Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #214: Your Right to Choose Your Dinner: Who’s Really in Charge?

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Episode #214: Your Right to Choose Your Dinner: Who’s Really in Charge? · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The average farmer is now 60 years old.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a refrain that I'm pushing all the time.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: The average farmer's 60 years old, so in the next 15 years, that's one five, fifteen years, half of all agriculture equity in the U.S., that's land, buildings, and machinery, are going to change hands.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's never happened in any society in history peacefully.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's only happened in war.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not getting ready to say we're going to war.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we are, maybe we aren't.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: But if we have this level of agriculture equity transfer peacefully, we will be the first civilization in the history of the world to do it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: All right, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is a special treat because Joel has been traveling, boots on the ground, talking to a lot of people, a lot of farmers.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what he has seen is increasing pushback on creative ways that farmers are trying to access their neighbors with food.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to talk about that today, give us um the heads up on what's going on, and talk about how this affects the consumer.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: So this isn't just an episode about farmers, it's also an episode about consumers, no matter where you shop, from your local farmer to a farmer's market, to the Walmart, to Whole Foods.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to tell you why this matters for you.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So stick with us.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead, Joel.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the number one uh thing when you start talking about access to food, it the temptation for a lot of people is to say, what do you mean, access to food?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I got access to food.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I stopped by the grocery store three times a week.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the shelves are full, uh, it's a pretty place, you know, and I can um I can get everything from donuts to diapers, uh, you know, in in in one stop.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean I don't have access?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um and yes, there is access, but as you know, if you've listened to this program a lot any at all, the quality of that food, we we don't have a a food quantity problem in this country.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have a food quality problem in this country.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know, if Tyson works for you and Cargill works for you, well, you know, uh you're probably not gonna be interested in what I'm going to say.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: But if if you if if you believe that it's important to preserve a choice in the food space, that I should be able to get uh beef from other sources than Walmart.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I should be able to get um uh tomatoes from another source uh besides Walmart, then this is why.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is why we have to care about the about how broad the market access is in the food system.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most people most people also care about the future of farmers.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're watching the news lately, you know that there is a there's a bit of a bloodbath going on.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: We don't hear about it much today because there are so few farmers.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're if you have your nose to the news at all, you know that um especially small farmers are having a lot of issues, and the average farmer is now 60 years old.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a refrain that I'm pushing all the time.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The average farmer's 60 years old, so in the next 15 years, that's one five, 15 years, half of all agriculture equity in the U.S., that's land, buildings, and machinery, are going to change hands.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's never happened in any society in history peacefully.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's only happened in war.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not getting ready to say we're going to war.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we are, maybe we aren't.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if we have this level of agriculture equity transfer peacefully, we will be the first civilization in the history of the world to do it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which is not a really great way to bet.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're watching the news, you're seeing things like uh, you know, Bill Gates is now the largest farmland owner in the U.S.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Vanguard, BlackRock are buying up hundreds of thousands of acres.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even the Chinese, whatever.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, who is going to operate this land and how is it going to happen?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now you say, well, what does that have to do with Walmart and Costco and food access?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because this.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this so that now I'm sharing with you now kind of a new thought that's really come to me in the last couple of months.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been stewing on it, working on it, and haven't written much about it, but I'm sharing it now just to just to uh dry run some of my thinking on it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest mistake, Cena, that I made in media interviews in my lifetime were made about 30 years ago when I, you know, started getting a little bit of notoriety, and I'd do interviews with the New York Times or whatever, and they'd say, What's your what's your prediction for the future?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what do you see in the future?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, this was this was back uh when you know um Michelle had the White House garden and you know, the low know your farmer, know your food, local food, you know, farmers markets were on the upswing.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there was a bit of a, you know, 30 years ago, there was a there was a uh uh upswing in interest in um in in local um good food.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, along with others like me, said, Oh, in 30 years, everybody's gonna be in their kitchen.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're all gonna be, I mean, it was it was the rise of you know Julia Child was hot on uh on TV, you know.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our son Daniel was you know a young a young teen.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, I mean, he just worshipped Julia Child.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: He can interview, he can imitate her uh to this day like crazy.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, so cooking, I mean, uh, you know, 50 years ago there were no cooking shows, you know.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: 30 years ago, they came on, and here was Julia Child, and and then of course Guy Fiero, and you know, you got all these cooking shows.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so there was a real interest in this, and so people that were in this space, like me, thought that this trend line would end up with domestic culinary art.