#75: Joel Salatin (@JoelSalatin) - Changing the World through Better Food & Health

What's going on, Meat Mafia? Welcome back to another episode of the one and only Meat Mafia podcast. On today's episode, we're joined by the legend, Joel Salatin. Joel is a multigenerational regenerative farmer, author, and outspoken advocate for reforming our food system through more diligent land stewardship. He's appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast twice, in Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and given talks at Google and TEDx.

He's an icon in the world of farming for his innovative approach to holistic land management and his outspoken commentary on the problems plaguing our food system. In our discussion with Joel, we discuss getting started as a farmer, the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals in our food and soil, the role of the microbiome in your health and resiliency, the future of sustainable agriculture in The United States, and and finally, decentralization of food. Joel addresses a number of the systemic problems facing our food system. In our conversation today, he lays out some of the problems as well as some of the solutions that he sees for a better food system for the future. Without further ado, Joel Salatin.

I hate ads, so I'll make this quick. We have given you guys some discount codes on three great products we have partnered with. These are affiliate brands that we have used in the past, and we love them all. We have Element Electrolyte Mix, Kettle and Fire Bone Broth, and Ferro Skincare. Go to the links in the description to check them out.

Alright. Now for the episode. Enjoy. Joel Salatin, welcome to the Meat Mafia podcast. We are so excited to have you.

Thank you. It's my honor, and I'm delighted to be with you. Yes.

So so we usually start off by doing this this little thing where we talk about the different guests that we've had on. So we've had on a few Virginians, so you're not our first Virginian on the podcast. We've had on a few farmers. You're not our first farmer. We've had on a Virginia farmer, so you're not our first Virginian farmer.

But you are our first Virginian farmer who's been on Joe Rogan's podcast, so that is your differentiator right now. And I think you might keep that title for a while.

It might it might be. Yeah. Might be.

And I'm thinking too, Joel, sometimes one of the one of the traditions on the Meat Mafia podcast is we like to do a baptism by bone broth. But with your tradition of drinking out of the trough, we might have to switch that to the trough potentially if that makes sense.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I drink out of the trough whenever I can.

Well, Joel, it's a pleasure to have you on. You you've been a real inspiration for us. I I know when I first started getting interested in regenerative farming, I came across your work and was struck by the the honest and genuine nature into which you speak about bringing real food to every American's tables. And I think that the work you've done to date in terms of publishing books, getting on podcasts, the work that you're doing on your farm is just incredible. So we're honored to have you on today, and and we're excited to talk about Polyface and all the different things that you've

been up to over the past few months and years. Sure. Great. Well, you you you lead, and I'll dance with you. That sounds fine.

Let's do

it. Beautiful. Harrison, I don't know if it was similar to you, but, Joel, I first came across you I think I was a sophomore in high school, and it was pretty cool because my science class actually showed us food ink. And that was really that was really the first exposure that I got into our food system and really just understanding the role that big food plays and how vastly you know, how how far we've moved away from eating actual real food. Harrison, I don't know if it was similar for you if you got to see it in high school or not, but that was the first time I came across Joel.

My first ex experience with Joel was through, Michael Pollan's book. So

Got it.

So Yeah. I mean, you've been everywhere, Joel. So maybe a good place to start for for people who aren't familiar with you is just maybe how you got into farming, maybe a little bit of the backstory behind Polyface. I think that would be great context for people just as a starting point.

Sure. So, yeah, it's always hard to know where to start. But, you know, unlike a lot of farmers in in this space, my nonchemical, whatever, unorthodoxy goes back before me. My grandfather, my my dad's dad, was a charter subscriber to Rodell's Organic Gardening and Farming magazine when it came out in 1948. And and and so he influenced my dad, and my dad was in was in a business administration.

He was a, you know, a good a good numbers guy and an accountant. And so, you know, I I grew up this way. Alright? So we came to the farm in 1961 when I was four years old, and it was the cheapest, most worn out, gully rock pile in the whole region. It was cheap.

That's why dad bought it. It was cheap. And back in those days, land was actually valued based on its based on its productive capacity, not anymore. Now it's based on its viewscape and location. But, anyway, started in and and dad dad got expertise, and he got public and private consultants to come in and ask them, how do I make a living on this farm?

And every one of them, both public and private, the advice was buy chemical fertilizer, plant corn, plow up everything, graze the woods, build silos, borrow more money. And and as as an economist and an accountant, dad knew that that just that just wasn't right. And, of course, the chemicals that, you know, vexed his righteous soul. And so he he you know, we went through those couple three years of of seeking, and then he realized, you know, nobody has an answer for me. And so, so we just started we, he, I was just a kid, started, you know, looking at other things and found Andre Voisin, who was the Frenchman who kinda developed the grass, you know, the rotational grazing, you know, grass farming kinda concept.

And then we went I remember one Sunday, I was maybe seven or eight, six maybe, and we went down the road somewhere and and and and spent a Sunday afternoon with a with a farmer who was using portable portable shelters with his animals. He was moving them around. And I don't remember what animals it were. I don't know where we went north or south. I don't know where it was.

But what I remember was coming home, dad's almost just childish enthusiasm over the concept of of mobile infrastructure. That was a breakthrough. And and so from that day on, dad dad really developed his his thinking toward mobile infrastructure and and mobile animals, moving them around. So he he he invented some electric some portable electric fence systems, a a shade mobile for cows, like a portable shade tree. And and then by you know, mom was a school teacher.

And so with her all farm jobs, the farm got paid for within ten years. So now we're at '71, 1971. I'm now 14, and I've got my I got my first chickens at 10 years old, started selling eggs. I was, you know, entrepreneurial gift to gab, you know, and everybody loved this little kid with eggs. So I sold these eggs around, and the flock grew and grew and grew.

And time I'm at 14, I've got, you know, 300 hens. I'm getting, you know, six eighty, ninety dozen eggs a week. I gotta sell them. And so we hooked up with the local curve market, which was a depression era market developed for farmers to be able to get cash. Farmers had food, but no cash, and people in the city had cash, but no food.

So it was a it was it was kind of a precursor. And the beautiful thing was there were no regulations. Mhmm. There was a there was an agreement between the inspection service and the extension service that if I joined four h and a woman joined the extension homemakers clubs, we could sell anything there without inspection. So we could we could butcher beef, chickens.

We could milk a cow, make yogurt, kefir, cottage cheese, meat pies, all this stuff. We could we could do all that and sell it. So all through high school, I was up every weekend of the year. This it was a Saturday morning market opened at 06:00. Can you imagine?

And and I was up every every Saturday morning at 04:00 to go down there and sell stuff. And and so this is, you know, this is mid seventies. This is the beginning of the, you know, the hippie, the the, you know, Woodstock, the the beaded bearded braless, you know, kinda there was a a kind of a back to the land movement then. And I've always said we were we were literally twenty years ahead of our time. And and but but but we did see we did see the opportunity in branded direct marketing as a local farm.

And we built up a local clientele. Then I went off to college. Nobody in the family wanted to do it. So we closed it down the stand, and by the time I came home, the two the two elderly matrons that had been there when I was a a teen, they had closed up and left. And and those two elderly matrons, one one did baking items.

One was a kind of diversified homestead. But through through my teen years, they took me under wing, told me how to present stuff, market stuff, make signage, deal with, you know, good customers, bad customers. I wouldn't trade that experience for a million dollars to actually be down there as a kid under the tutelage of these two elderly, you know, grandmothers. And and I'll always be grateful and and beholden to them. And so then when I came back from college, I said, okay.

So now it's my turn. Dad's still working in town. Mom's still teaching school. I wanna farm. How do I farm full time?

