Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #256: Why HALF of U.S. Farming Has Nothing to Do With Food

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Episode #256: Why HALF of U.S. Farming Has Nothing to Do With Food · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The average American doesn't realize how committed China is to becoming self-sufficient in food.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Half of all U.S.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: soybeans are exported, and roughly half of all U.S.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: corn goes into ethanol.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: The kind of unspoken goal is by 2030, which is not very far away, China will be completely independent of foreign food, fiber, agriculture imports.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So here we have these thousands of soybean farmers.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: The market's abandoned, and they're demanding to stay in business.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels Podcast with yours truly, Joel Salatin, the farmer, and our favorite researcher, Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to take a little interesting uh uh dive into some uh some things that have been on my mind lately.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um Cena usually is our great educator teacher.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh today I'm gonna I'm gonna dominate, I think, a little bit, but she's gonna chime in plenty, I know, uh, with things.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that it's there's a couple threads that I want to um talk about.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: One is one is the fact that so much of American farming is not about food.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're hearing um you know, we're hearing stuff from the Trump administration, from Maha, and all this about how to uh how to increase the quality of our food and you know help our farmers transition to whatever, you know, uh fewer chemicals, things like that.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I had the privilege lately of and and and just the whole idea of farmers, farmers being connected to food.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's what I want to drill down on a little bit.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think most of us don't realize how disconnected farmers are.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, your neighbor farmer, how disconnected they are from actually being in the food business.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I uh this really came to my mind recently, Cena, uh, was I I got to meet for an hour with one of the deputies at the U called at the U.S.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Trade Representative uh headquarters in DC.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the people who who um do the background for the deals, you know, the the tariff deals, trade deals, all this.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it's across the board, obviously, it's for you know other all sorts of things.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the things obviously that they work on are um agriculture trade deals, you know, exports, imports, things like that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um as as we as we talked and you know pointed out once again that half half of all U.S.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: soybeans are exported, and roughly half of all U.S.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: corn goes into ethanol, and then of the 50% of the soybeans that are used domestically, some of them now are turned into into biodiesel.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you get you get alcohol out of corn, that's carbohydrate, you get diesel out of soybeans, that's protein.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's the difference between the the two fuels, gasoline and diesel.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, think of diesel as protein and gasoline as you know starch.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um what they what they told me was that as they as they discuss things with their Chinese counterparts, because uh generally China has bought, goodness, a quarter of the U.S.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: soybean production.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: What they said was that the average American doesn't realize how committed China is to becoming self-sufficient in food.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: China does not want to be dependent on other countries for food.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want you to think about, Cena, just a minute, of how our cavalier attitude about manufacturing has come home to bite us.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, for for 30 years, we've been, sure, we'll just go to China, Vietnam, you know, India, whatever.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then you wake up 30 years later and suddenly nothing's made in the U.S.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're now you're completely dependent on people who may or may not be friendly, uh, who have their own interests to look after.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we we certainly see it in manufacturing that you know nothing's nothing's made here anymore.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when something is made here, uh the company makes a big deal about made in America.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a it like it's a great great accomplishment.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and and go to you know, Anderson, Indiana, and and St.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Louis, the Rust Belt.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these cities, it it's uh it's it's like they just got you know um through a nuclear war.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there there are miles of decrepit falling down.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Detroit is one of the biggest ones.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it it's hard to imagine the level of you know uh manufacturing rust.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, St.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Louis, between 1950 and 2000, St.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Louis lost 50,000 people a decade.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: From 1950 to 2000 lost 50,000 people a decade.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: So there are literally, you know, acres and square miles of just abandoned, abandoned city buildings, blocks and blocks of just abandoned, and of course that's where you know that's where you get then the you know the homeless setup, you get crack houses, you get you know all sorts of of um netherworld type um living, which then puts pressure on the urban society to you know for safety and for functionality and all that sort of thing.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so what these guys told me, um, and I don't think I'm telling secrets here, uh they said that that 15 years ago, China needed the US.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was completely dependent on on the U.S.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: for, for example, soybeans for for a lot of its you know um basic feedstocks.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: But China has been on a tear to um to eliminate that dependency.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the kind of unspoken goal is that by 2030, which is not very far away, China will be completely independent of foreign food, fiber, agriculture exports.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm sorry, imports, imports.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's their goal.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want you to think what you tell me if you can figure it out, because I haven't been able to figure it out.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: What goes through a soybean farmer's mind?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I want to lay this out so that everybody can follow along with the with the with the thought, with the idea.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: What goes through a soybean farmer's mind who who instead of thinking about doing something alternative or realizing the the handwriting on the wall, you know, in four years or three years ain't gonna be a market?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's it's not a situation where we're gonna be able to twist China's hand anymore and and say, you've got to take something.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's gone.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the market is gone.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: What goes through a soybean farmer's mind when looking at that resolute objective in China, looking at the export you know dysfunction, what makes that farmer think that the U.S.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: taxpayer should subsidize their unnecessary, unwanted soybeans just because they're a soybean farmer?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, you you see the disconnect.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, uh as the farmer, I mean, as a farmer, I can tell you, I I watch trends.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I what are people buying?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's the latest, whatever, you know, cut of meat, animal, uh, herb.