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Episode #106: Joel Shares the History of How CAFOs Came About · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The average uh person, Cena, doesn't have an any understanding of what electric fencing did to the possibility of pastured livestock.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: To the farm, it was equivalent to indoor plumbing in the city.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We know what indoor plumbing did to the city.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you could take a bath, you you you didn't have to go to the outhouse.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, you could you could wash things down, you could clean, you could wash clothes more frequently.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all sorts of things happen with with electrification and indoor plumbing, okay, that that simply that simply were not possible, you know, before then.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Cena McCullough, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Joel.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Sena.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: You always sound so excited when you say that, Joel.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Sina.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: As you can tell, Joel.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I am excited.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Sina.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Does that matter?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: As you can tell, Joel and I have already been having lively discussions this morning.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we start between around 7:30, 8 in the morning, and no caffeine at all, and we're, you know, perky little birds.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: So today's topic is very exciting for me.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Joel, our great um agricultural historian, is going to walk us through the history of how concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs came about.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: All right, take it away, Joel.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so as everybody knows, you know, the concentrated animal feeding operation, whether it's a feedlot for beef cattle, a um a huge 10,000 cow confinement dairy, or a Tyson chicken house, or a Smithfield hog factory, or a um, you know, a Purdue turkey house, um, and these these massive laying houses um for eggs.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we we're here, but how did we get here?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important understand, again, uh, we're not conspiracy theorists here.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We think, we think that people um are generally well intentioned, the things that they want to do, they're generally well-intentioned, but somehow they get off the rails and they're solving, they're they're trying to solve problems that they realistically want to solve, and they cause more problems.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So let's understand that in let's go back to 19, let's just go back to 1900, let's say.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: 1900, there were several things as as industrialism started, cities started, uh, you know, uh farms needed to be bigger to supply these, you know, to supply the the in the increasing size of the cities.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But farmers did not have uh very critical things to be able to scale up.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the animals are outside.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the the the average, the average uh chicken flock size.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about this.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: In in 1940, the average chicken flock size was only a hundred hens.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why, why was that the case?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and in the in the 1930s and 40s, there was rampant hog cholera.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was a deadly disease that ran through um every everything.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was awful, uh, decimated the hog industry.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why did hogs have cholera?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why did chickens get merricks and Newcastle's diseases and all these things?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right, because as it was because as farmers scaled up, markets were growing, uh, you know, farmers were trying to get you know additional scale in their production.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to understand there was no there were three things that needed to happen in order for farmers to scale up with animals on pasture or or or you know outside.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: One was they needed control, they couldn't have these animals running all over the place.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there was no electric fence.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was no electric fence, so fence had to be physical, physical.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you're talking about you know, physical wire, uh, physical boards, lumber.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, there was no uh that was extremely expensive.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Physical, physical barriers for animals are extremely expensive.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't just put a bunch of you know uh board vents out through a especially when there's no chainsaws.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, lumber is very expensive.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Steel is very, very expensive.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was no fencing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you couldn't you couldn't scale your chicken or pig or or cow operation very well, um, because all you all all you could afford for control was boundaries, you didn't have internal control because it was too expensive to control.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, they didn't have um plastic water pipe.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Plastic water pipe, you know, if you're gonna scale up and you're gonna have animals outside, you need to be able to get them water.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be able to control them and move them around on fresh ground, and you'd be able to get them water.