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Food is expensive for a reason few people understand · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:26
  Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the 10 penny files.
• 0:30
  My name is Dr.
• 0:30
  Sherry Tenpenny, and I'm your host.
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• 1:45
  Today's conversation is with my guest, Christian Libertarian Environmentalist Capitalist, and the most famous farmer in the world, Joe Salatin, to talk about his book, You Can Farm, an entrepreneur's guide to start and succeed in a farming enterprise.
• 2:02
  The book all current farmers, farmer wannabes, and wondering is farming really a possibility for me.
• 2:09
  This is the book for you.
• 2:11
  It is definitely a how-to manual on how to get started in farming.
• 2:16
  Joel, thank you so much for joining us here today at the 10 Penny Files.
• 2:19
  Thank you for having me.
• 2:20
  It's a real pleasure and an honor to be with you, Doctor.
• 2:23
  Well, thank you so much.
• 2:24
  You know, let's start right into your story.
• 2:26
  You know, when I was reading this book, uh, your story about about the farms, about your parents who fled Venezuela in the 1970s and to sheer grit, you and your wife Teresa had gotten married and have just learned how to do everything about farming from the ground up.
• 2:42
  You say in your book, where are the people who will dedicate themselves and live beneath their means to pursue a dream?
• 2:50
  This is not only about farming, it's about the American dream.
• 2:54
  And even though this book was written was published in 1998, everything about it is true and and really relevant for today.
• 3:03
  So tell us a little bit about your personal story and where did the name Pollyface Farms come from?
• 3:09
  Sure.
• 3:10
  So uh you mentioned Venezuela.
• 3:12
  So we have this have this uh really different kind of family background in that after world, dad was in the Navy in World War II and got out of the Navy and um and he wanted a farm, and he was in the you know, in Indiana in the Midwest, poor farm boy.
• 3:30
  How do you start?
• 3:32
  And uh at that time he was already seeing a lot of the you know, the kind of socialistic tendencies in in the U.S.
• 3:39
  I mean, um Atlas Shrugged uh, you know, was uh hot there around that time.
• 3:46
  And um, and so he he can conceived of a plan.
• 3:50
  He said, Well, I'm I'm gonna go to a developing country where it's a real free market, open markets, don't have a bunch of bureaucrats looking over your shoulder to uh ask permission for everything.
• 4:00
  And um, and so he he uh went as a he got his Spanish at uh um Middlebury uh college in uh Vermont and then went with as a bilingual accountant.
• 4:14
  He he majored in in the GI Bill, he majored in uh business economics, went as a bilingual accountant with Texas Oil Company to Venezuela uh to to be a bilingual accountant.
• 4:26
  It was a uh it was um you know, the early uh wildcat ventures in oil product oh peck, you know, this is 1948, 49.
• 4:37
  And um in seven years, he was able to save enough money to buy a thousand acre farm in the Venezuelan Highlands.
• 4:42
  We began raising chickens.
• 4:43
  Uh he and mom came back to the U.S., he married and um and then uh came back to the U.S.
• 4:51
  to have my older brother and then me.
• 4:54
  And um, so here we were, we were raising chickens, we were you know cooking right along, had great markets, uh basically took over the local market because our chickens were so clean and they weren't running around in you know squat pots and sewers and all that stuff.
• 5:10
  And um, and of course the locals accused us of witchcraft and voodoo because you know, you can't raise a chicken that clean unless you've got some you know uh demonic uh power.
• 5:22
  And um, so then when there was a junta, junta there in 1960, uh, Pettus and Menis uh was taken down.
• 5:31
  And um, when you have that kind of lawlessness and anarchy, it gives license for scores to be settled that wouldn't be settled under normal circumstances.
• 5:40
  And so um the locals, the then the the revolutionaries came in against us.
• 5:45
  We were just expats, expats out there living out on the land, very vulnerable.
• 5:50
  And so the machine guns came in the back door, we fled to front door and um spent another, I don't know, eight months there trying to get protection and couldn't get anything.
• 6:00
  And so um Easter, Easter Sunday 1961.
• 6:06
  We landed back in Philadelphia.
• 6:08
  Dad was 39 and had lost everything.
• 6:12
  And um, and he he used to wanted to go back.
• 6:14
  He'd been there 12 years, loved the loved the country, loved the people, loved the everything.
• 6:19
  I mean, how can you not love a place where you can have pineapples and bananas in the yard, you know?
• 6:23
  And uh, so we so um instead of going back to Indiana and Ohio, where he and mom were from, he wanted to be within a day's drive of Washington, DC, so that we could if things settled there, we could get back, get paperwork stamped and and and be back on the farm quickly.
• 6:39
  Well, that never happened, but that's why we ended up here in Virginia Shenandoah Valley and bought the most uh gullied rock pile, cheapest farmland that you could imagine at that time.
• 6:52
  And uh, and then began the the process of well, how do we how do we a make a living here?
• 6:58
  How do we heal this land?
• 6:59
  And uh as a little child, so I was four when we when we moved in here in 1961, and um, and I remember consultants coming, both government and private consultants, and dad asked, you know, how do I make a living on this farm?