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm watching this this market and making adjustments.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe they're, you know, maybe they're really into mushrooms.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we need to look at mushrooms, okay?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or they're into this, you know, uh gala apple, okay?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we ought to plant some gala apple trees.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm constantly, I'm I'm extremely uh cognizant of trends, uh, of trending things.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to be stuck in obsolescence, okay.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So here we have these thousands and of soybean farmers and corn farmers that are controlling you know millions of acres of prime, because you know, you don't grow soybeans and corn on poor land.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the best land in the world that you grow soybeans and corn on.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um they're they're demanding to be subsidized and remain in business even as they face oversupply in the market and and a uh what would be the right word?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh uh market abandonment.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, the market's abandoning them, abandoning them, and they're demanding to stay in business.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's going through that guy's mind?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: What what is he thinking?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, you want me to guess?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll I'll be happy for you to guess.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've I've got I've got some more thoughts, but uh yeah, please jump in and and and break the monotony of me uh ranting.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, love your rants.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: I just learned a bunch right now.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: I did not know about China's 2030 goal.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: This makes perfect sense, though, especially when we had Jan from American Thought Leaders on the podcast.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: It fits perfectly in what he is saying is the psyche of China and their goals for longevity.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um so my first thing that came to my mind was you know, you said that you watch the market and you're adjusting accordingly.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think that now I am not a farmer, but I would think that somebody who is a monocrop farmer who is getting government subsidies and is used to getting bailouts from the US government when there's not a market, I would think that they don't have as large of an incentive to watch the markets because what are they adjusting to?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: If if their plan is we're just gonna constantly make uh grow soybeans or constantly grow corn, they don't have plan B necessarily, that they can, at least not at scale.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: So why would they have an incentive to spend time and effort to watch the market to even see what's happening?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: So they may not even be aware of this 2030 China goal.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and again, because they are subsidized and because the US government has over and over again shown that they will just bail them out when there is not a sufficient market, they probably don't feel the same type of pressure.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: And people are loath to put in more work and effort when they don't have to, when they're not, they don't have the incentive to do so.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't think this fits in perfectly with human nature.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So so Cena, what's the what's the fastest, what's the surest way to make sure somebody makes bad decisions?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: To make sure make it so they don't have to feel the consequence of the decision.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow! Wow, bingo! Maybe it knows that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that this is just basic.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist, you don't have to be a smart, you know, you don't have to be a uh a cracker jack podcaster to realize that that that the the quickest way to get people to make bad decisions is to protect them from the consequences of their bad decisions.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if you constantly provide a safety net for their bad decisions, uh then they don't make decisions.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I call this, I say what we've got in this country now is decision deficit disorder.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Decision deficit disorder.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, uh uh if you if you drink four Coca-Cola's a day, well, you know, the doctor, the farm, the drug company will bail me out, you know, if I get diabetes or whatever.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've got, you know, uh, if I go to the hospital, they have to take care of me.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it doesn't matter if I can pay or not, they have to take care of me.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and so we have this, we have this burgeoning uh entitlement safety net mentality.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't have to save, you know, there's Social Security.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, just think about it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Across the culture, we have uh we have gradually chipped away at the consequences of decision making, which then makes our decision making both not discerning and very and and our decision-making muscles become lethargic.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's a dependency disorder.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is, it is, it's absolutely a dependency disorder.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, so, so just imagine with me.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, I I've been trying to put this in terminology that folks can understand and to show how far out these these soybean farmers, especially soybean, because you know, they just got a$12 billion bailout uh from Trump.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they got a$12 billion bailout last year, you know, uh and and now this year, supposedly, the corn farmers are gonna get the bailout.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um so imagine, imagine if there was a big project going on, a big construction project that needed 20 electricians.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: 20 electricians.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And these soybean farmers came and looked at this construction project and said, you know, we really like electricians.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: We think electricians should be, you know, paid and kept in business.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So even though this project only needs 20, we love electricians so much and we think they should be supported so much that we believe that there should be a mandate that this construction project hire 30 electricians instead of 20 electricians when they because we love electricians.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Cena, not a soybean farmer in the country would think like that.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Not a one of them would it's it's it's outlandish, okay?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you and I think it's outlandish, but I think soybean farmers would also say, no, I would never, if they need 20 electricians, they should hire 20 electricians, and that's what gets the project done, okay?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what these soybean farmers are demanding.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: We only need this many soybeans, but we love soybean farmers so much, and it's and it's such a uh uh valuable thing that we should pay soybean farmers even when we don't need them.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we should buy soybeans even when we don't need them.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we shouldn't mandate that the American taxpayer bail out the soybean farmers even when we don't need them.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know when you when you say it that way, it's it's outrageous.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, I'm actually, I'll I'll I'll confess, I'm having trouble resenting these soybean farmers.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh uh if there's one thing that that farmers and agriculture can't abide, it's when you dare to suggest there's good farming and bad farming.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the most the most um aggressive, whatever, hate speech that I've gotten throughout my career is when I dare to suggest there are good farmers and bad farmers.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that is like sacred ground.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, we're you know, all for one and one for all, you know, Mickey Mouse.