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people are gonna buy whole apples, they're gonna buy a whole butternut squash, they're gonna buy, you know, a whole chicken.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and um and that was the way it was gonna be.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what happened in those 30 years?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: What happened in those 30 years is we got hot pockets, lunchables, twizzlers, gummy bears, and the convenience food craze.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: 75% of all food Americans eat today.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: 75% of all food Americans eat today is convenience.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened as that convenience food movement penetrated our homes, uh, it it morphed into the ultra-processed phase.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because, because the food, the food makers, the food whatever, manipulators that were doing convenience food, the industrial food system is always pushing toward shelf life, shelf stability.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: How do we because when you're in like we are in our farm, you know, we sell, we sell meat, we sell stuff.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, you don't want stuff to sit in inventory.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you can, if you can make food longer lasting in your inventory, it cushions cycles, it it takes a lot of the risk out of out of selling because you can, you know, you can uh elongate your inventory, you know, highs and lows.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It just it just makes flow better.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so uh whether it's on the store shelf or sitting in a warehouse somewhere or the back room, you know, the the storage building of a of a processor, the goal of of shelf stability is everything.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what happens is as food sits and sits and sits, it becomes stale.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: We all know food becomes stale over time.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we how do we make sure that it doesn't go stale?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we start putting colors in it and we start putting um taste enhancers like monosodium glutamate in it to preserve, to hold the taste.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so you start injecting this stuff, and what's happened now is that these that that these additives have moved this convenience factor to an ultra-processed food factor.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: The point is, people like me who would love to see domestic culinary arts um whatever re-energize in our culture, we are now I I'm realizing that message, while it's still important and good and true, it's almost anachronistic.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: That the convenience horse has left the stall.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna put that convenience horse back in the stall.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and so what's happened during that period of time in the last century as we've moved to this old convenience uh um movement is that the share of money, I'm gonna link, I'm gonna leak the convenience to the farmland issue because they are linked.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: As that as as the as the convenience food movement grew and people left their kitchens, the share that the farmer got of the retail dollar went from roughly 50 cents a hundred years ago or less, 80 years ago, from 50 cents of the retail dollar down to today eight cents and it's trending lower.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, there simply is not enough money coming to the farmer's to the farmer's bank account to hold that farmer in business because the farmer has now become a basically a a colonial uh a colonial supplier to the convenience food sector that value adds it and puts and puts the the chicken into pieces, the thermometer in it, the breading on it.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh I mean I was at uh I was at a uh uh in a store the other day and uh and and saw um uh a dozen hard-boiled eggs already peeled and cut in half in these little clamshells, uh molded clamshells, uh for you know for um$32 a dozen.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and I'm gonna afford that.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well a lot of people, I was just talking to a guy this I was just doing a the Ozarks uh homesteading conference and um and talking to a fella who sells meat, and he said, My problem is people come in and they and they sniff at the$8 a pound ground beef, but they go over, they uh sniff at it like, oh man, that's expensive.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But they have no problem going over and buying the$30 a pound uh meat sticks, snack sticks that I have.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and you know, we see it here.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um Walmart, boneless, skinless Tyson chicken breasts at Walmart are are um what what's the they're the same price as our whole chickens at our farm.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and we're not the lowest priced outfit around.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just see that over and over.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had a I had a friend that used to always take a Snickers bar in his pocket to farmers market, and when people complained about his, you know, uh lamb chops being$18 a pound, he'd pull out the Snickers bar and say, This is$22 a pound.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you bought one?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and so so where I'm going with this is that the money, here's the thing: the money in the food system is in meeting the convenience market for the convenience buyer.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the money is in the food system.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The the money in the food system is not in raw product production at the farm level.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: The money in the food system is in this, is in this preparation and packaging uh component that gets it to the consumer who has left the kitchen.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: It really does seem like, you know, the prediction you said you got wrong, it really does seem like we're going in the direct opposite direction in multiple accounts.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, like if the convenience factor was also we wanted to have access to fruits and vegetables year-round, you know, like not just seasonally.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So now we have access to that, and it and there's a huge cost that comes with that, a nutritional cost that comes with it, you know.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and now we've moved even further away from making our own food by, you know, like you're saying, the convenience of the packaged food.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And your example was great that even if your whole chicken is the same price as the chicken that's been pieced apart in Walmart, they're probably gonna buy the chicken that's been cut apart into pieces.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's easier to cook.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, if they're the same price, you lose money.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: The consumer, the consumer pays more for the one at Walmart because then you can't even take the bones and turn them into bone broth.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or chicken stock.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, there's there's no stock, there's no broth from that.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the people, a lot of people that I know, Joel, don't even know how to do that.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's what I'm saying.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the opposite of from the Julia Charles time period because they're like, What?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: How would you make that?