• 7:14
  Every single one of them, the vice was the advice was well, uh plant corn, build silos, borrow money, uh buy chemicals, graze the woods, you know, all that stuff.
• 7:25
  And dad's dad, my grandfather had been a charter subscriber to Rodale's organic gardening and farming magazine when it came out in what 1945.
• 7:34
  And so dad grew up, dad had this this you know, ecological farming uh um attitude, persona, and knew that that you know the chemicals weren't the right approach.
• 7:45
  He saw it from an economic standpoint that that you know you're or you're on this uh chemical addiction.
• 7:51
  You have to, you know, uh buy more.
• 7:54
  It's it's like a it's like a uh a drug, a drug addict, you know, you got to get a bigger hit all the time, and you're never get off this rat race.
• 8:02
  And so we began uh the the redemption process, literally.
• 8:06
  We we um we started composting, we started controlled grazing.
• 8:10
  We uh we went counter to every piece of advice that the you know convention threw at us and um and started doing everything portable, mobile, mobile chickens, mobile pigs, mobile cows, uh and dad never made a living from the farm.
• 8:26
  He and mom worked off the farm to pay the mortgage.
• 8:29
  So by the time I'm in high school in the early 1970s, I'm well, how do I get back here on a farm?
• 8:34
  I'm in the I'm in the same situation, you know.
• 8:36
  How do I how do I make a living here on this small farm?
• 8:40
  And um, and so you know, we had done so much experimenting that then one of the things that I brought to the to the farm was the was communication, uh, was ability to tell our story, to market, to you know, make cold calls and and say, hey, you know, I've got chicken here, you want to buy some.
• 8:59
  And uh, and so I started you know, direct marketing things, and we saw that as a way in to get retail retail value for what we were producing.
• 9:09
  And so September 24, 1982, I left outside employment.
• 9:14
  I was a journalist and uh left the newspaper and came back to the farm September 24, 1982.
• 9:20
  Teresa and I had gotten married.
• 9:21
  We were we fixed up an attic in the old farmhouse, drove a 50 car, never had a TV, still don't have a TV, still don't have a smartphone.
• 9:29
  And um, and we lived on 300 a month, grew all of our own food.
• 9:34
  Uh, she could make all of our clothes.
• 9:36
  We, you know, we bought from the thrift store.
• 9:39
  She canned 800 quarts of stuff a summer out of the garden.
• 9:42
  We had our own firewood, we had all of our own food.
• 9:44
  We had our own, so we we were able to live cheaply enough that um that when I jumped off that cliff, we had saved, we had saved some a little bit enough to to kind of last a year.
• 9:56
  And um, and as it turned out, that little
• 10:00
  That little cruise of oil, I called it, you know, uh uh extended, and we made it one year, then we made it two, and by the end of the third year, we uh I say we exhaled, you know, okay, you know, now we're gonna make it after after three years.
• 10:14
  But it was, you know, uh, we were very happy.
• 10:17
  It we know we just uh we every penny was important, and um, and we and we we scrimped and we saved and we um I I did a couple little odd things I helped a neighbor build some fence, help another neighbor plant some trees, you know, little cash things.
• 10:33
  But when you're living on 300 a month, you know, 600, 700 bucks of cash, you know, carries you a good ways.
• 10:40
  And um, and we started, and so now uh the farm employs 22 people full time and uh we service 10,000 families, we ship nationwide, and uh it's a it's a true going going concern.
• 10:56
  So I've been very, very blessed.
• 10:58
  Where did the name polyface come from to name your your farm polyface farms?
• 11:03
  Well, we knew we knew that we would be doing multiple enterprises, you know.
• 11:07
  So many farmers say, what do you do?
• 11:08
  Well, I'm an orchardist or I'm a dairy farmer, or I'm a you know, corn and soybean farmer, whatever.
• 11:14
  But uh we knew that we were we were stewards of a piece of God's creation that that we would have multiple, multiple threads, multiple enterprises, multiple things going on.
• 11:27
  And so uh, so we say, well, let's just be poly the farm of many faces, poly is the you know, the the Latin prefix for many polygons, polyglot, you know, and uh uh polymers, okay.
• 11:40
  So uh, you know, polyface, the farm of many faces uh is is how we got to be.
• 11:46
  You know, I've heard you talk, yeah.
• 11:48
  I've heard you speak it's at a couple of different seminars and said that there's you know, there's a real issue with the the farmers that are older, they don't really have an exit plan.
• 11:57
  And the young who really think that they want to get into farming, they really don't have an entrance plan.
• 12:02
  If someone's thinking about getting into farming, is they they must have to start with a checklist.
• 12:08
  Where do where's the first place that you would guide them to say to to really do an evaluation of is this is this is this job for me, you know, sort of thing.
• 12:18
  Yeah, we're not no, that's that's the that's a fair thing.
• 12:20
  It's kind of like it's kind of like if you faint at the sight of blood, you might not want to become an EMP, you know.
• 12:26
  Right.
• 12:27
  And so it's a great question.
