Welcome to episode three of Behind the Shield. My name is James Gearing and I will be a host for
this podcast. My guest on this episode is American farmer Joel Salatin. Now Joel other than a farmer
is also a lecturer and an author. His books include Folks This Ain't Normal, You Can Farm,
and The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs. Joel is an English major from Bob Jones University.
He is featured in food documentaries Food Inc and Fresh, which I recommend both of those.
He has done TED Talks and spoken at Google. Joel is known for his holistic method of animal husbandry.
He has a very unique look at not only the way the animals are raised but even the way the food that
they eat is grown. So he will move his animals geographically through his farm.
To make sure that the acorns, the grass, whatever they're actually eating normally
has grown to the point where it has the maximum nutrition and the minimum amount of stress.
So the product is the healthiest, leanest meat that you can get and therefore this low stress,
high nutrition environment creates the healthiest meat for the people that he sells to.
He doesn't use any chemicals, any drugs or GMO feed. Now this whole topic is so important to me.
When you look outside the window, you look at our fellow citizens here in the US, in the UK
and other Western developed countries, you are seeing a growing trend of ill health.
This can absolutely be improved through exercise and movement but let's say you exercise for
four days a week about an hour at a time. Well that's only four hours total in the 150 odd hours
a week that you have available to you. So the rest of the time is obviously in that balance of
energy in, energy out. The quality of that food is even more important. The gastrointestinal tract
is 80% of your immune system. So what you put in is either going to hurt or nourish your body.
The food that we've been eating, even the salads and the vegetables and people think they're eating
well, if they're covered in pesticides, if people are wearing hazmat suits to apply this to the food
that then goes into your children's body, clearly every cell in that food is not going to be
beneficial. It's going to have some good properties but obviously some bad properties as well.
When you go locally to organic farms and you get vegetables and fruit that have not been sprayed
with these chemicals, that have been grown naturally, that's 100% nourishment, 100% nutrition.
The same with the meat. If the meat has not been treated with hormones and antibiotics and the meat
hasn't been shoulder to shoulder in some god-awful warehouse with these stress hormones just surging
through these poor animals, if its growth hasn't been rapidly accelerated through chemicals,
then the meat that you ingest is going to nourish your body. If it's this sick, overdeveloped meat
that's kept alive through pharmaceuticals, then again this meat is not going to nourish, it's
going to hurt. We've seen a rapid increase in the amount of disease in this country, heart disease,
cancer and I am 100% sure that a large part of it is to do with the food that we are served.
The other benefit of buying locally from these sustainable farms is you remove the transportation
costs, you remove the packaging, the impact on the environment. So your local farmer, if you select
one that prescribes to the same philosophy, doesn't have to ship that food 3000 miles,
doesn't have to cling wrap it and irradiate it and all the other processes that happen to the food
that are in the supermarket. And the misunderstanding that this food is more expensive is another
lie. You take away the middleman, the publics, the supermarket that's obviously trying to make
a profit and understandably so, the cost of processing, the cost of packaging, the cost of
transportation and you go from the home directly to the source, i.e. your local farmer, they can
afford to give you this product at a cheaper rate than the grocery stores do because all those
middlemen that are taking a cut have been eliminated. So that's the problem.
So that is a fallacy that good food is more expensive. It really isn't if you know where to look.
The other element is we consume way too much meat in this country. So to think of it more like
quality instead of quantity, you take out a third of your meat consumption, replace it with more
vegetables, beans, that kind of thing. When you do buy your meat, you buy the high quality meat and
that way you're nourishing your body instead of hurting it. So in this interview, we talk about
the food industry and how it became industrialized in the first place. We touch on the effects of
this process on our food and why chemicals are usually used in factory farming, how sustainable
farming creates the best quality food, how to find the local farmer. Joel's up in the northeast so
everyone listening to this needs to find a farmer that subscribes to this same philosophy
in their local area. So he'll talk about it and we'll provide links to where he suggests on the
show notes as well. And then how to start a garden, how to take even that farmer out of the equation
and grow some of this stuff yourself. So it doesn't have to be an entire smorgasbord of
vegetables and fruit but there's a few things that are very easy to grow in your local area.
You can have chickens and a chicken coop. There's all kinds of ideas that he comes up with
and making yourself more sustainable and that's going to affect how much you spend on food.
If you're growing it yourself then you can remove that cost from buying those certain
vegetables or eggs or poultry. I am very excited to introduce Joel. I think he's a voice that we
don't normally hear. When we talk about nutrition you hear the doctor telling you about lower your
cholesterol, remove fats from your diet and you talk about calorie counting and all these areas
of nutrition but no one ever talks about where the food comes from fundamentally and how if you eat
this type of food and have an abundance of vegetables on your plate you can really forget
about calorie counting. This will totally nourish your body and if you remove a lot of the processed
foods you really eliminate the need to quote unquote count calories. So without further ado
I am extremely excited to introduce to you Joel Salatin.
So thank you so much for agreeing to be on Behind the Shield. One of the main problems that we have
in first responders, firemen, policemen, EMS is miseducation I guess you could say from the
dietary point of view. There's a big push on the exercise side of losing weight and that kind of
thing but I think there's a huge lack of knowledge of the kinds of food people should be eating and
also fundamentally where that food is coming from in the first place. So I'd love to take you down
that road and have you educate everyone that's listening. I wonder if we could start with the
actual farm itself. I understand your parents bought the farm is that correct? Yes my mom and
dad bought this when I was just four in 1961 so we've been here not quite 60 years and I grew up
here. My mother's still alive and day-to-day operations are now done by our son Daniel and
we have our grandchildren here so we have four generations here on the farm. Fantastic and when
you got there was the soil in incredible condition? It was in incredible condition, incredibly bad.
We had very large gullies like corrugated roofing down the hillside, large rock areas that had
no vegetation on them whatsoever. These were shale areas, a quarter acre or so in size that
literally it was bare bare rock and today all those areas are covered up with 12 inches of soil.
You know it's not three feet like it was 500 years ago but at least it's covered up and growing
something and the gullies are healing slowly and it was arguably the armpit of the community today.