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you make us uh the the chicken stock so I can make the soup or whatever?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know it's so it's so foreign.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I didn't know that either growing up.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: It really wasn't until I got sick that I learned how to cook uh you know more traditionally to save my life.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I had an incentive to do that.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Most people's incentive is let's save time, let's be more efficient so I can go on to do the next thing, keep up with the Joneses, stay on that treadmill, you know.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yeah, that that's exactly right.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so the kind of the new thought scene to me is I guess it's uh, I don't know whether it's the throw in the towel or be or be kind and loving.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, never throw in the towel.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can call it whichever you want, but but rather than rather than sitting here and berating people for uh get a chicken and make broth.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, people get you know, I can get all irate and all in your face.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I'm saying, all right, all right.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's the impediment for people being able to get good broth?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't get people broth.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: In order for me to get a to get one of our customers chicken broth from our chicken, I have to send the I have to send the bones and the you know the stuff up to uh uh Northern Virginia, you know, 120 miles away to a soup company which has a licensed inspected kitchen, who then turns that stock into broth that then we ship, bring back by the you know, quart by the frozen quart uh container to the farm and sell it in our farm store.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that chicken, you know, this is a hundred, this is a an unnecessary um talk about you know carbon footprint, uh, energy miles, everything else that could be done right here at the farm.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why can't we do it here at the farm?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: For two reasons.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: One is a commercial kitchen is considered a manufacturing facility.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're zoned agriculture, so you're so you so you you have to go through a special use permit, public hearing process, pay a lot of money and and all this.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, and then secondly, then you have to go through all of the special um uh food safety requirements.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get a permit to have a uh a commercial kitchen, which includes an inspected bathroom, which requires a septic field, which is another$30,000.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and you see where I'm going with this, just to get to get a quart, a quart of chicken broth from a chicken that was grown and raised here on our farm, and even processed, you know, butchered here on our farm to take her bones.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I'm calling her a her, to take that chicken's bones, uh, and and make, and you know, maybe we maybe we've parted out that chicken, okay?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we have made breasts and legs and thighs and like that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got this um, you know, the the boned uh material left.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make broth out of it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: We can't get that to our customers who would love to be able to buy it.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we do get it to them, but we get it via this convoluted thing where we put them on a truck, pallet them up to a to a uh a place, and then pallet them back and get in our store.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that broth does not have any MSG.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: It has no, it has nothing in it.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is just it is it is just uh frozen, you know, frozen broth ready for you to use.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: My point here is, I I have several, but one point here is that that there is nothing wrong with convenience food.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't want convenience food?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I love a meat stick in any time of day, you know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love summer sausage.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could I could live on summer sausage um uh for a very, very long time.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who doesn't want to have a couple of, I don't know, leftover uh frozen quiche in the I mean the the ultimate convenience food is leftovers, you know, and and I I've I've always said uh you know the one litmus test that I have used that that I know when a person gets it is to ask, are you eating leftovers?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because if you're eating leftovers, it probably means you're cooking from scratch.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: You've eaten around a table and you had leftovers, and so I mean, I I mean I I can live on leftovers.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's the ultimate convenience food.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there is nothing inherently wrong with pre-prepared food.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, we we can we can venison, we can beef.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's already pre-cooked, it's canned.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could, if the power went out, you could eat that and live on it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: You could eat it cold if you wanted to.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, it's canned, it's it's it's ready to go.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you don't have to put a bunch of junk in it, like the ultra-processed.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: You look at that enable, you don't have to put glycol in it, you don't have to put glycerin in it, you don't have to put antifreeze in it.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the thing, that the thought that I've had here lately is quit quit browbeating people about convenience, and let's agree that convenience is a cool thing if we can do it with modern freezing and refrigeration and and and freeze drying and the technology that we have.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's embrace that, not browbeat a person for convenience where we have to where we have to to rant, if you will.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: The goal here is to be able to get a farmer to be able to tap in to this huge source of money from the convenience food trade and tap into it with an unadulterated, non-ultra-processed, just typical cooking, freezing, canning, you know, basic traditional uh preservation methods to get the convenience foods to our neighborhoods.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's that both solves the uh the the you know the choice issue on the consumer end.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, where do I find this stuff?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It uh that solves the choice end on that, and it solves the financial way in for a young farmer, a young farm family that wants to get.