Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #193: Subsidizing Sickness: What Your Grocery Bill Isn’t Telling You

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Episode #193: Subsidizing Sickness: What Your Grocery Bill Isn’t Telling You · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of netting in$300 an acre, we netted in$550 an acre.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: People have this mentality that cattle can't compete with corn.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's simply not true.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply not true.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it would and it would definitely not be true if you took away the subsidies.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, so you let's just make sure everybody understands this um comparison that you just made.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: So you're saying um even with corn being subsidized, so with the farmers getting paid to grow the corn, you're saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, that it's actually more profitable to grow cattle and grazing cattle than it is to grow subsidized corn.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you're actually growing, you're actually growing more nutrition.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Hi everyone, welcome to Beyond Labels.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Dr.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Cena McKella, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Today's episode is going to be very interesting because Joel is going to share why farm subsidies matter to you, even if you have never set foot on a farm.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: Joel recently visited two farms in America's corn and soy heartland where deep erosion goalies, hardened soil, and decades of subsidized monoculture paint a bleak picture for America's agricultural future and for your grocery bill.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Today, Joel is going to unpack some of the hidden costs of subsidized commodity crops, including, including their impact on meat prices.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: He's also going to explain what the grocery store prices really reflect and how he would solve this issue, which Joel's just hearing this for the first time, I'll tell you.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I want to know when Joel talks about this, how would he solve this issue?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I do want to stress from the onset this is not just a farming issue.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: This is the conversation that we should be having nationally because it involves our food, the health of our food, the freedom of ourselves and our country, and the future of our soil.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: So this is an episode you do not want to miss.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Joel, let's start out with what you saw when you were in America's Heartland.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just finished uh two uh two pretty in-depth um uh visits, one to Iowa and one to Ohio.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is um as we fly over country, it's heartland of America.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's and so I was on these two farms uh doing uh consulting work.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful, wonderful people that have bought them uh now and are trying to, you know, uh redeem them out of you know corn and soybean.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: One one has kind of been um neglected for a couple three years, and the other one was acting, I mean we walked across uh corn ground that had just been harvested in the fall, uh and so it was it was fresh, uh freshly done.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I live here in rolling country, and you know, it's not as it's not as uh up and down as Southwest Virginia or even West Virginia, but um compared to Iowa, compared to Ohio, Illinois, I mean though that is flat country.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't think of you don't think of that kind of flat country as being uh very erosive, you know, I mean, I mean, does the water actually pick up speed, you know, coming off of a off of something that's that flat?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in fact, it does.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And both of these farms uh and including, you know, driving to them from the airport, but especially you know, walking on them.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So around here, if you go down uh, you know, five, six feet uh at most, many times just one foot, especially on our farm, uh, you're onto solid rock.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one of the reasons that we can't run like a when we bury water lines, for example, and we run our, we have a we have a shoe, uh, it's called a subsoiler, and it's a single, it's a single shoe uh ripper that just goes along.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably seen the utility companies have, you know, they're like a ripper and it and it just goes down and it buries, you know, you'll see this big reel of wire, you know, and it's feeding down into the into the slit.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, we have one of those we use for water lines to for water pipe, to bury water pipe.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we do that on our hills we're ripping up, you know, basketball-size rock, uh, because it's just it's you know, rock.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so to be out there in Iowa, especially and Ohio, and see Cena 25 foot deep gullies.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, yeah, think about this.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're standing on the rim and you're looking as vertical.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't climb down the edge of this.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is a a gully that's so steep you can't climb down.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a like a cliff, but you know, 25 feet deep means it's probably you know 50 feet from rim to rim.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine 50 feet from rim to rim, 20 feet, five feet down, and that's how deep the soil is.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is it and and and you you can't find a rock.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's no rock.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: It, I mean, for somebody like me that's in this clay and shale, you know, I get out there flat, black, low-me, no rock.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just sit there and drool, you know.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, oh wow, to imagine, you know, having this.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it is it is fertile as can be.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we're still we're still mining fertility that was put down by the you know, by the bison um 200 years ago.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: You mean at at Polyface?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, in in Iowa and and out there in in Corn Country.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, wait, so there's still uh so paint the picture of how did they first get these gullies?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: And you but you're saying the gullies, you're saying there's fertility still there, but how does this form?