Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #110: Joel Shares the History of Why Chemicals Are Sprayed on Our Food

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Episode #110: Joel Shares the History of Why Chemicals Are Sprayed on Our Food · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he was able to determine that um that plants were composed of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, NPK.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he brought.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and what what's important, I think, to understand is that for the first time in human history, life, biology, was dumbed down to a mechanical idea.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the um the folklore and the the mysticism around, for example, the bubonic plague and diseases, and and there was all this fairies and people didn't understand microbes.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know about all those things.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so sickness and disease and and and life all had this very kind of mystical unknown force behind them.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Stina McKella here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And today, Joel is going to talk about the history of chemical agriculture.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people ask us like, how did we get to this place, right?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: How do we get, well, we're using chemical fertilizers and we're using pesticides and herbicides?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of conspiracy around it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Joel and I don't buy into that.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: So Joel is going to walk us through the history of how we got to this place of chemical agriculture, and he's going to provide us with some solutions.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So take it away, Joel.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Cena.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I like to start this discussion with one of my favorite books.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's called Erator.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Eritor, and it was written in 1818 by John Taylor, who was a uh they call him John Taylor of Caroline.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: He served in the Virginia General Assembly with Thomas Jefferson.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he's a contemporary of Jefferson.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: They were friends, they actually lived fairly near each other.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, near within within 40, 50 miles of each other.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a book in 1818.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Catch the date, 1818, called Erator.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the way one chapter starts.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let us boldly face the fact our country is nearly ruined.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and and it's it's a it's a chapter on how we've destroyed the soil.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um I won't I won't read any more of it, but but it's just it's just fascinating uh that in 1818 we had um really great farmers, contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, saying, let us boldly face the fact our country is nearly ruined because we've we've destroyed the soil and and all that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and he's uh he's very positive about about what how to restore the soil is with what he called vegetable matter.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The word compost had not been invented yet, the word organic had not been invented yet, but what he used were was vegetable matter.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: The word biomass had not yet been invented.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got a lot of words in our lexicon today that John Taylor of Caroline in 1818 didn't even have in his, you know, in his dictionary.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and and so he used just a broad term of vegetable matter.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, things that decompose.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was his solution.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, another guy was working on a solution as well, and his name was Justice von Liebig.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he was an Austrian uh chemist who was trying to solve the fertility problem.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was a there was a truly uh massive fertility problem, as we just saw from uh here and as well as in England.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, about 1825, they found all that um that that guano uh manure on the islands, the desert islands off of the coast of Peru.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so in 1825, they started mining that, and you know, that was that was a a multi-century buildup of cormorant, booby, and pelican bird guano, that was sometimes a hundred feet deep, and it had accumulated because it was desert.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so it never never rained.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So all these birds they roosted there, and over the centuries, uh, it built up a hundred feet deep.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so Great Britain actually got most of it.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: The U.S.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: got a little bit of it, but most of it was steamship.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was steamship hauled from Peru to Great Britain using uh Chinese, that's where we started the word coolies, Chinese coolie labor.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the working conditions were so terrible that a lot of the Chinese laborers, I mean, think about it, they were they were sent, they were hand shoveling manure 100 feet deep down slopes into these ships uh docked nearby, that some of them just got so whatever um um uh uh desperate that they actually flung themselves off of these cliffs into the ocean and died, uh, these Chinese coolies.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So my point is that there that is especially here in the West, uh in the developed uh countries, um, there was a panic going on um as to how to maintain fertility.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so there there were, you know, can I interject right there?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying that back way back in 1818, there was this fertility problem.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Where did that stem from?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Was that were they tilling?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Were they like destroying the topsoil or where where did that originate?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, all of the above, all the above.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, if you read, if you read uh again, uh, you know, um farmers from in the late 1700s, this is where go west, young man, go west developed.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were constantly looking for new lands, virgin lands, because growing tobacco, tobacco and cotton, uh and just the farming methods, they they they just destroyed uh the land and especially growing grain, especially grow uh with with tillage.