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they didn't have any water pipe, so guess where all the animals went to drink?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: They went to creeks, they went to rivers, they went, they went to, you know, uh people did build a few ponds, but basically all the water was in a central location, and so the animals muddied all this up, they pooped in it, they peed in it, that they they there wasn't a good way to get the water into a sanitary place and protect the water inventories that they had.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the creeks ran with all sorts of you know, uh bacteria and and and problems.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then the third thing was can ask you a question on that one before you go to the third.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: So there's no plastic water piping.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did they not have like metal pipe that yeah, but it was very, very expensive.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very expensive.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So so it it it it um it put it out of the reach of the average farmer, or or certainly um or certainly to be able to run it, run it, you know, to the far ends of the farm, to, you know, to to um to get it to as many spots as you'd want to get it to to actually work.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, very very expensive.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing was the chainsaw.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was no chainsaw.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: The chainsaw was not invented, was not really completed until 1957.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really that's a really um important thing because the chainsaw made biomass, made the carbon economy functional.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Until the carbon economy, until the chainsaw, the only carbon available was straw from from grain.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if you wanted carbon, you had to grow grain to get the stems for straw to have your carbon.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so these so as a farmer, think about you're a farmer, you're at 1900, you're a farmer, you're wanting to expand your your um, let's just say your your chickens, okay.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your chickens.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right, you you you so you take your hundred-bird flock and you turn it into a thousand bird flock, but you can't control them.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: They drink out of a of a creek or a spring, and they drink in the same place, that becomes all muddy and poop, pooped up, and um, and and they completely denude, you know, the vegetation because you can't move them, because you can't, because there's no fencing, so you can't move into a clean area, you can't give them water if they were there, and and and if you even do um uh want to try to uh control them in the winter, um you can't get enough material down underneath them to absorb all their manure, especially pigs.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you had was a raging time of 1900 to about 1930, a raging time of diseases on the farm, all sorts of diseases on the farm.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um because farmers didn't have these things.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank goodness, along came antibiotics.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So antibiotics allowed animals to remain viable even in fairly unhealthy conditions.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then came cheap energy.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the gushers, the oil gushers of the early Texas oil runs, you know, the the booming, the 30s, the the 20s and 30s, and for these oil gushers, all right.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly we started getting cheap energy, and with cheap energy came transportation.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you got cheap, cheap energy, cheap fuel, you got antibiotics, you got mechanization.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So now suddenly you could move you you before before mechanization and cheap energy, you could not move feedstocks, whether it was hay, grain, or whatever, you could not move feedstocks to that many animals in one spot, even if even if you could keep them alive, you couldn't move that much material in and the manure out.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You simply couldn't move it in ox carts and and mule-driven wagons and hand, you know, hand forking.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it was the mechanization that allowed the concentration uh to uh of the animals to be able to scale, the mechanization and the cheap fuel allowed uh allowed you to bring more volume of feedstocks to a certain location and haul the manure out.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so so everything before you know the 1930s and 40s, everything was um was limited in size and scope due to the inability to transport things in uh cheaply, the inability to control things cheaply, the inability to get water cheaply.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so you get water control and fuel, and and you simply could not expand because of those limitations.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: But once 1940 came along, um you know, then then things started to change pretty dramatically.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and what I'm what I'm getting at is again, I want everybody to understand there was no there was no farmer conspiracy that that we we want to we want to lock these animals in a building.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was it was the the the antibiotics that enabled scale to move forward and and outside and the mud, the mud, the lack of being able to get water, farmers were looking for a way out of the mud, out of the disease, out of the weather conditions, you know, uh you know, having half the chickens die in a blizzard.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh farmers were looking for ways out of all that.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as the as the 50s came along, as the 1950s came along with with the cheap fuel, the mechanization, the concentrated animal feeding operation with the antibiotics, freed farmers from the mud and the disease that they had been dealing with for the previous 50 to 70 years during early early ag industrialization without these other components.