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened what happened?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here on our farm, uh, you know, I've talked about erosion in our gullies forever in our exposed rocks.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our soils were not that deep.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when they started uh tilling it and and and plowing, it took the vegetation, you know, the cover off of the ground.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then when the rain hits it, a lot of people don't realize when raindrops hit the ground, they're hitting it at something around 100 miles an hour.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the raindrops are like little little bombs and they actually make craters.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you go out in a thunderstorm and you actually watch the water droplets hit, they actually look like little bombs that hit, and they what they do is they make a crater.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and when they when they hit the ground, they um they make a crater that splashes the you know the the the little it it's ibisi particles out, and um, and then they gradually settle, you know, in the little in the little crater.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're you know, these are small craters.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're not even the size of a teaspoon, all right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're they're very, very small, but but this is what happens.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they when they um add up, then of course the water starts to run and you get surface runoff, uh, which is why, you know, our cities have you know gutters and storm sewers and all that.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, because the water's got to go somewhere, all right?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's why your house has gutters on it, okay, to get the water uh ducted away.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and preferably you have a little downspout that runs it actually out, you know, five feet away from the house, so it doesn't come right down around the foundation of the house.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this is surface runoff, you know, and and and it adds up, and when it adds up, of course, it it develops, it turns into a little a little stream, and you know, and before long you've got a you know, you've got a a channel that's carving out the dirt across the landscape.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, around here, the soils were never that deep, and so you could only go down a few feet and you were onto solid limestone, solid limestone rock.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: But out there in Iowa, Illinois, um, Ohio, Indiana, in that in the heart of corn, I call it, you know, the corn belt, um those soils are extremely, extremely deep.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and you can go down, you can literally, you can literally go down 30 feet before you hit a rock.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just it's just unbelievable.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and a person like me, that every time we build a fence, all we do is deal it with rocks.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and that's pretty much the case, you know, in the mid-Atlantic region.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you go anywhere from you know Georgia on up into New England, you know, if you if you dig a post hole and you go down, you know, three or four feet, chances are you're gonna hit a rock of some sort.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna be pulling out some, you know, some pretty good size if you don't hit solid rock.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, out there, it's deep.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so what's happened?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh none of none of these existed.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: None of these existed prior to um whatever, 1850, all right, because it was it was still prairie then.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was vegetated with prairie that was so um thick and entwined that it held the moisture.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't until John Deere, you know that famous name, invented a plow, uh, uh an actual what's called a moldboard plow that would actually cut through the web roots.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's hard for us to appreciate how thick and impenetrable these prairie grasses, you know, that were eight feet tall, their root structure went multiple feet into the ground, and it was just completely um uh it was an entwined, it was a mat, an entwined mat of roots that were so thick and entwined that that you you couldn't you couldn't just go out with a hoe and you know and and and hoe it, you know, like you would like a garden or something.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so so the the breakthrough was um John Deere, who was able, it was a black, he was a black blacksmith by trade, and he was able to fashion a metallic, because before him, they they would put a metal tip on a board.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it was called a mold board.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The the mold board was fabricated on a on a on a a concave, a concave fabrication so that when the little steel tip cut this web, um, it would actually invert the soil layer.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So what was on top would be inverted underneath because you had you had essentially half of a spiral.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I think.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: So this is a uh what's it called?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: A mold board?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mold board, okay?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because the board molded, molded.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, think about a butter mold or any kind of mold, you know, that you're you're putting stuff in, a brick mold, okay?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So so the idea was you were you were molding, molding the soil, and this and this concave board was able to flip that soil.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the vegetation on top went underneath, and the underneath came up on top.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: So was that pulled by a horse?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, or a mule or an ox.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so some animals pulling this, and it's basically tilling the land.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but see, before the mold board in antiquity, all tillage was done, did not, it did not invert.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was simply a sharp stick.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so throughout Egypt, Mesopotamia, I mean, when you there was never a mold board until very recent history that inverted the soil layers.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Before everything else was just a stick, basically, yeah, still draft power, you know, a mule or a horse or ox or a you know, a uh you know, a water buffalo or something would pull this thing, draft power would pull it, but it was simply a stick.