• 12:30
  And so what I I encourage people to start where you are with what you can.
• 12:36
  And the truth is you can do a lot of things, even in an urban setting.
• 12:40
  Um, you know, you can have you can have uh a few chickens, you can have uh an herb garden on the porch, you can have beehives on the roof.
• 12:50
  I mean, there's there's a lot of things you can do.
• 12:52
  And if you don't have any, you know, if you live in a condominium, uh you can often get to a community garden down the road somewhere.
• 13:00
  There's there's one nearby.
• 13:02
  And and my point is that if you if you would not if you wouldn't rather go work in the garden or tend the chickens um more than watch Netflix, farming might not be for you.
• 13:17
  And in other words, in other words, you you you do what you can where you are, and if that excites you, then you probably know you're you know you're good to go.
• 13:29
  Um, and so you you've got it, you've got to determine your passion and then follow that passion.
• 13:35
  Uh, because you don't start farming to get rich.
• 13:38
  Uh you start farming because you love it, it's in your heart, your soul, um, and doesn't mean you have to be poor as a church mouth, but but but I don't know anybody that comes to farming, you know, to become wealthy.
• 13:52
  What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make if they that they do decide, okay, I want to, I want to go into farming.
• 13:58
  What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make from the very beginning?
• 14:03
  Well, probably the biggest mistake is uh is putting all your equity in land rather than um rather than leasing or renting or borrowing or building.
• 14:15
  One of the beauties of mobile livestock, um, which that's what we're in.
• 14:21
  We're in cows and pigs and chickens and everything, and everything's mobile.
• 14:24
  And one of the beauties of a mobile farm is that you don't have to own the land that you're using.
• 14:31
  You you can you can have your farming done on land that you don't own, and if the deal goes south, you just pick up everything and you move it to another another place.
• 14:42
  And so what happens frequently is people, well, I want to farm.
• 14:46
  The first thing I need to do is buy a piece of land.
• 14:48
  Well, land is very, very expensive.
• 14:50
  So what happens is you either you either put all your nest egg into the land with nothing left over for development, like, you know, a uh a walk-in cooler or chicken processing equipment, or you know, maybe uh maybe uh an inspected kitchen, you know, so you can uh value add things.
• 15:09
  Uh I mean, not to mention a you know, equipment, a tractor or a pickup truck or something like that.
• 15:14
  And so what happens then is you're you're then strapped to be able to develop the land that you just put all your equity in.
• 15:23
  The other thing, of course, is borrowing too much that straps you into a into a cash rat race where you can't um where you're always under the pressure to make that payment uh rather than the pressure to innovate, be creative and experiment.
• 15:48
  And so um so the the biggest mistake is dropping all your equity into land and not having anything left over to develop it.
• 15:57
  The second biggest mistake is trying to is trying to grow too fast.
• 16:02
  I mean, a lot of people who come to this, they've read my books, they read other books, and they come in with this with this, you know, starry-eyed fan, oh, we're gonna do this and this and this, this, and and um the stuff that we've taken, you know, 65 years to develop that they want it all in a in a year or two, and and suddenly, you know, the fence isn't done right, the cows are out, and then the pigs won't stay in, and then the chickens are being picked off by the predators, and the whole thing begins to collapse because you're you're you've got you've got you can't you can't afford to experiment on everything at once.
• 16:43
  Experimentation is costly because you make mistakes, and so you can only afford to experiment on, you know, a couple things at a time.
• 16:52
  You have to pace yourself.
• 16:53
  So I always encourage people to get well get one or two things done well, and then that finances the experimentation on the other end.
• 17:02
  And the third thing I would say, you know, to the question, you know, what are the biggest mistakes?
• 17:06
  The third one then is what I call sacred cows.
• 17:10
  And that's where you're you um you end up uh putting a lot of money and attention on things that don't return an income.
• 17:24
  Now, uh, you know, I don't hate horses, but there are a lot of people that are spending four or five, six thousand dollars a year on a horse to you know, maintain it, to feed it, to whatever, veterinary, whatever, they're pretty finicky.
• 17:42
  Um and wondering, well, why aren't we why can't we make it on this, you know, on this homestead or on this farm?
• 17:49
  Well, because you know, you've got this, or you've got some exotic, you know.
• 17:52
  Well, we want exotic chickens, you know, ones with feathers on their feet or or whatever.
• 17:57
  Um, and and you know, there those exotics and those kinds of of you know entertainment value things are things that you do after you've become well healed and money isn't so tight, time isn't so tight, and you become efficient on other things.
• 18:18
  That's when you you know, that's when you can kind of indulge yourself some of these other more, you know, side uh side exotics.
• 18:27
  You know, you say in your book, you can farm an entrepreneur's guide to start and succeed in farming enterprises in the second chapter, or I'm sorry, the it's actually the third chapter.
• 18:39
  You talk about writing down your philosophy, and that you have a philosophy of I think that in your book, it's kind of like philosophy of life, but also a philosophy of farming.
• 18:50
  What would you say to young people who uh maybe they don't even know what that means?
• 18:56
  Yeah, so this is kind of your you know, what what do you really believe about about life, about biology, about things.