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: to this, you know, to make a full-time living on a five to ten acre farm by value adding um uh uh to something and so so so how do we how do we punch through that and it it brings me to um the the the conundrum that's facing so many young farmers today with circumventive or uh you know there there's now uh a huge movements to private membership associations so um private membership associations were started in 1965 after the 1964 Civil Rights Act went in started by Georgia uh Georgia country clubs who didn't want blacks to come into the country club and these were public country clubs well how do we exclude blacks oh we we moved from public to private we started a private membership association now uh we're not we're not we're not serving the public anymore we're serving the private and the government said yep that's okay you can circumvent the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a PMA well some very smart minds in the food system and the farming sector have realized oh let's co-opt that PMA concept and say uh we're not actually selling food to the public we're we're a private little club here and our members pay a pay a dollar a year membership to be able to enjoy the privileges of our private club and we've come outside the government's purview because you just can't walk in off the street and buy you know buy a quiche or summer sausage you know you you have to you have to join the club and so the PMA movement called uh private membership associations these have now uh germinated there are there are numerous now organizations that that file the paperwork that actually create that have templates for farmers to be able to uh to come outside the public sector and be able to do summer sausage charcuterie you know quiche value added because our customers are screaming for convenience every time every on our farm every time we put up something that's convenient people are all over it they're all over it uh and and so and so um yeah I'm confessing I need to get over my frustration with I want to tell well get in your kitchen it's never been easier we've got crock pots time bake we've got ice cream makers and bread makers and slicers and dicers and pureees and blenders and you know uh uh but I I'm I'm done I'm done I I I've got to say you know it's okay um uh we we've just we've just got to let it go I love that and you know you already started on that path because that's what we did in our Beyond Labels book right we the goal was to try to meet them where they are and just give one little tip at a time and they could stop in the progression wherever they wanted to you know and pick it back up later if they wanted to and that's meeting somebody where they are and I because I had the same epiphany you're not going to change people right the culture uh the mindset has changed all of it's changed and even myself um I would like to have convenience sometimes and people trust you so when you put a product up there they're more likely to buy that from from you than the local grocery store and a lot of that is because we don't want all of those additives in our food that you're talking about.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: We want the cleaner options of the convenience foods.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think it's a great thing because you're not going to change people and so for example even if someone like me is traveling it's big to do where how to where do I get my food and I want to be able to take some prepackaged food with me like in my suitcase or I'll order food and have it delivered to where I'm going, you know, if I'm staying with friends or family.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's another time of travel can be very difficult for people who don't want to partake in that mainstream food and their narrative um there's times too when we're driving around uh my kids and I and let's say we stayed at a play date longer than we anticipated and we're all hungry and my kids will say because a lot of their friends will just go off and go pick something up on the way home for dinner and my kids will say I really wish there was a restaurant that we could eat at like you know what I mean like I wish there was a grain free organic restaurant like you know like um so I've often joked around that we should just start one as a family business so that other people can have that convenience too but it is it's because we want the convenience I don't want to have to cook every single meal for every single person in my family.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: I want sometimes I love it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me feel like I'm nurturing my family giving them the best of the best but sometimes I want to break I want to do something else I want to play I want to play with my kids and so it is time consuming.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm saying even even I like that convenience.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's a way that you if you figure out how we can get farmers to be able to supply more of these healthier convenience foods let's talk about it because this is a win all around absolutely it's a win.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So so one one of the things that's been tried is the private membership association.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and um and but what's happened is the PMA idea being applied to food it was one thing when the country club did it you know to exclude blacks it was quite another now it's being applied more generically within the food system and the government ain't happy with it let me just say it that way and so I'm watching now there's a case in Dayton there's a case in Virginia there are more that I'm sure that I don't know about where the state is now coming in.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So these are state governments coming in of course we we know about Amos Miller uh he was a PMA uh we've talked about him on this program in the past so but but what I'm seeing now it seems like there is a a an uptick if you will in the pushback from government agencies saying no this this is not okay uh this is a food sale it's in commerce it comes under our purview and um and you can't and so so they're trying to pierce they're piercing the PMA curtain if you will um to try to come in and so uh farmers are getting cease and desist orders uh around the country as the government pierces these PMA um uh protections no no wait so catch us up so um Amos Miller was he the first PMA case like the first big assault on the PMAs was that the first one I I would say he was probably the first the the certainly the the first biggest one yeah but but there there there have been um there there have been crude p PMA has um uh has evolved as well and the legal minds behind it have refined you know refined the terminology the thinking like there's a huge difference apparently between what is legal and what is lawful I mean I'm trying I'm trying to keep up with the yeah with the terminology in it and uh you know these are courtrooms these are people that they they spend their lives you know jousting over yeah the difference between legal and lawful all right but and and if you just step back and think about it for a minute like anyone listening so they're debating legal and lawful and all we want to do is to be able to choose the food we want to put in our own bodies like we're not forcing someone else to eat it.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's right I just want to eat the food I want to eat.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is ridiculous.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah absolutely and and what you what you have are are two willing people you have a you have a willing buyer you know on one side that says man I would love to get this I mean let's let's let's let's say chicken pot pie for example uh you know a frozen chicken pot pie I've got guests coming you know I don't have time to cook for them I want to get you know um Aunt Alice's chicken pot pie she makes them great all right uh and and um and and and you have Aunt Alice that would love to make a few dollars on the side uh you know she's uh she's on a farm and um Aunt Alice wants to make a few bucks and so she's a willing seller and a willing buyer a willing seller uh but uh but but um unfortunately in our country uh you have to ask permission from the government before you can engage in that kind of a transaction wow and so so that that's that's what keeps that's what keeps the that's what keeps the the um the craft end of the food system uh with a very elevated price uh if you if you go through the regulations the regulations are very size prejudicial uh so if you're small it's very very hard to comply uh very costly to comply per you know per chicken pot pie I'll just take with chicken pot pies I love chicken pot pie I don't know about you but I I could tell yeah chicken pot pies and bananas for Joel like yeah yeah and and and raw milk I mean raw milk is another one you know um so so so the the PMA is one is one thing another another technique uh another circumventive I'm sorry go ahead wait wait before we move uh past the PMA one what where did we leave off on Amos Miller in his case is that one done did he win or I I thought it wasn't totally over but where is it it's not totally over so right now the USDA has backed off and he can sell um outside Pennsylvania but Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is still pursuing him and he can't sell in the state of Pennsylvania oh my where he lives where he lives so he can't he can't sell to a neighbor but he can ship to Albuquerque New Mexico that's right.