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you were simply stirring the soil.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't inverting the soil.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when you s when you simply go through, you know, sod, grass, whatever, and you simply um um uh, you know, stir it like this, the veget, the vegetation doesn't get all buried, and you don't invert the soil layers, all right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in other words, turn the roots upside down.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're just uh it's it's like it's like a big glorified, you know, garden hoe, and you're just kind of you're just kind of chopping and disturbing, you know, uh so so you're running this sharp stick through it.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the mold board plow, so so the idea of, I mean, there was no such thing.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: My point is, until until um goodness, 1700.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably until 1700, there was no such thing as a moldboard plow.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that was a brand new word, just like, you know, 200 years ago there was no such word as an escalator.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you go, if you go to Williamsburg and talk to a a costumed, you know, one of the costumed uh uh folks at uh you know at Williamsburg and use the word escalator, they'll look at you like, escalator, that's an unusual word.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what that is, escalator, you know.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and so Moldboard, I I want us to understand, Sina, that words that we use in common usage today, there was a time when those words didn't exist because the technology didn't exist.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like the internet, okay?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I grew up there, internet has been invented in my lifetime.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was no such thing as an internet, you know, 50 years ago.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of these words, you know, like a bullet board plow, uh, we we just assume that it's been part of human, you know, human culture forever.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, granted, it's been a part for several hundred years, but not until fairly recent history, mold board plow.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so the break, so so but the problem was that the boards, the boards would constantly break.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you just you just couldn't fashion the boards as strong and durable.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what John Deere did, John Deere was a blacksmith, and he was able, with special heat and cooling and and smithing, he was able to craft what they'd been using in wood and and and you know, and carving wood.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I can make this out of metal, iron.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the breakthrough.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that, Cena, that is what opened the American Prairie, because they simply could not break the web, the root web of prairie grasses with a wooden moldboard plow.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It it just break.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was too it was it was too uh too heavy a mat, you know, too thick, too heavy a mat of roots and structure.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when uh when you know Americans uh went out here with this moldboard plow, we were able to invert those soil levels and uh convert the prairie from a prairie polyculture to a prairie monoculture, primarily corn and now soybeans, and of course, you know, um uh we we all the the other the other things.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, the south, you know, in the mid-Atlantic region, we'd been we'd been doing that for a long time, uh primarily though with a sharp stick, and it had been done on a you know on a on a relatively small scale or early on, and then it was done, you know, a much much larger scale.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: The thing to remember is when it's when when tillage in order to grow a mono uh an annual, so a perennial, you know, you don't have to plant that every year.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Perennial comes back every year, like rhubarb and asparagus and grass and and that sort of thing.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your lawn, you don't have to replant your lawn every year.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: An annual is something you have to plant every year, okay?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Squash, um, you know, watermelons, wheat, corn, cotton.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and so those were always extremely expensive and and arduous, laborious and arduous, because tillage was so difficult.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: You just couldn't you couldn't till that much with a sharp stick every day.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so the moldboard plow suddenly made tillage efficient.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time in human history, tillage was efficient.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is why diets of antiquity were always founded on herbivores and seafood.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you lived next to the ocean, you ate a lot of seafood.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't live next to the ocean next to the ocean, you ate, you know, you ate um herbivores, whether it was bison or um uh you know, camels or uh cattle, lamb, goat, herbivore, because those were the nutrient-dense things that could be grown without tillage, without having to till the grass, till the, you know, till the sod.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Left to itself, nature has almost no perennials.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are a few, but not very many.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, natural natural ecosystems don't have very many per uh very many annuals.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, because you said they don't have perennials.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I misspoke.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I was I look shocked.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you walk away, if you walk away from an ecosystem, it will not naturally grow corn and soybeans and watermelons and squash.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: It will grow trees and grass and you know it'll grow perennials, right?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: That will it grow some of those other perennials that you're talking about, like asparagus and rhubarb, or it won't even grow that.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, there are yeah, there there are natural whatever.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, people have had had tubers.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can eat you can eat iris bulbs.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, iris flowers, iris, you know, there are lots of there's lots of things and tubers, different things that you can eat, but they're they're not they're not generally that they're not they don't they don't dominate the ecosystem at all.