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what happened in the, like I say, 1957, we got the chainsaw, then we started getting little four-wheel drive tractors with front-end loaders.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: We finally got real cheap plastic pipe in the you know, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so that so that water could be delivered uh all over the place.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And by the early 1960s, we started getting electric fence.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: The average, the average uh person, Cena, doesn't have an any understanding of what electric fencing did to the uh to the to the possibility of pastured livestock.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um it it it was it was the I don't know what to uh equivocate it to.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was um I mean to the farm, it was equivalent to indoor plumbing in the city.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we know what indoor plumbing did to the city.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you could you could take a bath, you you you didn't have to go to the outhouse.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you could you could wash things down, you could clean, you could wash clothes more frequently.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all sorts of things happened with with electrification and indoor plumbing, okay, that that simply that simply were not possible, you know, before then.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way it was on the American farm.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Before you had electric fence, plastic pipe, chainsaw.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now we can now we can um uh control animals, we can move them around, we can get them water, we can get them, we we can have them outside without mud, and and and we can get them on new ground instead of being on the same ground every day where you have all these pathogens.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we can actually raise them without antibiotics, on clean ground with water, those those components, it literally took you know 40 years of technology development to finally bring those components together.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: But by that, by the time those components became very affordable and and and you know and and ubiquitous within the system, the concentrated animal feeding operation had become the model du jour, right?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: The the model of the day.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And as you and I know, when something becomes orthodox, it permeates, it permeates the science, it permeates the paradigm, it permeates the economy, it you know, it is just that's the way we do things, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and so uh uh supposed supposed efficiencies, supposed economics, supposed uh uh protocols, all those things by the, you know, by the 70s and 80s, when these, you know, when these other components of of control, water delivery, the carbon economy with chainsaws and chippers, when all those things finally became available and affordable to the farm, by that time KAFOs had captured not only the orthodoxy, but even the imagination of the nation, so much so that even imagining a functional food system without a KAFO became uh foolish.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who who who would who would even question it?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it would be like it would be like today um uh telling a child uh you know you you you you should never use a toothbrush.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, it you know, we just we just do it, right?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't you don't question that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: You yeah, we use a toothbrush.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that that's that's how that's how we got to our place.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the problem is as when orthodoxy, when conventional orthodoxy takes over a a model, um not only does it not look for alternatives, but it doesn't even recognize alternatives when they're presented.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, on our farm, um, I'm very quick to tell people, you know, we're trying to present a credible alternative that anybody that comes and visits can leave here and say, we don't need a KFO.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need a KFO.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's one reason why we don't we don't get uh whatever.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: We don't go down the rabbit holes of, for example, heritage breeds and and trying to raise a pig with you know with no grain.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, those are all well and good, and and they push, they push the envelope.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad there are people, you know, pushing the envelope.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know there's there's a guy like in Kentucky, he's got 200 acres of woods.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: He raises, I think it's I think it's 10, 10 pigs a year with no grain.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: They just run in the woods, but he he sells them for$10,000 a piece, you know, sausage for$100 a pound.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, look, I'm glad that somebody's pushing that envelope, but that's that's not a credible alternative.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not an alternative that I can present, you know, and make and make a logical argument to somebody we don't need, we don't need uh KFOs.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we recognize that we do make some compromises in order to have an authentic, credible alternative to the entire, you know, the entire uh uh KFO industry.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I have not even mentioned animal welfare or the social, emotional aspects of an animal that that that's crammed into a a small spot, um, you know, breathing their own fee all day, eating on their own toilet.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not I'm not even uh um bringing that into the conversation.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that it that is a you know, that is a huge part of of this um of the imperative of why we need to create credible alternatives so that the so so that the the pigness of the pig can be honored, the chickinness of the chicken can be honored.