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were constantly looking for new, you know, new new lands to um to to to take put to put into production.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so what so so the idea of wearing out the farm, wearing out the land was very, very uh common.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that was just farming wears out the land.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was no there was no um thought, except, I mean, obviously, people like John Taylor of Caroline, um, he he he took a contrarian view and said, no, we can restore it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: We can restore it with vegetable matter, um, and and we we can do this.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but but generally, farming was considered land degenerative.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, if you study you know, civilizations in history, that has been the trajectory of great civilizations in history.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: They start with fertility and they end in you know erosion and and and uh lack of fertility.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it so it wasn't new, it was just that you know, at the dawn of of you know, this was the beginning of the industrial age, the you know, the the steam engine was developing and and um there was uh you know you know mechanization was starting in.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you had the Luddites, you know, you had the uh um hand weaving was being replaced by looms.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was that was a it was a huge step, you know.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and it it that technology created um you know new opportunities for urbanization factory.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, uh Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens, England, you know, was 1820 to 1860, 1870.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and so that that's the period we're working on.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was it was this this early uh time, and and people were you know very concerned about, well, you know, how much more land can we find?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: How can we get something to to keep it?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So Justice von Liebig, the Austrian, his his motives were very pure.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: He he was trying to figure out how do we how do we feed, how do we field a burgeoning um you know, world population, you know.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and all this was you know, if you know your history, was um stimulating the work of of a guy named uh Malthus, you know, who had this this that we were gonna, you know, populate ourselves out of food and we're all gonna die, and and and you know, the the the Malthusian uh hierarchy of of human need.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: But and so jewelry has been right, similarities to today, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, absolutely, very much so.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um, in fact, if you study this this the century, the century cycles, uh, here we are in uh uh 2023, and we're talking about the period of of 1820.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we're you know, we're two cycles, and and I would I would argue that the other cycle then was World War I, which was about eight, you know, about 1915, 1920.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and so if you if you study you know centenarian uh um uh you know philosophy and and see these these century cycles, yes, I think we're definitely right in that same sequential a century, a century, a century.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a reason why that's you know that's such a uh a big deal throughout history.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, um Liebig used um test tubes uh for the first time they were able to pull vacuums, and he was able to determine that um that plants were composed of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, npk.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: That that's that's that's what he brought.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and what what's important I think to understand is that for the first time in human history uh life, biology was dumbed down to a mechanical idea.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if if you look at if you look at the um the folklore and the uh whatever, the the mysticism arounding, for example, the bubonic plague and diseases, and and and there was all this this um you know uh fairies and and people didn't understand didn't understand um microbes, and you know, we didn't we didn't know about all those things.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so so uh sickness and disease and and and life all had this very kind of uh mystical, mystical unknown force behind them.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of it obviously was considered to be divine, some of it was uh fairies, some of it was a hex, you know.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you put the hex on your on your Irish door to keep the bad spirits out.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there was all this spiritism in.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, suddenly Justice von Liebig dispelled all that.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said, it's not spirits, it's not it's not mystical stuff, it's just nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorum.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: All life is simply a rearrangement of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this, of course, this, of course, um worked very well to the burgeoning kind of mechanical industrial revolution uh that was starting about the same time.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I think it's important to realize in 1837 is also the year Cyrus McCormick um brought the Reaper to um you know to agriculture, which is the official start of the Industrial Revolution.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: The the Cyrus McCormick's Reaper uh was the was the um the official you know um starting of the industrial revolution because that got rid of the scythe.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, up until then, grain had always been harvested by hand with a scythe.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, we had a machine to harvest it.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the official beginning of the industrial revolution.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's amazing that we had von Liebig working in Austria, showing that life is mechanical, while Cyrus McCormick is working in here in the U.S.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: to bring the most um um you know technological uh advance in agriculture uh mechanically at the same time.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm I'm I'm key on this mechanical uh because it's gonna it's gonna play out as as we go forward.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So then then, you know, so so then throughout the 1800s and into 1870, 1880, you know, people are working on on how to, you know, uh uh whatever, mine, refine, and all, you know, NPK.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh by 1850, all that uh all that Peruvian uh um guano was mined out.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It only took them 25 years to mine out you know millennia of of this uh guano.