It's I would say arguably the most productive farm in the community. Yeah certainly the most
well known that's for sure. I grew up on a farm myself, my father was a veterinary surgeon in
England so I've had a unique perspective of you know 2016 and the years prior and how we are fed
and the choices that we make. I know that we weren't completely organic, I remember using
fertilizer and pesticide on some of the foods and you know the chickens were fed meal as well
as pecking around in the grass and I know we're going to talk about the way that you farm some
of those but it gave me a different perspective when I came over here and see so many people
choosing their food from the fridge you know the frozen aisle or everything being in a packet.
Now did you always want to be a farmer? Were you destined to be a farmer since you were young?
Yes from my earliest memories I definitely wanted to be a farmer. I think you know looking back
as you start thinking about your childhood memories sometimes I realize now the impact
that my grandfather's farm and my great uncle's farm had on me. My grandfather actually I shouldn't
say farm his garden and my uncle's farm you know I said we came to this place it was just you know
rocks and weeds and gullies and it was in rough shape but their places my grandfather was a charter
subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming magazine in 1949 had a just this lush
garden it was bounded with a tea trellis grape arbor and I was a kid you know and you could
reach up and just pick these these ripe succulent grapes and it just seemed you know boundless to
me and I think I never got away from that almost subconscious desire to to nest in abundance to be
able to walk out the back door every day and feel like you're like you're immersed and nestled
in abundance very very powerful metaphor. Yeah absolutely now your your parents then when you
were growing up clearly they had a different philosophy than than a lot of people in that
generation so so how how was their philosophy formed to kick so hard against what a lot of
the other farms were doing around them? That's a great question my my dad his degree was in
economics he was in World War II and then after the went to college after the war and got his
degree in economics and he I think he came to this more from an economic level than an
environmental level and he realized early on that the the chemical approach whether it's chemical
fertilizer or pesticide herbicide whatever but that that that trying to um trying to beat nature
with chemicals was essentially a drug addiction it was like a drug addiction and it was a it was a
vicious circle where you couldn't you couldn't ever get ahead because nature bats last and so
you were constantly looking for more potent chemicals you know more just just more more
chemicals you know we used 100 pounds last year we got to use 200 this year and he just saw it as a
as a treadmill that you could you could never get off of I mean like economically you know you
you can't um you can't you can't in uh you can't get yourself into wealth you know
and and you can't chemicalize yourself into health either and he saw that I think is primarily an
economic equation much more than an environmental equation which is kind of which is kind of
interesting uh because most people as soon as they hear about you know not using all that stuff
they assume that you don't have an appreciation for economics because economics means that you go to
concentrated animal feeding operations and factories and and you know industrial uh
monospeciated farms and chemicals and all that stuff so I like to point that out because because
I think the assumption is that that when you do well by the environment you you hurt yourself
economically and if you're going to do well economically you necessarily have to
make some compromises on the environment yeah absolutely it kind of reminds me of uh I did an
economics class years and years ago in England and one of the only things that stuck I don't even
think I finished the class to be honest but um was the term false economy and and I think that's
where we're at now is that they thought that these these uh farming methods were gonna save money in
you know initially but obviously in the long run now we have a nation of extremely unwell people
and now we're like like you said the debt is now having to be paid physically and I remember you
had a great quote in one of your interviews I heard you in um a gentleman in the 1940s had said
something about if you put chemicals in your food uh it was eventually the people will have to be
chemicalized as well yeah yeah that was sir Albert Howard uh the the British um agronomist who
brought aerobic the scientist who brought basically the the aerobic composting formula of carbon
nitrogen uh moisture oxygen and microbes to the to the world in 1943 writing his iconic and
agricultural testament which is kind of considered you know one of the one of the pillars of the
entire uh whatever sustainable ag regenerative agriculture movement uh he said uh when we use
artificial manures that's what he called chemical fertilizers artificial manures we um we grow
artificial plants which feed artificial animals which make artificial people who can only be
kept alive by using artificial and of course look at our pharmaceutical industry um you know that
was that was 1943 when he said that and certainly you know being kept alive with artificial um is
certainly where our nation has come at this point absolutely yeah I think that pretty much anyone
that deals with um EMS that's listening to this can testify that we have these patients with with
literally a trash bag full of medications and they're not fixing anything at all and the the
bigger irony is anyone in the medical community has to take the Hippocratic oath yeah Hippocrates
himself said let food be thy medicine so that's to me the biggest irony you can possibly have in the
medical industry right now yes and and I think one of the one of the problems is that nobody knows
what their tolerances are uh you know I don't want anybody to to to listening to this to think that
I'm some sort of a cultish and and and um it's anathema to ever eat a Snickers bar or even drink
a Coke for that matter okay but there's a big difference between having one once a month as a
little treat and having two a day or three a day and and you know moderation in all things and so
uh I and you know EMS personnel routinely spend a lot of time hanging out at the rescue squad or
the fire station or whatever and what do we do when we just kind of hang around well we we we
snack you know we we snack on things and um and so you know the the old adage you know that the
the cops all go down to Dunkin Donuts um you know it's there's a reason it's humor is as good humor
is because there's an element of truth to it and so um we need to appreciate that none of us knows
where our tolerances are we don't know when that when that snacking and what we're snacking on is
going to result in diabetes or obesity or or you know any of these kinds of things and the truth
is if you look at the label you know you can't pronounce half of the stuff that's on the label
and that's brand new in the human lexicon and the human gut that the microbiome uh you know was not
was not designed to handle things that you needed to be a scientist in a laboratory to make
or things that that were too hard to pronounce to say I'm kind of a with Michael Pollan who says
you know we probably shouldn't eat anything that wasn't available before 1900 that's kind of when
things really went south and of course we can all be very thankful that the hot dogs were introduced
at the 1890 world's fair so you know hot dogs just squeaked in under the uh under the 1900s
benchmark that was the ones without nitrates back then probably yes oh yeah absolutely yeah
on our on our farm we make uh we make hot dogs and uh yeah they don't have anything unpronounceable
you know it's just beef and pork and and uh they're they're really great and they actually
