Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #227: Joel Salatin on the EU Protests (And Why Your Grocery Bill Keeps Rising)

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Episode #227: Joel Salatin on the EU Protests (And Why Your Grocery Bill Keeps Rising) · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: What people don't realize is that roughly half of the EU budget is farm subsidies.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so the farmers in the EU have enjoyed um incredible safety nets.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: My take uh won't make maybe some people happy.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Beyond Labels.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And today's gonna be a fun podcast because we're gonna talk about some current events.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really interested in this first topic.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get Joel's take on it because the made the media is largely painting this really sad picture for farmers in the European Union, you know, like in Belgium and France.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened was just recently, thousands of French farmers and some Belgian farmers have come out in protest against um this trade agreement between the EU and um Mocosur.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Am I saying that right?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Mokosur?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like Mocoser.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, something I knew that you didn't know.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like a relish in this moment.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: But so basically, um Mercosur is a group of South American countries uh like Brazil and Argentina who, after 20 years, are saying that they're gonna sign a trade deal with the European Union.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So farmers are coming out in droves against this.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the trade deal, by the way, has been delayed for one month.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers are out demonstrating they're blocking roads with tractors, they're having their sheep, sheep go through the street, which I saw a video of this, Joel, and I was so impressed with how they have their dogs there and the sheep herders, how they're they're able to tend the sheep through these roads.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I was really, really amazed.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what impressed me was those big uh liquid manure, liquid manure tanks, and they're driving up and spraying manure on the parliament building, government building.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's unbelievable, unbelievable.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they're very upset dumping that in front of the wasn't it the president's home too?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think they dumped it there.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, they're waving the flags.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I did see videos that if these are correct, that farmers were like throwing rocks through windows and you know, it it got very violent.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So farmers there are warning about this deal.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The deal reduces tariffs between the EU and these South African um nations.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying that South America, oh sorry, South American nations, South American nations, thank you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying that um this could undermine local agriculture and it would increase competition among the European producers.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to get Joel's take on this because oftentimes Joel, as you know, has this great input um and insight that uh a lot of us don't have.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's been there.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Joel, I watch these videos and my heart breaks for all these farmers, and I see the little cute sheep, and I'm like, oh protect them.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So give us the rundown.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's what's really happening here?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And should we be siding with the farmers?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my uh my take uh won't make maybe some people happy, but um you know, I've been there uh numerous times.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm going back to Poland in uh in in this coming spring.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um what people don't realize is that roughly half of the EU budget is farm subsidies.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now in America, uh you know, that portion of our, you know, if we take the the farm subsidy, crop insurance part of our uh budget, American budget, it's probably, I don't know, five percent, less than five percent.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: It it yeah, it's it's not much, um, maybe even three percent.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, compared to Medicare, Medicaid, defense budget, and now the interest on the national debt.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it but it's minuscule.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: In the EU, it's almost 50, it's it's roughly 50 percent.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so the farmers in the EU have enjoyed um incredible safety nets.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, many of them get get a check simply for owning farmland.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they don't have to do anything, they just get a check for owning farmland.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so that what happens is when you have that level of of safety net is that of it affects it affects your the way that you make decisions because you can continue making the same decisions you've made over and over and over, assuming that nothing will ever change.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then when something changes, you can't make a decision because you can't conceive of a system that's unlike what you've had.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, there's an old business axiom that says what you what got you here won't get you there.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there's a lot there's a lot of truth to that because things do change.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so the EU, of course, is under a lot of pressure right now, and and France, especially Macron, uh has has been the staunchest supporter of Ukraine.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so these European countries, as the US pulls out of of um, you know, giving the company store to Ukraine, they're trying to step up and step into the gap.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as they go, as they increase GDP portions, and of course, you know, EU is full of every kind of welfare thing you can imagine, um, in addition to the farms being on welfare, uh, that that as they as they start to try to pick up the U.S.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: shortfall for Ukraine, this is putting extreme budgetary pressure on these EU countries, most importantly, France, because Macron is the one that's stepping out most aggressively saying we've got to be there for Vladimir, you know, Z Zelensky for Ukraine.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why it's most acute in France.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So they're trying to figure out ways to um to free up money for for military and reduce costs.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's happened in the EU, I can tell you I've been there, um the farmers are extremely inefficient.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not I'm not trying to be difficult or ornery or anything like that.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, when you get the level of subsidy they get, uh you get you get kind of um, you know uh well, if not cocky, at least kind of um you you don't have to be as innovative and creative as you might like to be, uh or or or you maybe should be.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I think what's happening here is you've got on the one hand, you've got the the Ukraine war that's pushing, on the other hand, you've got cheap foodstuffs that they're trying to free up money, and the farmers are getting caught in the middle of that, and they're losing, they're losing their gravy trade.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and they're they're losing their tariff protection that they've had for a long, long time.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and now they're gonna see themselves flooded because believe me, Brazil, Brazil can raise stuff for half the cost of the European Union.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the EU, all animals, and I'm saying all, not everyone, obviously, but virtually all animals in the EU are in confinement buildings.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you think confinement farming in the U.S.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: is bad?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they're not as big.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: The barns and the buildings are not as big as they are in the U.S.