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're you know, we're we're uh we're all in this together.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: You you you can't you can't dare impugn farmers.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: We we need farmers, we love farmers.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: We yeah, uh you know, good farmers, yes, but we don't need bad farmers, and we certainly don't need um continued soybeans and corn that make a dead zone the size of Rhode Island and the Gulf of Mexico.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and poison the groundwater.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Iowa, Iowa's groundwater, Illinois groundwater, I mean, it is it is it is almost like poison with all the chemicals that have gone into the you into the uh water.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so then then you have these broad ramifications.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: For example, a couple of weeks ago, I spoke at the uh horse progress days out in uh Arthur, Illinois.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So for two days, I was with, you ready for this?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: 13,000 Amish.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: I never saw so many buggies and horses in all my life.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um they they they they have this big gala once a year, they move it around about five different locations.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so I was there and they were talking about the price of land.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked some of the elders uh there, well, what what makes the land so expensive?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Without batting an eye, they say the subsidies.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's the subsidies that make the farmland expensive.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So then young farmers can't afford to get in.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So so this has this have has ramp way beyond just you know, should the U.S.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: taxpayer bail out soybean farmers, the repercussions of it go all the way to how do we create on-ramps for young farmers to receive the baton from retiring farmers?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: The average farmer is 60 years old.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: So where's this baton gonna go?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have all of these artificial prop-ups to soybeans, suddenly this land is is worth twice what it ought to be if it were actually market value, young people could afford to get in and and start farming.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they wouldn't and they wouldn't start farming with soybeans.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so so so what we so what's the one, I mean test your this this is the test, Zena.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um what's the one agricultural item right now in the United States that we have that we need more of more than any other single item in United States agriculture?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I know, like, wow.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I don't follow this like you.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: I would guess um beef.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh! Bingo! Cena, you're way smarter than anybody ever thought.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, beef.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you've had if you've had your ear to the news at all, you know that we have the lowest, uh think about this.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: We have the lowest beef animal numbers in the U.S.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: that we've had since 1950.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Since 19.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: So think about this, Zena.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: 1950, since 1950, that's uh 76 years ago.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: What has happened to the U.S.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: population in that time?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It has doubled.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have double the U.S.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: population, and we have fewer cows than we had seventy-six years ago.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're baling out soybeans, which we don't need, to keep farmers in business to grow something we don't need.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what the market is begging for is cows.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And nothing grows grass like land that grows corn and soybeans.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's the best land in the world.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually did a I did a financial analysis recently, and I took a hypothetical, okay, it's hypothetical, but I but I know a little bit about this.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I took a hypothetical soybean farm in um in Kansas.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: A thousand acres.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now in 2025, the average soybean farm, according to the USDA figures, lost a hundred dollars an acre.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: So think about this.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: You got a thousand acres, you lose a hundred dollars an acre.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you lost a hundred thousand dollars.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I I said, well, what if that guy um went to cows?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I know what fence costs, I know what water pipe costs, I know what grass seed costs.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the bottom line is that for$300,000, that thousand-acre soybean farm could be converted completely to grass with fencing and water lines for cows.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, he doesn't have a cow yet.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, don't worry, I'll get to that momentarily.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: But but but the in the the the land the land investment, the development, the infrastructure, and and the and the plants, the seeds to go from soybeans to perennial, you know, perennial polyculture of forages, fencing, waterline, um, seed planting, three hundred thousand dollars.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know what it costs to plant a thousand acres of soybeans?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Three hundred thousand dollars.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and that's every year, Sina, that's every year.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so here we have a once-in-a-lifetime capitalization cost.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how long does black plastic pipe last in the ground?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it, you know, hundreds of years, all right.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, so um, you know, this this is a one-time capital expense, you know, generally speaking, for the same cost as putting in a crop of soybeans, and now you've got it, now you've got to stock it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's where it gets expensive, because cows are really expensive right now because they're they're they're expensive.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: But even at today's prices, if you went out and bought cutter canter cows.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So these are these are culled cows, these are cows that in, you know, if you planted this in uh in let's say April, by fall, you'd have this wonderful big thick stand of you know, grasses, perennial grasses.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so in the fall, you go and you buy a bunch of culled cows.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: These are these are older, old cows that farmers are getting rid of because you know they're they're they're not you know they're not doing well.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, they're not they're on the way out.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And no farmer wants to keep cows that might not last.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you get these cows, they've weaned their calves off.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: About 30% of them will probably be pregnant.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 70% of them won't, but they're gonna hit your nice new grass, they're gonna fatten up really nice in the spring.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can sell 70% of them into the fat cow market, and um, these go into hot dogs and burgers and stuff.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is the you know, called cow is what you know a Burger King at McDonald's buys.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: They don't they don't buy prime beef, you know, because they're not in the steak business.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so the the burger, the the burger business is what keeps the the price acceptable for you know for salvage animals, you know, older animals, uh people, you know, animals that people, animals that don't that don't grade well, okay?