Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode 30: Can Seeds Save Our Republic?

Transcript

Episode 30: Can Seeds Save Our Republic? · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are just tired of being um uh whatever, you know, herded like cattle here.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so that's another uh part of this.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I do think that there is a new interest in self-reliance.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we certainly feel it here, and of course, you know, in in what we do here at the farm, and we do a lot of teaching and education, uh, seminars and things like that.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the interest in this is just, you know, it's just it's more than I've ever seen in my lifetime.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, it you know, we're we're in a we're we're in a we're in a shaking, we're in a movement.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I think almost everybody feels like we're in a kind of a a disruptive, uh a pretty disruptive cycle.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And COVID was a bit of a black swan, if you're familiar with that uh idea.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and so a lot of things are confluing here to uh to make people uneasy.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when people get uneasy, the bottom line is when people get uneasy, they head for the hills.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McKella, and I'm here with the amazing Joel Salatin.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Joel.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Sina.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So today I'm very excited because this is a topic that I've wanted to discuss with you for quite some time.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is in your wheelhouse, more so than mine.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it it the current movement that we're seeing of individuals moving out to more rural communities, starting to farm, you know, whether they're they're growing, they're creating a full farm, or they're just starting to raise chickens, or they're starting to grow one plant, there is this movement towards more self-reliance, right?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Becoming more independent.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is fascinating in the context of the birth of our nation, right?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um I I love learning about the founders uh and that part of our history.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And what I started thinking about as we're seeing this movement to the farms is that farming was a big determination, was a big determinant of American independence.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the ability of us, you know, when we were just colonists, colonists, our ability to actually grow our own food, in my opinion, was one of the most critical factors that was required for us to actually earn or fight for our independence against the British, right?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because we could boycott British goods, right?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can actually grow our own food and we can trade freely with each other.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, these this the actual seeds, right, the seeds of the plants represent autonomy, right?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: They represented independence and patriotism.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like we're starting to wake up to that realization again, especially with all the problems that we have seen across the country in the last two years with the breaking down of the industrial food supply and the food shortages, um, now the inflation that has hit us already.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and then, and as we I'm predicting that more and more inflation is coming in the food supply, which you tend to feel kind of helpless, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: What can you really do with these rising food costs?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so for me, it feels like a little bit of my freedom is being stripped away, which is why I started to think back to harken back to what did food mean to the founders, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I came up stumbled upon this epiphany that if they were not food independent, could we really have declared our independence from Great Britain, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or would we have been enslaved to them because we were reliant on them for goods and foods?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, Cena, when when you think back of the the very early settlements, um, obviously we we don't know what happened down in the Roanoke colony.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: People still speculate, you know, what happened there, but then you've got Jamestown and Plymouth, and and we know that um more than half of all those original settlers for the first you know, roughly 20 years, uh more than half of them died.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we have the great starvation.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and in fact, even in Jamestown, you know, they were getting ready to leave, to abandon it uh when the supply ship showed up, you know.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so establishing that beachhead was initially a a complete dependence on the you know on the on the mother country, um complete dependence.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then they got their toehold and they and they and they uh you know were able to move forward.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, to point out that our our personal ability to feel free is or or at liberty to do, to do, to be, to uh is is directly linked to our sense of uh our sense of um of abundance.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you you can't you can't have you can't have freedom of thought, movement, and deed.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I just made that up, but anyway, you can't you can't have you can't have freedom of thought, movement, and deed um if you're if you don't know where your next meal is coming from.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean think about think about the cultures right now.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, numerous of them in Africa, where it's literally a day-to-day thing, um and and and has been for a long, long time.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um those folks don't have much, they they don't have much freedom to change their daily routine, to change their vocation, to change their uh their location, all right.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um, so I I just you know freedom and abundance really go hand in hand.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and so as we enter this time of um of you know, I'm just gonna call it, you know, kind of mega food insecurity that we're seeing, supply chain breakdowns.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're watching the news, you're seeing the cost of of chemical fertilizer has has jumped uh depending on what you're buying, anywhere from 200 to 400 percent.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that that's huge.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this, there's this um uh and yeah, you mentioned the economy.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we we've just come off of well, we're we're getting off, it looks like uh the you know, the mask, all the the COVID, uh the different things.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, there there is a there is an um a food security and just a kind of a a cultural oppression, oppression that many people feel right now, that things just aren't um aren't uh abundant.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so or or or might not be.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um in fact, an interesting study was just done in Great Britain where they um measured they uh counted the the words in British Parliament over the last 10 years, and uh I don't know who does these kinds of things, but anyway, it was really interesting.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh what's happened in the last 10 years, the the use of the words uh efficient and efficiency have dropped by 50 percent, and the use of the words resilient or resiliency has increased by 100, has doubled.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when when you see, you know, when you see something like British Parliament totally changing its language from efficiency to resiliency, you know, you realize there is there's a shaking going on, there's a you know, there's a concern, uh a big concern.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we're seeing here, certainly in rural America, is an absolute tsunami.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I call it a tsunami of people moving to the land.