it actually tastes like food they don't taste like you know some uh synthetic material yeah
absolutely so that that kind of pushed me to the next question I think this is a huge pivotal one
we obviously our generation I'm 42 now so I was raised outside of my farm I was raised to
to believe that you know it's safe to spray all our food and insecticides and you know the mass
production and uh pasteurizing our milk and all these other other areas that we literally were
taught by our school boards and our health boards of the respective countries so when did the
industrialization of food really begin and then what was the the regression from there
well I think that the real uh catalyst came post world war two because um you have to remember that
ammunition bombs explosives are made from nitrogen potassium and phosphorus and of course those are
the three things that are in chemical fertilizer and so after world war two we had all these stock
piles of of np and k we had all these uh businesses you know that uh you know big businesses that had
developed to to to mine and bag and and and create np and k and so it was extremely cheap and so um
the natural thing was well let's find a market for these things let's go and and of course in that day
you know you could sprinkle some of this on the soil and it would really take off well the soil
a lot of the soils responded to it um because they still had organic matter left over from draft
power from all the animal manures and and all that stuff so you know they responded to it and so
I'm a little bit careful to um you know to cast great disparagements on you know on on great
grandpa who reached for that bag of chemical fertilizer as opposed to shoveling shoveling
shoveling shoveling shoveling shoveling shoveling uh in a day when you know there were not front end
loaders uh you know there was so the alternative was well do I do I spread his little bag of stuff
I mean it's like a miracle or do I shovel and people were tired of shoveling they've been
shoveling all the time and so uh for the first five or six years you know this this took off
and of course it was all cheap because they were leftover stockpiles from the war effort
in many cases it had virtually been paid for and was just you know a salvage operation so it was
extremely cheap extremely um um you know marketable it was it was um accessible and so uh that that
took off well in the early 1950s then you know we had the development of the tractor and of course
of course rural electrification plastic pipe uh chippers shredders um you know and gradually
the components the components to run a true carbon-centric system gradually came into being
through the 1950s so that by 1960 there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to be using
chemical fertilizers but by that time that orthodoxy was so entrenched in the cultural psyche
that it was very difficult to as we say unring that bell you can't unring a bell and so you
couldn't you couldn't restart that clock by that time you know the land grant universities the
research uh non-profits all of the the usda all of these things were were stacked and stocked
with a paradigm that was a chemical oriented uh paradigm the truth is that with we if we had had
a manhattan project for compost um not only would we have fed the world we would have done it without
uh three-legged salamanders infertile frogs in a in a dead zone the gulf the size of new jersey
in the gulf of mexico that's the truth but we didn't have a manhattan product project for that
we had a manhattan project for something else and so um so that that's where we ended up
right and then the the uh i guess the monsanto uh pesticide area was another separate
arm of that whole movement well yeah well you know it's like every um if you read uh you know
the diffusion of innovation these business books that talk about you know um uh new things and how
to how they market how they change markets and how markets adapt what you see is this is this um
you know gentle slow start and then as and then it comes to this the trajectory starts to steepen
and steepen uh because you get all the all the components necessary to make it efficient you
know uh mining uh um laboratories uh distribution packaging uh marketing advertising you know all
these things have to come together and so it just it just got you know steeper and the the curve got
faster and faster and so you know what started out as as pigs coming in off of pasture and going
into a small piggery of of 20 sows gradually became a piggery you know a concentrated animal
feeding operation of of of uh 5 000 sows uh pigs uh chickens the same thing antibiotics played a
huge role in this because prior to antibiotics you simply couldn't um um you know put this many
animals in one spot in such filthy conditions and have them survive so the the concentrated animal
feeding operation was definitely a product of of antibiotics that allowed us to keep these animals
alive in such uh filthy and unsanitary conditions and then of course you had petroleum came along
which allowed us to efficiently transport stuff i mean you couldn't have a capo 150 years ago
because you you simply couldn't put you couldn't bring in that much food stuff and haul out that
much manure you simply couldn't do it 150 years ago because you couldn't do it with draft power
it was too transportation was too expensive and too difficult too arduous and laborious
but when petroleum came along and transportation was extremely cheap then all of these historic
kind of boundaries um uh could be could be broken and you could just and you could do pretty much
anything you wanted to so you have a pocket full of antibiotics and the truck is idling in the
you know on the porch and suddenly all these historic um historic parameters these historic
norms um you know could be could be punched through you know we didn't have to uh do only what we could
move with draft power we didn't have to do only what we could shovel or or move and you know um
and then as we did that you know the the capacity to take that paradigm on down the road uh did
did indeed occur and um you know Joel Arthur Barker who wrote the book uh paradigms uh said
that every paradigm eventually exceeds its point of efficiency and that's of course exactly where
we are now as this paradigm of concentrated animals segregated uh food systems monospeciation
uh chemical fertilization and now of course uh you know genetically modified organisms and whatever
uh these have now you know uh continued to accelerate and and so now suddenly in the last
30 years we have this burgeoning uh problem with um for example food allergies um you know when I
was growing up the phrase food allergies didn't even exist I mean nobody said anything you could
you could have a potluck or a get-together nobody had to worry about gluten or peanuts or or whatever
and now you know you can't have a get-together without accommodating half a dozen uh special
food allergy requests then you have you know E. coli salmonella campylobacter listeria bovine
spongiform encephalopathy you know all of these things have come in the last 30 years as that
supposedly um progressive and scientific uh paradigm has exceeded its point of efficiency
and nature is now nature is now batting last and and we're seeing it of course in consequences as
you mentioned you know in uh you know bags full of uh of of medications and um and you know social
uh emotional problems uh from you know from rage to depression to uh all sorts of things that of
course first responders deal with on a daily basis for sure first responders are on the
you know on the cutting edge of society's fringes and um and it's it's society's fringes
where you see the the fabric the matrix of a civilization you see them beginning to crumble
crumble and so first responders have a have a very unique and special uh look into the the
mortar that's cracking on the bastions of civilization it's quite profound yeah that's
a very good way of looking at never even thought about that but we certainly i think to me it's
just so blatant that the philosophy we have in our health care at the moment just does not work