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um so suddenly you know that that came and went.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and meanwhile, you know, the industrial revolution is going on apace, and um and and you know, things are things are moving forward.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have World War One.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, interestingly, we make uh explosives, ammunition out of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that's what we make bombs and explosives out of.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I want us all to appreciate that World War I, that the war effort, the war effort funded, massively funded the the technology uh surrounding NPK development.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, so you know, you you the war effort funded the mining, the refining, the marketing, and the distribution of NPK and brought the cost way, way down.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh, you know, you have uh and meanwhile, farmers are shoveling.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in I think like 1910 to 1915, a lot of the um urban editorials and newspapers uh are writing about the demise of the city, that the the cities were getting bigger and bigger, but with draft power, they couldn't stay ahead of the poop, you know, the the horse poop, the mule poop, all this stuff.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there was poop everywhere.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and and and so the automobile, the automobile, uh, the automobile literally saved the city from from from being covered up in poop, and and plumbing, and plumbing saved the city from its sanitation price, from uh from from sewer pipes to indoor plumbing, to be able to, you know, take a bath more than you know once every two weeks.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, all of those things came you know in 1910 to 1925 rapidly, streetcars.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, all of those things developed very rapidly right then.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it was a century turn, but it it made it made livable cities, which which could which could exceed anything that history had ever had before, because because cities were always held in check by the fact that you just couldn't move fodder and poop and sewage, you know, into and out of the city, uh, you know, uh, except uh unless it was so big.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then we enter World War II, and World War II, of course, moved us in the same direction, more war effort into NPK.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I want to, what, what I what I want to just have us focus on is post-World War II.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So think about think about all the farmers as they sent their sons off to war, World War II, and and dad's expecting, you know, the sons to come back and help him on the farm.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So 1946-47, a lot of these sons are dead or injured, and a lot of them don't want to come back to the farm.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And dad's sitting there, he's now you know in his 50s, and he's been hand shoveling, hand shoveling all of his life, shovel, shovel, shovel, shovel.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he's presented, hey, you can put this bag of 10, 10, 10 on your field, or you can continue shoveling.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I always come to this point to try to help people to understand: look, don't crucify grandpa.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: You and I in the same position, chances are we would have taken that little bag of 10, 10, 10 chemical fertilizer rather than shoveling, shoveling, shoveling at 55, 58, 60 years old, we would have done the same thing.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, so be gentle, be forgiving on that, and realize that the people that developed uh, you know, uh Norman Borlog and the green, all that stuff, uh, you know, to pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, um, all of those things, they were they were they were sincere-minded.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: These were not nefarious, evil people.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were they were trying to protect humanity, to feed humanity, to to you know, make fertile soils uh long-term.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's where they were, yeah, that's what they were trying to do.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there was another set of people working at the same time, and the uh the kind of leader of that group, which was which was looking at the biological approach, or as we heard from John Taylor of Caroline, the vegetable matter approach, the decomposition approach to fertility, that was ongoing at the same time, and that was led by a man named Sir Albert Howard.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sir Albert Howard uh worked in India while it was still a British, you know, a British uh protectorate, um, from about 1920 to 1945.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he brought his his year, his his life's finding to the world in 1943.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So 1943, right, you know, in World War II, and um, and essentially the whole his whole um whatever life's work and research was in developing a scientific method of composting that he learned in India from the Indians.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and it's a it's a five recipe, I think I've got five here, five recipe uh uh thing.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, water, and microbes.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those those are the five components, and they have they have to be balanced, they have to be in the right ratios.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so he he worked out that scientific formula.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem, Sena.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: 1943, most farms in the United States didn't even have tractors yet.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: There was no chainsaw, there was no uh manure spreader, there was no there was there was no way to efficiently utilize carbon, utilize vegetable matter, biomass, carbon.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was no efficient way to use compost as a uh as a fertility engine.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: We did not have the info infrastructure.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and of course, it makes sense that this was developed in India where labor was cheap.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: The reason, the reason that the that that Albert Sir Albert Howard could do his research trials with uh he worked on Cecil plantations, uh, a lot of T T you know tea plantations and fiber and different things was the reason he could do it was because he had cheap labor, you know.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if he had had to pay British or American labor, he might not have been able to do it.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and so so here he is, he brings the alternative to the world in 1943, and uh not in the middle of World War II, post-World War II, you know, you've got this question do we shovel or do we do we reach the bag?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took 20 years.