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we could call them, you know, new pioneers, new settlers, whatever.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we've talked about flyover country, flyover country, suddenly flyover country is the new, you know, is the new place to be.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a reawakening of a new um of a new migration within the country from urban to rural as people seek um not just food security, but just just to give me some space, give me some space, uh, you know, with with with with prying eyes, with, you know, with with uh the pointed finger, with, you know, I'm gonna turn you in.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we don't want to see policemen every two minutes.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I and I'm not trying, I'm not being negative about policemen, but we just we just don't we a lot of people are just tired of being um uh whatever, you know, herded like cattle here.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so that's another uh part of this.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I do think that there is a new interest in self-reliance.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we certainly feel it here, and of course, you know, in in what we do here at the farm, and we do a lot of teaching and education, uh, seminars and things like that.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the interest in this is just, you know, it's just it's more than I've ever seen in my lifetime.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, it you know, we're we're in a we're we're in a we're in a shaking, we're in a movement.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I think almost everybody feels like we're in a kind of a a disruptive, uh a pretty disruptive cycle.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And COVID was a bit of a black swan, if you're familiar with that uh idea.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and so a lot of things are confluing here to uh to make people uneasy.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when people get uneasy, the bottom line is when people get uneasy, they head for the hills.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm wondering too if this movement is actually going to be what's gonna restore our freedom, you know, is this gonna be what's going to save our republic?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because people, like you said, they're they're going to these rural areas, not only for food independence, but people who I talk to who are moving to these areas are also going there for community.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're going there to be around a type of individual, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: A person who the founders would have described probably as virtuous, these virtuous people.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's one thing um that I wanted to emphasize here is that the many of the founders actually believed that we would stay a free and virtuous nation if we if we stayed um as chiefly an agrarian society, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we've we went we have gone in the opposite direction.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: We've gone to this massive industrial society.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I wanted to share a couple of quotes that I found that um that really resonated with me.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So this one's from um Thomas Jefferson.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was a letter he wrote to James Madison in 1787.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Jefferson says, I quote, I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries, as long as they are chiefly agricultural.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America, where they, when they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt, as in Europe.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is exactly what we've seen.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another quote from Jefferson: those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he also went on to say cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interest by the most lasting bonds.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've I've often said that farmers are farmers, um, not the industrial farmers, you know, our small farmers are the last stronghold in our fight for our freedom.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is echoed in their words.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um here, I'll say your jump, you're biting at the bit to come in too.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So let me let me um say one more and then I'll hand it over to you.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I found this quote interesting.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: This was from Ben Franklin.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: This was after we had won the war, and we had to figure out how we're gonna build the American economy.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so Ben Franklin said this there seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is robbery.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: The second is by commerce, which is generally cheating.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, that's mostly what we have today in America is commerce, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Cheating.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: The third by agriculture, the only honest way wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground in a kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of God in his favor as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, the use of the word virtuous among our farmers, and they are the ones that um that are tied to our land, the strongest, and they're the ones that are the are gonna help us uphold our freedom.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: All right, your turn.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of my, yeah, great.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorites is um 1784.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is Ben Franklin again.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: You used him a moment ago.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, he was our ambassador to France after after the war.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was our ambassador to France and and was was um was loved, you know, well loved there.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was quite entertaining and and all that.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he he was the he was the oldest of the founders.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he he was he was basically you know 20 or 30 years older than everybody else.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he was in his 60s when when Thomas Jefferson was in his late 20s.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence when he was 28 years old.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you imagine?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um, so so he he wrote this letter on on uh coming to America, um, published in London as information to those who would remove to America.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And here's one little paragraph.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is that though there are in that country few people so miserable as the poor of Europe, there are also very few that in Europe would be called rich.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are few great proprietors of the soil and few tenants.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Most people cultivate their own lands or follow some handicraft or merchandise.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Very few are rich enough to live idly upon their rents or incomes or to pay the high prices given in Europe for paintings, statues, architecture, and the other works of art that are more curious than useful.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's there's ever-present functional Ben Franklin, you know.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's always been a little favorite of mine, that that little uh passage that you know, nobody's nobody's as poor, uh, but nobody's as rich either.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was truly a a land of I love the his term of the word of of uh mediocrity.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we would call that today the middle class.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so this this notion that you can with your own hands and your own effort uh feed yourself um and and function is is a pretty is a pretty basic uh you know freedom instinct, you know, within the human heart.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I and I think at least from my readings, it seemed like the founders, like I said, viewed that the seed and viewed farming as a symbol of not only their economic independence from Britain, but also it was a patriotic act, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was patriotic to do that.