And, and I realized, you know, we we'd always milk a couple of Guernsey cows. Said, you know what? I I could milk 10 cows, sell the milk at at retail, not jack it up because it's organic, not jack it up because it's grass. Just just sell it like Kroger sells and and and Food Lion and Safeway. You know?

Just sell it at regular retail price. I could milk 10 cows and make a living on this farm. Mhmm. There was only one problem. It was illegal.

Yep.

And I've I've never gotten over the fact that that that that illegality kept me off the farm. So I I went to work in town at the local newspaper. I'd worked there some in high school. And and and and Theresa and I got married. We built we filled out a apartment in the attic, and we lived on, you know, $300 a month, drove a $50 car.

She she was she was you know, she could sew anything, cook anything, can anything. She started canning, you know, 800 quarts of stuff a summer. If we didn't grow it, we didn't eat it. We only ate out of our garden. We didn't have a TV, still don't have a TV, and and and and lived, fruitily.

And so in a couple of years, we even though we weren't didn't get paid a lot, we were saved enough that we could live on the farm for one year. So if I handed him my notice and walked out of that office 09/24/1982 and came back to the farm full time. I fully I was 25. I fully expected that we'd run through it. I'd have to go take work somewhere, you know, to fill in.

But as it turned out, never had to go back out off the farm. It was nip and tuck for about three years, but we we we started, you know, direct marketing again, finding customers, telling our story. It took about three or four years till we, you know, realized, you know, we could breathe and say, okay. I you know, we're gonna make it. And and and so and today, we, you know, we we get 25 salaries off the farm.

We, you know, we about 8,000 families. We ship nationwide. We service some, you know, 40 restaurants, 10 institutions, commercial establishments, and and and it's just been you know, we we never aspired to it, but but here it is. And, we're just really grateful and and blessed to be here.

It's it's amazing to hear that story too because people just see the finished product of Polyphase Farms, and they don't necessarily understand the whole backstory of what what went into it. Like you were saying, you and your wife living off of $300 a month just eating what the food that you were growing on the farm. You know, just a quick question, Joel. What what was it particularly about farming and ranching that spoke to you as a kid or as a teenager that made you realize that that was ultimately what you wanted to do with your life?

Well, know, a lot of things things happen when you're a child, and you don't realize the significance till sometimes years later looking back. And so one of the things I know that struck me was so we came to this farm. I was four when we came, and it was when I say it, I mean, it was it we had a 16 foot deep gully we measured. We had we had I could walk the whole farm and never set foot on a piece of vegetation. It was that barren.

And and and the garden, there was a garden space by the house, and and it was nothing but but clay clods. I mean, you you you you had to break them up with a sledgehammer to know whether it was a rock or dirt. I mean, the guard and and my grandfather, remember I mentioned him, he was a charter subscriber to Rodell's Organic Gardening and Farming magazine. So he lived in Indiana, and we'd go and visit him, you know, once a year or so in the fall or in in the late summer after Hay was in and before school started because mom was a school teacher. So we had to go between hay and school starting.

Right? So we always went about the same time of year up to up to grandma and grandpa's in Indiana, and he had these compost piles And his soil, it was black, and you could just stick your arm in it, you know, and and everything was verdant. And he had this this tea trellis grape grape arbor around it. He had a huge garden. It was like a quarter acre, which, you know, it's a pretty big garden.

And and he sold he sold produce, you know, in the in the community. And and he had this tea top trellis all the way around. Of course, you know, I'm a little kid, seven, eight, nine years old, and I could just barely reach these clusters of grapes. And and they were always ripe when we were up there late in the summer, and they would just be dripping with with juice and and sweetness. And, of course, you know, those bees up in there and all that.

And and and and looking back, I just I realized that that something got into my soul where I wanted I wanted to be able to immerse myself in that kind of abundance. And our farm our farm was struggling. It was it was weedy. It was thistles. You you'd have thought we were growing thistles as a crop.

It it it it was it was infertile. It was, you know, it was it was not a it was not an an abundance place. But grandpa's place was an abundance place. And so the the the idea that that just the idea of just being able to fall into that womb of of of, nurturing abundance, just just I think, as they say, it got a hold of me and, and and and never let go.

Joel, can can you speak to how you guys went about restoring your land? There's obviously a your ability to use some of that mobile infrastructure seems like it maybe played a a good role in in how you guys manage that. But the whole management process of restoring infertile land is something that I think a lot of people are really interested in in hearing more about.

Well well, absolutely. So so we we looked at nature and said, well, how does nature build soil? Nature doesn't build soil with ten ten ten chemical fertilizer and and and plows. Nature the the the the deepest, richest soils on the planet are actually under grasslands, not forests and not bushes. They're under prairies, grasslands, the the American Midwest, the the the Pampas Of Argentina, the the Serengeti Of Africa, the the Steppes Of of Mongolia.

These were all these are where the the most fertile deepest soils on the planet are, and they were where the megafauna was. The megafauna, the Mhmm. I mean, from from I mean, historically, you know, the mastodons all the way to, you know, the bison and the wildebeest and the and the, you know, the llamas and alpacas. All of these were were were were this mega fauna. So what you had, you had these perennials as opposed to annuals.

So annuals have to be planted every year. That's like, you know, squash and cucumbers and barley and wheat and corn. Perennials are your are your clovers and grasses and a lot of forbs, you know, grow year after year after year. And so and and the energy flow is completely different between an annual and a perennial. An annual is always putting its energy into some sort of big seed or fruit or something like that.

So it is it is soil energy extractive into some fruit, seed, nut, whatever. Whereas a perennial is is is it places energy in the ground because it needs a bank account of energy in the ground to withstand a flood, a drought, a hot, a cold, you know, to to withstand extremes because because there's nobody around to plant it. It it it doesn't it doesn't rejuvenate by seed as much as it it it rejuvenates from root ground, from from root energy. That's the big difference between a perennial and an annual. So the energy flow is completely different.

And so so that's why the deep soils on the planet were all developed under perennials, and nature has very few annuals. There are annuals, but they're primarily short term healers that you know, after a, you know, a a flood comes through and and, you know, rips up something or a volcano, you know, devastates something. It's it's a kind of a short term placeholder until the perennials can come back in. And so so, you know, we've been here since 1961. We've never planted a seed in the pasture.

All of this all of the the now, you know, we've probably increased from from that point, we've probably increased the the the productive capacity. I'm not exaggerating here. Hang with me about tenfold. Okay? About tenfold.

And and so so that that increase has not come because we plowed or because we bought fertilizer. We haven't even applied fertilizer. I'll tell you what we applied in a minute, but but, you know, it it has come as we have stimulated and leveraged the, you know, the resources on-site and the multispeciation that that nature that nature would have would have normally had. And so so the point is that one of the first things that we did was start moving the cows around with portable electric fence. When you look at herbivores in nature, they're they're nature's pruners of these grasslands.

But the thing about these grasslands, these prairies is that they run they they grow in a cycle. They they grow in a in a s curve. They start slow, then grow real fast, then go into senescence. I call that diaper grass, teenage grass, and nursing home grass. And and so and so if we if we wanna collect more solar energy and convert solar energy into biomass, into carbon, what we want is for that grass to be in that fast growth period, not in diaper stage and not out here in nursing home stage.

And it's the herbivore. Nature uses the herbivore to prune that plant as it approaches senescence to freshen it up and restart it. Just like you know, it's amazing. People would assume that an orchardist who doesn't prune his apple trees is negligent or or or a viticulturist who doesn't prune his grapevines is is negligent. But somehow those of us who who mimic nature's pruners with cattle to prune perennials and refresh and start this for carbon sequestration, somehow we're destroying the planet.