it's not like someone has blood pressure medicine for six months and then they come up to you one
day like god that medicine works so well my blood pressure is perfect now i don't have to take it
anymore that never happens they're on that medication the rest of their life they're on the
the diabetes medication the cholesterol medication and and you you see i see my blood work from the
way i eat and and you see some of these great documentaries food ink and forks over knives and
fat sick and nearly dead and you see these people healed just by returning and eating the way they
were supposed to eat a hundred years ago and it's that simple and and yet this this lie is so
ingrained in people's psyche that when you talk to them like that you get looked at like you're
you know you just pooped in their cornflakes and it's it's it's it's incredible that i mean
that you know they've managed to to pull that off in such a short time well it it certainly is and
and and uh and then then you have the the fire station or rescue squad again everybody's hanging
around there so they've got vending machines with nabs and and soda and all this then i mean it's
it's uh it's just it's just a disaster uh waiting to happen and so yes the whole food the body food
connection is um is profoundly inarguable today and everywhere i go i i you know i run into people
that have you know healed their children from autism healed themselves from uh you know cancers
uh all sorts of things simply by fundamentally changing diet you know the the human the human
experience um you know was not designed to be um you know to be propped up to have crutches of
pharmaceuticals you know that that should be the the the person that needs this stuff should be an
anomaly not the norm and and the fact that it is becoming such a such a norm is indicative that
something is you know greatly out of whack absolutely i know the one of the statistics that
blew me away was and i didn't realize it still somewhat recently that the gi tract is actually
80 of our immune system so obviously whatever you put in your mind is going to be a huge
in your mouth that travels through that tube and comes out your other end is going to affect you
positively or negatively and as you mentioned with the the uh bacteria in there it's going to kill
them and and destroy everything or it's going to get them to bloom and thrive in the right way not
in an imbalanced way like c diff or something like that yes well you know we we we are studying now
a lot of the whole microbiome thing and uh you know each of us has has three trillion three
trillion beings critters uh in our you know in our digestive tract three trillion i mean that's a
pretty big community and you think about it there's a lot of intricacy there too and you know they
have to build highways and have fire stations and rescue squads and hospitals and schools and you
know go to the you know lions club and whatever i mean they're doing all sorts of stuff down there
and uh and that that's a very complex uh community to maintain and if we put toxins into it if we put
uh foreign material into that community it's going to upset that community just like you know
polluted water in a community or or corrupt politicians or whatever you you throw corruption
in a community and you're gonna you're gonna be in disarray and that's the same thing in this uh in
this bacterial microbial community of three trillion members in our in our gut um you know we
we don't we don't see it but uh it's nonetheless there and completely dependent on what we're
what we're giving it every day right and is that am i correct in understanding that down the the
line of gmos by messing with the genetic structure of these these you know basically foreign objects
that the body is now not able to recognize them these these ancient ancient bacteria not able to
recognize these particles that are coming in and that's what's causing the problems or am i off
there uh no you're you're in the ballpark and you know i'm not a i'm not a scientist in that regard
so i can't give you all the the latin ins and outs of this thing but yes you're exactly right the the
the gmo studies that have been done where they actually feed them the way you and i would eat
and not in some special contrived uh prejudicial study that monsanto sets up um the the the
the the truth i mean i'll give you an example when when um when monsanto was looking at gmo potatoes
for example they specifically chose um they specifically chose geriatric rats this is all
in uh jeffrey smith's um book uh seeds of deception it's a great book anybody that wants to
you know get a kind of layman's look at gmos and so they they got geriatric rats and fed them well
they didn't see any difference in the gmos versus the non-gmo but when the same experiment was
repeated in uh scotland but but instead of being completely repeated they repeated everything except
except they used juvenile rats instead of geriatric rats well then suddenly they had all sorts of
problems they had they had uh organ you know organ malfunction they had sociopathy had a mental you
know um mental breakdown um just you know all sorts of problems just by changing the experiment
from geriatric rats who already you know had their routines and their and their personalities
and their organs and whatever you know there's no you know geriatrics they they don't change much
they've already lived their life and it's it's done uh you don't see the big differences but in
the in the young ones where the metabolism is faster and they're still developing they saw you
know huge huge differences and so you know these kinds of studies have been now done
all over the world and um the only people who can't see them of course are the people who are
um you know who are who are in agreement with the basic idea that life is fundamentally mechanical
and you know that that's where it comes down um you know the the industrial mindset suggests that
that life is fundamentally mechanical and we can tweak and move and and adjust this dna and that
dna and throw chemicals on the soil and and whatever whereas many of us believe that life
is fundamentally not mechanical but biological and there's a huge difference between biology
and mechanics uh one of the big differences is that uh that that living things are spontaneous
they they kind of think they don't just follow a routine uh they they often you know kind of have
a mind of their own but the main thing is that biological things can heal mechanical things
can't if a bearing goes out in your in your front wheel of your truck um you know it's not going to
it's not going to get better by rest or by you know praying over or whatever it's only going to
get better if you take it out and replace it um but you know biological things can heal they can
be in rough shape and you can change the diet you can change the support you can you can have
a relationship that's gone south and you can ask for a forgiveness and apologize and the relationship
can be healed i mean this this fundamental idea that that biological systems can heal is the great
hope is the great hope that we have and um it's it's a wonderful thing compared to compared to
mechanics but the entire industrial food system that you know that you can live on on twinkies
and cocoa puffs and mountain dew uh is predicated on a on the idea that your body and my body and
life is fundamentally mechanical and it doesn't really matter um it doesn't really matter what
biology goes in yeah it's it's very uh it's very scary i think one of the other fundamental things
that that we're seeing you know in the last few generations now is it seems like if you remove
the desire to have all the money all the power and just disseminate it back to the whole country
we would eliminate a lot of those problems as well and you see that with the mega farms now
you know one or two farm companies that want to provide all the food to the entire country or the
world for that matter i mean of course it's going to just fundamentally fall apart instead of having