• 19:07
  And you gotta real the the reason this is important is because right now in our our culture is a very uh Greco-Roman Western disconnected, segregated, you know, um linear reductionist uh uh kind of thinking and and our farming is that way, our healthcare system is that way.
• 19:29
  You know, it it's life is viewed fundamentally as a as a kind of mechanical thing, uh like like a car, and we can, you know, we can uh pull this DNA out here and stick some in DNA over here, and we can, you know, uh like you you pull bearings out of a front wheel, you know, and you can mix and match the parts.
• 19:49
  But you and I know, um Dr.
• 19:52
  Sherry, that that that life is dynamic, it's spontaneous, it is it it's adapt.
• 20:00
  It it's responsive.
• 20:02
  Um, you know, you can go out all day and you know hug the hood of your Ferrari and tell your Ferrari you love this car, you're a beautiful car, I'm in love with you.
• 20:13
  It doesn't care a lick.
• 20:15
  But if you go out and throw your arms around your milk cow or a or a chicken, or for that matter, even a tomato plant, the life life responds.
• 20:26
  It it it it it responds and it it hugs you back.
• 20:30
  And so uh in the book, uh, I wanted to start straight up with kind of my philosophical confession of of you know, here is here is my philosophy.
• 20:45
  Here's what I what I believe in, you know, and and biblically, even uh even Paul, you know, he he says uh he doesn't say you'll be you'll be messed up by this, you know, which songs you sing or which choir robes you buy or whether your church has a steeple or not.
• 21:00
  It says you'll be destroyed by what he says, vain philosophy.
• 21:05
  And so it it is it is the philosophical underpinnings that that drive our ultimate decision making.
• 21:14
  And if we believe that life is fundamentally biological and not mechanical, it means that we ask questions like, well, how do I make a pig happy?
• 21:27
  Does it matter if a pig is happy?
• 21:30
  Uh does it matter if if the soil is biologically alive or chemically biologically inert because I've dumped a bunch of chemicals on it.
• 21:42
  Am I adding things that that stimulate pollinators and wildlife and life, or am I doing things that discourage life diversity, pollinators, and you know, and life.
• 21:56
  Um, and so that's why I wanted to address that straight up, so that everybody could could see what my philosophy is.
• 22:03
  And that's then how you that's your basis of making decisions.
• 22:08
  Well, it is good.
• 22:09
  It's definitely gives you a guidepost if you really know what your philosophy is and what you believe in.
• 22:14
  You know, if people are wanting to get into farming, uh they, you know, I think that people are so tired of big egg and big food and big pharma and all these things, and they want to grow their own food.
• 22:25
  Um, what are some of the big opportunities that are out there that people for people to start a farm?
• 22:32
  So uh some of the I mean, obviously, your your opportunity is what really drives your heart.
• 22:40
  And what we've found is that people tend to move toward animals or plants.
• 22:48
  Generally, you don't see you don't see uh a farm who whose core uh whose core enterprises, the core enterprise tends to move one direction or another, you know, either livestock or plants.
• 23:04
  And then within plants, you have you have the difference between annuals like you know, squash and watermelons versus perennials like berries and orchard and apples and things like that.
• 23:15
  And so the the first thing, in my view, is to uh to experiment enough with some things to know yourself and to know yourself to know here's what I really really enjoy.
• 23:30
  And um, and so once you discover that, then um, then there are principles of of how do we how do we how do we create a habitat that makes health?
• 23:42
  I mean, on our farm, we have thousands and thousands of animals.
• 23:45
  We have zero vet bill.
• 23:47
  I mean, we just we just don't even have a vet bill.
• 23:49
  And now it doesn't mean we never have a sick animal, but it does mean that we we don't have we don't have a a vet program, you know.
• 23:59
  Uh uh we don't medicate anything, we don't vaccinate anything, any of those kinds of things, because we have devoted our attention to creating a habitat that that makes for satisfied, happy, you know, happy animals.
• 24:15
  And so um, so the first thing is to develop uh a habitat that you know that that creates health, so you don't have a bunch of you know, vet bills or or or or you know, pesticides, fungus, or whatever, all these other you know, problems that most farmers deal with all the time.
• 24:34
  And then, and then secondly, is direct marketing.
• 24:38
  Um, I'm a big believer in owning the customer, owning the retail dollar.
• 24:44
  Uh there's not enough margin in the commodity business to be able to beat to make a living at commodity prices.
• 24:56
  Um, if you're if you're a small farm.
• 24:59
  This is what we found.
• 25:00
  And so the way to beat that system is to become the notorious middleman.
• 25:06
  You know, the you hear farmers, well, the middleman makes all the money, you know.
• 25:10
  Well, if that's where the money is, then I want to be one.
• 25:14
  And so and so those those four kind of those four income threads, production, processing, marketing, and distribution, those four legs of the stool, I want to own all four of those legs so I get the full retail dollar.
• 25:28
  That gets me off the treadmill of having to beat uh to beat the commodity price uh by scale at low margins.
• 25:39
  Instead, I can reduce my production scale and put attention on processing, marketing, and distribution and my customers at retail value.