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: But they're all confined, and all the feedstocks are harvested by machine, carried in, and all the manure is carried out.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's not composted, most of it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's raw, stinks to high heavens.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so everything is done with machinery in a place where fuel is twice as expensive as it is in the U.S.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so the cost of producing something in the US in the EU is substantially higher than it is in the U.S.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: and way higher than it is in South America, where you know cost of living is lower and and natural resources are more extensive.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where we are, and um and what I want to tell those European farmers is you need to you you're in the same problem we've got in the U.S.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: here.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: All of us in the developing in the highly developed uh economies, we're suffering from overregulation on food.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if you farmers would get out of the commodity business and start actually taking your commodity to a value-added level, then you can compete very well.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't compete at the commodity level.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: The commodity level, the commodity level is always going to seek a floor in price.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: The world is going to always gravitate to the cheapest commodity because it's undifferentiated, it's the same thing everywhere worldwide.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Corn, corn, corn, soybean, soybean, soybean, whatever it is.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wheat, wheat, wheat.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so the global price is always gonna be a race to the bot to the floor bottom.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not the least cost producer, uh, you're not gonna make it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what's happening in France.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you notice, if you notice the tractors that you see are big ones.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're not little ones.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: They had a whole line, it was like a parade of tractors.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of really little tractors in France, but you won't see them there.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Those little guys are doing the kind of things that we do here to make an end run around the system and not become completely dependent on the on the government programs.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because actually, in France, unless your farm, I think it's two hectares, which would be um five acres, almost five acres, you get no subsidies whatsoever.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, so these little farmers, and there are a lot of them, uh, have had to get really, really creative, value added.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna probably be fine because they've got little local, you know, local branding, local recognition, they've got little stores at their farms, things like that.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and they're fine.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it's the big guys that are beholden to this global, you know, system that are taking it on the chin.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And now, is it possible that if this deal is signed, that it could affect American farmers or American consumers?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it could.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: It all depends on uh the amount of the number of our exports there, but I can tell you that American farmers are gonna be hard pressed to compete with Brazilian farmers too.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay, uh those big, those big South American uh countries, uh, we're gonna be hard-pressed.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So um I it it'll probably it'd probably be a little bit of a wash.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh, you know, we've got some trade deals with the EU, and um and and if this if this affects those trade deals to where we don't export as much, you know, um our prices could absolutely go down.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the fact is, Cena, the U.S.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: produces twice as much corn and soybeans as we need, even as the world needs.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about domestic supplies, half of the soybeans American farmers produce, half of them are exported.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So only half of them are even used domestically.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact is that the world is awash in soybeans.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: The world's got way, way more soybeans than it needs, which is why Trump's recent bailout of$12 billion for our soybean farmers, primarily for our soybean farmers, is again puts us down the same pathway.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Look, two years ago, he also bailed uh they also got a$12 billion bailout.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: How many, how many bailouts, how many bailouts does a soybean farmer have to get um to to realize that there's an overproduction?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's never gonna, he's never gonna quit growing soybeans as long as the government keeps giving him money.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So so um the the right thing to do is to eliminate the subsidies and let farmers um let farmers enjoy the consequences of their decisions.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so that's where we need to be.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And corn in the U.S., 40% of the corn in the U.S.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: goes into federally subsidized ethanol.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so roughly half of the corn and soybeans in America is either not consumed domestically or doesn't even go through a person or an animal.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's how that's how awash we are.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: But what do you expect when the government puts a safety net out and says, hey, even if the price isn't good enough, the taxpayers will pick up the tab for you.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is what happened with uh with with college tuition.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Government said, ah, we'll back your loan.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and what happened to college tuitions?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: They doubled in you know 15 years uh because suddenly there was a gravy train uh to jump on.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: This always happens when there's an interventive thing.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Obamacare, look at Obamacare and health care.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: What happened to Pre?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly they double.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my, we didn't see that coming.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as the government says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump into the system and and um you know and subsidize the system, the system is gonna increase its cost because suddenly there's a bunch of money from the, you know, from the um from the public largest.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what happens in every we've seen it, we've seen it in the in the healthcare industry, we've seen it in college tuitions, and we're seeing it in uh agriculture right now.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now we're seeing what happens when you try to take the subsidies away from the farmers.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, because when they when they get dependent on that on that check, uh then they feel they feel betrayed, they feel uh unappreciated, and and all that when actually, you know, they've been um they've been at the at the public traugh for a long, long time, especially in the EU, especially in the EU.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So in America, then are you saying that roughly the 50% of corn um and soy that we produce that's not even staying local, should we stop producing that and instead produce like more cows or absolutely.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, uh I have an open letter out there right now.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: My last editorial in the Stopman Grass Farmer was an open letter to America's soybean farmers.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I basically said, you know, what will it take for you guys to do something different?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um I mean, obviously, financial hardship would be the quickest way to do something different.