all these small farms being supported by by their local communities and the food traveling you know
as i know your policy is less than four hours um and that way it's not being packaged it's not
being frozen or irradiated or any of those things you go to your local farmer you you pick up your
food and then you bring it home yeah well there are a lot of aspects to the you know the global
food matrix um as you mentioned that you know the first one being opaqueness i mean you just can't
you can't follow that chain of custody and so so you don't know what is going on in that you know
shrimp farm in thailand that's showing up at your applebee's restaurant and so when you start eating
more local you actually have a shorter chain of custody from farm to farm to plate and the shorter
chain of custody allows you to have more accountability because there's more transparency in that shorter
chain of custody and i think i think another thing that's really powerful is that when you have a
local-centric food system you you actually uh increase a capacity for resilience and security
in the food system you know when you're dependent on a costco warehouse a thousand miles away
uh that ultimately is a fairly fragile system i mean you have to assume that trucks can run on time
that computers work that uh the merchant marine gets their you know their stuff hauled to the dock
on uh on time um you know a lot of things have to work uh smoothly in that situation but when you
have a local-centric system where you know your farmer or you you know you're very very close
you can actually see what's on inventory you know where it is uh you can you can walk there if you
add to the point is that there's a tremendous amount of resiliency and forgiveness built into
the system when you have a proximity between producer and consumer as opposed to long distance
yeah absolutely and i think that another huge uh lie really or or misunderstanding i guess would be
a more gentle way of saying it is that the pesticide covered foreign fruit and vegetables
for example that we find in our our shelves in the local supermarket are cheaper than organic and
obviously they are if you buy the organic in the same shop or in whole foods but if you just go
to your local farmers market it's cheaper i mean i i have bags and bags full of of produce that i
buy once a week from my local farm and i mean literally probably four or five of those cloth
grocery bags is for about 50 there's no way in hell you'd be able to buy that much food
in this but but again it's it's that simple simple message doesn't get out there and if
you remove the middleman and the price of the gas and the taxes and and all the other uh skimming
that goes on between them and you then all of a sudden it's cheaper and they still make their
money and you still get your food yes well that's exactly right and and um you know you're mentioning
you're mentioning this makes me uh think about the just the cost of of processing and packaging and
and all that you know the the way the way to get affordable food is to get whole food you know just
just raw food and then use your own kitchen to prepare package preserve uh you know to the food
i was in um i was in new york city a couple of years ago and um we went down to the green market
there on union square arguably the most expensive farmers market in the most expensive city of the
world and i asked my hostess could you take me to the most good could you show me the most expensive
potato in this market she said oh i know just the guy so we you know shoulder away through the crowd
come up to this uh farmer with his stand and he's got a like a credenza you know a bunch of little
cubbies with all these potatoes and he has about 20 different varieties orange ones red ones blue
ones long ones skinny ones round ones whatever and so i looked and i found the most expensive
one it was a blue peruvian heirloom fingerling potato for a dollar 99 a pound which is you know
a little bit pricey for potatoes but all around that uh that green market are supermarkets
with 120 feet of fluorescent lighted tile floor
with shelves full of potato chips for 2.99 a pound you know uh way way more expensive
than those little potatoes so when i say you know get in your kitchen um i don't mean go back to
you know washboards hoop skirts and hearth cooking as romantic as that may sound to somebody who's
never done it um you know we've never technogadgetized our kitchens as comfortably as we have today with
hot and cold running water refrigerators freezers uh you know flickable button stoves slow cookers
tom's bake um uh Cuisinart's fry babies bread makers ice cream makers Tupperware
grandma would have given her eye teeth for all this stuff um and so it's never it's we've never
been able to more efficiently or sanitarily or or or simply you know actually prepare food
and and yet you know the average american is far more interested
and knowledgeable about the latest dysfunction in the kardashian household
than they are what's going to become flesh of their flesh and bone in their bones at six o'clock
and and when and when that's the case when that's the case those shortcuts that we take
for our own food and nutrition our own body's well-being those shortcuts are going to come back
to haunt us and of course that's exactly what we see yeah and again you touched with the packaging
i mean if you look at the grocery cart full of of food by the time you empty all of those food
items out of whatever surrounding them you end up with two garbage bags full of crap that you've
got to get rid of now somewhere whereas if you are taking home cloth bags full of of uh of
vegetables you have zero packaging yeah yeah that's exactly right that's exactly right
yeah well i mean just for just for your own uh you know for just for canning i mean if you bought
a bushel basket full of green beans and and just canned them uh we you know we get an argument
about canning or not but let's just assume that i mean put them in glass jars you know
there's there's there's virtually no waste except you know you're probably going to throw away the
little uh the little lid um but the comparison in the amount of packaging material for landfills
and for petroleum use and just the sheer uh volume of that is is amazing yeah absolutely i mean it
would make such a huge difference on on uh i think everyone's community i mean because some people
might not have that giant uh bird-filled mountain in their in their uh local area yet but if you go
to any any larger urban area i mean they they have those things at the side of the freeways and
they're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger so something has to stop there too
yeah uh-huh that's right so i'm going to transition now a little bit to to polyface so first i had a
question about polyface where did you come up with the name
well uh poly of course is the greek um the the latin prefix for many and so we knew that we wanted
to do a lot of different things so we decided that we would be polyface the farm of many faces
right and uh i know you have several different uh species of livestock on there but i'm going to
take the lifestyles from realtà here you go the uh% x took our pronouncements and learned
it he could do all of that so and participated so basically the um so overall the protocol
is just going to come from here like so we decided we wanted to play with the same
families with different types of yield characteristics so they would just go ahead and
tell him how they're gonna continue to self-지
Okay, so grass grows in an S-curve, a sigmoid curve.
It starts slow, then grows real fast, and then goes into senescence and slows down.
And so the idea, the reason that there are so many herbivores around the planet is to
prune that grass as it moves towards senescence, to prune it back to pre-adolescent stage so
it can go through another vibrant, vigorous, green growth stage, which of course also means
that it's going to inhale carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, break off the carbon, leave
it in the soil, and exhale the oxygen so you and I can breathe.