You know? I mean, that's it it's crazy. But but but those bison, the wildebeest, the, you know, the alpacas, the the the water buffalo, all of those things, those are all pruners that restart this this this vegetative cycle so that the grass can regrow and put more energy in the soil, concentrate more more sunlight in a decomposable biomass. So that's one thing. The second thing is that the that the soil is built with decomposition.

It's and so so the more we can get decomposition into the soil on the soil and stimulate carbon decomposition, the better the soil is gonna be. So we began composting. We started doing this carbonaceous diaper under the cows, and we fed hay in the barn, and we let it, you know, build up. The cows trump out the oxygen. It's anaerobic.

We add corn to it. The corn ferments. The cows come out. This beddie pack might be four feet deep. We put in the pigs.

The pigs seek the fermented corn, and as they do that, they aerate the fermented the anaerobic stack, turn it into aerobic compost, and that is our fertilizer program. So so so so instead of buying, you know, chemical fertilizer, we bought a big commercial chipper that we used to generate wood chips from forest work, tree line trimming, junk, down trees, crooked trees, things like that as we upgrade and weed the wood lot. That then becomes integrated. Forest gets integrated into pasture and brings fungi into the bacteria. Grasslands tend to be bacterial.

Forestlands tend to be fungal. The best soils have both bacteria and fungi. And so by integrating the forest land and the open land, we actually build that soil. So the first soil test we took in 1961, we averaged less than 1% organic matter. Today, we average over 8% organic matter.

So so, you know, that's a that's a pretty dramatic difference. And when you realize that one pound of organic matter holds four pounds of water, we can now hold a 130,000 gallons more water per acre now than we did 60 ago. So so this this stuff were I'm not saying that to brag. This stuff works. And and so, you know, as we started down that path, we started doing a portable shade mobile, moving the cows every day, and and we just saw, you know, we just saw nature respond.

Then we added the chickens, and then we added the pigs. And now and then we added turkeys and rabbits and ducks and sheep. And and it's this we call it ballet in the pasture. It's a choreography of animal movement through the pasture and and what, you know, what what produced, you know, a thousand pounds sixty years ago produces 10,000 pounds today.

The the restoration of the ecosystem is amazing. The water cycle point is is one that I find very fascinating where I think you hit on it, but, like, one percent increase or decrease in soil carbon equates to almost, like, two swimming pools worth of water in the soil. And at the same time, we're seeing conventional agriculture, which is not restoring the soil, and we're seeing desertification, soil erosion, and all these other negative externalities in relation to how that land management is is occurring. And I find it fascinating the the comparison and contrast between what you're doing in conventional agriculture. Can you speak to some of the high input topics of agriculture and, like, what you've seen?

Because it seem sounds like you never even really entertained the idea of going the high input route. I'm curious if you ever if you guys ever even thought about it.

No. We we never even thought about it. We we realized we realized that that soil is built, way nature works, the we wanna if call it the template, the template of nature, it's all about decomposition. It's about carbon in situ. In other words, carbon on-site.

How do we how do we leverage the carbon on-site? And so the the whole food system today, the industrial the industrial food system, it is is a primarily segregated system. We we have broken apart these symbiotic relationships. In nature let me just give you an example. In nature, the herbivore goes down into the valley to graze because that's where the best grass is, and then predators drive them up on the hilltop when they're, you know, when they're ready to ruminate.

And and so so they go down. They graze in the valley. They go up to the top of the hill so they can look out and make sure the predators aren't coming. And in doing so, they urinate and defecate on the hilltop. So one of the reasons for animals in nature is to bring gravitationally moving carbon, minerals, and and and vitamins and that that that naturally aggregate in in the valley floor to bring those back up to the ridge top so that you democratize fertility.

Otherwise otherwise, the the ridge tops and slopes would become completely infertile, and everything would collect down in the valleys. So it's the predator cycle. It it's it's the herbivore and the predator cycle that that nature uses and birds, birds too, to defy the gravitational movement that would concentrate minerals and fertility in low ground and instead go against gravity and bring it to high ground. You know? So this so this this this natural, you know, this natural animal animal fertility democratization is is a is a profound ecological principle and something that obviously the Beyond Beef and Impossible Burger folks aren't you know, have no have no appreciation for.

I don't know if they don't have a concept of it, but they certainly don't have an appreciation of it.

And, Joel, one of the things that you mentioned a few minutes ago was this I think you described it as like a ballet and choreography that a lot of your animals on the farm are doing. How can you expand on that ballet and choreography and how important that is to the overall ecosystem health of Polyface?

Sure. So so imagine, you know, the cows are the cows are coming. So you got you got this tall grass. Right? And and because it's it's up there towards senescence.

It's not it's not short overgray stuff. It's, you know, it's full of spiders and moles and voles and and and pollinators. And, I mean, it's just a cacophony of of of biomass abundance and insect and pollinator life. Okay? So the cows come through, and and and they eat most of it.

They trump some of it onto the soil surface. They actually chip up some of the, you know, we call this bobstocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified sequestration fertilization. And they come through, and and and now it's a, you know, it's a it's it's a whole different situation where the they ate a lot, they pooped, they urinated, and they tramped a lot of it on the ground. So we come behind the cows about four or five days with the Eggmobile. So an Eggmobile is simply a portable chicken house.

The chickens free range out from the Eggmobile, and they scratch through the cow patties to eat the fly larvae, also called maggots, as you know. And and and, I mean, to a chicken, a maggot is like, you know, Briar's ice cream. Right? So so so they're they're eating these fly larvae. The fly larvae energize the chickens to scratch.

So they they take this little cow pie, and they spread it into a great big area which fertilizes the pasture. They eat the exposed crickets, grasshoppers, pathogens, and things like that and and and and help to scratch the duff and the and the the dried grass again into the soil surface. And and so the the chickens act as a as a sanitizer behind the cows just like the egret on the rhino's nose. And and and so in so, you know, that's that's one thing that goes through. Obviously, you know, the sheep can go through as well.

The, you know, turkeys turkeys can be on that same pasture. So at different times in a season and occupying different spots at different times in the same field, there might be cows, meat chickens, egg laying chickens, and turkeys all, you know, in the same area. And and and so what that does is not only does it increase the economic viability because you're actually stacking you're you're stacking complementary enterprises on the same land base. So, you know, we're as you know, most most farmers are are monocropping. Even, you know, even beef cattle farmers are monocro they're they're they're just raising beef.

Right? And so and so what we wanna do is permaculture style. We wanna have stacking enterprises that bring more economic benefit on a given acre. That's one thing. The second thing is that then we get, you know, we get the benefits of all not only the the pruning that the cow does, but the pecking and scratching that the chicken does and the the the long legged insect consumption that the turkeys offer.

And the turkeys offer a different and each of these animals offers a different kind of manure, a different a different relationship of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, molybdenum, boron, gobal in their manure. And so because all of them have a different digestive system, and all of that adds a complexity rather than simplicity. Modern conventional agriculture is all predicated on the fact that this is all very, very simple, and it's mechanistic, and and we can simplify this down to to basically, it's mechanical like a bunch of interchangeable parts. Whereas I believe that it's fundamentally complex. In fact, a lot of it is mysterious.

In fact in fact, we've only named 10% of the bacteria in the soil. 9090% of the soil beings have not even been identified yet. That's how little we know about the soil. And and yet and yet, yeah, and yet we've got people, you know, wading into that into that arena like a bunch of swashbuckling pirates, you know, and and we're just gonna, you know, take here and move here and and move this around, you know, with with with complete hubris and no humility to the, you know, to the to the intricacy that's going on. The the the every, you know, every, you know, cubic foot of soil, every second has, you know, a quadrillion exchanges going on just like our microbiome.