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man okay so there's been no so in terms of PMA cases that have been brought forth there's been no win so far like there's not nothing that has set a precedent moving forward that others could follow if if they're trying to use the PMA strategy.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: No the only precedents that have been set have been several several attempts at litigation that then stopped before they went to court and because the state backed off.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where the PMA group is saying yeah see we you know we won we won so there there have absolutely been wins there have absolutely been wins and there have been situations where you know an inspector came out saw the paperwork and just left and didn't say anything um but but but but there are there are there are a couple now that are uh gaining some notoriety uh that are going to be precedent setting that are going to court and if the farmer loses this will be precedent in the other which then suddenly some of these say you know what it's not worth fooling with you know some states some I mean you know it's all up to the all up to the the state attorney general you know and and they can't they can't fight every they can't take every hill that's possible and so they you know they make decisions just like you and I do is it worth it is it worth it some places are saying it ain't worth it other places are saying hey you know we need to we need to crack down on this so PMA is one another one of course that we're very familiar with is herd shares for raw dairy and of course herd shares have been around a long time and right now North Carolina is really leading the nation I think apparently in trying to eliminate herd shares so that legislation has been written it's coming up I'm actually going to North Carolina on a rally for that here uh in in in another uh few weeks and um and what's interesting is that that is being pushed by conservative Republicans who are afraid of bird flu in milk there hasn't been a single example of bird flu in milk yet but um but that's what they're suggesting and if you're aware you know there's been an alleged outbreak of problem in Florida due to her due to raw milk that family they they've been they've they've been um vilified in the press uh it's a it's big news in the in the raw milk movement but the state didn't even take a sample didn't even do anything uh the the the they're still operating and um but but that that has uh people concerned as well so so um her herd share herd share has been kind of the the protective way but herd share is clunky it it's clunky you know uh uh so I mean Theresa and I have a herd share uh to a raw milk dairy the problem is if we um the problem we face is if I'm gone our consumption drops by about two-thirds because I drink about two-thirds of it and so so we've got a half a gallon here that I've got to take out and feed to the to the pigs uh because I was gone all week and didn't and so she can't tell the dairy look you know that we're not we're gonna be gone for a week just don't send us ours and and by the same token if we have if we have company we can't say hey we've got uh you know we've got guests coming for a week can you give us a a second gallon legally they can't they can't make any adjustment I mean it's our cow our milk we take the gallon a week we can't get any more we can't stop it it's you know and so so dairies that are trying to do this as a business they have to be really really careful to never go over their lowest production or or people don't get people don't get milk and so the result is it's a real inventory problem and so you know people make uh have pigs on the side or make cheese or you know do something uh course you can't sell cheese either unless it's you know cured over um whatever 60 days and so uh so the herd share is is appears to be under attack in some places as well and then the third kind of workaround in this in this whole how how are farmers dealing with I've got to be able to value add food to the convenience sector and make money on my farm how do I get there so you got PMAs you got herd shares and the third one is pet food is um and Florida Florida has been the state that has been the most shall we say um you know the most amenable to the pet food category basically the way and I may be wrong but the way I understand it in Florida you can pretty much register anything as a pet food not for human consumption and sell it for a license fee of$25 a year.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: So like the pot pies the chicken broth yeah bread ice cream you know uh cheese whatever you just register the product as a pet food and go with it um however there are there are rumblings um that that loophole is trying to be closed as well and so so here we have we have three uh we have we have three and and you know there may be others that I don't know about I mean there's a there's a food church in North Carolina you have to join the church then you can get you know illegal food there there are there are hybrids and workarounds from this I mean uh guy in Michigan he's doing the he's doing the the right of private contract under the Constitution and has agreed to only sell off of his farm so that the state has come in on him and pushed him down down until he's now they're leaving him alone as long as he only sells stuff on his farm premises that that's where he's he's circling his wagons and and and seems to seems to be seems to be doing very well and winning more power to him but but as I as I've watched all of these all of these efforts from courageous farmers to try to make a living on their small farm and and meet and meet the desires of people like you and I who want non-Walmart food it's a it's it's it's a it it's I want to just say it's enough already.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is there some overriding thing that we can do to um you know to allow this to move forward and that's where I come to my food emancipation proclamation.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I think we just need a blanket a blanket uh um proclamation to take the shackles off of two voluntary consenting adults who want to engage in a food transaction that they should be able to do so without asking permission from the government.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying we should be able to export to Vietnam I'm not saying we should be able to sell to to Walmart I'm not even saying we should be able to sell to a restaurant uh a food nothing just just let two parties who want to who want to give their microbiome agency be able to engage in a food transaction without asking the government's permission.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: That just seems like like it ought to be possible you would think so and it seems pretty ridiculous that we even have to have these conversations that the government can dictate what we can eat.