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if we if we start the clock again in 1945, the end of World War II, and it took 20 years until about 1965 for these pieces of infrastructure, for this technology to be developed on the other side of the equation.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: The war effort had developed the technology on the chemical side.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: You follow me?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: The war effort funded all of that, but it took the private sector 20 years to develop the infrastructure, the technology on the other side that that allowed for a compost.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Versus chemical uh um uh competition, or a viable competition between the two.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So here are some of the things that people have thought about this.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, we needed ability to spread compost.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: That requires a manure spreader.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Manure spreaders, we didn't really get, we didn't get PTO power takeoff, power takeoff powered manure spreaders until the 1960s because tractors didn't have a PTO shaft.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Tractors for the first you know 30 years were simply viewed as um uh as beasts of burden.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they you could just you could just pull stuff with them.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, they were so crude that many farmers, many farmers in our area continued using draft power even up until you know uh uh post-World War II.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so so you needed a way to spread, you know, to spread this on your fields.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um you you needed ability to handle it.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So tractors didn't get front-end loaders until the 1960s.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, goodness, we have these cute little, you know, uh uh diesel four-wheel drives with a front-end loader on them.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a guy can move, I mean, I can move mountains of material in a day.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're going to go to a materials handling, vegetable matter, biomass uh uh material, you you you've got to be able to handle it.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so so we finally got front-end loaders.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then listen, the chainsaw, the chainsaw was not developed until 1957.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the five it was in development, you know, for for for a century almost, but it wasn't until 1957 that we got all the final you know components of the chainsaw, which allowed, which allowed um um saw milling, lumber, lumber prices came down, and we were able to generate uh um biomass out of our out of our forests that had grown back, by the way, as a result of the discovery of petroleum.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um uh right now in in everything pretty much east of the Mississippi has twice as much forest as it did in 1860.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you look at all any old aerial photograph of an area, and the first thing that strikes you is, well, there aren't any trees.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't any trees.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh the the wood stove, so going away from fireplaces, going to the wood stove, and then the petroleum gave us our trees back.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: So our trees back now could be utilized as a biomass engine for our fields, as opposed to um uh burning, burning all this up through the chimney, you know, in the fireplace.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Ben Franklin's Franklin stove, that's what that's what it that that was why that was such a great invention, because Franklin said, hey, you know, look at all the heat going up.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: If we can bring that heat out into the room in a in a something, uh a cast iron pot, uh, we can get you know uh 10 times as much heat and not set it all up the chimney.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So so the Franklin stove was a you know was was a huge invention way back, way back then.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then we finally got chippers and we got water pipe.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Water pipes so we could we could uh get efficiently get water to compost piles, we could get we could get water uh to places that we need it.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so these are just you know just a few of the components.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took 20 years for that infrastructure to develop.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in those 20 years, the NPK, the chemical side, got a massive head start in the race.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if we say, if we say a new starting gun went off in 1945, 46, post-World War II, there was a 20-year head start from the for the chemical approach before finally we got the infrastructure to be able to efficiently handle the car the the compost, the carbon approach.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and and that that was not a conspiracy, it was not what it was not evil intended, it it just it's just the way it was.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the way it was.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and and you can say what you want about you know World War One, all the war efforts, I don't want to get into all those things, but the fact is that those those efforts, those efforts um um launched, uh catalyzed, facilitated the the chemist chemical approach because farmers didn't have to pay for it, the war effort did.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so so there was this, you know, there was this kind of unfair, you know, unfair race uh going on.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is, if we had had a Manhattan project for compost, not only would we have fed the world, we would have done it without three-legged salamanders, infertile frogs, and a dead zone the size of Rhode Island and the Gulf of Mexico.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's my that's my sound bite.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and that that's what I think people need to understand.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this was not evil, it was not nefarious.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are, so here we are, 1965.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: We now have so I I'm willing to give a lot of forgiveness and deference to those farmers from 1940 to 1960 who who just shook their heads at the compost, you know, at J.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I Rodale, at Sir Albert Howard, at um uh you know, Ed Faulkner and Lewis Bromfield, and and the early icons, the ones who saw this in the 40s and 50s and and said, no, no, let's put the brakes on this.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: But but the average farmer didn't have, these were all, you know, kind of wealthy people or scientists.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: They they were not they were not the normal farmer who didn't have that infrastructure.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so be gentle on those guys.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: But by 1965, I quit being gentle.