• 25:52
  Suddenly, I don't have to have a huge farm to make a living to make a living farming.
• 25:57
  And that's how to beat that that uh price financial rat race.
• 26:02
  Wow, that's such good advice.
• 26:03
  And you you talked in your book about developing a brand, and I think that that's what you're what you're what you're referring to there.
• 26:09
  And I think this is a a good place to take a short break to hold so hold that thought for a second, Joel.
• 26:15
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  We'll be right back with more from Joel Salatin and his book, You Can Farm.
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• 34:06
  Welcome back, everyone.
• 34:07
  Our conversation today is with Joel Salatin and his book You Can Farm, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise.
• 34:17
  The book for all current farmers, wannabe farmers, and wondering if farming is possibly right for you.
• 34:24
  Let me tell you a little bit more about our guest, Joel Salatin.
• 34:27
  Joel has a room full of debate trophies from high school and college days.
• 34:32
  He has published 16 books and runs a thriving multi-generational family regenerative farm called Polyface Farms, located in Northern Virginia.
• 34:42
  He draws on a lifetime of food, farming, and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world.
• 34:48
  He's comfortable, he's as comfortable moving cows in the pasture as addressing CEOs in Wall Street business conferences.
• 34:55
  Polyface Farm services more than 5,000 families, 10 restaurants, and five retail outlets with beef, poultry, pork, and forest products.
• 35:04
  The farm can also ship nationwide to your doorstep.
• 35:08
  Joel is Salaton's practical can-do solutions tied to passionate writing and speaking about sustainability, offer everyone food for thought and plans for action.
• 35:19
  Joel is a rare combination, a profit leader, hands-on practitioner, and he is a solid Christian man for our times.
• 35:29
  Joel, you know, this Maha movement is doing a lot for small farmers and especially regenerative farming.
• 35:34
  We've heard uh Secretary Kennedy talk about that a lot.
• 35:37
  We've seen them release some money to uh with um Secretary Rollins is doing that.
• 35:42
  Um, what do you think that that is going to do to help small farmers, small, small farmers succeed, if anything?
• 35:50
  Maybe it's not going to do anything at all.
• 35:53
  Well, uh, I put I put very little faith in government programs.
• 35:58
  I will tell you that I have a lot more faith in Maha than I do Brooke Rollins.
• 36:03
  I think um I had I had a really fascinating conversation not long ago with uh with Callie Means and I asked him, because the reason I'm saying this is because I was completely mistaken, uh, or at least uh from his viewpoint.
• 36:20
  Um I always thought Big Pharma was way bigger or worse or you know, badder than big big ag.
• 36:27
  And I asked him, I said, in your opinion, which is which is worse or bigger, which is which is the bigger problem, you know, the bigger uh cultural hurdle is it big big pharma or big egg.
• 36:37
  Oh, without blinking, he said, Oh, big pharma's 10 times worse.
• 36:40
  And I was shocked.
• 36:41
  I I I could hardly believe it.
• 36:43
  And um, and so here's what's interesting about the politics of it is that the core of the of the um conserve the the Republican conservative movement is are those um ag those those senators from AG states, Iowa, Wisconsin, um, Oklahoma, Texas, um, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas.
• 37:10
  They are that is the that is the core of the Republican Senate, you know, group.
• 37:18
  And they are all completely beholden to big ag completely.
• 37:24
  And so um, and so this is what made whereas, whereas on the pharmaceutical end, it's a little bit split.
• 37:31
  It's a little more, you know, you you don't have as as as clear a partisan, whatever stranglehold.
• 37:39
  Uh, you know, you see, you see, well, that's that's why Maha is so bipartisan.
• 37:44
  You see, Democrats, Republicans, and nuns, you know, all over in the Maha movement.
• 37:49
  It's it's quite profound.
• 37:51
  Um, you know, you go to one of their shindigs, and well, where'd you go?
• 37:55
  Well, I was a Democrat.
• 37:57
  Oh, I was a Republican, you know.
• 37:58
  It's real, the Maha is what is way more bipartisan.
• 38:02
  Ag big agor say, you know, um the the all the the alt alternative ag um community is uh is is not that way.
• 38:16
  And the the ag power, the politics of the ag power is very much in these large so when um when when uh secretary Rollins and uh RFK Jr.
• 38:30
  come together and say we're gonna we're gonna put what was it, 700 million dollars into transitional uh farming practices.
• 38:39
  Um I'm looking at that, and and and how's the money going to be divvied out?
• 38:45
  Well, it's gonna go through the national the NRCS Natural Resources Conservation Service, which has been administering conservation money, you know, crap programs, all sorts of things for for a long, long, long time.
• 38:57
  And um my experience with NRCS is that they have been extremely regimented as engineers, regimented from being able to do what I would consider, you know, terrain-based ecological type uh stuff.
• 39:15
  And um, and and it's all it's very, very expensive, so they cost share, but it still costs as much as if you just did it yourself.
• 39:22
  Um, you know, poor boy.
• 39:24
  And so uh I I don't here's here's the question.