Our microbiome has a quadrillion spontaneous decisions happening per millisecond as our as our trillions of microbes. You know, I'll trade you a I'll trade you a boron for some of that polysaccharide, and I'll trade you you know, there there I I just view I just view all this as as kinda Star Wars, you know, when Mhmm. When when Luke Skywalker walks into that space cafe looking for a fast ship, and he first meets Han Han Solo. Right? You've got the Millennium Falcon.

And over in the corner, there's this band playing. You know? There's these all these aliens, you know, two heads and three tails and all this stuff. And that's why I see the soil as all these, you know, alien looking critters. You know?

One's lopping off somebody's head. Another one's got a got a narwhal spear. He, you know, he sucks out the, you know, the aqueous little four legged thing and, you know, sucks it out. All this stuff's going on like a you know, it it makes Steven Spielberg look like child's play. It's that it's that exciting, the the drama, the theater, and the cinema going on in our microbiome and in the soil.

So, Joel, you you bring the the carbon content in the soil from 1% to 8%. Your production capacity increases tenfold. Can you speak to the quality of the product that you're producing at the endpoint of that journey? So like, is the is the beef and chicken and and pig meat that you guys are producing, is that better quality after you've made all these changes on the farm?

Oh, is it better? Yeah. Well, you're you're a you you just you just almost, like, rattle the chain to see if the dog will bark, don't you? Yeah. That was

a that was a softball. You tee that one up.

Softball. That was a softball. So, you know, we've had numerous empirical studies done, fat studies, saturated, unsaturated, mono, different things. You know, one interesting one that we did several years ago was with 11 other pastured egg producers in in America. We we looked at 12, you know, 12 things, and and we sent them sent the eggs to a lab.

And what we're trying to to settle was so many people say, oh, come on. An egg is an egg is an egg. There's not you know, there's no difference in eggs. And and so we looked at twelve twelve nutrients, and and it wasn't it wasn't little 10% variations. It was it was dramatic.

I'll give you one. Folic acid. Folic acid is really important for pregnant women. And the USDA like, the you go to the store and it's got the USDA nutrient label on there. It'll it'll tell you that that the egg has, like, forty eight micrograms of folic acid per egg.

And and and our eggs you ready for this? Our eggs averaged 1,038 micrograms per egg. You know? So we're not talking about little percentage deviations. You know, riboflavin in beef riboflavin in beef in in in grass finished beef, you know, is is 300% more than riboflavin in corn fed beef.

We say, well, you know, what's the importance of riboflavin? Well, riboflavin is the calming essential fatty acid. In other words, it it it calms your nerves. So, you know, you wonder sometimes why everybody's, shooting off and being short with everybody and shooting up schools and road rage and, you know, all the part of it is because we're not getting, you know, we're not getting riboflavin, you know, in our meats. The another one, I mean, there there are numerous one of these.

There there's a real interesting there's a real interesting thing that happened with, you know, with cooking. So we have tried to work with numerous, institutions, and we've we've succeeded a couple times, but we've failed many times. And most of the times we fail, it's because they have some sort of cooking protocol. And what we've learned from all of our chefs and our and our institutional customers is that all of our meats cook about 20%, 25% shorter period of time than the store bought stuff. And and and they're they're we don't know exactly why.

I mean, whether you're barbecuing a chicken, you know, cooking a hamburger, whatever it is, it it making pork barbecue, pulled pork, it always cooks way faster. And there are a couple things. One is that because of the exercise so so here's an interesting one. I don't know if you guys ever heard this, that that muscle becomes moist when it gets exercised. It gets dry when it's not exercised.

So so so muscles muscles that are exercised are tough but moist. Muscles that are not exercised are tender but dry. So think about a chicken a chicken breast. Tender but dry, whereas the thigh is tougher but more moist. And and and and moist, I'm gonna say succulent.

Okay? Succulents. So so succulents has to do with movement, and and tenderness has to do with nonmovement. And so and so what what we have found is that that what that that our meats are are more moist. We actually learned this.

The main test that we passed on this was with Chipotle. We supplied Chipotle for ten years before they went to centralized and and and and kind of lost their lost their lost their convictions, if you will. Anyway, we we supply we supply two of their restaurants for ten years, and and and they only used pork shoulders for their carnitas because the shoulder is way more moist than the ham because there's more exercise. The front of the animal gets more exercise than the back of the animal. And so and so when they when they said, well, we're only gonna use the shoulders.

I said, well, we can't we can't work with you because we gotta move the shoulders and the ham because we gotta use more of the more of the pig. You know? If you're gonna use eight or 10 a week, we gotta move the rest of this thing. And so they actually had to ship ship them out some hams, and they found that our hams were as moist as any shoulder they could find. And and in fact in fact, my father-in-law used to grow pigs, you know, when he was a kid, and and they had a a a 24 inch threshold in the in the little pig pig shed where the pigs would jump in to get water and feed and stuff.

And I asked my father-in-law, you know, after, you know, when I was over there courting Teresa, my wife, and I said, you know, why do you have that 24 inch? I mean, looks like those pigs have to really work to jump up in there every time. You know? He said, oh, that's the exercise of the hams and makes the hams real moist. And and so this was something that that people knew long part of food lore, you know, back in the day.

And today, it's all about just faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper. Nobody asks about taste. Nobody asks about nutritional quality. It's just it's just it's just protoplasmic structure. How fast, how cheap can we grow it?

And and and what we're seeing is there are dramatic differences in, you know, in in the quality, both nutrition, taste, and handling, dramatically different all the way across the board.

Joel, one of the things you touched on a few minutes ago was just the the micronutrient profile, the eggs from polyphase. You mentioned how the riboflavin is off the chart, all the micronutrients. Do you think that that's part of where we've gone wrong within our food system is this tendency to overfocus on calories and macronutrients, proteins, carbs, and fat versus the actual micronutrient profile that you're able to extract from your food?

Oh, with without a doubt. Absolutely. We we have seen look. Fundamentally, in our culture, food as v is viewed as as as primarily just inert stuff. It's it's like petroleum in the car.

Right? It's and in fact, now, think about it, sterility sterility is now equated with safety. So if we want safe food, it's gotta be sterilized. And so what we have is a situation where Coca Cola is sterile. I mean, it won't you can't grow a you can't grow mold in Coca Cola.

Right? But but raw raw milk is unsafe because it's unsterile. And and but but our microbiome is not sterile. I mean, our microbiome is a petri dish, you know, of microbes. And and so, you know, Velveeta cheese.

I mean, you could squirt Velveeta cheese on the table, walk away from it for two years. It doesn't mold. It doesn't dry. It doesn't do it just sits there for two years. It doesn't change at all.

But you you put real cheese on a table and an ambient temperature in five days, it's all fuzzy, grows legs, and walks off the table. And and and so so so, essentially, if look. If it won't rot if it won't rot, it won't decompose. If it won't decompose, it won't digest. So, I mean, that's such a simple rule.

And yet think I mean, red dye 29, monosodium glutamate, high fructose corn syrup. I mean, all of our not all, but but but most of our foods, the conventional foods down in the supermarket are all selected for shelf life, for for nonrotting, nondigesting. That's what they're selected for. Nobody's selecting tomatoes for nutrient profile. They're selecting tomatoes that can withstand bouncing around in the back of a truck for 1,500 miles, you know, going from the farm to the supermarket.

And and if that's what you're selecting for tomatoes, you're gonna get cardboard tomatoes. Cardboard tomatoes don't have nutrition in them. Anybody that's had a, you know, a homegrown homegrown, you know, juice running down your elbow tomato knows the difference between the cardboard tomato at the supermarket and a homegrown tomato. And and and so, you know, those those differences are really, really easy to to tell. You know?

And and I would just I would just say this too. One of the most dramatic things that that I ever saw was was the the pet test. So we had a customer. So we had a customer who had a little pet dog and little Pomeranian or something. You know?