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and so, you know, what we have are burgeoning, you know, we have beef prices going through the wazoo because we we have a low, a low herd based on all several factors: drought, um, aging, aging ranchers, that sort of thing.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: But also because we closed the Mexican border because of the screw worm.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so that stopped a million head of cattle from being exported into the U.S.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: We had eight ports of entry, and a million head of cattle were suddenly stopped.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: That would have think about a million head that would have come beginning May 1, uh, that million head have not come into the U.S.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, of course, that's creates a hardship in Mexico.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Those guys now don't have any place to send their beef in the U.S.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're not getting it in to help our own shortfall.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so the price of beef has gone through the roof.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I'm suggesting look, you soybean guys, this is some of the best land in the world.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: You don't grow soybeans on poor land.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you put it back in perennial prairie polycultures under intensive you know grazing management?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let's grow beef instead of soybeans.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans will go up because the production will drop, beef will come down because the production goes up, and everybody's happy.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: See, the problem, Cena, though, is that 80 years ago when you said that, the the the the um the the flipping the flipping from one thing to another was pretty easy because almost all farms had fences, because they would flip between cows and crops, and and they kind of they kind of had divert, you know, you had diversified diversified farms uh because they had to generate their own uh manure, their own uh fertilizer.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's happened though in the last, you know, in the last 80 years is that these diversified farms that used to all be fenced, so they could kind of, oh, we'll we'll increase our cows a little bit, uh, we'll decrease, we'll grow a little more wheat this year, you know, and and and they would kind of it was kind of a chessboard that they would uh switch around a little bit that the the various the various and sundry number of acres into certain things.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened in the last 80 years with the you know with the crop insurance program, the subsidy program that started in the in the 30s, uh we have now these farms are no longer diversified.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: They just grow corn and soybeans, period.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there are no fences.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't you can't shift very easily back to a livestock operation uh from a cropping operation because you let all you let all your fences fall down.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so it's a it's a real it's a real problem, and and my you know, I I vacillate between my heartbreaking, but also my frustration that that these guys just for some reason think the taxpayer is supposed to just continue flooding the globe with cheap stuff, and we're supposed to be fine with that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the soil erosion, the chemical use, the aquifer depletion, and all that happens.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you turn that to perennial prairie polycultures under intensive livestock management, guess what?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: The aquifers will fill, the soil will build, pollinators will come back, wildlife will come back.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's all sorts of really cool things that happen, and not only that, but you know, who wouldn't rather eat a steak than a corn dog?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the part you brought up about the fence, the fencing is fascinating.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I had always heard that you know, fencers were bad, like it it was the death of the cowboy, and um, you know, like and one of the only farmers, or I guess you'd call them a rancher that I know of that doesn't use the fences is Ed El Z El Zinga, uh-huh up there in Idaho.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I always thought that was pretty cool that you know that he has um daughters who are cowboys, and by the way, they will get upset if you call them cowgirls, they are cowboys.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, and you know, that they're also they're also all tall and beautiful, too.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, like models.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they look great good in those pictures on his ranch.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, that's the place to be.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, I visualize him out there with that, and he has his dogs with him, and they're herding these, you know, the cattle and whatnot, and they sleep out there with them.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you know, there's no fences.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh they're just out there grazing where where the cows are gonna go.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fascinating to think that there was a positive aspect.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a total, that's a totally they're in Idaho.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very rough terrain, a lot of Bureau of Land Management land, uh public lands, uh canyons up and down, mountainous.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can you can place a herd in a in a valley in a situation like that, because there's kind of uh natural geographical terrain.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's not soybean country.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you you know go to Kansas, Nebraska, it's flat and uh it Illinois, Iowa, all right.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is flat as a pancake as far as the eye can see.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um and and it'd be it's a totally different um landscape type situation than what they have in Idaho.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so um so you need the fences to corral them.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and and the farms, uh the farms in not in Idaho, he's on a he's on a very, very large, a very extensive uh land base, thousands of acres.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um what I'm talking about, soybean farms, I mean, there's a lot of them that are you know 150 acres, 160 acres.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, and so so you you much smaller, you know, much more like here in in Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the average, the average farm, I think in our county is 160 acres.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was kind of what one person could, you know, handle.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, so you know, that's a that's a small place.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: That that that's that's land intensive, not land extensive, like you know, what they're doing in Idaho.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: But uh what a great example of just another area of our lives that like we've lost this resiliency in, you know, we've like put you put all your eggs in one basket.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I didn't I did not know that the farms would flip back and forth.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fascinating.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that helps them, like you said, if if a crop goes bad or whatnot, then you know you have a contingency plan.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So okay, so we'll keep an eye on it and see what happens.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know if anything's gonna come down the pike and affect affect America, like in our consumers.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully our prices don't go up anymore.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: But well, uh actually for our prices to keep up with where they were in the 1960s, they'd probably have to triple.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about beef in particular?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everything.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everything.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: In order in order, I mean, think about this.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Think of whatever every think of how much has gone up in price since let's say 1960.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Just realize that a bushel of wheat today at five dollars and sixty cents is exactly the same as it was in 1960.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: You tell me any other thing in in society that is the same price today as it was in 1960, I'll take you out for a steak dinner.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, how is it the same price?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because it hasn't kept up with inflation.