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um so that gets all your money back, and then you have these 30% that have calves.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can either sell them as cow calf pears, you can keep them till fall.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that that within 18 months you have all your investment back and your capitalization costs back, and you're in the cow business.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And America is can eat really high-quality grass-finished beef instead of bailing out soybeans that we don't need that destroy the land.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at at food needs and food trends, these U.S.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: trade representatives that I met with in DC, they looked at me and they asked, here was the here was the question, which which which germinated today's podcast.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Their question was, could you tell me as a farmer, why farmers are so disconnected from food?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it I I just found it such a profound question because you know, the average American, what do farmers do?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they produce food.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they don't actually produce food, they produce soybeans for export, for diesel fuel, corn for ethanol, and the dirty little secret is alfalfa.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Millions of acres of alfalfa with irrigated precious aquifer water that we're depleting at 12 inches a year to be exported for racehorses in Japan and Dubai.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: What I s I spent I spent a uh a morning with the largest hay exporter of the U.S.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: in um in uh Oregon.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I mean shipping containers.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just I mean, a whole two football fields full of shipping containers.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna stick little square bales in, put them on a boat, and ship them to Japan and uh and uh uh uh the the countries in the Middle East to feed race horses because they don't grow good hay or they don't have enough hay or whatever.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are desertifying the U.S., depleting our aquifers, using our precious water to grow alfalfa, to go on a ship to go around the world, millions of acres of this stuff, to go around the world to feed racehorses.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's not being subsidized like like crops.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: The the U.S.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: they we just so everybody knows, we subsidize six things in the U.S.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: We subsidize six six things um in the agricultural program: soybeans, corn, and wheat, cotton, rice, and sugar cane.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we definitely need to subsidize sugarcane.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we need a lot more sugar cane.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's a joke, by the way.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for your ice cream that you love.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for my ice cream, yeah, yeah.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but those are the six things we subsidize.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: But these uh foreign places are willing to spend so much for racehorse quality hay that there is a that there is a market, there's a foreign market for the for this hay.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it begs the question, Cena.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think, are you old enough to remember Jurassic Park?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're so young, I always have to, you know, uh pinch myself with how young you are.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So so in the movie Jurassic Park, you remember what the um what the single most pregnant line in the movie is?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: The journalist gets in the face of this scientist that's you know got all these raptors and dinosaurs and are getting ready to destroy civilization and eating people and cars and all this stuff.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the journalist and and and the scientist is euphoric over what he's been able to look at all this thing.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Look at what I've done.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is wonderful, all this.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the journalist gets in his face and he asks a question.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is, you know what it is?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: My son would be so upset with me that I can't remember.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: It it's something about isn't it something about like just because you can and then you shouldn't?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're three for three today.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so proud of you.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Three for three today.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: The question is just because we can, should we?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just because we can, should we?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that's a that's a fair question because you know, my my dad had a had a saying, he said, as humans, you know, we're pretty clever.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're pretty clever.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know we got we got a big old brain, we've got you know mechanical ability, man.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: We can we can do things and we can invent things.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: He called it overrunning our headlights.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: We can invent things that we can't spiritually, emotionally, physically, or mentally metabolize.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: So what we do is we invent things, and then we spend generations trying to trying to deal with the fallout from our creative um idea as as we try to metabolize, you know, the the unintended consequences of what it did.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, think of DDT, you know, think of think of um of margarine, okay?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: GMOs.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I mean think think of you know Cheerios, all right.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, and and in the future, I'm sure we'll look back, you know, uh hot pockets and lunchables and and whatever.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: But we, you know, we do these, we do these things, and then and then um, and then there's these consequences that we didn't think about.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, how do we how do we um handle that?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, so here we are with with uh with a system that essentially doesn't have any, we're circling back to the front, real-time consequences.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, those alfalfa guys depleting aquifers to raise racehorse hay for Dubai on precious American farmland, there's no there's no immediate consequence to desertification, to eliminating the aquifer.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's no immediate consequence to you know having whatever that land can produce, you know, in a monoculture of alfalfa to go to racehorses.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so the the lag the lag time between the um you know between the the exploitation of an opportunity and its consequences is sometimes pretty long.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and here we are.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so, again, these all these millions of acres growing alfalfa for Japanese and and uh Middle Eastern racehorses, they're not growing food.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's the that's the thing I want folks to understand today is that when we talk about farming, and and we and we use this word as a as a big tent term, don't we?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we say farmers, as if as if we're all in this together, we're on the same team, we're pulling the same direction, we're all rowing the boat the same direction, you know, we're all punching the volleyball the same direction.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and I I I I think it's it's it's absolutely essential that people realize we can't use farmers in that type of generic terminology.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that kind of a new idea?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what's what comes to mind is I'm not surprised you get you're getting pushback because I think that you make an excellent point, and I'm right on board with you, like right aligned with what you're saying.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I know this sounds maybe a little bit trivial, but I would maybe say there's good farming practices and there's bad farming practices if you want to use the good and bad versus good farmers and bad farmers.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's where part of the pushback might come from.