And it it wouldn't eat meat out of it wouldn't eat meat. She she know what was wrong with it. Why don't you know? It wouldn't eat ever eat meat. And and so she heard about us, and she wanted to come out and get some get some meat.

And so she came out, and her husband gave her the raspberries. Oh, you're gonna pay, you know, an arm and a leg, and it can't be worth anything, blah blah blah. And she came out anyway and got some, went home. She's she's in the kitchen fixing, you know, something, and the dog's in. And the dog's just worried her death, yipping at her heels, just care.

She said, look. You know, you don't even like me. Why? Why are you yipping around? You worried her so much.

She finally dropped a piece of meat on the floor, and the dog immediately dropped on it and and devoured it just as her husband came down the stairs to the kitchen. He saw that. He said, wherever you went and got that meat, that's the only meat I'm eating the rest of my life. And and and they trusted their dog more than anything else. You know?

And so she told me that story. I couldn't believe it. So so I actually went to the store, got some meat, and and and and got some of ours, and I put it out. We had four cats. We didn't have a Pomeranian dog.

We had four cats at the time. And I I put the tooth out on a on paper plates on a back porch and and sat back to watch. Those cats came up. They smelled they put their noses and smelled the stuff from the supermarket, and then all four of took pictures of it. All four of them surrounded the paper plate with with our it was ground beef on it, and they they ate it and almost ate the plate and licked it up before they would even before they would even go over and look at the adjacent I mean, I didn't put them five feet apart.

I put them, you know, six inches apart, and and they wouldn't even look at that. And so I always tell people, if you don't trust yourself or trust the doctor or trust my slick marketing campaign, ask your pets, and your pets will tell you. That's what you need to do.

What do you attribute that to? Is that their ability to actually smell some of these nutrients that are more abundant in your meat?

Oh oh, absolutely. You know, animals animals are so much more tuned in. You know? They don't have TVs. You know?

So they they they they don't they don't have social media. You know? They don't have stuff going on in their in their heads and their ears, you know, telling them, you know, you're supposed to you know, you can look like, you know, whatever, Bo Derek, you know, if you eat like this. And and they don't have any I'm I'm dating myself. You know, Bo D, she's, like, not young anymore.

Anyway

Might have to do some research on that one when we get off on three.

Yeah. No. She's she's beautiful. She's beautiful.

It's a good it's a good pick.

Yeah. So so so my my my point my point is that that animals are so, you know, keyed to the situation. They're not swayed by peer dependency. They're not swayed by, you know, you know, media messaging, that sort of thing. And so, yes, they have a very innate innate sense.

Listen. I had a neighbor. He he bought a little place, a homestead near us. He was buying some hay. And we were talking about hay one day, and and, he said, you know, would you mind, you know, selling me a couple bales, and I can just see if if there's any difference in in in hay, you know, in the community.

And so so he he took a patty of our hay, put it down the bottom of the manger. He had a milk cow. Put it in the bottom of the manger, and then he took this other hay he'd been buying and covered it all up, put it stacked it up in the manger. Alright? The cow walked in there.

She took all that hay from the top, flung it out of the manger to get to ours in the bottom that was grown on compost instead of chemical fertilizer. Listen. Those animals are so much smarter than us. You know, when it comes to this, it's they haven't lost their instinctual primitive innate, you know, capacity to, you know, to sense, to smell, to, you know, to to to know how they feel. I mean, we we we don't even ask we don't even ask our bodies how they feel.

We we eat stuff, come up, you know, oh, I feel terrible. And then we go back tomorrow, eat the same thing. You know? If you get up and feel terrible, why don't you start why don't you eat something else? Try something else.

And if you feel good when you get up, well, then, you know, stay with that. And, but we we don't even we don't even trust ourselves. We just assume, well, you know, I'm I'm I'm eating like everybody else, and I have a problem. I go to the doctor. I get, you know, Zentac or I get, you know, Tums or whatever and fix it.

And and and listen. You're not having digestive orders because you're you're not having digestive disorders because you're drug deficient. No. Is sick because they're drug deficient. And and so, you know, you need to you need to be aware of that.

Mhmm. Joel, speaking of that kind of intuitive approach to eating, what approach has worked the best for you, your wife, and your family over the years to help you kind of metabolically thrive and and feel your best?

Yeah. Well, it's it's a great question, and I don't I don't know that we have it all figured out. But, you know, I I think a lot is this whole thing I'm talking about. How do you feel? And and for me for me, I'm a meat and fruit guy.

I thrive on fruit, and I thrive on meat. Do I eat vegetables? Yeah. You know, I eat some vegetables, but but I love bread, but bread doesn't love meat. So I go easy on bread.

Mhmm. And and you know, some of it's genetic. Some of it is just our our genetic soup is is is amazing. And when you look at different cultures around the world and, you know, what what they eat, You know, I think part of our problem as Americans is we just don't eat much variety anymore. If you get if you get Dolly Madison Dolly Madison or Martha Washington's cookbooks from either Montpelier or or or Mount Vernon.

And, Harrison, you know what I'm talking about? These these are our our Virginia, you know, our great Virginia icons. Right? But you get their cookbooks, and you know what? Half of the stuff in there, we don't even know what they are.

You know, currant berries and goose and I mean, they they have, like like, you know, 50 different kinds of of fruit that they grew on their on their homesteads. I mean, this was common. Why? They did because they had to grow it. They didn't have Costco.

They didn't have Walmart. Right? So they had to grow it. And and, you know, the Australian Aborigines, they say, ate 2,500 different things routinely. 2,500 different food stuffs.

Americans eat what? Like, you know, 25. We just we just don't eat any any variety, and and yet our microbiome is dependent on variety. So let me let me just say a word about that when it comes to pastured pastured livestock. So getting these chickens out on a on a perennial diversified pasture.

What we want is we wanna be able to go out in that pasture and in a, you know, in a in a a few square feet, we wanna be able to find ten, fifteen, 20 varieties of plants, you know, clovers and grasses and forbs and and legumes and different things. And so one of the one of the fastest ways that a modern American one of the fastest ways a modern American that can diversify their diet rapidly is eating pastured chickens, pastured eggs, pastured beef, that's on a a perennial diversified pasture sword. Not alfalfa, not corn, but a diversified perennial pasture sword because every one of those plants brings in a different chemical, a different vitamin, a different mineral into the body, into the muscle tissue. And so we can tap in to that that that variety, that that vegetative variety by eating something that's been eating that kind of buffet in their diet.

That's such a nuanced point. It's so fascinating too.

Yeah. It is. So, hey. Listen. You know?

To me, I would much rather get my salad my salad in a good juicy burger or a T bone steak than have to eat a salad. I mean, I do eat salad. But, anyway, it it it makes it makes a humorous way to to look at how are you, you know, how are you getting that diversity in your diet.

Joe, one of the things oh. Was Eric, do mind if I

I was oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

I just had a really just really quick question just based off that because I'm very interested. Harrison and I have talked about this a lot, Joel, and we've had on a few guests that have talked about pasture raised versus grass fed, grass finished meat. You were touching on some of the imperial studies and some of the nutritional studies you've done with your own meat. Do you find is there does is pasture raised versus grass fed, grass finished more impactful in terms of the nutrient content of your meat? I don't know how nuanced that question is, but just just curious what matters more.

Yeah. Well well, as you can imagine, there's there's all sorts of, whatever, clever speak and, you know, greenwashing, out there in the in the movement. And so so we like to use the term for beef. For beef, we like to say grass finished. Because right now, the industry says that if a cow has ever eaten one blade of grass, then she's obviously grass fed.