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: It has it um is it price fixing?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like is it no, it's just it's just um a uh production has gone up, so you you get more production, you get more production per acre.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and and the the world price, other people in the world like Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, uh have have entered the you know entered the market.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there's more supply.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it hasn't changed at all since the 60s.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it should change.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: But think but think of think about think about all the I mean, uh not now.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna sound like a bleeding heart farmer.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but but but think of all the think of all the things that have changed.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: The price of labor, the price of the tractor, the price of the fertilizer, the price of of you know, steel roofing for a building, um, the price of fuel, energy, you know, to run the tractor, the truck, the whatever it is.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all those things.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like like an old timer told me, he said, he said, I remember when I used to go with a straight truck down to the sale barn and sell a straight truckload of cattle.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that'd be a single axle, you know, cattle truck that would hold, you know, maybe 15 head.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I could go down there, sell that truckload of cattle, and go and buy the biggest brand new tractor on a lot.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Today I stake the same truck down and I can't buy a tire from the biggest tractor on the lot.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why what got you here won't get you there.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we have to smart farm smarter, and that's why I spend a lot of time pushing the pencil and doing farm business courses and stuff for people to help them to understand the importance of value adding for farmers to value add so that you are able to.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only way to beat the system.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Look, here's another little interesting number for you.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and by the way, I'm I'm working on a new book, so all this is really hot in my head right now.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the farm gate price, the farm gate value of retail pricing was fifty was almost 50 cents on the dollar 80 years ago.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, when somebody bought, when you bought a dollar's worth of stuff at the grocery store, the farmer got half of it, almost.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Today, that share is eight cents.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Eight cents.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm getting at there is when when we talk about the farm problem, the problem is that the farmers have not been able to grow themselves.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, have they increased production?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they have some, but they've not grown production enough to compensate for a 42% reduction in farm gate value, farm gate percentage.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why, which is why the the roadmap, the pathway out of this, you know, the farm problem is not grants and transition money to organics and all the other distractions.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I call it moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is food emancipation to allow farmers to be able to access their neighbors with retail priced food.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, so convenience.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, all my life I've preached, get in your kitchen, get in your kitchen, and we do that in beyond labels.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know, you and I, we get in your kitchen.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: There comes a time, though, when people when a culture, uh, a trajectory is so far disconnected that that that admonition fails to stimulate positive action and instead stimulates paranoia and intimidation.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we are in our culture now.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you I talk to people, you know, non-farmers, customers, and the thought, I mean, they don't know how to boil water.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like people our age?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is that this admonition to cook from scratch, to get whole foods, to get a butternut squash, peel it, and you know, and dice it up and cook it, that sounds really easy and doable for you and you know, for us.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: We do it all the time.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just went down to the orchard nearby and bought six bushels of apples, and for the last week or so, Teresa's been, you know, cooking up a half a bushel, and we have we eat fresh applesauce for um, you know, about two or three dinners, and she cans about seven quarts and gradually, you know, squirreling away our little supply of you know of 80, 90 quarts of applesauce, you know, using the little mill.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, that for us, that's just that's just routine life.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we don't eat, we don't even think, I mean, it's it's like muscle memory.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even think about it, okay?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if you've never, if you've never bought apples from an apple orchard, and you've never cooked apples in your kitchen, and you've never run a food mill, and you've never run a canner, that whole process is frightening.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: It in other words, for me to tell you to do it is not helpful for you.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's um it's panicking.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so so here we are on the on this conundrum with convenience food that's now 75% of the consumer diet.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Convenience food sucking up, sucking up all of the retail food value in the last 80 years, but the farmer at the farm gate is unable to tap into that reservoir of money because we've got food safety regulations that make it too difficult, too expensive for the farmer at a small farm scale to be able to get the infrastructure and the paperwork and the licensing to be able to access that 75% of the convenience food dollar.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so this so this is this is a meanwhile, we've got you know, we've got young farmers that want to get into farming.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we got we got, you know, again, we've got proposals to well, let's let's offer, you know, 50-year mortgages and low interest loans for startup farmers.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, there's a there's all these things being bandied about by by my friends that that are that are well intended, but we don't need that.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: We just we just need farmers to be able to access the market.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if and if we can access the market, we're in good shape.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's such a low return on the investment.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had no idea.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: That would you say it was eight cents per dollar?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is it eight cents?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so um so so that's the farmer's share of the retail dollar, okay.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: My point is at that low rate, there just aren't enough dollars to keep the farmers in business.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you just think about that.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and so uh let me let me give you one more little uh interesting um data point.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in America, the average farm that generates$100,000 in income has$400,000 of depreciable infrastructure.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's not land, that's buildings and machinery.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's a four to one, four hundred thousand dollars worth of depreciable equity to be able to turn uh a hundred thousand dollars in gross income.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay here at Polyface, our ratio instead of being four to one, is fifty cents to one.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh 50 cents of depreciable of depreciable capital infrastructure for every dollar in annual gross sales.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: So four to one to fifty cents to one, that's an eight hundred percent difference in depreciable capitalization cost to annual gross income.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the power of value adding.