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't think people want to, when you say there's bad farmers, it almost implies that there's um a bad intent, you know, like an intentionality between it.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: So let me ask you this, Cena.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Would you say there are good mechanics and bad mechanics?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say, yes, we say that, but I think there's a different like reverence for farmers than there are mechanics.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't think, you know, we've heard about it's Americans' heart land.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's literally what we call it, the heart land.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: And we depend on them, right?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: Us eaters depend on these farmers.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think they do have this, they put them in a different category.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think you're fighting a whole nother battle when you start saying that there's a bad farmer.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: So even I think just distinguishing it's a bad farming practice, because that means that it, that farmer, you're kind of giving them grace and giving them um like a do-over.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like, here, that's a bad practice, but like you're not a bad person.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like comparing.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: They'll say, like, don't say, like, oh, you're bad.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: Say that behavior was bad, not the child isn't bad, the behavior is bad.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it gives that psyche of that person more of an opportunity to say, like, okay, I'm not gonna go into a shame space here, you know, and I'm not a bad person.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: I can redeem myself, like I can do better.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's why I know some people listening might be like, oh, she's parsing words, but there is a difference in the psyche of both the person who hears it and you saying it.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I think I think you're exactly right.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I I think you're I think you're dead on, which is why we're willing, we're willing to to parse that language for farmers.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and I and I I'm I I'm just pushing back on we we don't parse that for us.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: We don't say, we don't say um uh if we want to say there's good preachers and bad preachers, we don't say, well, there are preachers who preach good sermons and preachers who preach bad sermons.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Name me, name me anything else that that we're that um that uh uh careful or that you know that that sensitive about.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're not sensitive about about uh any other vote.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we say there's good accountants and bad accounts.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: We don't say there are accountants who do good practice and there are accountants who do bad practice.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, we and and and I'm I'm just trying I'm just trying to make a point that that as a that as a culture um perhaps perhaps we have we have been um oh what's the word I mean we we we have allowed ourselves to almost um revere to the point of non-obligatory pushback on I'll say it bad farming practice You can teach an old dog new tricks um and and and and and so no but nobody else gets a pass to that to that extent.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody else gets a uh other vocations, other things.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean good grief.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: We even say, you know, good lawyers and bad lawyers.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah we don't say you know good good practicing lawyers and good and bad practicing uh lawyers.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I even hear people saying good doctors and bad doctors.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I said that too, you know, when when I was going through my healing journey and running up against the wall with one Western medical medical doctor after the next, and I would say to Donnie, oh, like they were not a good doctor, you know.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um it wasn't until later when I was practicing forgiveness that I realized, oh, I just kind of clumped all these doctors as like together as bad when I would say they're a bad doctor, um, instead of saying, like giving them grace, they don't know any better.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is what they were trained.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, they can get themselves out of it, but you know what I'm you know what I'm saying, that it wasn't an intentional thing.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's one reason why I'm more um just like I'm more I pay attention to that terminology more because it kept me in a state of anger for a long time.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that helps people to kind of release that and not get stuck in that emotional roadblock.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you could say, oh, it's not that the person's bad, it's just that um they're using a tool set that um that that I don't agree with.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're using a tool set that isn't designed to help you heal, you know?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so if you can differ if you can separate the two, you can oftentimes release that uh emotion of anger.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, because now you're saying you're fresh you're frustrated with you have a little bit of resentment to the soybean farmer.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a similar thing to what I went through with the medical doctors.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: What is it with you?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: So so so would would you have that same uh would you have that same mentality to a bank robber?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: That there's some oh that he's a bad thing.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're a good person, you're just you're just practicing bad behavior.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: To a bank robber?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, is it to a rapist?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're really a good person, you're just practicing bad behavior.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, clearly that would be a harder thing to do than attaching that to a farmer being labeled as a bad farmer, you know.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like, but I think that's the whole point of the system, right?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: When they talk about trying to reform people, that's what they part of the reforming process is to separate out the behavior from the person, to, I mean, not to excuse the behavior, but to acknowledge that the beh behavior is bad.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: But if you ultimately think that the person is just a bad person and they're not redeemable, then you have to throw out that whole system of trying to help people um to rehabilitate, rehabilitate themselves.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so this is a much deeper question that you're asking.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very good question.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: This would be a good thought question for the listeners as well.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I agree.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and um I I just you know, it's like it's like talk to the hand.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to the hand, talk to the hand, you know, don't talk to me.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I I get you know uh that whole you know psychological kind of thing to where we're trying to uh separate, but you know, um our our behavior, our behavior is an outgrowth of the way we think and then what's in our heart, what we believe.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and uh and uh prop probably the most extreme example, I'm gonna go where uh uh a little different thing here, but I want you to think about, you know, I I I have a a deep honor and respect for Native Americans and think that we, you know, did them a pretty bad turn, and um have read a lot uh and been on a lot of reservations and talked to you know Native American folks, and I'm always asking them, you know, what should have been done?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and as I've read as I've read those, you know, what are known as the Indian Wars, you know, post-Civil War as as we as the as the U.S.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, pushed them out of their uh places and and did not honor our treaties with them.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, you know, we can argue that they didn't honor some of theirs too, but I think the I think the the bigger um agreement was on the was on the US the the US side, not the Native American side.