Well, that's not what a person when I say grass fed, they mean not grain fed. Right? But but but the, you know, the industry uses very, you know, clever speak and and wordsmithing and to obfuscate things. But the omnivore, we we don't we can't say grass finished on the omnivore, which is, you know, which is a turkey, chicken, pork, because they're eating a lot of grain supplementation. So there, we use the term pasture raised or pasture based in order to in order to differentiate from, you know, from a from a factory farm.

And, of course, the the the the next well, then what kind of pasture? Because now that's being adulterated with people that have stationary houses and a moonscape yard or or, like, the organic cert organic certification that requires outdoor well, they they make a little three foot apron in a 10,000 bird house and call that pasture. The chickens never go outside. They never see it. Even the the in France, the the you know, it's not just Americans.

In France, the La Belle Rouge chickens La Belle Rouge, which is their, you know, top brand of of of chicken in France, They even they say that the the the pasture doesn't do anything for the chicken except psychologically. The chicken can see out there and and think that it, you know, it's okay. So there's actually there are actually efforts right now to to to create video screens in houses. There there was actually an experiment done on dairy cows to put eye goggles with pictures of of of pasture in a confinement dairy, and the cows actually responded and gave more milk because they thought they were on, you know, on a a bucolic setting. So there's all sorts of crazy things going on.

And and the main thing is, you know, look at the website carefully. You know? I mean, we we've got we've got a organic certified outfit up near us, here in the Shenandoah Valley. And if you go on their website, meet our farmers, you yeah. Meet their farmers.

There's a dad and mom, and they got their couple kids, and they're all standing in front of their confinement chicken house. They're not a chicken on there's not a chicken outside. There's no chicken on pasture. Those chickens aren't getting they're not getting any worms or bugs or fresh sunshine or anything. And so, you know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to to to look at a website and and, you know, and and see what's, you know, what's what's actually going on.

I was I was asked about an outfit that's, you know, shipping all over, and they're trying to present themselves as, you know, the homesteaders answered to the, you know, food system. And so I said, yeah, I'll, you know, I'll I'll look at their website. So I looked at their website. I said clicked on on chicken. You know?

Let's see how they do their chicken. And the homepage of their chicken is a homepage with the background is five Tyson chicken houses. Well, you know, that's not a homesteader. You know, that's not a pastured operation. So so be smart when you're looking at websites.

Obviously, the best is to go visit the farm. That's the best thing. And and, you know, turn off Netflix and just go visit the farm. But if you can't, you can actually really get skilled at at looking at websites and comparing and what the language what's the pictures? What's the language?

And there are there are definitely, you know, red flags out there that you can see what's going on.

Joel, one of the things you brought up was variety. And I was really curious on getting your take on how we've almost bred variety out of a lot of the species in our food system, whether it's, you know, corn, soy, wheat, like, the variety of those plants has shrunk over, you know, from nineteen hundreds to, you know, even a few decades later. I think it's, like, you know, only a handful of species that are still being bred for those. And then the same thing with livestock and other animals. Is is that does that play into the that variety topic that you were talking about?

Oh, absolutely. Genetic genetic diversity has been nature's, whatever adapt you know, adaptable, wild card, right, for forever. It's genetic diversity. And and and that's why we have so many different breeds that have geographic names because, you know, Guernsey came from the Guernsey Island. The the, you know, Scottish Highlander didn't come from Senegal.

You know? It came from the Scottish Highlands. And so, so what we have are these these, these geographical, genetic, you know, types that thrived in a certain, area, certain climate. And so what we would like to see at our farm, you know, we're we're now hatching egg layers, chickens, and and we're, you know, we have our own brood cow herd. We also buy calves.

We have brood cows. And and what what we'd like to see is basically a, you know, a swooped cow, a swooped chick, you know, one that that thrives in our bioregion. And and then and then, you know, 50 miles away, there'd be another one. 50 miles away, there'd be another one. And so instead of getting hooked up with heritage breeds and stuff that worked, you know, five hundred years ago, let's let's let's take what our forefathers did in breeding and genetic selection, and and let's and let's create for our grandchildren, let's create a thousand new brands, new genetic names that are that are that show special promise for adaptability in different bioregions.

You know, that would actually add diversity to the gene pool rather than detracting diversity from the gene pool, which is what we have right now. Oh, you know, it it it it's Angus. Angus cow. That that's that's all you see. You know?

Well, there, you know, there there's a lot of others with a lot of different traits, and and let's let's let's let's add genetic diversity. You know? No no one animal, no one genetic profile has all the answers. You always there are always trade offs. Well, we we get maternal, but we lose fertility.

We get fertility and we lose longevity. We get you know? And and you you you trade off. So you're looking for, you know, you're looking for a balance within the, you know, within the genetic pool.

Joel, one of the things I've I've heard you speak to is that you guys have a processing plant on-site. Is that correct?

We do our own poultry. Okay. We don't we don't do beef and pork, but we do our we do do our own poultry. And I we co own with another partner a small slaughterhouse. Yes.

That that does our beef and pork. Yes.

How do you well, one of the things we talk about all the time is the concentration in that industry in particular. There's basically four players, and I think not a lot of people realize that that's one of the biggest bottlenecks in our food system around the processing side. How do you think about that topic and sort of the problems that it creates?

Yeah. Well, you know, that that has developed over time, and and it has been justified by, you know, using phrases like, you know, scale and efficiency and, you know, cheap food and and those kinds of things. But, of course, recently, especially since COVID, that efficiency is starting to to break down, and we're seeing a new a profound awareness of fragility. And so the the new operative term is resilience, and I think people are beginning to realize that if if you're not resilient first, if if you don't survive first, there's nothing to be efficient about later. So the first thing is to be resilient, to to be to be a survivor.

And and so, you know, what we're what what's happening right now and what happened in COVID is these great big outfits, as you mentioned perfectly, the the concentration of these outfits are are are are fragile when you have viruses, when you have people on top of each other working in moist, dark, tight conditions, and and and and you're just vulnerable to diseases. That's just the way it is. You know, a a a a Tyson chicken house is far more vulnerable to a disease than a backyard flock of chickens. Either one of them could get sick. Absolutely, it could, but the vulnerability is way higher on the on the concentrated, you know, larger thing.

We we all know that intuitively. I mean, if, you know, if if your county suddenly had a outbreak of of the flu, people don't say, well, let's take all the kids and and and let's put them all in the gymnasium for a week till the flu passes. No. They close the schools and say, stay home. Don't go you know, don't visit.

Stay around. Let the thing run its course. We we we we intuitively understand that that pathogens thrive in concentration, and they and they they are hampered or they decrease with decentralization. And so, so the the question I would just ask anyone who's reasonable listening to this, podcast, I would simply ask, let me ask you this. If instead of a 155,000 employee processing plants in 2020, if instead of 755,000 employee processing plants in 2020, what if instead we had had we had had a 150,020 per 20 employee processing plants all over The US in all the little communities, do you think we would have had as big a glitch in the food system and and and in the and in the the the viral impact within those processing facilities if we had been that democratized and and and and deconcentrated, decentralized.

And I think intuitively, we don't need a rocket scientist to tell us if we'd had a 150,000 plants instead of a 150 a 150,000 small plants instead of a 150 mega plants, we'd have been much less vulnerable. And so what's happening today is that these big, what I call, aircraft carrier aircraft carrier outfits are spending a lot of time now in human resources. You know, they they wake up every morning worrying about, oh, man. Is is John down there in, you know, in in quadrant c gonna turn us into OSHA for not having the right, you know, COVID precautions or the mat right Protective equipment. I mean, yeah, there's all these things going on.

And and and that drives the thinking. It it it it in a mechanical term, we say it's it's carbon on the valves. Whereas a a place like ours is like a speedboat. You know? And and we're able to navigate stones and rocks and shoals, and, you know, we're we're nimble.