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it wouldn't be prolific, yeah, yeah, like like like grasses and trees and shrubs and things like that.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, is this what they talk about where they'll say because I've read some things, this is not my specialty.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: I've read some things where it's talked about how there would be like wild varieties of things, like there would be wild grain varieties, for example.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: But that's different than if somebody's growing that as an annual, right?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: The the wild, wild type varieties, I mean, you know, maize, maize, corn, was a was a staple in Mesoamerica, you know, the um in in antiquity, but but it was it was grown in very special environments that had that had water and where um and where tillage was you know down along the rivers, for example.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, where and they were farming, right?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, they were farming, but they very little and and uh the the the Incas Um and the Aztecs all you know cultivated stuff, potatoes, potatoes in in Peru, and and of course, you know, corn in uh in in Mesoamerica and Central America, but the you know the the floating gardens, the the chiapas uh all around Mexico City that the Spanish found, uh, those were all floating gardens, and they were they were growing vegetables, but they were growing them on floating reed gardens, uh, you know, Lake Titicacay in uh in uh South America, uh same situation.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, so so the native people, the indigenous people, you know, that didn't have a lot of machinery, almost no machinery, they they created systems, you know, think about it, think about it, that it would be easier to cut floating reeds and make islands in a lake, that that would be easier than than plowing uh uh the the terrain the the soil uh you know outside the lake it'd be easier to make a floating island and grow vegetables on a floating island of reeds than it would be to till an acre you know out on shore and grow corn.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean yeah it's just that's just crazy you know it sounds like a lot of work like I would probably rather go hunt yeah yeah yeah well and and and they and they did a lot of that that's for sure so here here's here's where I'm going with this this uh this ecosystem this middle american ecosystem with these deep soils is um is very very fragile and you know if and uh so yes it's it's beautiful soil but it's uh it's not clay based it's not hard it's it's soft and and that softness makes it very very fragile and so what's happened you know grain has always been the holy grail I mean from from the earliest civilization grain has been the holy grail because because it's hard to do you know it's scarce it's like it's like gold okay it's it's it's hard to do hard to hard to grow because it's hard to you know cut the grass out and and so you can grow wheat or barley or oats or whatever and so this this idea of constantly on the look for lookout for cheaper grain how do we grow it more voluminously how do we grow more volume how do we do it easier how do we do it cheaper you know has been has been it it's it's in the human DNA at this point okay it just is all right and so here we come into you know 20th century 1900 and um and now we've got this technology you know and then by the time world war two comes along we've got tractors and we don't even have to use draft power we've got cheap cheap energy you know until until world war two basically one third of every farm's production one third of every acre on a farm was devoted to feeding draft power ox horse mule okay so one third of every farm was devoted to its energy source well when petroleum was discovered suddenly oh we don't need to spend a third of our farm on you know on on feeding on creating our energy uh we can now just get it from the ground and so then then that that of course germinated the entire you know uh uh tractor based um tractor based and and petroleum based system that we have the the thing is we were able to do it on such a massive scale uh the first time in history you know we'd never been able to do this kind of we um I mean civilizations long before ours have have done erosion and have have hurt the soil that's true but it took them it took them hundreds and hundreds of years to do it we with big machines chemicals cheap energy have been able to do the equivalent in just literally decades that that that's that's the difference and so as I'm standing out here on the rim of a 25 foot deep gully realizing that literally in in in just a hundred years in just a hundred years this this this gully that's 50 feet wide at the top 20 feet deep it it went from you know from level soil across to this amount and and it just and and it goes you know down the down the terrain you know you can follow it down the terrain um until it finally ends up in a in a creek and of course that is that then eventually ended up down in the Mississippi Delta okay that's that's what that's what grows a delta all right is is all this silt coming in from from tillage so here we are now we get to the policy that we have in this country I'm standing there on this rim looking at this and realizing that one of the reasons we have this in our country is because we subsidize we subsidize the annual and we don't subsidize the perennial then the perennial of course is what feeds herbivores you know cows and sheep and goats and obviously in prehistoric times bison and and that sort of thing elk deer you know all all that and so one of the talks that I did at a homestead summit out there because I was I was where I was and I was talking to farmers all day you know when you do a homestead summit it's a totally different kind of person at a at a homestead summit or you know in in in Iowa um a lot of them had some pretty big acres you know a thousand two thousand three thousand acres and they were desperate for a you know how do we get out of this you know they're they're on this rat race there um and and um how do we how do we get out of this so wait meaning how do they get out of farming mono crops yes and this whole subsidies the whole system that we've set up of incentivizing the farmer to grow the annuals in this subsidy network right where that's lead that's that basically results in them growing large quantities of monocrops and these goalies will manifest from that and and and that's if I'm hearing you correctly part this is um going back to the whole thing that this is not how nature was intended to exist.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't intended to have all these annuals so it wasn't intended to have the bare soil but when the farmers are out there planting all these monocrops that there are annuals and so they're having to I'm assuming they're having to till each time that they're planting and they're tilling they're inverting the whole soil is that correct that's that that's where yeah that that's where no till has come in you've probably heard the term no till and so no till essentially substitutes um substitutes herbicide to to to kill the vegetation so you can plant a crop into it rather than tillage and so yes that that has definitely and and I would argue that has certainly helped that has certainly slowed the erosion some but I'll tell you what as I went as I walked across this cornfield the amount of what's called um what's called you know um kind of surface erosion it was everywhere everywhere you could not step hardly without seeing a little bit of this this um where where the soil was moving it was moving on the on the ground I mean it wasn't moving while I was walking on it but but but you could see where the little rivulets little little gutters of water an inch here two inches here um where that was we that's called sheet erosion sheet erosion where it's where it's not actually making a a cut right away but it's it's it's moving soil like a sheet like a sheet of paper all right off the okay off off the surface.