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that's just my opinion.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the um the uh the American, the European idea of these natives was that they were.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Such barbarians because they would mutilate the bodies of the of the soldiers they killed.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they would they would dismember them, disembowel them.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't want to go into there might be somebody listening to this that's you know eating a sandwich in their car.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to go into all the deal, but but but but this mutilization was considered barbaric.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: But in the Native American psyche culture, they did that because they wanted to delay all the body parts coming together in the afterlife that they considered that would assemble and would would would continue this this uh this tension.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I can make the arms harder to hook up with the legs and the liver and the head, then um we have a reprieve in the happy hunting grounds, we have a reprieve from this from this um conflict because we've delayed that body getting back together.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was the Native American mentality.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you look at it in that respect, it makes perfect sense.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not barbaric, it's not barbaric.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is completely uh culturally spiritual as to as to where they were.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean you you can say it's wrong.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can, I mean, and and I mean I tend to think that it's wrong, uh, but but but um but it's but it's not it's it's not barbaric like we think of barbaric.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't qualify in my view, it doesn't qualify for barbarism, it qualifies for a consistent spirituality in how we're preparing for the afterlife.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: But but the American soldiers didn't see it that way, they couldn't see it that way.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and so um so it's hard.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: That that's probably one of the most um profound examples of your illustration of why just because somebody's doing something that you vehemently disagree with, you can't bag them as an evil person.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're just expressing their mindset.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: It may be extremely wrong, misguided, misinformed, or you know, misaligned.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: There can be a lot of things with it, but um you're but you're giving you're giving um benefit of the doubt um at at a at a very at a very charitable uh uh pos um uh degree.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: More than me.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: More than well, you're giving them grace.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's good to talk through it.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's it's gonna be because because I mean I don't want to go around filled with hate, but I but I do I do um I do uh struggle with frustration of the system that continues to feed this and and and and say it's okay.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not okay.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I agree with you.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's it is not okay, and it hurts us.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: And China by 2030, you said is going to be fully independent.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: And where are we?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, we're we're squandering our resources.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I are we I mean, Joel, in the last 15 years, as China's moving towards full independence, are we becoming more independent in our food supply?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Are we stagnant?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: Are we worse?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Where are we?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um in general that's a that's a great question.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm not confident of the answer.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: I do know that in general, we are now we are now at a 20%.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I have two statistics I know.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: One is that according to these U.S.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: trade representatives, we now import more billions of dollars of food than we export.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: So our our imports now exceed our exports in dollars.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, not in tonnage, because we're exporting soybeans and we're importing French wines.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it doesn't take it doesn't take very many pallets of French wine to you know to to uh equal a whole you know a tractor trailer load of soybeans.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: So so we're um so so so that this this is new.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is new in U.S.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: history that we are importing more value than we're exporting agriculturally.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: That that's never happened before.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's only happened in the last couple of years, all right?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's new.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing that's new is that in the last 10 years, we have moved to 20%, one-fifth, one in five of every biteful of food an American eats now is not produced in America.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's produced somewhere else.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's also brand new.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you take those two um facts, those two you know trend facts and put them together, it does indicate you know a trend that's not good.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and then and then when you know when you realize that 500 years ago, North America produced more food than it does today, um, and and I had a guy tell me, well, it's because of because of urbanization.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not because of urbanization.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's because we have um we've desertified, we've lost so much of our land.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, um you know, even in the arid southwest, pre-European, you know, that was tall grass.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Tall grass.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was it was, you know, six feet tall.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the bison would, you know, would roam through there, you know, once a year, once every two years, and they had this, you know, this unbelievable uh choreography.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I was on a and this is true throughout the world.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um a ranch in Australia that was a hundred thousand acres, and in 1820, when they started that ranch, it had 28,000 cows.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: And today the same acreage can only support 4,000 cows.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing is true throughout the deep south in America and the you know and the um the the kind of you know the the the more brittle the more brittle environments.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: They've gotten more and more and more brittle uh over time.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: And why is that?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: If it's a worldwide thing, is it it's uh it's overgrazing.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's overgrazing.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's overgrazing, lack it's it's lack of vegetation.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we've talked about this before, that it's it's the vegetation that exudes the bacteria into the atmosphere that create little tiny um, you know, almost at a molecular level, uh um particles that allow water vapor to convene to condense.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Water vapor can't condense in a vacuum, it needs a particle to condense on.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so where do these particles come from?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: They come from vegetation, from the leaves of vegetation that exude these bacterial microbial particles that allow condensation to occur.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: So when you overgraze or you overplow or you you reduce the the vegetation, you reduce leaf area, okay?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: When you reduce leaf area, you reduce the bacterial exudates, and now there's and and and dust doesn't count.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: You like to think, well, dust the dust particles?