• 39:28
  Um how do you how do you help um the power less by going through the powerful?
• 39:37
  Uh in other words, NRCS has been handling millions and billions of dollars for a long time in a you know in a certain approach, and now you're going to give them more money and ask them to take a different approach.
• 39:55
  Uh yeah, I don't know.
• 39:57
  But you know, I I I I I I don't want to, you know, throw
• 40:00
  Cold water on the thing.
• 40:01
  I'm glad these conversations are happening and people are actually talking about regenerative agriculture and soil health and earthworm earthworm development, you know, at high stages.
• 40:13
  So I'm, you know, I'm I'm in general, I'm I'm pleased that that conversation uh has percolated up as high as it has.
• 40:22
  Um but I'm I'm not I'm not gonna hold my breath that you know that that another program and another uh millions of dollars are going to fundamentally change the landscape.
• 40:39
  I mean, what what I want to see is freedom to sell.
• 40:43
  Uh in my view, what we really need is we need market access for farmers.
• 40:49
  Uh so if they if they really wanted to help, they would say uh from now on, we're going to let two consenting adults exercise freedom of choice and engage in a food transaction without asking one of our inspectors to give them permission.
• 41:04
  And um and that that would fundamentally change the climate because now suddenly the farmers have access to you know uh to the market.
• 41:15
  I mean, some of this money is earmarked, for example, for uh for small uh slaughterhouses, for example, abattoirs I mean, our country is in desperate need of more, you know, slaughterhouses.
• 41:27
  But um if you if you start, I know a couple of slaughterhouses who have used grant money near us that are now out of business.
• 41:38
  Well, they got a grant money, they started, but they weren't good business people.
• 41:41
  And so now the now the facility that costs millions of dollars is sitting there empty um be because they they weren't good business people.
• 41:49
  They they were great at filling out grants and chasing down you know government money, but they weren't good at at developing a business.
• 41:57
  And so um so I I just don't think in general that the government throwing money at something uh generally solves it.
• 42:07
  I just I just hopeful, I'm hopeful, but I wasn't born yesterday.
• 42:13
  Yeah, and I you know, we talked about this a little bit uh prior to starting our our conversation here that government in all areas of industry, they just throw money at stuff and thinking it's going to get better, and it generally doesn't.
• 42:26
  You know, in your book, this book, You Can Farm, it was written in 19, it was published in 1998.
• 42:33
  So more than 20 years ago, things that you put this together.
• 42:37
  What do you think has changed since that time?
• 42:40
  What have what has changed for for small and want to be farmers since since you wrote this um in 1998?
• 42:48
  Yeah, yeah.
• 42:49
  So uh so several things have changed.
• 42:53
  One is that the uh cost of land has continued to exceed the cost of production.
• 43:01
  In other words, the the relationship between land price and production capacity has continued to widen.
• 43:09
  Uh another thing that's happened is additional uh government regulation for marketing.
• 43:15
  It's become much worse uh under the you know the um food food and safe food modernization act under Obama, uh, you know, when he when he put um Michael Taylor, the legal counsel for Monsanto, who shepherded genetically modified organisms and and put him as the as the food safety czar.
• 43:37
  Well, you can imagine the philosophy, we're back to philosophy, the mindset of you know the Monsanto GMO legal counsel being in charge of safe food.
• 43:47
  It's not going to be food that lives, it's going to be food that's that's sterile, that's um you know, that has a long shelf life that is manipulated uh, you know, with 10,000 additives, um, like RFK Jr.
• 44:00
  has shown.
• 44:01
  So that's been a change.
• 44:02
  I think I think another significant change, and this is literally something that I've I've kind of just come to lately, um, is that the in the in the 30 years since that book was published, uh first written, um we've had a continuing and accelerating disconnect from food.
• 44:27
  Um what I what I call domestic culinary arts.
• 44:31
  And you know um I have spent most of my life encouraging non-farmers, you know, I mean, we buy food too, uh, but everybody that buys food to get in your kitchen.
• 44:45
  You know, you don't have to buy processed, buy real food, you know, whole foods, get a get a butternut squash, you know, peel it and cook the butternut squash.
• 44:55
  Uh get a whole sweet potato, cut it in half, put it on a tray, bake it, you know, with some uh honey and and butter on it, and I mean life doesn't get any better than that.
• 45:05
  Um so you know, whole foods, even a whole chicken, you know, you can put it in a crock pot uh in the morning and 40 watts all day and come home and it's you know perfect to eat.
• 45:18
  So um, so this has just been the way we've we've lived forever.
• 45:22
  We, you know, we don't buy applesauce from the store.
• 45:25
  We go to an orchard, we buy six bushels of apples and we uh cook them and we use the food mill and we can applesauce and there's our stash of apple, you know, applesauce for the year, okay.
• 45:37
  Um and so I have preached this forever, not only not only as a way to, you know, continue to stay informed about food, you know, taste, texture, touch, all that, but but a way to uh to reduce your cost of food.
• 45:52
  We we have this affordability thing.
• 45:54
  Well, let me tell you, um, lunchables, lunchables are 14 a pound in our supermarket here.