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: So does that mean they're losing the topsoil?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes absolutely absolutely and of course on the edge of all these so so so you follow this down and then then you see the cut you see the cut at the beginning of the ditch the beginning of the gully where it finally builds up enough the water builds up enough water uh enough water enough velocity and enough volume to actually create a a little a little a little river now the river might be no more than you know a foot wide and six inches deep okay uh but when you're when you're on bare ground a foot wide and six inches deep with running you know running uh building up steam that has incredible cutting ability okay and so then it it cuts and these these ditches then they they grow and and I was on one the farmer said you know three years ago this cut was you know 20 feet down there and in three years here it's already it's already up this far.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow cuts and now this is um is this correct joel that this is not just in conventionally grown crops this can also occur in the organically grown crops because sometimes they're yeah organic crops are grown in large monocultures as well yeah absolutely absolutely now there are so the the the the the biggest technique right now that's being used uh in in what I would call the you know the the most innovative um whatever ecological edge of non-chemical farming for with grain is where you plant a it's called crimping crimping and this is done now where you you plant a a smother crop something like hairy vetch rye Austrian peas and you get this mass of material and in the spring you you don't you don't disturb anything you don't herbicide anything you come along with a crimper roller and uh it's exciting I was in a I was in an Amish uh Amish factory in Indiana a couple of years ago and was able to see a factory where they make these things so it I mean it's exciting to see this kind of uh development being uh coming along and most of the science on this Cena was developed at the Rodale Research Center in Imais Pennsylvania over the last three or four decades um Rodale you know was a big organic you know that that's an organic uh outfit and and they've been experimenting they've been running um crimping crimping cover crop smother trop no-till uh trials now for literally three decades and have and have um developed this kind of machinery it's it's very it's very much in its infancy very much in its infancy but um but there are people some pretty large farms actually uh this can scale I know a know a guy in Indiana that's running 3000 acres and he's using this with no chemicals no fertilizer basically um what what we do on our farm with with uh chips and compost and biomass he's doing on site with growing material in other words this is sun sun driven vegetation that he then he then crimps down so these crimps are just imagine uh like a lawn roller but a a miniature lawn roller it's only you know maybe 18 inches wide with uh with a spiral cleats on it and as you as you roll it imagine this imagine this mass of material that's oh I don't know what uh you know four or five feet high and it's just thick thick you you couldn't even walk through it all right and you're rolling through and these crimps are every like three inches they're they're they're they're crimping they're not actually they're not actually cutting it like a mower but they're crimping it okay and and laying it down like a mat.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then you plant your plant your uh annual into that you know corn soybeans wheat whatever you plant into that and it comes up through that now through that now um decaying mulch and so you're literally putting on three or four inches of decomposable mulch vegetation on your field and that's what feed this biology and and grows your grows your crop while I was out there so so all these farmers are asking you know well how do I how do I make a transition how do I how do I make money if I don't grow row crops and so what I did see it was one of my favorite exercises I went to the front of the room I got a big whiteboard and I said okay all right everybody let's grow let's grow a crop of corn and I said look I don't grow corn you give me the numbers how much are you going to pay for seed how much are you going to you know uh pay for fertilizer how much you're gonna you know and and so there the you know the room they they really warmed up to it you know you especially the old the old codger farmers that have been doing this all their life you know uh and they and and it was fun to one go uh you know$125 I felt like it was an auction you know 125 150 who's gonna give me 160 you know and and so um so anyway we we came to consensus you know I kind of hit a middle of the road and and we did a budget you know um we're gonna grow whatever 180 bushel corn the corn's gonna be uh sold for this much and this is how much it costs us in labor uh fuel harvest plant seed you know da budget all right and it came out to about$350 an acre enterprise margin in other words uh this isn't that this doesn't pay for all your overheads like insurance and property taxes and things like that but it does it does give you a uh an enterprise margin on on that acre and um it it came out you know into the three$300 range something like that all right so then I said all right let's do another column we're gonna grow some calves we're gonna grow calves we're gonna buy them at the sale barn we're not even gonna keep them in the winter we're gonna buy them and and we're not even gonna direct market them we're not gonna brand them we're just gonna buy them buy them at the stockyard sell them at the stockyard and and just have them for eight months we're gonna buy them first of April and we're gonna sell them at the end of November and you know and we're done and in the winter we don't have any hay we don't have any cattle because that's the big argument these crop farmers well in the winter you know I get to go to Bermuda for a month I get to go on a Caribbean cruise you know I don't want to be tied down here with animals so um because as soon as you get animals you know then you got you know whether it's dogs or cats or chickens or cows you got you know you got they got to be fed you know they got to be fed and watered and taken care of.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right so so I I do this other column here and we we did the same thing went down that at the end of it instead of instead of netting in$300 an acre we netted in$550 an acre people have this mentality that cattle can't compete with corn and and it's simply not true.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply not true and it would and it would definitely not be true if you took away the subsidies.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wait so you let's just make sure everybody understands this um comparison that you just made so you're saying um even with corn being uh subsidized so with the farmers getting paid to grow the corn you're saying if I'm hearing you correctly that it's actually more profitable to grow cattle in grazing cattle yes than it is to grow subsidized corn.