So when we look at nature, at the template of nature, what we see are animals moving.
In fact, we see large herds of animals moving.
But we don't have those large herds anymore.
We don't have the wolves.
We don't have fire.
So an eight million head herd of bison running down through your Starbucks and the elementary
school might not be a really good thing.
What we do have now is electric fencing, which acts as a steering mechanism, a steering wheel,
a brake, and an accelerator on that four-legged pruner.
So we can now steer the animals, steer the animals around the pasture so that we perfectly
manage the meeting, the timing of that meeting between plant and animal so that they work
in symbiosis rather than competitively.
So the cows move every day at four o'clock to a new paddock that's been allowed to rest
for two or three months so the grass is long.
And we mob them in at high density so they look like a mob of wild herbivores.
And then tomorrow at four o'clock they'll move on to the next paddock.
And so any one area will only have a cow on it maybe three or four times in a year.
Then after the herd moves along, following about four days behind are the egg mobiles.
These are portable henhouses, chicken houses with layers, who free-range out from those
henhouses, scratch through the cow patties, eat out the fly larvae, sanitize the paddock,
turn the newly exposed grasshoppers and crickets into eggs, and work symbiotically with the
herbivores, just like the birds in nature.
So these are systems that we use.
Pigs are out in pig pastures with silvo pastures, widely spaced trees and grasses.
And again, they get moved not every day but every five to 12 days.
They get moved to a new paddock.
And those we touch three times a year.
Acorn glens in the forest for the pigs, those get touched once or twice a year.
They're more extensive and not quite as intensive.
So yeah, everything is out and moving along.
So it's moving free-range as it's designed to versus the factory meats that are stressed
and side by side and having to be medicated just to basically a chemical life support
until they're slaughtered.
Yes, well, yeah, we don't have to use the antibiotics and the grubicides, the parasiticides
and all those things that the industry uses because we're actually using the different
animals in symbiosis, in relational symbiosis to each other.
And there's nothing as exciting as a confused pathogen.
And in our industrial system, everything is about monospeciation, whether it's cherry
trees or wheat fields or a Tyson chicken farm.
The whole idea is to just grow one thing and grow it very densely and grow it over and
over and over again.
Well, all three of those things, one thing densely and over and over, nature doesn't
do any of that stuff.
Nature is always about multiple things and seasonal differences, different kinds of vegetation,
different times of the season and actually disturbance events, whether it's fire or
a big herd moving through, big flock of birds destroying an area for a day.
But nature is all about change up, change up.
And of course, industry is all about saying, keep it the same, keep it the same, keep it
the same.
Nature is all about spontaneity and dynamics.
And so on our farm, we build ponds, we have a lot of tree peninsulas, forestal zones to
stimulate wildlife and of course the pasture, so you have a lot of this edge effect, open
land, forest land, riparian, the ponds we can use for irrigation in a drought.
Water is gravity fed through a matrix of six miles of water line, water pipes.
We have fresh gravity, high pressure, gravity fed water on the whole place.
So it's not like we sit around here and do nothing, we just try to strategically interact
with the landscape in a way that builds resilience and redemptive capacity into the landscape.
Absolutely.
I've seen the incredible farm that you have now and to say that you went originally from
a very barren landscape, that model surely would be of great interest to areas that do
have more drought, whether it's domestic or international for potentially growing crops
and feeding people there too.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah, that would be incredible.
So the other question I'm sure that everyone's listening to now is I'm pretty sure they're
sold as I was when I first heard you talk a long time ago.
Side by side, there's absolutely no question.
That animal is inhumanely raised and obviously the meat is going to be very, very unhealthy
and we're seeing that with the ill health of our nation.
And then you've got the humanely raised that you're part of that group.
So what are good resources for people to find a farm like yours in their local area?
Well fortunately, there are farms that are doing a good job virtually in every community.
You know, there's the Weston A. Price Foundation, they do the Smart Shoppers Guide.
Every state has some sort of sustainable ag, ecological agriculture network support group
in it.
Find out who that is and check with that outfit.
Check with your CrossFit gym or wellness centers, naturopath, acupuncturists, often anybody
in that alternative wellness community will be plugged into the wellness food.
The point is that this is a non-front page undercurrent.
We are an alternative, a guerrilla tribe if you will.
And so we're everywhere but you have to find us, you have to seek us out.
And as soon as you start seeking farmers like ours out, you will find us.
For pastured livestock, there's eatwild.com which is the number one national website for
pasture-based livestock.
It's not a certification thing, it's just a place where farmers who do this can register.
So there's no substitute for knowing your farmer, know your food, go visit the farm.
If the farmer won't let you visit, then don't go there.
We have a 24-7, 365 open door policy here.
Anyone can come from anywhere, anytime to see anything unannounced.
That's our commitment to transparency.
And so you just have to appreciate, you just have to understand that this is a tribe.
So if you're seeking that alternative wellness, seek out the alternative wellness community
in your community and you'll find a vibrant support network for these folks.
The Nutritional Therapy Association, nutritional therapists, they're a national network.
There are several groups that do nutritional therapy.
They're plugged in to this wellness community.
So yeah, it's there.
You just have to find it.
Fantastic.
You mentioned the word certification and just kind of jarred something else that I've been
meaning to ask you.
So you are known for preparing your chickens and that is the one I've seen outside in the
fresh air, in the pasture.
I know that's frowned upon by the governing agencies that be.
So how's that battle coming on?
Are the people starting to push now for deregulation of some of that stuff?
Oh, not really.
Generally speaking, it's getting worse and worse.
What we are seeing, I think, is a little more ability for small producers to comply with
licensing.
There does seem to be some give in the regulatory world to allow smaller outfits to comply cheaper,
easier.
This is as it should be.
Scale does make a difference.
It does make a difference whether you're making 10 pounds of cheese or 10,000 pounds of cheese.
And so this whole compliance thing is a big deal.
There are definitely efforts underway to circumvent the compliance, which we think is great.
We are big believers in the right of private contract.
It's guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, but we haven't been following the Bill of Rights
for a very, very long time.