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: That that's in other words, that's not me getting rich.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: That is that is simply um appreciating the value of that retail of the retail dollar and being able to access that at the farm gate level.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that could be done.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let me let me let me give you a great example that one of them that I put in this book.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think it I think it it it really resonates.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so chicken pot pie.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I love chicken pot pie.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you like chicken pot pie?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Shepherd's pie, chicken pot pie.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's as like that's as good as it comes.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So so chicken pot pie.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we service a restaurant downtown um uh with chicken, and they make a chicken pot pie.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: They even they call it polyface chicken pot pie on their menu.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of their signature, one of their signature dishes, and it comes in this wonderful cast iron skillet, you know, and and oh, it's just it's just magnificent.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um chicken pot pie.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so they buy a chicken from us for 20 bucks, they make 15 pot pies out of it, and they sell those pot pies for$405.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if we say that less than half of that is the chicken, they've basically taken a$20 chicken and turned it into a$200 chicken through the pot pie.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were able to get$200 a chicken and you were able to raise, let's just say,$1,200 chickens,$1,200 chickens at$20 would be$240,000.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's enough to make a nice living.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how much land would that take?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we run roughly 600 broilers, chickens, on an acre in pasture.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: So 1,200 chickens a year would take two acres.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: So on a two-acre farm, you could turn$240,000 a year and make a full-time living selling your chicken pot pies uh at retail value.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Cena, that my point, that's the way in.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can talk about grants and transitions and let's shift this money from here to there and all that stuff.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: But what I've just described, that's a way in for these young people.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because suddenly you don't have to have a thousand acres and and and two hundred thousand dollars in tractors to turn you know$100,000 in sale.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now suddenly you've got, you know, you've got sixty thousand dollars worth of, you know, you've got a commercial kitchen, you've got some stainless steel, some pots, some, you know, maybe a walk-in freezer, all right.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've got you've got some stuff, chicken processing equipment, all right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, your total cost is, you know, up there around$60,000,$70,000.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: But but you're turning$240.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're back to that 50 cents to a dollar instead of four dollars to a dollar worth of depreciable capital infrastructure.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you're ending up with a product that's really yummy.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing that has struck me in all this is it I had this epiphany, not, I mean, this is literally all this summer.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is there's nothing wrong with convenience food.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, leftovers, that's the ultimate convenience food, right?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Left, I mean, shoot, Teresa cooked, she cooked uh well last week.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: She cooked a couple chickens and she picked it all off and just put it in a big stainless steel bowl in a refrigerator.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: So every day when I want something to eat at lunch or whatever, I just grab a couple pieces of that chicken and eat it and lunch, you know.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you don't have to cook it, you don't have to do anything with it, you know.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: I put the, you know, the uh cellophane wrapper back on the stainless steel bowl, stick it back in the refrigerator, it's good for tomorrow.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've been eating on that thing for a week.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's nothing, there's nothing inherently wrong with convenience food.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've been doing it forever.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: But convenience food, I mean, I'm calling a chicken pot pie a convenience food, but it doesn't need to have MSG, red dye 29, and glycerin in it.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and 10,000 food additives that are grass.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it it doesn't need that.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so um and so that's that's where I am that I'm I'm ready.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm ready to join the convenience um, and we have some.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: We've got you know, meat sticks, and and we've we've done some things, but uh, but the the big the big begging um opportunity here is the full convenience panoply of stuff.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're not gonna make Snickers bars and you know and and hot pockets, but but we have said forever here, what people really want is is a polyface hot pocket.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna say, well, what's the difference between a hot pocket and a chicken pot pie?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Not yeah, not much, uh unless unless it actually comes with good chicken and you know GMO free ingredients and things like that.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having some frozen chicken pot pies in your freezer that you can heat and eat whenever you want to.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in uh, but but again, it doesn't have to have 10,000 food additives in it.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've grappled with this because I have young children, and you know, they're gonna want to eat what their friends are eating, or similar things to what their friends are eating, or when you're out and about, like I get tired of always having to bring our food everywhere that we go, or when we travel, we bring the whole ice chest with all these pre-made meals.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I'm like, I would just like the convenience of being able to go to a restaurant and eat there and know that like I'm not gonna get sick, or we're not eating all these mad-made chemicals.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually has been a thought and a dream of mine for a while to even create like uh my own product line of um, you know, desserts, like packages of desserts, like a cake mix, uh brownie mix, you know, cookie mix um that is, you know, organic, grain-free, and doesn't have all these man-made chemicals in it.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I I completely agree with you.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't fight against the convenience.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's the world that we live in.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's a losing battle.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to convince somebody to not consume a cookie every now and then or a slice of bread, you know.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm all about let's give them a choice.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not go ahead.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So so here's the thing, Cena.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm I'm all in with you, okay?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let uh yeah, let's do this.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: What's the first thing?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: If if you said I want to do a product line of you know packages of desserts, what's the first thing you've got to do?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now you've got to have a hassle plan, you gotta have to have a uh a freestanding, a separate building with a commercial kitchen with a separate bathroom in it that goes to a separate leech field, and it can't be a composting toilet.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be a flushable toilet.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and I mean, and I've just gotten started, okay?