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and I would suggest that a that a culture that doesn't honor and respect and and try, try to create a habitat that honors the pigness of the pig and the chickenness of the chick chicken will um will soon you know not honor and respect the tomness of Tom and the merriness of Mary.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we we create an ethical framework on which we hang you know everything else.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: It all hangs on that.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't I don't want to discount that, but but but believe me, nobody, nobody said about in the KFO business, nobody sat down and said, let's disrespect animals.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, nobody did that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody sat down and said, let's make a let's make a terrible place to raise pigs.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody did that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were trying to solve their mud and disease and scale problems.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were trying to solve those issues in a time where the cities were expanding, the markets were expanding, and the economics were pushing farmers to expand, but they literally did not have the tools like electric fencing, plastic pipe, chainsaws for biomass to make carbonaceous diapers.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: They simply didn't have the tools to be able to scale um uh without having all those those negatives.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so the the bringing the animals inside seemed to be an answer to weather issues, it seemed to be an answer to mud, it seemed to be an answer to disease, it seemed to be an answer to uh water and control and and labor.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed to be an answer to all those things um uh you know at the time.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, of course, you know, as as as we're wont to do as humans, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we've got some benefit here.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's do it more, more, more.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and suddenly um, you know, the the the one-room schoolhouse that works very well suddenly becomes 3,000 uh uh students crammed in an institution.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: The the city that works very well at 100,000 suddenly becomes a million.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the uh the the little the little uh house of um you know uh uh of of 2,000 chickens that works very well uh suddenly becomes a house of a hundred thousand chickens, you know, and and so uh we see that you know we we talk about patterns a lot on this pro on this pot.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about patterns.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and this is one of the patterns that that it seems it seems um uh just plagues plagues the human mind that um that that if a little a little is good, then more is better, more is better, more is better.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and we know, especially when it comes to biology, um uh that that there are there's a reason why a mouse is the size of a mouse is and an elephant is the size an elephant is.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Elephant the size of a mouse wouldn't be a very successful mouse, and a mouse the size of an elephant wouldn't be a very successful you know, elephant elephant.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: elephant or whatever.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that there there are there are reasons for biological limits and scale and and and and and function.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um you know uh uh just just because an actinomycetes in the soil is such a wonderful micro um doesn't mean that that um it would be better if it were five times bigger you know the actinomycetes works because it's tiny you know it's a tiny microbe and and so we see those kinds of uh things and and and so what happened with the KFO it was it was absolutely well intentioned they were trying to solve problems of the day they did they did a lot of very very small ones but then but then as as fuel became cheaper transportation became cheaper and as as concrete became cheaper uh lumber became cheaper all these things uh and antibiotics became cheaper and more ubiquitous all of those things enabled a simple housing solution of 1930 to become you know um uh a a stadium a stadium sized chicken house in 2023 okay that was amazing but um i have a few questions um and one is just more on for me filling some of the gaps in the timeline that exist in my mind so um when was the first cafo like started when do they start using the first cafo was that in the 1940s or when where was that no it it was it was more it was more um in the in the early to mid 1960s um oh okay they they have not yeah the reason the reason that there's the the 19 uh 1968 um uh food safety laws that were revamped in 1960 the safe what was it called the safe food act safe food act of 1968 uh the reason it carved out a poultry exemption was because even in 1968 which isn't that i mean you can't remember it but i can well remember 1968 yeah i wasn't born yet joel no you were uh i remember it very well and um and and 19 in 1968 isn't that far uh away but even even as late as that there were um purdue and tyson and these big companies were literally just in their infancy uh of starting and so that's why they had to carve out this poultry exemption because even as late as 1968 um most chickens came from very small you know community operations in a you know uh around around a city you know they they they came from very small operations and he just couldn't afford to to put all of them out the out of the business and and that wonderful you know public law 90-492 exemption for on farm slaughter uh is still in effect today um because of 1968 you know if that law had been had been put into effect in you know in um in 19 I'm gonna say 1980 uh 1988 instead of 1968 it would not have had that poultry exemption absolutely it would not have had it because we had so many KFOs by that point because we're all yeah because Tyson Purdue all these big companies pilgrim they they had already they'd already uh established the vertical integration uh system and uh you know it was it was really up and coming okay that makes a lot of sense so that happened so in in 1968 Purdue Tyson and those they were still in their infancy and then over like the next decade you're saying they grew okay um and that just in case someone didn't catch it that poultry exemption that you're talking about so that's the one