or feeling like we're helpless.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's so much that the individual can do, even if you're not a farmer, right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much a renter can do or a homeowner can do, get a rain barrel, you know, create these rainfall zones, right?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and those aren't hard things.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those aren't hard things.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: We can do them, we can do them with our kids or with our grandkids, have them be, you know, a home project we're gonna do.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are simple things, and we can really make a difference if we all just believe in this power that that God's instilled in all of us, right?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's given all of us this power.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate you walking us through this because this is just one more example of how you've you're teaching us how to harness our power in ways that we can do it that are manageable, not overwhelming, and sustainable.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, and on a backyard level, I mean, just a a few hours with a with a shovel and a mattock, you know, and and and you you can make a gentle uh contour um uh uh uh situation that you can then that will then um you know give you a a zone, uh a zone of rainfall equivalent that is you know two or three times higher than the one you're in.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a that's a very empowering uh kind of thought.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and and yeah, and if that were done on a on on a massive scale, it would be good.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: And to realize that that what we're doing, and and you know, we didn't start this.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this has been done for a long time.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh the north of Africa was all a forest when Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Homer said he walked across the north of Africa, what's today the Sahara, and never left the shade of a tree.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Libya, think about this.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Libya was the main supplier of the tigers and the lions for the Colosseum in uh in Rome, you know, back in back uh in the heights of the Roman Empire.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know what Libya looks like today.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: There is no uh there's nothing.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is just you know uh sand and dry in Libya.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And but it was it was a tropical, it was a tropical vegetation paradise.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but through massive tillage and the rise of Carthage and Rome and all that grain production and tillage, changed the vegetation on the cycle, changed the evapotranspiration cycle, and brought the deserts.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: The Rajputan Desert in India, you know, they've uncovered massive uh lime, lime uh pits where they grain storage facilities.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: The University of Wisconsin sent a team of folks over to the Rajputan Desert uh years ago, and they just fenced out from the nomads.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: They fenced out like you know, five or six square miles, and within five years, that whole that desert was revegetated with green material and it was starting to affect the the hydrology cycle.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was a you know five or six square miles, it was a pretty big project, but but but I mean in in the in the in the big scheme of things, you know, five or square miles is is nothing.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if that were done on a on a on an India-wide scale, um, you know, it it would it would fundamentally change uh uh things.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so we uh yeah, we uh we've done a lot of damage as humans, but goodness gracious, we've got so much capacity to heal.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's you know, that's what we've got to be.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: We we've we've done our damage.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's repent and sackcloth and ashes and dust ourselves off.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Say, okay, now from now on, from this day forward, we're gonna start healing.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's where we need to go.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Joel.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's funny because um I call you, and you know, this kind of inside joke, I call Joel the healer of the land and the animals and the humans that eat those animals.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm gonna start calling you the healer of the water cycle.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have that wisdom and the knowledge, and you have that courage to speak the truth.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate it and I thank you for always speaking your truth.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you're gonna get here, folks, on the Beyond Labels podcast.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get our truth as we see it and our encouragement so that you can empower yourself and we can make a difference in the world.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we'll see you next time.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.