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes and you're actually growing you're actually growing more nutrition you're actually growing more nutrition with the cattle as well but that that's another another argument for another day.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm just I'm just saying as a farmer if you're trying to figure out how can I move my income per acre or my my profit per acre from$10 to$20 to$20 to$30 the the the the beef animal and not to mention the dairy animal that's another that's another that's another whole um uh deal but just the beef animal which is the easiest one to control the easiest one to manage the easiest one to everything um it it will it will greatly greatly increase your um you know your income per acre and or your your and your profit per acre but here's the problem anytime that anyone else does these kinds of analyses for these farmers they're not assuming what we do which is mob stocking herbivorous you know lignified carbon sequestration uh fertilization they're they're they're they're not assuming this this highly managed system where you're managing like the bison were managed with you know wolves and and and stuff you know back in the back in prehistoric days and so when when I'm able to show them because there's an equivalency if if land will grow 100 100 bushel an acre corn it'll grow 400 cow day grass I don't want to get too far into weeds here but but in other words as a as a measure of production um if there's enough fertility to grow 100 bushel corn uh an acre corn it'll grow 400 cow day grass which is equivalent to 600 um 600 stalker days if they're gaining a pound and a half you know that's 900 pounds and if those pounds are worth$2 that's$1800 an acre that's gross that's gross okay your corn you see how you make a comparison here you can run a budget down both sides and so and so where we are um I I remember well the first time I heard this done was from my you know mentor Alan Nation founder of Stockman Grass Farmer I've mentioned him many many times on the podcast here and um we're we were driving in a car somewhere and he went over this with me and I'll never forget it and I said well goodness if if if farmers realized that grain prices would drop like a rock because there'd be there'd be so much of it you know if everybody started uh feeding their cows grass instead of grain and and and uh started doing this and he said oh no no my dear boy no my dear boy um he said he said the day that farmers realize they can make way more money with grass than with corn grain prices will tr will double or triple because that's what it'll take for them to tear up their prairie tear up their grass and put in a monocrop so I'm just so everybody understands I'm I don't think it's sinful to grow corn and soybeans.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's sinful at all okay but I do think it's sinful to for the government for the society to put their hands on a scale and and make it and make it seem more profitable than it is and and and to change the whole um so now we get into grocery store prices.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: What you really very quickly see is that in Thomas Jefferson's day peasants peasants ate goat lamb and beef that's what peasants ate the rich people ate bread the rich people ate chicken and pheasant and poultry because grain was too expensive to feed to omnivores like pigs and uh and pigs um they they simply were raised primarily on um like you know acorns and dairy tailings you know uh whey and and you know rotten Milk and stuff.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, without refrigerator.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, in that day, nobody would even imagine drinking skim milk.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: They skimmed the milk, made butter, and fed the milk to pigs.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Skim milk was not considered uh a human food until literally 50 years ago.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that incredible how the perception alone of food has changed in a very short period of time?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very, very much, very much.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so and so if you if you eliminated, and and I know I'm saying subsidies, I know the term now is um is crop insurance.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: They they they they went away from subsidies because that sounded that sounded bad.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so they've they they've moved all this to crop insurance.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: You got to realize there's only six things that enjoy the privilege of crop insurance.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Six things: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, and sugar cane.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the six crops that are the official recipients of the public largesse through the crop insurance program.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Iowa, one of the other speakers at this conference, he had a chart uh showing the amount of money Iowa, just the state of Iowa, just the state of Iowa, gets about 1.3 billion with a B billion dollars a year in crop subsidies.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so these subsidies determine what farmers grow.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: They determine, you know, culturally what's valuable.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly corn and soybeans, you know, in kind of the social conversation, if you will, that remains the holy grail instead of how do you grow a better T-bone steak?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: It dominates the um the grain cartels, you know, the soybean association, the corn growers association.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um it dominates the the input, you know.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: So go down the value chain of all the inputs, the chemical companies, the fertilizer companies, the genetically modified organism development, herbicide, pesticide, um, all of these.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everything becomes dominated by this by this um this cultish addiction to figure out how to grow corn and soybeans, and nobody's even asking, well, how can we grow beef, goat, and lamb better on a perennial, on a perennial polyculture?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's like that's like yeah, that's like Cinderella in rags sitting down in the ashes in the corner of the, you know, the corner of the castle.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because because that that doesn't even rise to the question.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I might add that uh, you know, to expand on this web of tentacles that you're talking about, for the consumer, uh, so those that aren't farmers, but they're consuming these foods, what you're explaining here does affect them as well, because this affects the formulation of food.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: So the processed foods that you're buying, your chips, your cookies, your cakes, your breads, your frozen meals, you know, the pizzas.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: This, these subsidies affect all of that because um we've talked about this before on the podcast, but basically um, I call it the corn illusion that we go into the grocery store and we think we can choose between um Asian food and Mexican food and Greek food and whatnot, Italian food, but they're all in essence, you know, for the most part, laced with um corn and or soy and or wheat.