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, dust particles don't work.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Dust particles are hot, bacterial particles are cool.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is how the earth um maintains as a radiator.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and so and and so this is why a lot of areas of the earth now, the wet areas are becoming wetter, and the dry areas are becoming drier because the earth needs to maintain its temperature, and so it the the clouds form more aggressively over the vegetated areas and less aggressively over the non-vegetative areas.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: And those are man, those are man-created, man, you know, human, human-cause human created.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this this is not this is not, you know, overall global warming, climate, it it's it's a it's a result of the management of the vegetation and the desire of the earth to maintain atmospheric temperature uh uh control.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all about the vegetation.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: So are you saying it, for example, if farmers are growing just rows and rows of these monocrops with bare soil, uh, are they causing that area to be become drier and drier over time?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and then that actually would change the climate, wouldn't it?
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: In in that area, yes, yes.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most interesting experiments I ever read about was um the meteorological department at University of Wisconsin went to the Rajputan Desert in India and they fenced out a big area.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was maybe 10 square miles, okay.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine, fenced it out so that the nomads couldn't run their sheep and goats through this desert area.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: And within five years, it re-vegetated and the rain started.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were able to get vegetation there.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so this has been done.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um, Jeff Lawton in Lebanon and Jordan has done this in the in the desert of the Middle East.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: This has been done all over the place.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we we can absolutely um what would be the word?
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um und desertify places.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but all of these places have been have been um mismanaged, the vegetation has been mismanaged to such an extent that um that you don't you you reduce the hydrologic, the hydrologic evapotranspiration cycle by by uh significantly reducing the vegetation over a large area.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh okay.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean Libya, Libya, you know what Libya looks like today.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, during the height of the Roman Empire, Libya was the number one supplier of baboons to the Colosseum contests in in Rome.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, where do baboons live?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: They don't live in a desert, yeah.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: They live in a jungle.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there ain't no jungle in Libya today.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so imagine Libya as a jungle.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and and this can be this can be said, isn't what these climatologists at the University of Wisconsin showed, the book, it's a fascinating book, it's called Climates of Hunger.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Climates of Hunger, and it was written like 40 years ago.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of my one of my early, early, like, you know, revelatory books that that I read.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And basically their position was every desert is man-made and every desert can be man-cured.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's simply management.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it's hard for us, Sina, to appreciate the level, you know, going down through through history, you know, the level of mismanagement on land.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was in Israel this spring, you know, where Absalom, when it when he uh rebelled against David, the king, his father, and he rides this horse under the and and and you know, he has this long hair, and the hair gets stuck up in the tree, and he hangs himself on a tree.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that area, there isn't a tree in miles.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happened to all the trees?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: During the Ottoman Empire, when they controlled the Middle East, they put a tax on trees, and so everybody living there cut down all the trees because they want to pay taxes on the trees.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's how Israel got completely devastated from from forests and from trees was during the Ottoman uh Empire uh rule of that area.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and that you know, Carthage, uh, you know, Hamurabri and his elephants that went from Carthage to uh over to try to take Rome, you know, Carthage rivaled Rome.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's a desert.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can't find an elephant there, there's no there's no nothing.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happened?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they they overgrazed, building this great big city, Carthage, and let's agree that it was a little more uh of a of a less temperate environment than Rome.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: And um anyway, uh long story short, the rain stopped when they, you know, when they over overdid it.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you go to four corners of the U.S., go to four corners of the U.S.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: and look, you know, in um in the year 100 A.D.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: at a thousand A.D., all right, so this is a thousand years ago, the Native American cultures of four corners, there were you know, Colorado and Arizona all come together at four corners, those were the tallest buildings on the planet.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: And those whole civilizations completely collapsed.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because they got too big, they cut all the trees, and planted uh uh maize, corn, and um and and changed the changed the weather pattern, and it all dried up.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: Then they then they collapsed.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: This is fascinating.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: So tying this back into what you spoke about with subsidies, so you're saying that so the land in the U.S.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_02: costs more because of subsidies, and I'm assuming that means because they have potential to get government money if they plant the monocrops, the soybeans and the corn.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: So then a farmer is not incentivized to plant uh vegetation, like to do anything but these row crops, right?