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't done our HACCP plan, we haven't got our cold chain verified yet, we don't have our our thermometers, and and so so um so this this is the this is the conundrum of the system right now.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you could if you could launch this in your own kitchen to people nearby that you know, look, you don't need to make a million dollars if you don't have any if you don't have any capital cost in it, you use your own stuff, you're you use your own kitchen and stuff, and and you play with it and you you play around with it, and and I like this one, I don't like this one, and you sell it to four or five friends who I really like this, I really don't like that.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's how you that's how you jockey into you know a viable business idea.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, but the but the onerous food safety regulations, as soon as they throw up that four hundred thousand dollar barrier, you're you're never gonna jockey around.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can't afford to, you know.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you can rent time in a kitchen that's government approved, but it's expensive.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the I have to travel pretty far to get to one of them.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: So how that's it's it's cost prohibitive for me, and then I gotta put my kids somewhere while I'm in that government approved kitchen.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, so I hear you.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: I went through all this and you know, Donnie and I um brainstormed about it because I was I I because I really want the convenience for myself, like you know, so I was like, let me create what I want.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure other people want that too.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can I can walk out to the sales building and grab a couple of uh meat sticks, you know, and man, I'm in I'm in heaven.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't It for myself as much as anything.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, oh my goodness.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: We looked into it and I said, this is so cost and time prohibitive for me.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, especially because the return wasn't going to be great enough for the pain that we'd have to go through.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then one of my girlfriends said, Oh, well, you can just get investors and you can have them do it in the company.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Oh my gosh, now it's just turned into this huge project.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's a full-time job and a huge risk.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, like I'm not in that stage of my life.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it it would be fantastic if there was, if they loosened up those reins so that I could do the product testing, like you're talking about.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I test stuff on my friends all the time.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't sell it to them, but you know, I test out recipes and whatnot for cookbook.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: My friend does sell um like tallow at local farm stores.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she because it's tallow, so it's different.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not eating it.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is like for skin products.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's wonderful because she'll get me free products to test out all the time, like do exactly what you're talking about, you know?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I trade with her.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: I make her herbals and give her, you know, herbal blends as a payback for these skin products.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's and that's a wonderful, wonderful system.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she gets it's like very minimal cost for her to give us all these products, our friends, for us to give her honest feedback.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's her pilot testing right there.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's right.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because all all um kind of entrepreneurial startups um start up least risky um i if they're small.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh everybody in in in American business, boy, you know, we we gotta be big.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's always well, how big can this be?
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: How big can this be?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Around our farm, whenever somebody's got an idea, our first question is, how little can it be?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: How small can it be?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because if if it if it doesn't work small, it probably won't work big.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and so all new ideas, prototypes, have to be launched embryonically.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's why babies are little, you know.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh so so you you know, you you have to launch small, but the the problem with these uh with all food regulations like this is that they are schedules scale prejudicial, they're easier to comply with and pay for if you're big than if you're small.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and and that is inherently unjust and unfair.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you if you have to get big to be viable, then it is inherently a scale discriminatory policy.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's sizist.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is somebody will say, well, well, give me an example of something that's not.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, a good one is uh speed limits.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Speed limits, you know, 60 miles an hour.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't take you any more effort to put your foot on the brake of an 18-wheeler as a Toyota Prius.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's it's it's it's just it's a it's a foot pedal, okay?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: So so that doesn't cost you any more or less, you know, just because it's big.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so um and so that that uh access, that ability to embryonically access market to start, to do trials, uh all those kinds of things is to me that that is the that's the way in.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's how the next generation of young farmers are going to get in.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're not going to get in, that's gonna be the hurdle, that's gonna be the blockage that keeps them from being able to get in.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm working on this on this new book, uh food emancipation.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know what the subtitle will be, but it's something like um, you know, uh uh taking the shackles off of our food system or something like that.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I know that's a powerful word.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I thought a lot about food freedom, but it's it's too generic.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I want people to understand we we are enslaved by these by these regulations that that keep that keep two consenting adults exercising freedom of choice to give their microbiome sustenance agency without the government's permission.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: We need to enable that to happen so that I'm not saying to to take regulations off of exports to Sri Lanka and Vietnam or even to Walmart and Costco, you know, let let that be where it where it is.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that for those of us who want an underground railroad to escape the system, we should be able to do so.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the one of the big one of the big uh problems is the healthcare industry.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: So what's happened with healthcare, with government involvement with healthcare in the last 80 years, is it used to be that you could hurt yourself or engage in risky behavior without it financially impacting your neighbor or somebody else.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you if you want to go uh live a Russian roulette life and you know drink six Coca-Cola a day, have at it.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's fine.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you get diabetes, don't come to me.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now that the government has gotten involved with health care, and you know, this includes Medicare, Medicaid, all the different things, um, prescription drug, Obamacare, all that stuff, um now suddenly we our our personal decisions on behavior carry societal risk.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so suddenly, my drinking raw milk, if society thinks that's risky behavior, they can't just sit back and say, ah, it's all right, go ahead, drink it, get sick, that's fine with me.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's your you know, it's your deal.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, now they have a justification to say, no, we need to outlaw that because that's risky behavior.