And the right of private contract says essentially if you and I want to do business together,
it's none of the government's business if we want to do a private contract between each
other.
I want to buy from you or you want to sell to me or whatever.
But we have this big brother bureaucracy that points its nose and gets in the way of innovative
embryonic solutions to our food system.
And that then arbitrarily makes the price of alternative food more expensive than it
should be.
And these are all big issues that are all part of the equation and part of our context.
And the way to make progress fastest on this front is for more and more and more people
to take it upon themselves to find integrity food, patronize it, and realize that we are
changing our landscape one bite at a time.
Whatever we have on the landscape, the health of our nation, the health of our farms, the
health of our soil, all of that today is a physical manifestation of the compounded decisions
that everybody's been making for the last X number of years.
Where we will be in the future, in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, will also be a physical
manifestation of the decisions we make between now and then.
So at the end of the day, my question is, as a result of my decisions this week, have
I helped, have I, you know, the old parable of the dog, which dog will survive, which
dog will thrive, will the one you feed?
So I'm asking, which dog are you feeding?
Are you feeding the Monsanto dog, the dog of obesity, health, and of ill health, erosion,
abuse, and violence toward the ecology, toward the biological world?
Or are you feeding the dog toward wellness, resilience, forgiveness, and healing?
And 20 years down the road, we'll know which dog we fed.
Yes, yes we will.
It's interesting, I just found a quote the other day, Winston Churchill actually said,
healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.
Now following this most recent election process that we've had, I think it's clearer now than
ever, and I'm not saying versus left or right, I'm just saying the entire process from beginning
to end, that we do need to vote with our dollar, we do need to vote with our individual voice,
because if we put all our faith into whoever they place at the top of the pyramid, which
should really be upside down anyway, then we're at their mercy, but if we actually start
making decisions and voting, like you said, with our feet, then we are going to change
this world.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, now the other thing I wanted to just touch on is, obviously a lot of people listening
to this are going to be in some sort of urban or suburban area.
Now I looked into my homeowners association rules and I'm not allowed to have chickens
or anything.
I'm hoping that that's going to change, but do you have any tips on someone that just
wants to take a corner of their garden and start a very, very small scale vegetable patch
and or chicken coop type deal?
Well, yeah, again, I think the more people do this, you know, the old victory gardens
of World War II, the more people that do this, the more awareness there is, the more interest
there is.
It just, you know, it just moves the conversation forward and I would say the freedom forward
as more and more people come on board.
So yes, I'm a huge believer in doing something for yourself.
And if for no other reason than to just dabble your toe into the awesomeness and the mystery
and the magic of life.
And I think for children, gardens are amazingly therapeutic, self-affirming.
I mean, the self-affirmation that comes from being able to plant a tomato seed and then,
you know, pull a tomato off and watch the juice run down your elbows as you eat that
tomato, that is such a more powerful and profound human affirmation than being the top points
getter on Angry Birds.
I think so too.
Yeah.
So I think they have a lot to offer and wonderfully, we now have a lot of infrastructure that enables
us to do this more efficiently and easier.
You know, we have these PVC pipes with, you know, side pockets in them where you pack
them full of compost, you pack your plant in there, you drip on top and the plants grow
out the sides of them, barrels like this.
We have, you know, the patio gardens, the stackable pots where you can, you know, stack
them up on a patio.
You know, beehives on your roof, the house roof.
Solariums, all these wonderful solarium kits, stick them on the south side of your house
and you can grow, you know, we eat, we eat mess with mix and lettuce, you know, year
round from our solarium on the side of our house.
Our house was built in 1790.
So if we can do it on our house, you can certainly do it on yours.
And I think that those kinds of visceral participatory actions move our collective psyche and move
our collective understanding of this anchoring to our ecological umbilical.
I think it moves it to a place of humility rather than hubris.
And I think a place of humility is a place for all of us to start.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think the appreciation when you open the door, the appreciation of where you are
is huge.
I live in central Florida and people get bogged down in their everyday lives.
And I'd say to my little boy, just zoom out for a second.
We live in the state where most people will save up to come visit for a week.
And this is your home.
This is where you live.
Yeah.
So, you know, to appreciate what's around you.
I'm right next to what's called Ocala National Forest and the Florida Greenway.
So we have amazing nature running around.
In fact, if my homeowners does stay inflexible, I probably will transition because this is
a horse farm community originally.
So there is a lot of land and there are some mini farms that you can get for somewhat decent
amount.
But I think you're...
Yeah, well, those HOA things are just...
Oh, man, don't even get me started on those things.
They're just frustrating.
And I'll tell you, what they do, what they show is not only a profound, whatever, arrogance
toward our dependency on nature, but I think they indicate a condescending attitude toward
farming, actually.
And why is it that growing a rose bush is perfectly acceptable, but a tomato plant is
unacceptable?
The only difference is, you know, one's edible and one's just ornamental.
But one, smacks of garden shows, the other smacks of farmers.
And I think that as a culture, we have denigrated farming to the point where most farmers are
kind of apologetic about being farmers.
Well, you know, I guess I didn't have enough brains to be an engineer or a doctor, so,
you know, I just became a farmer.
And we've got this kind of universal mindset that dumb people farm and smart people don't.
And I think that that's a very, very dangerous place to be when the most precious assets
of any culture are air, soil, and water, and farmers are our first responders to air, soil,
and water, and we've condescended to them as if they don't really matter.
And that is a very dangerous place for civilization to be.
Yeah.
Well, especially as you said, I mean, they're not doctors, but they are.
We've come full circle and yeah, they provide the very medicine that we need.
And I think that there's a phrase I love is in America and England and other Western countries
were malnourished and overfed, which sounds like a ridiculous statement, but it's true.
The calories that we consume are ungodly, yet the nutrition on the plate is almost non-existent.
That's right.
It's empty calories with no nutrition to go with them.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Well, I would love, I honestly think there is a movement.
There's a couple of phrases I keep hearing now.
It's definitely a paradigm shift going on.
I think people are finally getting sick and tired of being sick and tired, being worked
into the ground, not sleeping properly, over-medicated and then the word that comes up a lot is when
you use it yourself is that tribe.