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're not incentivized to do what you're saying needs to be done in order even to bring the moisture back and um to save our land.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you you have to realize that that the entire here and we're out of time here, but but the entire um US agriculture policy is anti-ecological.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: The entire policy is anti-ecological.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that's that's a significant enough thought to meditate on for a while.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's sombering.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very sobering, which, you know, which then when you look at when you look at, well, let's let's let's throw 700 million dollars in a bucket to help farmers transition to regenerative agriculture, it stop.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it it's it's just it's it's just silly.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just in my view, it's just silly.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's um it's just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it so what can we do?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do?
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so farmers can start connecting to food and their land and the hydrologic cycle.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we need to be promoting.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to be buying from farmers who get this diversified vegetation, non-chemical, non-interventive government approach.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: That that's who needs to be that's who needs to be funded by our you know, our purchase dollars, and that's how we need to to go forward.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um and it's a it's a tall order, but it can happen one or the other.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I'm just trying to encourage people, okay.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if we don't say there's bad farmers and good farmers, um I'm not ready to go there yet.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: I still have too much uh too much uh discontent in my heart.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: But um uh well see I feel I feel like I've got a pass because I am one.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I am one, so I can be a little more aggressive than you know than other people.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: But but I I'm I'm fine to say there's there's there's there's bad farming and good farming.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: How about that?
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's bad farming and good farming of the thing.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: That would be great.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, if you're public, you just don't want to turn somebody off from your bigger argument just because of the word choice, you know.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take I'll take that advice, Zina.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take that.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: Bad farming and good farming, and and let's let's defund bad farming and and realize that much of that, and here's the other takeaway, I think, from today.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: The other takeaway is um much of farming, okay.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you've helped me today.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm gonna take the people out of it, and I'm gonna put much of farming has nothing to do with food.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there's good farming and bad farming, and uh and half of the farming in the U.S.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: has nothing to do with food.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I I think if a person actually meditates on that and gets that in their in their vocabulary and then their discussions, that is probably enough of a of a profound idea that it'll stop most people in their tracks.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and it'll start a conversation.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, really?
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me more.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what we want, Zena.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: We want people to start conversations about this.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want it to just be siloed stereotype, you know, I know, I know, I know all there is to know, and you know, we go on about our day.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, what we want is to create, is to create conversations that are interesting enough that people stop and say, Oh, really, tell me more.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we want.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: And would you say that uh you've talked about the soybean farmers and the corn farmers and you know how much of what they produce isn't food.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then the rest of what most of the rest of what they produce actually goes into processed food and ultra-processed food, right?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the other part of that.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: And like are those um in terms of numbers of uh or numbers of farmers or the amount of food, you know, food crops produced, like the soybean corn versus other whole foods, is that the do they produce the majority of the crops in America?
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is the majority of crops produced in America, are the majority of crops produced in America going toward exports, ethanol, gas, and processed foods?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um I don't know what the percentage is.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly, you know, uh we could probably say over half is.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: But remember, uh a lot a lot of it is is is going to pigs, pigs and and poultry.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ruminants.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, um, um, not not ruminants, uh omnivores.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we certain we certainly buy, we we, you know, we buy corn, we buy, we buy feedstuffs for our you know, uh omnivores, the the chickens, the turkeys, the the pigs, because they're not herbivores, all right.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: And herbivores uh do fine just on on cellulytic forage structure.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but um so some of this is is obviously feed stocks, but you know, probably only um you know somewhere between 25 and 30 percent.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: So so just so just imagine, just imagine if if our cropland, our corn and soybean production dropped, let's just say 70 percent.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, imagine what that would do if that were converted to perennial prairie polycultures with cows.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just imagine what that would do to the hydrology cycle, the erosion, the the soil erosion, uh earthworms, pollinators, nesting birds.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, it it would be it would be um beyond it would be beyond major.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, that's that's that's where we're going.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah, here we are.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you certainly have less chemical input.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh uh yeah, because the animals, the animals um self-fertilize.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, you know they that sounds like they they say that uh uh well cows are inefficient.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, that's why they grow grass, because they're inefficient.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: If a cow was as efficient as squashed, we wouldn't have any soil.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the only reason we've got soil is because herbivores are inefficient.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that's uh that's that's a good thing.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: Huh, question.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: Question uh for our for our group.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: What was the question you had?
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's when we were talking about like good people versus good behavior, bad people versus bad behavior, and you know, their thoughts on that, because you brought up, oh, like is a bank robber still a could they still be a good person or you know, but you're feel free and ask whatever questions on Joel's mind.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh me, oh me.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um so um I would ask a question of far of um farmers that you know farmers that you know um are they y are they how how much of the farmers that you know um do not receive any government help whatsoever?
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're uh subsidy free.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: How many farmers do you know that are subsidy free?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: That might that might be a good one.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, thanks for visiting with us.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's been a been an interesting discussion.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: Seen as always a good a good compass to keep us um fair and and balanced.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we appreciate you being with us on another uh episode of Beyond Labels, and we look forward to being with you again next week.