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like in a lot of ways sometimes that I'm being forced to eat the foods that the government actually thinks are the ones that are healthy like the GMOs like you know like the GMOs are fine the pesticides are fine the food additives are fine the grass chemicals are fine here eat all these foods like these are the ones that are allowed for you to eat you might come to this right box store to your grocery store and this is what you can have or the fast food stuff and you know this is what you're allowed um like we're children and they're the parents telling us this is this is okay this is not okay you know um as you're talking I'm sitting here thinking it's like they the government is saying we don't trust the farmers right this is like more of the small farmers that are wanting to provide this food and we're wanting to get it from the farm from the farmers when did this happen in America did we always mistrust the farmer is this a newer thing when did where in the world did this distrust come from in our American history I I think it has developed in mistrusting business in general you know the the consumer advocacy the Ralph Nader okay I mean I'll just uh that's the tip of the spear um interestingly enough I was talking with Pete Kennedy recently who works closely with Weston A Price Foundation and um he was reading to me the original 1908 uh Teddy Roosevelt um implementation of the Food Safety Inspection Service and um 1908 and it specifically it specifically precluded FSIS um intrusion in private sales private food sales that clearly has has has you know been uh pierced long long ago and so uh another um uh but what for people who aren't familiar with FSIS uh can you translate what that means uh so what did Roosevelt effectively do uh in uh so uh a guy named Upton Upton Sinclair wrote a book titled The Jungle in 1906 and it within uh it it it charted the um atrocities in the primarily the Chicago slaughterhouse trade at that time there were seven companies that that controlled fifty percent of America's meat supply seven companies controlled fifty percent Six months after that book was published, it was a runaway bestseller.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: People couldn't believe what they were reading.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's you know, there's things that he made stuff up, and I don't want to get into all that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the the point is that within six months of that book coming out, those companies, those seven companies, lost half of their sales, half of their market.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were they were in bankruptcy freefall.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they, their CEOs, went to Teddy Roosevelt on bended knee and said, We need a government program to give us credibility with the American consumer, or we're gonna go out of business.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh being a bit of a communist, Teddy Roosevelt acquiesced.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: What he should have said was, hey, you made your bed, now lie in it, figure it out.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and and they would have a couple of them probably would have gone out of business.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there would have been private certification groups like like AAA or Underwriters Laboratory that people would have formed, you know, and said, hey, here's going to be our, we're we're gonna go in, we're gonna demand access and we're gonna inspect, and we're gonna expect this, this, this, and this, and this.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for, you know, for 50 bucks a year, you can become a member of our vetting association, and we will we will check your food for you.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: That would, that would have happened in addition to them cleaning up their act, okay?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that would have happened all privately without a government program at all at that time.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that shows the power of information in the marketplace.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons why we do this podcast, Zena, is to inform people so they don't go running to the government for an answer, but they actually feel empowered with their own information to make decisions about their own provenance to let the market speak.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: You and I are not whine to the government every time there's something we don't like.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: We want to empower with information so people can make their own decisions about what is right.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think I said that pretty well.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a sound bite right there.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so and so what happened was Teddy Roosevelt uh created the Food Safety Inspection Service, F-S-I-S, and in 1908.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been with us ever since.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it has continually gotten like all you know bureaucracies do, it's gotten more powerful, and they keep cranking out additional regulations and additional regulations and additional regulations.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been overhauled.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was overhauled once in the 1940s, once in the late 1960s, and then the Food Modernization Act was an overhaul under um Obama.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and so it's been overhauled numerous times.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and each time, interestingly, each time within 24 months of being overhauled and modernized, America has lost another half of its um its slaughterhouse capacity.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we are a little over a century after FSIS.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: And now instead of having seven companies controlling 50% of America's meat supply, we have four companies controlling almost 85% of our meat supply.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's how much consolidation, centralization has uh has happened with, as RFK Jr.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: says, the you know, agency capture as the big corporations wind and dined these bureaucrats uh and and and made um and made additional rules that are sympathetic toward the big guys and um and and aggressive against the little guys.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we keep losing this losing this capacity, which then which then shuts out farmers from the marketplace and shuts the marketplace out of being able to buy from their local farmer.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so then so then we have we have not only do we have lack of food choice, we have, as Bernie Sanders talks, the oligarchy.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have the oligarchy in the food system, but it's precisely because of government interventive policy.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because we've had freedom and liberty within the food system.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then now, as the chickens come home to roost on this policy, now we have the aging farmer, half of America's farmland coming up for successional transfer over the next roughly decade.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no entry point, there's no on-ramp, or or or not none, but there's a difficult uh an unnecessarily difficult prohibitive on-ramp for young farmers to get onto those farms to be able to access their neighbors with uh with food.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, so so it it's it's it's two big conundrums.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and as I've watched, as I've watched the herd share, the pet food, the mine club, the PMA, as I've watched all of the, you know, all of the effort and the investment in time, money, thinking to try to solve this problem, I'm I'm realizing, you know, I we don't have enough time to work out all those.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're seeing the government start to push back and try to chip away at these these circumventive measures that farmers in desperation and their customers in desperation have carved out.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of these people, you know, if you've got to sign a six-page uh a six-page uh agreement to buy a um to buy some gouda cheese, people do that or or buy a gallon of milk.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: People do that.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's nobody, there's nobody held holding a gun to somebody's head saying, you've got to sign up for this herd share.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, people are scrambling for it.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, I can't, oh wow, you know, good milk.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't I can't get there fast enough.