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it could hurt you, and so we need to, we need to stop that.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh cheese, you know, cheese that gets moldy.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we gotta, we got can't have that, you know.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: That uh you might get something from from cheese, um, you know, homemade chicken pot pie, charcuterie, um, you know, a homemade cookie, uh, the whole, you know, nine yards, homemade to, you know, potato salad.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's all it's all now uh uh not just a decision that I can make for me and I'm willing to take the risk.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now it has to be proscribed by society to okay it because my decisions now carry societal financial risk.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, yeah, because it's we're all too intertwined now with the system because you could be a burden on the system, and then I have to pay for your choices.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a huge, this was a huge um conversation or debate that came up with Obamacare, remember?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because especially amongst libertarians, right?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh people were really split because I mean I'm of that mindset that I'm like, you do what you do you, just don't hurt anybody else.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: But now, if you're choosing that lifestyle that I think could um lead to chronic disease, and then I have to now pay for your choices.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that fair for me?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're now affecting me and my freedom.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: So in the book, I have a story where I uh I rode the metro into DC one time, and I get on the metro, and and uh next stop, guy gets on uh across the aisle from me.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: He weighs like 400 pounds, he's got a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, he's carrying a uh like a one-liter jug of uh Mr.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Pib or something, some sugary soft drink.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he's got a great big bag of lay's potato chips, and he proceeds to drink and eat as we drive along.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I and this was, by the way, this was this was not long after Obamacare was passed.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember sitting there looking at that and thinking, and why am I responsible for his health care?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, so um that that kind of um whatever germinated in my mind.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, about a month later, I was speaking at a college in Pennsylvania, and um I had, I don't know, 300 kids in a in a lecture hall, and I'm done, and we do QA.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um, one thing was leading to another, leading to another, and I thought, you know what, I'm just I'm just gonna this is interesting the way this is going.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I asked him, I I I so I told him this story, just like I told you, the guy in the metro and you know, all this.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, So I want one of you young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed college students, they're very smart.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to tell me why I'm responsible for his health.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole room just went totally silent.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: You could hear breath.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and in those kind of situations, I've learned that it's best to just to wait and not break the silence.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let them let them deal with it.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm waiting in a minute, total silence.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Two minutes, total silence, three minutes now now.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's awkward, you know.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's kind of squeamish, looking around at each other.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure about this.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, this gal on the front row, she raises her hand and said, Yes, ma'am, what do you think?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: She says, because your generation made him do it.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was not expecting that.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that was my reaction too.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because your generation clarification, like she explained.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, just just that our generation um made cheap corn syrup and cheap food, and you know, and and we didn't we let it, we whatever, subsidized it, encouraged it to happen.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and and what was your rebuttal?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I well, I I said it I said, does anybody else have a have a thing?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody else had anything.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: I said, well, listen, I gotta hand it to you for having the the courage to you know to to uh answer the question.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't the time or play because we'd already been all around the horn on this.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we I mean I'd already talked about it a lot.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna beat the dead horse here, but I do just find it fascinating that that's the that's the best answer is that he's a total victim with no agency, and it's all my fault.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a powerful thing, and I will I will process that and you know think about it.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I've I've put it in the book, I put the whole story in the book so people will hear.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a lot, a lot of stories in the book because I've been at this a long, long time.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got all sorts of conversations and stories, including the interaction I had with our Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture one time.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was down there at a hearing and um he pulled me aside.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was a hearing for you know a cottage food bill.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: He pulled me aside, very nice man.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: He pulled me aside and he said, uh, he said, Joel, we can't we can't give people food choice.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, why not?
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: He said, because we couldn't build hospitals fast enough for all the sick people that would get dirty food from you know bad farmers.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, as as as if we can build hospitals fast enough for people getting sick buying your food.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, um, you know, this this this is the mentality.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is the mentality.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so anyway, I'm I'm I'm um I'm moving through all these arguments and all the you know the the pluses, the minuses dealing with them and laying a foundation for um for food freedom for for for two consenting people to be able to engage in a food transaction without the government's permission.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I love all these personal stories because like you have your boots on the ground, you're interacting with so many different um audiences, and to hear from you some of their responses and just a thought process, and not in a judgmental way, but just as a as a cure in out of a curiosity way, and like what's hindering us from moving forward?
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: What's hindering us from getting, you know, buying our food from the farm again?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's hindering us from making our own applesauce?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's really eye-opening to see just how far removed people are from their food, from the farm, but also from that personal responsibility of it is my job of what goes in my body.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I it's really making me rethink different, even different ways that even on this podcast, we can structure arguments and discussions and have more entry points for people to come in so that maybe they're not um even intimidated, yeah, you know, by by what we're by the way we think or what we're asking people to do, the challenges we put forth.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: It may just be too intimidating for some people, too foreign even.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of my chapters is um what do I call that?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh food paranoia, food paranoia, just to to to explain this whole uh there comes a point where your ignorance is so and and again, I'm not being judgmental, but where you're where your your um your ignorance on a topic is so is so profound that that you're paranoid of even talking about the topic.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because also because you may look, you may think you might look dumb.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like asking the sort asking even basic questions, like, you know, how are they gonna perceive me?