• 46:02
  Well, you can get two pounds of ground beef for you know, for 14 bucks uh almost, and there's way more nutrition than in a lunchable.
• 46:13
  Uh, you know, I have a friend that takes a Snickers bar in his pocket, he sells lamb at the farmer's market.
• 46:18
  When people complain about, you know, 22 a pound for lamb, he pulls a Snickers bar out of his pocket, says this is 22 a pound.
• 46:26
  Did you buy one lately?
• 46:28
  Um and so convenience food and and ultra-processed food is expensive.
• 46:35
  But so all my life I've been saying, if you want to really, you know, defund the big bad food system, uh, big food and big farm and all that, buy whole foods, get in your kitchen and cook them.
• 46:47
  Well, what's happened, I think, since you can farm was written in the last 30 years, is that has gone from an appealing, oh, that's that's interesting.
• 46:58
  I think I'd like to, I think I'd like to do that, you know, let's try to do that to the disconnect now is so profound that it becomes um offensive and intimidating.
• 47:07
  What?
• 47:08
  I mean, I you know, I I can't, I don't know what to do with my kitchen.
• 47:12
  You know, um, yeah, I mean, I was down, I was down at a food co-op the other day, and I see I see uh a clamshell of a dozen eggs, hard-boiled eggs already peeled in a clam shell for like $26 a dozen.
• 47:29
  Now there are few things easier to do than hard boil an egg and peel the you know, peel the shell off of it.
• 47:40
  But you know, have we have we come to such a point in our culture that we're so far removed from our kitchens, our food, our culinary domestic understanding that that now when I say get in your kitchen, people look at me like like I'm being I'm being uh unfair or I'm being offensive, or um, and so that's that's one of the big changes, which is why I'm on a tear about allowing market access to farmers to go to convenience.
• 48:10
  In the 30 years since this book was written, we've gone from roughly, you know, 25% uh convenience food or you know, processed food, to now today, as you know, it's 75%.
• 48:23
  75% of the food Americans eat now is processed.
• 48:26
  In other words, it's it's already um table ready, you know.
• 48:31
  You you just eat it or you pull the wrapper off or something, it's table ready.
• 48:36
  That dramatic change has happened in these 30 years, and it's why we desperately need farmers to be able to access that convenience food market, because now I'm realizing the the challenge is not to get people in their kitchen, the challenge is to enable farmers to enjoy the convenience food value add, uh value add uh capacity.
• 49:09
  That's what really makes a difference.
• 49:11
  I mean, we we supply a restaurant in in Stanton with chicken, they buy a chicken for 20 bucks, they sell it for 45, they turn it into 15 entrees that they sell for 405.
• 49:22
  If you if you say half of that is the chicken, they take it, they take a 20 chicken and turn it into a 200.
• 49:29
  Well, if you had a couple of acres of land and could raise a thousand chicken and make chicken pot pie and sell it to your neighbors, you could make a living on an acre of of land with chickens uh with with a kitchen.
• 49:41
  Uh, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
• 49:44
  That's where Maha and Secretary Rollins, in my opinion, if if if they could put their um their political equity behind allowing farmer access to value added convenience.
• 50:00
  It's product, that would do more than anything in transitioning.
• 50:06
  You know, I think that when they stopped, and I'm not sure how long ago this stopped, but they stopped having like home ac classes in like middle school.
• 50:15
  And you know, we're we're about the same age.
• 50:17
  So I'm sure you remember that.
• 50:18
  And then shop classes that they, you know, for the boys and home ac for the girls.
• 50:23
  Because when you say get in the kitchen, uh, most people don't even know what to do with these vegetables.
• 50:28
  You know, I have a friend here in I live in Cleveland, Ohio, and I have a friend here that operates a small nonprofit in a pretty, you know, in a in a middle class suburb that's here.
• 50:39
  And she said, you would be amazed, Sherry, at how many of the people that come here that the only vegetable they know is potatoes, and the only thing that they know about potatoes is mashed potatoes and French fries.
• 50:53
  And so you know they don't even know like what would you do with chalarabi?
• 50:58
  What would you do, you know, with with sort of the off mainstream vegetables, something other than than a head of lettuce, you know?
• 51:04
  They don't even know what that is or know the nutritional value.
• 51:07
  I think because we stopped teaching that, you know, in high school when you, you know, learned how to do family planning and lunches and things like that.
• 51:16
  So I think that your idea of of farmers capturing in on that on that fast, more processed food market.
• 51:24
  Um, I think that there's some value to that, but I think more value would be to just teach people, you know, what to do with these vegetables.
• 51:30
  They could do it themselves.
• 51:31
  I mean, I go to the grocery store, and I feel like you know, I've I've taught people for years, you know, shop around the edges.
• 51:38
  Yeah, you have all your meat and eggs and bread and things like that.
• 51:42
  And the only aisle you're allowed to go down is the one that has laundry detergent and toilet paper.
• 51:49
  Because the rest of it is just all garbage.
• 51:51
  You know, you read down there, you just feel like you're being surrounded by poisons, you know, the seed oils and the you know, all these different things.