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: And this is one reason.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: So so I call it the illusion because you're not really choosing between those different types of food.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: You're choosing between, you know, uh processed, GMO, soy, coin.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're you're choosing, you're choosing um how uh uh you're choosing its processing technique.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's configuring, you're only choosing its configuration.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: How is it presented?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, it's it um it's it's like it's like uh an actress that can do um that can do uh tragedy, comedy, and uh whatever, uh, you know, thriller.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's the same actress, but configured, you know, three different ways.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's exactly right.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's why I say I call it an illusion of choice because the government has really already chosen your food on your plate for you.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: And this is one reason why we believe that we're seeing more allergies and sensitivities to things like corn and soy and wheat, because of our exposure to them, our overwhelming exposure to these food substances that our immune system would not have seen previously.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and certainly would not have seen in the quantity.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at the pounds of wheat, uh, for example, just let's just take wheat, for example, the pounds of wheat consumed per capita.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: That chart is on like a 45 degree angle from about 1980, you know, 1980 on.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, partly because uh the 1979 food pyramid uh put wheat on the bottom.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, it put all these things on the bottom with you know with with um herbivores uh you know, way out here uh and in the tip, you know, just a little bit of that.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and so so uh people need to appreciate, I think uh one of the bottom lines for me on this discussion, well, A is just erosion.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the fact that the United States is still eroding enough soil to fill the tr to fill a train from the earth to the moon and back to the earth every single year.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're still we're still losing that much soil.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we are, you know, we are still in a in a devastatingly negative trajectory from a you know from an ultimate soil soil bank uh um you know balance sheet um ecologically.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: But but the other thing that that I think is so important to appreciate is that if if farmers, if farmers ever caught on to the potential for well-managed herbivores on their um on their land as an alternative to grains, and grains did, as Alan said, um you know, tripled in price.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we eliminated the the subsidies.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: We we so so we eliminated the subsidies.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: We uh as a farming community, we start realizing, oh, we can grow nutrient-dense, you know, beef, lamb, goat on um, you know, on well-managed pasture if the price of grain tripled.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Think what that would do to the price of Doritos, to the price of uh chips and processed food, and and especially the price of chicken and pork that are primarily fed grains now in our country.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, pigs used to be fed primarily um, you know, uh acorns that they could scavenge from the woods.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, George Washington, uh, you know, he was considered the father of American agriculture.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and he his his greatest lament farming was I can never count how many pigs I have because they all just ran into woods, you know, and they they just kind of you know fended for themselves.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and so, you know, so he never he never could get them all in and get a count on them.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: He really bugged him.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, Jefferson, Jefferson spent um a lot of of um you know energy um with his at that time with his slaves of keeping the the pigs and cows and stuff out of his gardens at Monticello.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, you read his stuff and he's constantly battling because he didn't have an electric fence.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't, you know, so we now have all this wonderful technology, you know, that allows us to control these animals, unlike, you know, um, and that was another allure of crops was well, cows you can't control, but you put a corn seed in the ground, the corn doesn't, it doesn't run into the highway, it doesn't run in the neighbor's place, you know, you don't have to put a you don't have to build a fence, you know, it the corn just stays there.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's all these, all these historic, you know, historic biases and perceptions that now our technology uh with electric fence and and and and you know simple trailers and uh plastic pipe to be able to get water uh places and portable shade, all that stuff has enabled us to do this.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, so just imagine if grain tripled in price, what would happen to pork and pork and chicken?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Pork and chicken would suddenly double in price, and we would return to the historical peasant food, where peasant food was beef, lamb, and goat.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Today, with cheap grain, peasant, I mean, I'm poor peasant food, you know, the the the the cheapest food, the cheapest meat, if you will, is chicken.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's the cheapest, and then you have pork, and then you have beef, you know, in the echelon of of um of expense.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if you if you changed to a more historical ratio, the beef would be the cheapest, and then pork, and then chicken would be the most expensive.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I find this fascinating because uh, you know, let me kind of say it in a different way and tell me if this is correct.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: So what you're saying is that uh the uh the government uh crop insurance, the farm subsidies have distorted the market.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: So we don't have a free market.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: And by subsidizing these annual grains, not only are we causing erosion in the heartland um and elsewhere, but what we're doing is causing poultry and pork to be artificially cheaper than grass-fed beef.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and then when you add, boy, we haven't even talked about this one.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is it?