You know, there's there's a business book out. It's not the big that eats the small. It's the fast that eat the slow. It's all about being nimble. And so when you're smaller, you you you are more adaptable.

You are more nimble. And and what's fascinating to me is for the first time in my life, we're seeing, for example, Tyson in the last twelve months raised beef prices 32%. We only raised ours 10%. Wow. Because because we don't buy any fertilizer.

If we don't get any fertilizer from Russia, who cares? We don't even buy the stuff. You know? If we don't get wheat from Ukraine, who cares? We don't buy Ukrainian wheat.

We get all of our grain from farmers within, you know, 50 miles of us. So we have a direct supply chain. And so when you have this concentration and these expanded supply lines in in in in, you know, in in the whatever, disruptive times, what you have is fragility rather than resilience. And when you when you democratize and decentralize, which is part of diversity, okay, what you have then is you might not have the same level of efficiency, but you have resist resistance, resilience, and you have adaptability and and nimbleness. And if there's ever a time when we needed that, it's right now.

I know this is a super loaded question, but how do we democratize and decentralize in a way that will allow for these the hyper localization of processors? Because, obviously, we're looking at it from an outsider's perspective. I heard it's incredibly difficult for someone to just start a processing facility, the legality, the startup costs, etcetera. So how do we go about decentralizing this?

You're right.

It's so loaded. I know.

That is such a loaded question.

I know.

Do we have another two hours? No. I'll I'll I'll I'll convince this as fast as I can. I've got I've got a couple ideas here to just throw out. One is one is that you are exactly right.

The, you know, the bureaucracy grows every day. It it just continues to grow. You know, it was interesting back, you know, back when we had all those E. Coli and salmonella outbreaks, you know, twenty years ago, there was a there was a big study conducted by, at that time, the general accounting office, GAO. It's now it's not not not the GAO anymore or something else.

But, anyway, they did this this this bipartisan study on on, you know, on pathogens in the meat system in The US. And guess what? You know? They they put their finger on exactly the right They they said the reason we have this problem is centralization and production, centralization and processing, and long long distance transportation, you know, large scale warehousing, and subtherapeutic use of antibiotic. I mean, you know, they nailed it directly.

Now wouldn't you think wouldn't you wouldn't you think that somebody within the system would say, okay. If that's the culprit, you know, what's the what's the opposite? What's the opposite of of large scale, processing? Well, it'd be small scale. It'd be like community abattoirs and community canneries and, you know, a community, processing food system.

What's the opposite of concentrated production? Oh, I think those would be like smaller family farms. Right? Diversified farms with lots of different species on them. And so we we we know the answers.

We we just we just don't do it. And so so the the the the onerous, the onerous licensing has become just just, mind numbing. So I've got a couple thoughts. One is that that when when compliance becomes so tyrannous that circumvention is more efficient, we need to go to we need to go to circumvention. So a a friend and I, John Moody and I, have convened now for three years.

We've done several of these. They're called rogue food conferences. Rogue RFC, rogue food conferences. Our next one's coming up in in Tennessee. I think it's Tennessee.

Is it Tennessee or Kentucky? I'm not sure. You you you can you can Google rogue food rogue food conference just like it says. Yeah. August 16 and wait a minute.

Where is it? I'm not I'm not sure here. Yeah. Here it is. December 11 or December 10.

December 10, Rogue Food Tennessee Rogue Food Conference. And and what these are, these these are conferences where we're finding the most clever, innovative circumventors in the country. People who have figured out how to transact meat and poultry commerce without any licensing whatsoever. Everything from personal member personal membership, associations like country clubs to, you know, a contract with your customer. We co own the animal, and and and I'll butcher it on my front porch.

I want the guts. You take the meat. You know? I can put you my own animal. I mean, there's all sorts of creative.

There's a food church. Food church is being used where one of the membership perks is, you know, you get you get meat. There's there's all sorts of cool stuff going on, and we're showcasing these people who have basically, you know, thumbed their nose at the bureaucracy and said, you know, forget you. We're we're gonna we're gonna transact business anyway. The the second the second option, which I think really has, traction, and I would love for the Libertarian party to to take this up, is what I call the Uberization of the food system.

So so a quick quick history. So, you know, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker was embedded in the village back, you know, five hundred years ago, and everybody knew who the good ones were and who the bad ones were because they all lived in the village. They saw their kids. They, you know, they saw them. They went to church together.

They went to meet you know, talk to each other on the street, and they knew who the Charlottesons were and who the good ones were. And so you didn't need a, you know, a bureaucracy to to to ride herd and give give licenses. Well, with the industrial food system, all of these the butcher and a baker and a candlestick maker became so large that nobody wanted in their backyard and and and and and so they put razor wire up and guard houses and no trespassing signs. Well, people get scared when they see stuff behind no trespassing. What's going on back there?

So people demanded demanded a a bureaucracy bigger than the industry. That gave us the food safety inspection service, the the food drug administration, blah blah blah. So we got an industrial bureaucracy to handle an industrial food system. Well, what's happened now is with the Internet with the Internet, we have completely democratized the the audit the the the time auditability and brought back at global scale the village voice of the butcher baker and candlestick maker. Who would have guessed thirty years ago that people by the millions would jump into cars with people who don't have a license, nothing at all, but nothing but an Uber app.

The reason is because because the the the riders can can can judge can judge the drivers, and the drivers can judge the riders. And so the Internet has democratized the audit trail in real time to take the government clear out of it. Airbnb Airbnb forty years ago, who would have thought that within twenty years, there would be more hospitality rooms in the world than Marriott, Sheraton, and Hilton combined, and nobody drove a nail in a wall. Can you believe that? And and and it was all done because of the of the mass democratization of access that the Internet supplied.

So I'm suggesting that just like we have Uber ized the the transportation system, we've we've Airbnb ed, you know, Uber the the the hospitality industry, why not let's now Uber the food system and and and say, if I if I'm happy, if I'm as a as a voluntary a voluntary decision, why can't I, as a consenting adult, I'm using loaded language here, as a consenting adult exercise freedom of choice to transact business with a friend without a bureaucrat getting in between our our our decision? If I wanna come to your farm, ask around, look around, and as a voluntary consenting adult exercise freedom of choice for my microbiome, what's wrong with that? And and so so there there is there is momentum, I think, in the system for for moving in that direction. And so right now, you know, that being said, there are numerous modular things. There's plant in a box.

There there there are modular little, you know, little plants springing up. But the problem the problem with all these and I'm not opposed to them. I'm just saying that all of the food safety know because we co own a small slaughterhouse with 25 employees, and and all of the regulations are size prejudicial. It's much easier to comply if you're big than if you're small. We have the same paperwork to fill out as a plant.

Even though we only do fifty fifty cows a week, we have the same paperwork as a plant that does 50 cows a minute. Okay? And and so it it so the the the prejudice so so it takes us it takes us at our plant $500 to do what Iowa Beef Packers does in in in $80. So when when you have, you know, $80 versus $500, that's a huge price prejudice when it comes to the marketplace. So that's what's happening within the system, and and that's, and that's what creates these these arbitrary capricious hurdles for small scale production, and it puts small scale producers at a price disadvantage in the marketplace.

And so so yeah. I I wish I had a magic recipe. I can tell you it's it's a it's a huge problem. You know? As the society as the society goes into dysfunction, you know, the the big $64,000,000 question is, is the government gonna get worse and worse, or will the government just cease to exist and and and and fall into disarray?

And I think, historically, we have to say the government's gonna get worse and worse and worse until until we finally have collapse and it implodes. Have no idea when that will be, but it doesn't bode well. So I'm a big believer in circumvention at this point, a circumvention rather than compliance, and let's let's put our creativity on our heads and forget and forget trying to figure out how to bow and instead figure out how to buck.