• 51:57
  And so I think that that's really important.
• 52:00
  You know, you're fear what you've been talking about with financial risk and business risks of um with having with having um farms, buying you know, stock and things like that.
• 52:10
  Do you offer courses or online classes for people that are just starting out?
• 52:15
  Oh, sure.
• 52:16
  So we we have our polyface intensive discovery seminar, uh, which we it's a two-day, two-day six meal seminar that we offer every summer a couple of times, and it's very intimate.
• 52:28
  We, you know, we limit it to about 35 people so that everybody can see and hear, and and it's it's basically um uh a four-day seminar compressed into two long days, uh, no breaks.
• 52:40
  Uh it's very, very intensive.
• 52:43
  Uh, nine page syllabus, but we butcher chickens, we butcher rabbits, we build compost, we cut trees, we mill logs, we build ponds, we move cows, we move pigs.
• 52:52
  We I mean, it's it's it's uh it's a very um comprehensive, you know, behind the curtain look at at what we uh at what we do here.
• 53:02
  And so, yes, we do, uh and of course the farm hosts you know numerous events.
• 53:08
  In fact, this year, this year, I'll give a shameless plug.
• 53:11
  For one, we're doing August uh 21, 22, I think it is.
• 53:14
  The Stopman Grass Farmer magazine is hosting a beginning farmer conference here where we're gonna feature eight eight uh young people who uh were who who can say this.
• 53:28
  I was 20 and had no land and no money, and I'm now full-time farming in my 30s.
• 53:33
  And we're we're gonna feature eight of them and their stories uh over the two-day period, and we'll and we'll feed everybody too, so you get good food.
• 53:42
  Uh, and that's that's going to happen here at the farm.
• 53:45
  So, yes, we do a lot of educational informational um uh stuff here at the farm.
• 53:51
  Mention that uh seminar again.
• 53:53
  When is it and where can people find out more information about it?
• 53:56
  Yeah, well, they they can uh they can find out on our website, Polyface Farms.
• 54:00
  Uh the registration will be through Stockman Grass Farmer magazine, but it's going to be um August 21 and 22 here at our farm.
• 54:11
  Um the Stoppman Grass Farmer Magazine does a does an educational seminar uh once every two years.
• 54:21
  And so this is the this is the two year, and and I'm featuring these eight young people.
• 54:27
  Uh I was 20, no land, no money, and I'm full-time farming in my 30s.
• 54:31
  And their stories are are amazing.
• 54:33
  Some of them, some of them don't even own land.
• 54:36
  Uh they and they're all over the country, different places, but uh I think it's going to be a dynamite um a dynamite summit because their stories are so unique.
• 54:47
  And and and one of the things you see, remember I said I was 20, no land of money, I'm in my 30s now, full-time farming.
• 54:54
  So many of them, it's taken a 15-year-old you know, a 15-year incremental move, but um, but to go from zero to full-time and even 15 years is is pretty dramatic.
• 55:06
  And all of them, all of them knew they wanted to do this at 20.
• 55:10
  They weren't 40, 40 and realizing, oh, I think I want a piece of land.
• 55:15
  They actually started at 20, which gave them uh uh, you know, a high energy uh on ramp time to learn to experiment to, you know, to build to build collaborations and things like that until they could finally pull it off.
• 55:32
  Well, we've got about a minute and a half left, Joel.
• 55:35
  What take-home message do you want to leave with our listeners here today?
• 55:39
  So my take-home message is very simple.
• 55:42
  You know, there are a lot of dysfunctions in our culture right now, a lot of things that are dysfunctional.
• 55:48
  And you can get frustrated real easily at all these things.
• 55:52
  And so, you know, whether it's economics or food or you know, health or whatever, and and it's okay to make a list.
• 55:58
  If you want to write down a list of all the things I'm frustrated about, go ahead.
• 56:01
  You know, maybe there's some um, you know, catharsis in in writing down this list of all these things I'm frustrated about.
• 56:07
  But at the end, you look at that list and say, okay, how am I going to respond?
• 56:12
  And how I want to respond to that list is I want to flip it upside down and say, what what is what can I do?
• 56:20
  What is my solution in this space?
• 56:23
  So that at the end of the day, we we create hope and help when society becomes hopeless and helpless.
• 56:32
  Oh, that's beautiful.
• 56:33
  That's my message.
• 56:34
  Well, that's a great, that's a great way to end this great conversation that we've had here today with Joel Salatin, the world's most famous farmer who's been doing this his whole life and can pull on all kinds of experience.
• 56:46
  So with that, I want to close out with one of my favorite verses from the Bible.
• 56:50
  I close all my podcasts with, whether they are live or pre-recorded, which is Romans 12, 12.
• 56:55
  Rejoice in hope, be patient in trouble and be persistent in prayer.
• 56:59
  So we'll see you again tomorrow or the next time at 3 p.m.
• 57:03
  Eastern, Monday through Friday on the 10 Penny Piles.
• 57:06
  Well, have a great week, rest of your day, everybody.
• 57:08
  Goodbye and God bless.