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care how many pages there is to sign, five pages, eight pages, ten pages.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the government keeps putting all this legalese, you know, uh hurdles in front of people.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: People are desperate, people are desperate for an underground railroad.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so so I'm as as opposed to many of my friends in this movement, I'm not in favor of outlawing Monsanto or outlawing you know uh ractopamine in pigs or whatever.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I don't like it and I don't want it, but the question is, do we do we make societal change faster by by regulating what we don't like?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, CRISPR, you know, crisper technology, you know, uh I don't like it, all right?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: But from a from a strategic standpoint culturally, how do we make how do we make changes faster?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I would suggest we make changes faster not by not by picking and choosing to regulate this, that, and the other that we don't like, but rather by opening up the freedom at the grassroots for farmers to access and and underground railroad consumers to access a free neighbor, uh, uh direct, you know, relationally marketed uh food transaction.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: I see, now I I you know I just got back from uh you know another uh homestead festival.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: I meet thousands, thousands of small farmers, and I say small farmers, you know, five to twenty five acres all over this country that are that would love to make a living on their farm, and they could, with very little production, if they could actually sell to their neighbors, you know, without without a$500,000 facility and you know, two inches of government forms and paperwork and public hearings.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um so the the need is there, and I'm just concerned that A, when you thumb your nose at these big federal agencies, they've got a lot of power.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: They've got all the time in the world, they got all the money in the world, and they and they have the backing, they have the backing of a lot of people who like you don't trust farmers.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers are dirty.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how did farmers get a dirty reputation?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because a lot of farmers are dirty.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: Go to a Tyson chicken house, go buy a go buy a beef feed lot, go buy a confinement dairy, go buy a Smithfield hog factory.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can smell it for three miles.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers are dirty.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so the industrial the industrial sector gave us a dirty farmer persona, and then and then that system has created the um the barricade to its own solution, which is clean, aesthetically, aromatically, sensually romantic farms, okay, which certainly exist and would be glad to service their you know their neighbors and and service you know people one-on-one that wanted to uh opt out of the of the current system.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do you visualize this food emancipation proclamation as being adopted on the state level?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or well, it it can't it can't be adopted on the state level because every state that's tried, the last one was Maine, um, every state that tries to do something like this, um, the the federal comes in and says, if you do that, we're pulling our federal inspection from your state, and you won't be able to ship anything out of your state.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately, and immediately everybody collapses.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh be you're because because the federal operates this.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got a I've got Thomas Jefferson's farm book here.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: And people don't realize it when I look at um at in Jefferson's day, let me just I I know we're pushing time here, but this is so fascinating.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still working on this.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is cutting edge stuff for me.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've just put this together.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've done a done a bunch of uh um pencil pushing here on this to try to get the the ratios today compared to Jefferson's day.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: So think about this.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Jefferson's day, the the the ratio between um farm labor, if you wanted a uh uh, you know, what would you what would you pay have a person work on your farm for a day, and uh beef prices was a one hundredfold difference.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Today it's only sixty-fold.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um if if wheat, here's one, if wheat were sold at the same rate per bushel as it was in Thomas Jefferson's day, wheat today would be three hundred and twelve dollars a bushel.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's only ten dollars and ninety cents.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: If wheat were three dollars three hundred and twelve dollars a bushel, a loaf of bread would be thirty dollars.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, um I I I I'm working on these and they're they're just they're just um they're just really fascinating.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: The difference between cows, sheep, pigs, you know, turkeys, bushel of wheat.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, think about this.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: A bushel of wheat a bushel of wheat was was equivalent to one sixth of the value of a cow.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: So so six bushels of wheat would have been equivalent to a cow.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: Today, a bushel of wheat is one eight hundred and third of a cow.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: One one one hundred and eighty-thirds of a cow is a bushel today, a bushel of wheat today.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: So so anyway, I don't want to get off on that rabbit trail.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: All I'm getting at is that we've gotten where we are um with with not only cultural, technological, but a lot of regulatory um a lot of regulatory uh intervention that is capriciously and arbitrarily prohibiting prohibiting small farmers from being able to access this huge convenience food desire and market, and that's one of the things that's making this farmland issue such a you know such a conundrum.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that people don't want to farm.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that farmland, it's not even that farmland's too expensive.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that farmers, because of these food regulations, are largely unable to capture that that 92 cents, that 92 cents of the retail dollar that they could capture and put in their pocket if if they were if they were uh legally allowed to.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know we're running out of time, but part of that, I think part of how we got here as well was not just the regulations, but what the consumers are demanding.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because even part of what you were saying in the Jefferson book, I took away in part that we're we're not valuing food the way that it used to be valued.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: We just complain food's so expensive now, but then when you read in that book, like the food's cheap.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like so it's also like this um shifting of value to the consumer, like and looking at what did they value then versus now what are we valuing and and what are we not valuing today?