where you can slaughter on your own farm right you can slaughter a chicken yeah and and sell it and sell it with with without inspection and and that's still um in it's still it's it's still there and it it it it is absolutely why the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association apa um that that's why it has been successful uh of all the of all the kind of alternative meats that have been most successful um the poultry uh has has been has enjoyed I think more success than pork and beef and some of the others um be because of that poultry exemption so there's no exemption for the beef or the or lamb or lamb or goat or or beef or pork there's no there's no exemption for them i mean even one animal one animal you can't you can't slaughter on your farm and sell it to a neighbor not even just one animal but chicken uh chicken and turkey poultry you you can and and if you do if you do pheasants if you do pheasants they're not controlled at all you can do a million pheasants with no inspection and sell them without any without any inspection whatsoever oh wow okay but so but the common ones that we would eat like you know the beef and the pork yeah because it doesn't have an exemption what you're saying is it has to go and be slaughtered in a facility that is government inspected uh yeah if you're gonna if you're gonna sell that you know sell that sausage or that T-bone steak or whatever now now um I don't want to get I don't want to get too far into the weeds on this there is there is custom there is custom slaughter which allows me to take an animal and have it done for myself and I can sell that animal live to you and put your name on it and get it done and that's done without inspection as well okay um but but but that that's kind of a hybrid they they still the the facility the facility is licensed but the individual carcass is not poked and sniffed at okay okay that makes sense another reason to know your farmer right to have these relationships with them exactly uh okay so then um in the very beginning so you said you know started in as out in the 1900s with you know we had the industrial revolution people were coming into the cities farmers needed to scale up production what um give us paint us a picture briefly if you will because we're almost out of time before farmers started to scale up what did the farm look like were the chickens getting water from the creek already were they giving them bowls of water like what did that scene look like yeah yeah so you mentioned that there was piping yes so what you would have is um often you would have a central a central water so you know maybe there was a creek maybe there was a spring and maybe there was a well but it was not it was not piped and moved around the farm so there was a there was a place where you could get water um and so and so essentially you were limited to the amount of water that you could carry so you bucketed water yeah you you had tubs you had buckets you had whatever and you'd go and get your water and you'd bucket it or or you would or you would simply allow the animals to run in the creek the spring the stream the whatever and and and drink their own water um so then the problem that's why that's why many many farmsteads old you know old farmsteads are are located um adjacent to a spring so that you know so that they could so that they could have water because wells were expensive too in fact in our area with our our karst uh limestone uh geology almost all the old farms before built any any any barn built before 1950 had a huge like 2000 gallon cistern uh that they would dig and they would take the water off the roof put in a cistern and that's what that's what watered the barnyard animals you know that were around the barnyard you know the the the cup the the 10 milk cows the you know four pigs maybe a couple of sows that were farrowing uh and and other animals just ran you know ran out far loose and found a creek or you know something for their own water and so it was a it was a very um very limited you know water became an extremely limiting factor because it simply was it simply wasn't delivered around the property okay and then so if if you had a farm and you had chickens that were say had free access to a creek but then are you saying the problem would come if the farmer tried to scale up it's the quantity of chickens drinking from that creek because you have much more feces at that point so there's so it's like too much is like what you said.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't find that balance in nature when you have too much right exactly I mean you know 20 20 chickens coming down to a creek edge to drink not that big a deal but if you go to a thousand chickens coming down to that treek creek edge edge to drink now guess what it turns into a mud hole and now you've got now you've got a mud hole you've got no vegetation you've got no protection manure manure water uh mud and you've got a perfect petri dish for growing all sorts of you know problems yeah it's a matter of scale okay so all of those limitations you mentioned that you know they didn't have um like the water and they couldn't move them and it turned into mud and stuff so that in like the 1930s and 1940s you're saying that was a time period when they had a lot of disease on the farm because they were trying to scale up but they didn't have that equipment that they needed that's right to do it without okay okay so that makes sense that's that's why you see you you know you don't hear much about disease in the 1700s even in the 1800s you don't hear much but man come 1900 you just hear all these diseases diseases I mean I've had people I've had people from the industry uh like the the pork industry come here and they they come here to see our pigs out on pasture because everything that they've been taught throughout their schooling is pigs outside equals hog cholera and and and they come here to to see how do you have pigs outside without mud mud the the the the moonscape mud I mean pigs are hard you know they they dig they root up they okay and so um so the the proverbial hog lot the hog lot of the 1900s to 19 uh 1880 to 1940 the the hog lot was was a moonscape um um you know disease factory okay but today we have electric fence so we can move these pigs every few days we can control them we have water pipe so we can deliver water to those paddocks that we move them in and so for the first time in human history we can raise a lot of pigs outside without diseases and and and that that is that is absolutely that is absolutely a factor of technology yes this is so amazing because this like you said this is another episode about patterns right and this is another pattern that we see is that uh we don't understand nature all right so we don't learn how to dance that that that intimate dance that you are so well versed in we don't learn that and and we abuse it and then there's a problem that comes about like disease in this case and then we create man-made solutions right the antibiotics the vaccines to try to solve those problems when that's really not the root cause of the problem and then we're trained we train the the the generations that come after that oh this hogs in the in the mud equals disease and you have to give X, Y, and Z, you know, man-made drugs for it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: So another pattern that we're seeing we're about out of time but I want to close with this question if we could.