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done now.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm you know, I mean, you know, fill mentally, philosophically, I'm done now.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: The race is over.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: We now have all the components, and now it's just a mindset.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is life fundamentally mechanical or is life biological?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have a competitive, a competitive, physical alternative that makes the question now not financial and physical, it makes it philosophical.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so so I I become much less forgiving on the farmers post-1965, 1970, who have continued to follow the chemical approach, uh, when now the biological has made it not only obsolete, we we produce more, we build soil, we have a lower carbon footprint.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean uh uh the the nutrition is higher in what we produce.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the look, life is fundamentally biological.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is there chemistry involved?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are there physics involved?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: But but but there is, and I don't want to go back to fairies and goblins and and and and and and mysticism, but but life is more than just documented physical stuff.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are there are energies, there are things we talk about it on our podcast, right?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there there are things out there even beyond the human comprehension still that make the biological um just uh beyond our you know beyond our our our complete comprehension.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um it just is.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so that's how we got where we are.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and of course, during that time, the land grant universities were controlled by um you know by the chemical approach, the US dub became controlled by the you know, chemical.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing to me.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this bookshelf behind me, I've got a ton of old ag books from 1860 to 1930, and and it's amazing, even in the USDA, the amount of of knowledge and information surrounding non-chemical approaches to animal sickness, to plant sickness, and and there was a huge amount of understanding about management and and husbandry and care.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that gradually just went to a you know a chemical approach, you know, post-World War II, as as every everything became dominated by this, you know, that this chemical narrative.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and I I think I think in a lot of ways, um, you know, here we are at this turn of the century, and now we're turning to fake meat.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like the next turn of the wheel is is let's take the ant, let's take the animals out of our food, um, and and artificial intelligence is gonna make all our decisions for us.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're instead of um you know, instead of learning our lesson and saying, hey, let's, you know, let we all right, we've learned our lesson.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, life is fundamentally biological.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's concentrate on that a while.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, we're now turning that, turning that crank another crank yet, and going into pharmaceutical, artificial intelligence, fake meat, fake food, uh hydroponics, uh, led lights, no sunshine, you know, da-da-da-da-da.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and we're we're we're turning that crank one more time, and that's and that's um that's sad.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but the encouragement, the encouragement is we do have this technology and understanding now um that those of us who are embracing the the the biological approach to life, um there are more of us.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: We are uh we are we are confirmed in this in the uh the science is confirming for us all the time, you know, from the microbiome to to to soil uh soil biology, and and our side is being affirmed every day by new understanding.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And more and more farmers are coming to this, more and more food is available in this space, and um, and we're not, you know, we're not going away.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is the that is the encouragement and the hopefulness, you know, going forward.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's such so much information that you were able to squeeze into our limited time period.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: That was amazing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking, my kids are gonna love this story because you keep talking about poop.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, around around around our house, almost no conversation uh lasts more than about 10 minutes before you get to poop.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because poop, you know, poop drives poop drives everything.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit a big deal.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: I uh this is totally off topic, but I just have to share this.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: My husband, you know, chemical engineer, right?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: He does not talk about biological things.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, no, I am a robot.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I have no emotions.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: He's has literally said that to me before, right?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, I've freely talked about feces in our family, and like this is the indicator of health.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I would say to my kids, do not flush the toilet.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Let me come and analyze your feces with you to teach.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so my kids talk about it freely too, which is this is a biological process.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my goodness, it would drive my husband crazy.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, Could you not do that at the dinner table?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And like, stop talking about it.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I could you not now that we've been together like what, 14 years or something, now he's starting to talk about poop.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's my great influence.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I got my husband to talk about poop.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a good thing.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you what, on the farm here with our animals, with our animals, that that is the that's the number one thing, you know, from uh from an uh observational standpoint to observe uh to observe the manure that's coming out of the animal, because you can tell a lot, a lot about e even the stress of the animal.