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I read somewhere that, for instance, Washington um insisted on planting like American species of plants on his land.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that was uh an act of patriotism.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in fact, Washington um was he said at one point, quote, I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to be known as a farmer, and actually, if you have you been to Mount Vernon to his home, I I haven't been there.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been there.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's on my that's on my bucket list.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get there.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been to Yeah, I've been to Monticello, Monticello many times, uh, which is Jefferson's home and Montpelier, James Madison, um, but not to not up to Mount Vernon.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's too close to Washington.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's too close to Washington, DC.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I've taken my children there several times.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: When you get a chance, you have to go.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think you would love it.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: He actually, uh, if you take the tour of his house, he was so um enamored by farming and thought it was so critical to life and independence that in his house there's a fireplace, and etched above it in the stone are um are farmers.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's like all throughout his house, you know, and it it was the centerpiece of like the mantle on his fireplace.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he he actually he devoted his life to um improving American agriculture.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um he studied farming methods, he sought to continually improve the methods of farming throughout his whole life, things like crop rotation, he used different fertilizing methods, he had that threshing barn that he designed, which you know there it's there today.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's the original.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not quite, I doubt it, but um, he designed that threshy barn.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can go in there and you can see it.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think it's amazing because even though you know he was our first president, we call him the founder of our country, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: He he helped win the American Revolution, but he did think of himself first as a farmer.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think this is for me, it just like I get tearied when I think about it because they knew something.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: They knew something that was so um profound and and basic to the survival of our nation.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we've lost that.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like now, now that I recognize this connection, I recognize the significance of a single seed, that this is patriotism, this is in my own way, you know, with a lot of stuff that's been going on in the last couple of years, many of us have felt like we've been in this freeze response, right?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: What am I gonna do about it?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just one person, now they're you know, taking away more of my freedom.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, just starting to plant seeds in my house, like we're we're planting herbs now, you know, spring's coming.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just recognizing that me planting one single herb in my window is an act of patriotism.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I am standing up against what's happening.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I am fighting for freedom in my own way, you know, in a doable way.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it it actually gives me hope and encouragement, and it it truly makes me feel more patriotic at heart.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and and yeah, that you're actually uh doing something culturally that's um that's that's helpful.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: We see we see so many things culturally right right now.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: We see so many cultural things that are are dysfunctional and unhelpful.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and to see something that's actually helpful, you know, uh as you think back through that colonial period, uh that you know, think back about the set the the the peasant revolts and the famine, you know, uh of of Paris, of the potato famine in Ireland, a lot of that um, you know, that uh time period from you know 1600 to 1800 uh in Europe was rife with with famine, with hunger, uh whether it was you know uh demographic or whatever.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and so uh the idea of America where you know you could have your own acre, you could have your own garden, you didn't have to ask the Lord, you didn't have to ask the king.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean the Lord like God, I mean you know the Lord.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: of the manor you didn't and and of course great britain uh the whole common law thing developed over you know the inability of people to um you know to feed themselves on the commons you had the magna carta you i mean you had robin hood uh the sheriff of noting you know you you you go into all this lore and it's all about this this inability to procure food for myself and my family and so uh you know if food is is perhaps the most basic human need um for for survival when things when things look uh you know look bleak food is the first place people turn and so it it it's significant that in 2020 one million backyard flocks of chickens started in america it's significant that in 2020 um lemans uh sold 10 times as many canning jar lids in one year as they they had sold in the 10 years prior to that i mean those are those are massive um market indicators of a of an awareness an awareness within the the culture that is um that is moving you know moving agrarian so yeah it's a it's a it's a great trend we we welcome it uh you know we think that we'd we would have a stronger and more um reasonable commonsensical culture if more people grew some food for themselves even on a postage stamp plot and had a hive of bees or some uh a hanging herb garden on the patio uh there's something there's something about um uh viscerally connecting with our with the dependence of our ecological womb that actually makes me smaller and makes me appreciate I'm part of something bigger than myself and if there's something that we need right now um it's to get over this hubris and the world revolves around me and to realize I'm a piece I'm a part of something bigger than myself and the privilege and honor of participating in something bigger than myself uh it helps to bring balance I think mentally spiritually and physically to to the human life oh I love that now I'm inspired like I want to go plant some more seeds like right yeah yeah yeah and and so I know we're we're about out of time um and so I just want to bring it back around to what we started with is that when when anybody a government or individual you know wants to control somebody the easiest way to do that is to control their food right take away their food right and we've seen this in history we've seen this happen in other countries too um and so the founders knew that right and I I think I still think that because they Great Britain could not take away our food they could not control us.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a great strategy for us in present day moving forward is that's one way that we don't let them control us is to as you say don't participate in that game right just don't just stop just even if it's even if it's just even if you have an apartment you have a window just grow start growing one thing just grow one herb or like a little lettuce pot you know it's and it's like your sign of protest but it also you know it also is it's a patriotic sign.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sign of you're you're opting out of the system as best to the best of your ability in that moment right there's no judgment on how much or how little you can do but it it it is an act of independence of self reliance and it just may help you feel more empowered during this time.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't agree more Cena thanks for the insights everybody thank you for joining us for another Beyond Labels podcast and we look forward to seeing you next time