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I am I gonna feel shamed that you know, back to the shame topic.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I mean I remember I remember uh a a neighbor, the only neighbor uh that we've ever had here who thought we were smart, and he came to me and he asked me to help him get started with controlled grazing.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I spent the winter over at his place with aerial maps, and we drew out, you know, fence lines and stuff.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so the next spring I went over and we we put in fence and things, and we're up there um and he's getting ready to bring his cows up the next day uh to this to this property, and um and he he got really quiet and it just was I could tell something was bothering him, and I said, You okay?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's bothering you?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm scared.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now this this guy is a he was a uh a machinist in a factory over in Verona, you know, burly man's man, you know, ran machines in a factory and um you know, bass voice.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I said, Scared.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah, he said, uh, I've I've never I've never done this before, and I'm I'm scared.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was it was one of the most tender man-to-man moments I've ever had as he got kind of teary, and then I kind of got teary, and I put my arm around him, I said, Um, we're not gonna let you fail.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're right here, we're not gonna let you fail.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna carry you through.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and and you know, and it struck me how how intimidating new is.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and and I think those of us, people like you and me, you know, we're pretty intrepid and we're we're free thinkers.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's I mean, to do what you and I do and think the way you and I think, you're we're we're not your average person.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just agree, okay?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're just not.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's easy for us, I think, to take a kind of a a cavalier, non-emphetic approach to people who haven't shared our life experiences and who haven't been through it and who haven't invested the sleuthing and the you know, the experimenting and the stuff that we've done, and to just, oh, come on, come on, get, you know, get off.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and and it's so easy.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I I find, you know, I find I have to, you know, talk to myself, call myself.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and when we wrote Beyond Labels, you know, we we I think I think that we almost went overboard in in starting elementary enough that we could pull that we could bring people along and not lose them um in the in that journey.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: We I think you for sure were were really adamant about that.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and I think I think it was really, really good.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: But uh boy, that's a that's a because you know, here here's the thing.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Alan Nation, my mentor, used to always tell me, he said, entrepreneurs always end up hating their customers.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I yeah, that was a typical Alanism.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, just as a profound thing.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: I said, really?
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: I said, how's that?
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: He said, well, because because entrepreneur, we entrepreneurs, uh, or or you know, we whatever, free thinkers, you know, that sort of thing.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know, we start here and we started here whatever, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, and we've we've made progress.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're you know, we're and and and in our reading, our thinking, our conversations, and and we've moved up up to here, you know, up to this level.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: We said every day, every day we get a new customer that this is brand new.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they ask the same question, and we have to answer them as if, oh, that is the most wonderful question, and we have to answer it as if it's the first time we have ever heard the question before, and we and we get tired of it, you know, which is why then you have to delegate a sidekick to start taking those calls, you know, a young person to to take that pressure off of you.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because you do, you just you you get um you get tired of of just over, oh, are we here again, really?
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, but but we've moved on and they're coming in right here.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to be able to come down to that level and not talk down, condescend, or, or intimidate and you know, and bring them along with you.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and like you said, have that empathy and be relatable.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like remember when you were at that first step, you know.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, you know, that's why uh I finally just I finally created an my online program because I got so tired of having to answer the same questions over and over about how to reverse disease.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, because like you're saying, I moved past it.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like now I look at all I still look at strategies and tools you can use to reverse it, but I'm way past all the basics.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I now when someone asks me, I'm like, here, just go learn it in my program.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is because is because the idea, the idea of unregulated food transactions between two individuals is so far removed from the average person that that you know, it takes me an hour to explain it.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: And every time every time they they they they totally buy into it.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you know, we're having an argument, it's just oh yeah, I get it.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't have enough time in the day to spend an hour with every single person.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I need to be able to handle this.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Here it is, you know, read it.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that's the whole idea is that that duplication.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: So well, I love it.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to read it.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't wait for you to finish it and get it, and and and we get the first interview here on Beyond Labels.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Joel, I will have to say, we failed today.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: We had four current event topics to cover, and we covered one.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the way it goes sometimes.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is a spontaneous, dynamic, um, unplanned, uh kind of unrehearsed uh deal.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, unscripted one.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my question, Cena.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my question, Cena.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: I know we have listeners who are homesteaders and small farmers.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you could offer something value added in food to your neighbors, what would it be?
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: What what right now would you enjoy uh producing as a value-added food product for your neighbors that you that you can't right now because of, or or that you feel like you can't right now because of um uh size prejudicial government regulations?
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get a couple of those on the on the on the docket to where we see what what could be available if people could do this.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: We know from Cena there would be some really cool um desserts.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, healthy dessert alternatives, absolutely.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, you're and friends, yeah.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: Some of your kids, uh, I mean, hunter, those guys enjoyed cooking some.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh boy, they could they could uh produce a line.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you had our fudge when I was at at your farm class.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: You liked it.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was that was kind of moorish.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of moorish.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: You could eat more and more of it.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was like, what?
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: The new word for the day.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let me can I add one thing to the question?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are not a farmer or a homesteader, let's say you're a consumer, what would you want your local farmer to sell?
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's a good one.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right, yeah, give them some ideas.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: Either way, either way, yeah.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: We'll launch some entrepreneurs.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: All right, everybody.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for spending the hour with us uh on Beyond Labels.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh sorry we went just a little bit over time, but I hope it was um interesting and exciting.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we will look forward to being with you again next week.