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, cows, when when they get nervous, man, they get the squirts and they're squirting all over the place, you know.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and and so you you you you can tell diet, stress, uh, all sorts of things by looking at the um, you know, if you've got coccidiosis in your chickens, first thing you see are little little blood, little streaks of blood in their in their droppings.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the first little telltale sign.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um you can tell a lot by poop.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you're you're right.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: You should you should you should you should do it and look at it and then think about it.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because they have those poop charts too that you can look at to cut yourself.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I will tell you, the highest yields I've ever gained from my garden have been when I used um alpaca feces.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, it was like distilled down, but it was fantastic for it.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't smell or anything, it was like abundance throughout my garden.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: But okay, back on to the topic.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: In the in the few minutes we have remaining, can you tell us?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: So someone's listening to this, right?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And for some of us, uh, some of this is familiar, and you're helping though to fill in the gaps.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: For some of us, this is new information.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, for all of us consumers, for instance, who don't want to continue supporting the chemical approach to our food supply, we want to support the biological approach.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: What are some easy practical steps they could take?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I mean, obviously you, you know, you can you can grow food yourself, uh, and and you can you can you can uh create a compost pile.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the most important thing um to understand here is that carbon drives fertility.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: If there's if we could condense all this into one thing, carbon drives fertility.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to produce your own food, uh if you want to have a garden, those kinds of things, start looking for sources of carbon in your area.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a lawn?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, don't throw your lawn clippings away.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh keep them.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um make you know, you can you can mulch your garden with them, you can make a compost pile.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Leaves, don't let the city come and pick up your leaves.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh put them in a pile, run a lawnmower over them, shred them up, and uh and use them for mulch on your garden, uh, including getting your neighbor's leaves.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, thinking about uh you see a you see a wood chipper in the area, you know, cleaning like utility lines or something.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Go tell them, hey, you know, dump dump the chips on at my place.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um we need we need to be looking, we we need to be looking for those sources.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Cena, you have to understand the the heartbreak of my soul is that 75% of everything that's gone into sanitary landfills since they were begun 60, 70 years ago, 75% of everything that gone into land landfills is compostable.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's uh it's yard yard cleanings, uh, you know, that sort of thing, and and uh, you know, everything from pallets to construction materials, lumber, boards, 75%.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: That that material is what the earthworms were counting on for their breakfast.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the earthworms are counting on for their breakfast.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we have for 70, 80 years since landfills were started, we have been throwing away the earthworms breakfast, burying it in landfills instead of composting it for the worms.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't know how much more visceral and practical I can get uh than that.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: We are we we don't throw your kitchen stuff down a garbage dispose all.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, uh put it in a bucket and and and add it to some leaves and some wood chips and um uh and and and make a little compost pile.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um at least feed it to you know verma, a verma composting kit under your sink, and you use the use the worm castings, uh, you can give it to a couple chickens and get a couple eggs from it.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: But but but we need we need to start thinking, we need to think like a worm.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: We need to think like a worm ourselves and realize that we uh that that they're in nature does not have any away, it doesn't throw things away.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and so sure, you know, I throw things away, yeah.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: I you know that there's some things, but boy, you know, the less we can throw away, uh the better.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so that that just developing that carbon, that carbon mentality, um, I think is the is the most practical thing.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course, you know, if you if you live in an apartment or don't have any land whatsoever, then certainly, you know, um, you know, find a farmer.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the first things that that I when I go onto a farm, show me your compost pile.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, or if you're searching for a farm on on a website, show me your compost pile.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: If a farmer doesn't have a compost pile, he's not doing a carbon economy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and um, you know, a farmer should have a compost pile because that is the that is the fertility engine, you know, that drives everything.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a takeaway here for everybody, whether you're a farmer or consumer, whether you live, you know, on lots of acreage or you live in an apartment, there is something that you can do, right, to support the biological approach and to save the worms.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't starve our worms.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Joel, it has really been a treat.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, as always, for sharing your wisdom, your knowledge, and your passion with all of us.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't wait to hear what you're gonna say next week.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to chatting with you next week.