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of the chickens in the CAFOs um just so that people understand that maybe not be might not be familiar with how many chickens are actually raised in CAFO.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So could you just briefly answer how many chickens do we think percentage rides however you want to answer it are actually raised in KAFOs that we're eating in this country and then my follow-up to that is once people understand how ubiquitous it is in your opinion can we can the farmers can the industrialized complex stop using KAFOs to raise these chickens and raise them on pasture like is that a doable obtainable goal okay well let me try to give you a really condensed answer here uh the the percentage of chickens in CAFOs in the US uh is probably I'm just gonna give you probably 98% um I might even be low on that I mean it is it is including the organic the organic chicken is also raised in KAFOs.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: So so CAFOs is pretty much um ubiquitous the the only ones not raised in in KAFOs would be ones uh that are raised on pasture you know with with with movement around but even then a lot of the you know like like like vital farms um that's you know that says they have pat you know that they have 5000 birds in a house and you know in it and it's a non-rotated pasture.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you know there's there's a lot.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah it it it's way up there way up there.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um as far as can the can the big industries um uh you know come to this and stop using CAFOs um you know yeah theoretically yes theoretically they could uh practically they won't because this gets into another little discussion of of of accounting and tax law that what we do takes more more people on the farm.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now it doesn't require any drugs doesn't require any mRNA doesn't require any concrete fans uh it it's very um you know doesn't require much energy but it does require people but you have to understand that we don't have we don't have any laws that keep a that keep you from being able to um that that says you have to spend this much on a fan or spend this much on concrete or spend this much on on on feed we do have laws that say you have to spend this much on labor and so so our our entire uh uh tax and and regulatory system incentivizes non-human non-human investment and it disincentivizes human investment that's why every company is trying to replace people with things and we see that and so the CAFO is all about trying to replace people with concrete fans energy drugs you know uh um um lumber uh steel okay is trying to replace people with all this there's no people and and and so if you're going to come to a a more biological system part of that biology is the people yeah and so this takes more people on the farm which are heavily heavily heavily regulated and and i'm not trying I'm not trying to say I don't want I want to abuse anybody all right I'm just saying that there is no stipulation that says the farmer has to spend this much on the lumber on his on his barn this much on a fan that he installs this much on the feed that he uses this much on the concrete that he pours but there are all sorts of laws that tell you how much sick leave you're supposed to give how much you're supposed to pay an hour and how you're supposed to have uh uh handle people and and what those do is they create and and then and then there are other things as well you know within the corporate the the corporatocracy but but all of that what it does is all of those protocols within the system all disincentivize replacing replacing energy concrete stuff you know uh uh depreciable that they they they all move to replace to to incentivizing depreciable stuff and disincentivizing appreciate appreciating things which are human capital that is appreciating skill levels increase knowledge levels increase uh uh relationships increase that's all appreciating human capital which depreciating non-human capital is incentivized through tax law through regulatory structure through bureaucracy to occur so that was a little bit of a rabbit hole but I hope that was interesting to folks to help understand that a biological system is fundamentally people centric a non-biological system is fundamentally um um non non-people centric it it's it's essentially um non-biological and and um and so yes KFOs could be eliminated tomorrow we don't need a single one in the whole planet that's for sure but what it would require is a lot more people on farms actually participating in the production end of it and way fewer people in in concrete concrete businesses pharmaceutical businesses um you know uh those kinds of things way fewer people there and a lot of them could come out and and enjoy um pastured chickens wow i love that and that would be so amazing to see right if we had all of these pastured chicken farms and we had all these people that left the factories and came back onto the farms and built their microbiomes up again just by being on the farms like on these great farms so uh it's a it's a great dream to have and hopefully at some point we will shift back over there.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um one way we can help as consumers right is buy from farmers that are raising chickens that are truly pastured.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you thank you Joel our um agricultural historian for sharing this wisdom I I love the pictures that you paint.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: They're so vivid I can actually what listen to this podcast and go tell my kids.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: So this is going to be their history lesson for today.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Cool and I love it.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we hope you all enjoyed it too as always send in your your questions that you have for us we we'd love to hear from the audience and we can't wait to connect with you again next week.