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that if there was more of a consumer demand for these types of we'll call them cleaner, healthier, convenience foods from farmers, right?
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: We would be able to push more of the regulation when more people stood up, you know, but that that's what they wanted.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to work, um, I think there is also that there's the regular regulatory side for sure, but there's also the lack of consumer demand.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're compliant.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it's important to understand, too, that if if if we had a viable underground railroad for these transactions to happen, the price of good food would come way, way down.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right now people like us are accused of being elitists and you're you know, prices are high and all this stuff.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's because it's because we're trying to squeeze, we're trying to squeeze, you know, 10 cows through a metric that was created for a thousand cows.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and so our overheads, so you know, at our at our small uh slaughterhouse that we use, our federal inspective slaughterhouse, it costs us five hundred dollars to do to uh a steer, for example, what uh what Tyson does for a hundred dollars.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, guess who pays that$400?
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the consumer.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: If if we if we didn't have to put that cow on the road, send it up the road, and we could do it right here at the farm, we could do it way, way, way, way cheaper.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd keep all the the guts and the blood and everything.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: We could compost it here for our own fertility and not lose it to the rendering, you know, service uh business.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's just there's just so many things that happen when you when you allow um you know when you allow the direct the direct transaction uh unimpeded.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's just it it angers me.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to like release that because it's just one more way that they're nudging our food choices, you know.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: They nudge us with the food guide pyramid, and now they're nudging us with um not only decreasing our access to these healthier food choices, right?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: But um they're just they're making it harder every single step of the way by now increasing the price of those healthier foods.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: And of course the pushback is always well, don't you know somebody might get unsafe food, somebody might be hurt from you know from a farmer.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that is such a lame argument because Cena, our hospitals are full of sick people eating government-sanctioned food.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: So so don't don't even start on me that that your neighbor farmer is more untrustworthy than than than Tyson.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't buy it for a minute.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I've ever heard you say lame.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a my generation word.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're so lame, like you know, yeah.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I like that.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's your argument.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lame point.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like Joel said, it's lame.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, wait, well, so we're about out of time.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: This has been so fascinating and educational, and I I love this perspective.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is something I you know I hadn't thought about, and it just shows your evolution as well as an individual in your own thinking and your own principles, and developing more, even even more compassion toward the average person and meeting where with meeting them where they are.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's beautiful, and you have a great solution here.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to see this implemented.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: What is our community question?
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think I think um our community question um might be do you um would you trust would you trust your neighbor farmer um more than a uh federal bureaucrat?
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's it to to approve that's to approve the food that you put on your plate?
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really good one too, because I mean uh it's easy just to say, sure, like after listening to our podcast, but you know, really think about it, right?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: Really think about what that means.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: What are they inspecting?
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: What is the federal person inspecting?
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: What is the farmer inspecting?
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: What you know what are those markers that they're actually looking for?
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do they even have the same um like data points, the same boxes that they're trying to check?
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right?
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just a thought, thought experiment, just roll with that and and just tease it out into looking at that.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: If they both had a a clipboard with the check check boxes, um, in order for you to be able to eat that food, what do you think they're checking on the box?
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what would you actually want them to check?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like that would be interesting too.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how aligned are you?
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, yeah, that's right.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as always, this was fantastic.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I can't wait to hear.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love it when you go on these trips, you have all this time to um not all this time, but you do um think and piece things together and start really pushing outside the box and and and connecting dots for us.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I really enjoy these conversations.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't wait for you to travel again to see what you're gonna come up with next.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everyone, thanks for being with us on another Beyond Labels podcast.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: We just appreciate your attention to this, and uh, we'll look forward to visiting with you again next week.