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: Something like 40% of all the corn grown in the U.S.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: now goes into ethanol.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: For for gasoline.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, which is heavily subsidized.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: These alcohol plants were all, you know, inner Department of Energy heavily, heavily subsidized with, you know, grants and and tax concessions for the businesses and all that stuff.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: So so you just see this, I'll I'll just say it, Cena, you just see this perversity, this this perverse everything in um in the entire system that that's uh that's against it's against truth, it's against ecology, and it's against nutrition.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh and it's against the earthworm.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it's it's again it's against everything.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and I just I just wanted to rant a little bit today because I was just on these, uh, you know, I don't get I don't get into you know big corn country, big soybean country, you know, every day.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not that here in you know, where I am in Virginia, um, you know, we're not in that region.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and when I get there, um and I was able to spend these two days walking the land, seeing the devastation, it just, you know, if you love the land and you love and you love the nation, frankly, and you want America to flourish and to be not great again, let's just be good.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe not even again, maybe we've never been good, but but it it if if you want this for our nation, your heart just yearns for for uh you know a different a different value base, a different understanding base, and a and a different bias.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because you having boots on the ground and seeing it with your own two eyes and sharing it with us is so impactful because most of us are just seeing statistics, right?
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're just seeing news reports or headlines.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_03: We're hearing Kennedy say that he wants to change subsidies.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_03: And most people aren't really understanding what that even means.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what is a subsidy and how are these going to be changed?
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he's talked about changing them away from subsidizing these uh monoculture commodity crops that you're talking about that are destructive to the land and our health, and shifting toward regenerative ag um, you know, supports.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: So unfortunately, we're out of time.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: We will talk about this a lot because we have John Clark coming on the show.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_03: We'll talk about you know, pros and cons of subsidies.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's going to be in the news a lot as Kennedy tries to navigate his way through this.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll see what kind of impact they're having.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but for right now, in this moment, to kind of wrap this part one, if you will, of harm subsidies on our program.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think the answer seems somewhat obvious, at least initially, based on what you've shared already.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_03: But can you share with us, even just highlights, what would you do to fix this?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing I would do to fix it is to eliminate eliminate all farm subsidies, all of them across the board, all of them, uh farm supports, because they they perversely, they perversely affect prices and what's grown in the marketplace.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the second thing I would do, again, is just it's not a policy thing, but it's just encourage people, encourage people to to buy products from farms that aren't participating in government programs.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Cena, we're we're beyond labels here.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and and there's no label in the grocery store that says this farm got$100,000 from the government, uh, this farm got$50,000 from the government.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's not on the label.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: But but like in Iowa, you know, this$1.3 billion that those guys get, just a handful, literally, literally, you know, five uh 5% of the of the farmers in Iowa get 90% of that money.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're great, big, massive things.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and so, and that's the way it is in every state.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: There are very, very few recipients.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: People think these farms, oh, we're gonna help all the farmers.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: It it goes to a handful of very, very large conglomerated uh outfits, uh, the kind that are owned by you know Bill Gates and Vanguard and BlackRock and and those kinds of things.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they they play the system.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: They they and and in those areas, they use the term we're farming the government.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're farming the government.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's what they're farming.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're farming the government.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if the government um, you know, uh doesn't um whatever incentivize something, then they they do something else.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the main thing is just to get rid of every single subsidy.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if these if these corn guys want to stand on their own, stand on their own, including the ethanol plants and everything else.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Get rid of the tax concessions, the subsidies, everything, and let it stand on its own.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then at least, at least that's not a guarantee that people will make better decisions, but I think it does guarantee that there's a better chance of truth, of truth coming to the fore because you don't have a um a government hand on the scale.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I I love that.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think too, you painted a great picture today of how well how the system is um propped up based on the you know by the government, but also of just how involved the this topic is, just how many tentacles it really has.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd be remiss if I didn't even mention that um it also touches pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications because corn, wheat, soy are used often as like excipients in in those medications.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: So this is so far-reaching, more than we could just cover a one hour.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're definitely going to come back to this.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I've got, I have like 10 more questions for you that I prepared in advance as like hard-hating questions.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't even get to.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: So there will definitely be more to come on this.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, in the meantime, my solution is piggybacking on yours, uh basically support your local farmer.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, get to know them, and we can shift this, our food supply if we speak with our dollars, right?
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_03: And um and participate, participate in where your food's coming in, coming from by doing that work that it takes to go find your local farmer or even just order from a farmer online and support them, right?
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then you won't be supporting these subsidies.
• 1:02:38
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the question of the day is when you if if you opened your refrigerator or your pantry um uh and you looked at you looked at the labels or the you know the brands, do you know, do you know if that brand receives uh taxpayer subsidies or not?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just do you know?
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and and um if you if you don't, um is there an alternative that you can find that that does?
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, we'll see what everybody has to say.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: Answer over on Discord, and we're looking forward to um your feedback and what you're finding out when you're looking at your labels.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for joining us, and we will see you again next week.