And I'm going to have Sebastian Junger on the podcast next month and his book, Tribe
is Phenomenal and as a fireman, I've touched on this in a couple of other interviews, that's
what's missing in society.
And I think he absolutely hit the nail on the head.
And I think when you're connected to your community again and obviously through your
farms that you're recreating that tribe that people pride in, that's the fundamental soul
of the human species.
Yes.
That will be an exciting program.
That'll be great.
Good for you.
Yeah.
I can't wait for that.
Well, this is an exciting program too though.
I mean, I was scrambling because it came together so quickly, but listening to you, we don't,
I mean, you said it yourself, this umpteen scientists that you could interview, but how
many farmers do you get to, you know, actual conscious farmers that truly grow the way
it's supposed to be grown and raise livestock the way it's supposed to be raised and educate
our generation.
I mean, you know, pretty much yours and mine and everyone younger than us of what it's
supposed to be like, because we were all told something different.
And I even, even growing up on my farm, it was, it was a hybrid of the old style and
the industrial style.
And my father was a vet.
So he, he was, you know, healing animals the whole time, but even he believed a lot of
the things that we were told.
So I think this, the shift really is, is going to happen, but I think people need to take
a look in the mirror and be brave, make a courageous decision and say, I'm going to,
you know, it's okay to change your mind.
It's okay to say, you know what?
You got me.
That you're congratulations.
You, you jute me.
And you know, I have these ailments now, but today is the day I turn around and say enough
is enough.
I'm investing in my health.
And that example you use, I've heard you in other interviews, people say they can't
afford to eat healthy.
And then you point out all the material items that we have in our homes that we quote unquote
can't live without.
It's time to rethink about that.
Right, right.
That's right.
There's plenty of money in the system.
What's not there is the conviction to live by value.
And that's the next, you know, that's the next hurdle.
Live by value and just do it.
So yeah, that's good.
Absolutely.
Okay, well I'm going to wrap it with a couple of short questions and then I will let you
go because I know you had an interview before this and I'm sure you probably got a bunch
of people racked up.
So obviously you've written several books yourself.
Folks, This Ain't Normal is the one that I've got coming to me.
As far as you as a reader, is there a book and or a movie that you recommend?
Well, the movie, I mean, Food Inc. is as powerful as they get.
It's a little bit of a downer.
As long as you come out of there realizing there are farmers like me, to go patronize
is good, but it's a little bit of a downer.
We like Fresh better.
There's a documentary out named Fresh.
We're in that one too, but it's a much more upbeat, can-do type of movie.
Books, well, you know, I tend to gravitate toward farming books, but you know, it doesn't
get any better than Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America.
You know, Wendell Berry is iconic in the sustainable ag movement and certainly articulates a lot
of the issues very well.
He's wonderful to read and profound.
So if somebody wants to just, I mean, besides my books, to look at these issues, Wendell
Berry's The Unsettling of America is probably as good as they get.
Okay, yeah, I have seen Fresh as well.
That was a very well made film too.
And then one more question, when you need to laugh, when you've had a bad day or you
just had enough and you need to laugh, what do you do?
Where do you go?
Who do you hang out with?
Oh, well, I enjoy being at home.
I mean, I travel a lot, so when I want to get away, I get home.
So I enjoy being at home.
What I do for enjoyment is I read and my wife and I are right now are going through Downton
Abbey.
That's just a wonderful series.
We don't have a TV, so we get a DVD of a series if we like it.
But we have a lot of laughter on the farm.
We've got a lot of people here and there's a lot of people and they enjoy each other.
There's a lot of laughter just in the shenanigans of everyday ordinary activity.
Last evening, I'll tell you this, yesterday afternoon, those people who know me and have
read after me know that I do not have great carpenter skills.
I get along, but it's kind of slap dab together.
And so yesterday afternoon, I was helping my 13-year-old grandson put together his duck
pen for the winter in one of the hoop houses.
And we've done this every year for like three or four years.
He's had his ducks and we just make like a 12-foot by 18-foot.
He's only got 40 ducks, so it's not like that has to be real big.
So we kind of make this little plastic bird netting pen inside the hoop house so the hens,
the chickens are outside and this little pen of ducks is inside.
So it's an enclosure within the enclosure.
And we've used the same material stuff every year.
So we're out there and for some reason last year the boards got misplaced.
Somebody put them away.
We didn't have them.
We had to start afresh.
I thought, oh, let's go make this thing a little bit simpler.
So we did.
And so we got done and Travis, he's 13, he just turned 13.
He's standing there, he's looking at this and he says, well, Grandpa, that's a pretty
good job.
It just looks like a two-year-old built.
I about laughed till I split.
So that's humor.
Yeah, the kids say some funny stuff.
I remember this is not quite the same genre, but I remember when my son was probably only
five and he came out of the shower holding his manhood and looks at me and goes, Daddy,
look, it's almost as big as yours now.
I said, thanks.
Thanks a lot, Ty.
But yeah, that keeps me laughing every day too.
I think that's another thing that we're missing.
We should be laughing a lot more.
Oh, very good.
All right.
So just to finish up then, where can people find you just before we hang up so they know
where to look?
Yeah, Polyface Farms is our website.
That's all one word, P-O-L-Y-F-A-C-E Farms.
If you get Poly about P-O-L-Y-F in there, it will pop right up.
It's a website.
We have all sorts of links.
We have resources, lots of information there, places where I'll be speaking, all those kinds
of things.
We have a gift shop.
We have our shirt that says, you know, grass fed or lunatic farmer or whatever.
We have that as well.
So yeah, check that out.
Lots of information there and that's polyfacefarms.com.
Fantastic.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for talking to us today.
I'm sure that there's a huge amount of people out there that are going to have their minds
blown by this talk.
And I would love if it's okay with you in the future down the line sometime to come
up to the farm and actually maybe shoot an interview on video, follow up.
Absolutely.
We'd love to have you.
Fantastic.
All right.
Well, thank you so much, Joel.
You have a great day.
You too.
Thank you.
We'll be right back.