Joel, have you found during the past two two years, high tension time period, that a lot of your ideas that you just talked about, were they becoming more validated? And were were people or I guess my my ultimate question is, what have you learned over the past two years during this pandemic time period, you know, through operating your farm, through talking to more farmers? Like, what's kind of been your big takeaways from that time period as it relates to all the things that you were just talking about in terms of democratizing the food system?

Yeah. Well well, first of all, it has been perhaps the most affirming two years of my life.

I

mean, I've been this this ugly this ugly cinder you know, ugly Cinderella in the ashes all my life being accused of being a, you know, a bioterrorist and a a what do you wanna do? You know, murder half the world because we know you can't feed the world, you know, that sort of thing. And suddenly, you know, we're we're we're finding we're sitting in the driver's seat. You know? We're we're we're seeing this.

And and we now have, literally, a homestead tsunami going on in the country. I mean, people are leaving the city. They're looking for two, three, five, ten acres. They're looking for self reliance. They're looking for this opportunity, and and there are homesteading fairs and conferences just springing up all over the country.

And and it it it is absolutely one of the most exciting times I've ever been alive. For us personally in our business, it's the first time in my life that we feel like we're actually becoming literally by the day, more competitive in pricing in the marketplace because we're not subject we're not subject to to what to the big things. I mean, I mean, look at gas costs. You know, the the average farm in America, half of their expenses are petroleum. Half of their expenses.

On our farm, only only 5% of our expenses are petroleum. Now do I like high gas prices? No. I don't like it. But think about the viability.

Think about our viability. If we're if we're 5% fuel oriented versus 50% fuel oriented, that that means at least we'll be the last guy standing. And, of course, you know, that by the time you're the last guy standing, somebody else, you know, figured out how to how to join you, you know, on the mountain. And so there there is so what I've learned is both encouragement and affirmation. I've I've seen a a literally a a tsunami of interest in small scale, you know, food production and and rural, what I call, agrarian bunkers around the country.

And and and and what I'm what I'm optimistic about is just the whole, you know, price differentiation as our resiliency shows itself credible and valid, we by the day, we become more and more, you know, more and more a valid option within the within the system. That's that's very exciting. So, you know, there there's a lot there's a lot to be frustrated and angry about in in this whole, deal, but I try to encourage people to say, look. At the bottom of the day, yes, you can be angry. You can be frustrated.

That's all negative. Let's see if we can invert that and take all that negative energy and and focus it into positive innovation and creativity so that we can be hope and help when the culture becomes hopeless and helpless.

Wow. That's so powerful. So it's something we love to ask our guests as we wrap up our conversations. We love to just say, you know, when you think about the future future of the food system and just humanity in general, are you generally optimistic? And it sounds like for you, you definitely are.

Is that fair to say?

I'm I'm I'm I'm pessimistic about the overall where the culture's going. I'm pessimistic about the overall society and the culture, but I'm extremely optimistic about what we as individuals and communities as we as we geographically, whatever, proximate into into a new tribalism of shared value and and aggregate to ourselves people who know how to build things, fix things, and grow things. We need our communities to be looking at our our our eclectic skill mastery base. Who knows how to grow something? Who knows how to fix stuff?

Who knows how to build stuff? And and we need to actually be investing in those relationships. If that means pulling your money out of the stock market and investing in some is a diesel mechanic school or or, you know, plumbing or some sort of a a vocational skill or or, goodness, taking some people that you that you've put off knowing in your community, take them out to dinner, you know, build relationships. Mean, that's where I think we're entering a time where people are realizing that those kinds of it's the nonmonetary things that are gonna be more valuable than money, especially since money has gone off the rails.

Joel, maybe before we wrap up, for someone who's been listening and saying, oh, this this Joel Salatin guy is really onto something here. He he's hit the nail on the head with in terms of creating better quality food, but how can you possibly feed the world or feed our population in this way? How do you think about, you know, that that topic in general, just supplying enough food for people? Is it a community based approach like you've been talking about, or, you know, how do you think about that?

Yeah. Well, there again, I have a whole one hour presentation to answer that question. One of it's one of my most popular ones.

I saved it right for the end.

Yeah. But but but I'll I'll give you just a couple bullet points. First of all, right now right now, the world is throwing away almost 50% of human edible food. It it it's past the sell by date. It's blemished.

It's got a little rust on it. It's not perfect. Blah blah blah. And and so right now, we're we're that that that level of throwing away food has never happened in human history before. We've always had, you know, different streams.

You know, if the cabbage isn't perfect, it goes into sauerkraut. If the apple isn't perfect, it goes into applesauce. But but we've lost those, you know, we've lost those those salvage strains today. And and so, you know, almost half of the food in the world. So the the point is there's plenty of food.

You know, don't don't worry about running out of food. There's plenty of it. Number two, America. America has 35,000,000 acres of lawn and 36,000,000 acres housing and feeding recreational horses. That's 71,000,000 acres.

That's enough to feed the entire country without a single farm. So so and I haven't even gotten to golf courses yet. So so so the truth is that we are not even scratching the surface on productive capacity. And and and number three, if we integrated our system so so, you know, going back to the first one, instead of having ornamental trees, we could have edible landscaping. It doesn't take any more room to to grow an apple tree as it does, you know, a a non fruit bearing apple tree.

So let's take our yards and, you know, let's let's let's let's ediblize them. I I wrote a book called Polyface Micro about how to have chickens and rabbits in a Manhattan apartment without smell. And so so, you know, we we can micro down beautifully these systems to integrate them. So, you know, we can have I mean, Pat Foreman wrote City Chicks, and she pointed out that if one in three households had enough chickens to eat their food scraps, there would not be an egg industry in The United States. That would produce all the eggs we need without a single egg in the supermarket.

So so we could need to integrate integrate our spaces rather than segregate our spaces. And and and and and then and then beyond that, for sure, the biological approach, this whole idea that, you know, that that that nonchemical farming isn't as productive, it stems from the whole, you know, from the from the old notion that, you know, that chemicals beat out chemicals beat out compost. Well, the problem was that it took a while for the for for compost that sir Albert Howard developed in 1943. It it took a while for that to for all the ingredients to metabolize. We needed chainsaws and chippers and black plastic pipe and and and front end loaders to to to really metabolize an efficient compost system.

And and and so it the point of innovation always is a ragged edge where you have this point of innovation and then you have, you know, other things around it. And so, you know, compost was an innovation in 1943. Took about, you know, twenty years for for for the the infrastructure to metabolize around it. Meanwhile, chemicals, you know, chemicals were the chemical approach was really given a shot in the arm by World War one, World War two, which required n, p, and k, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus to make ammunition. And so the war effort subsidized the chemical laboratory, mining, distribution, marketing systems so that the end of World War two, with a lot of farm boys dead in the war, dead sitting there, what am I gonna do?

Well, you can either do compost, which requires shoveling, shoveling, shoveling, shoveling some more, or you can put on this little bag of ten ten ten, which would you choose? So be gentle on grandpa. You know? You and I in the same position probably would have reached for the same thing. And and so the fact is and then it took about twenty years for the metabolism of compost to beat out the to beat out the chemicals, but the but but the the the narrative the narrative, the land grant colleges, and the and The US, duh, I call it, The US, duh, they that had been clear the orthodoxy by that time, by the nineteen sixties, was well entrenched in the chemical approach.

And and and that's why 1961, when Rachel Carson wrote silent spring, know, that was the wake up call. Uh-oh. You know, now maybe we've gone too far. Here's the point, guys. The point 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 in the Gulf Of Mexico.

That's the truth.

Man, I feel like I just got a PhD in in everything, land management and food system. This has been, this has been amazing.

It's a mic drop right there.

Joel Joel, we're so grateful to to have had you on. This has been an amazing conversation, and our audience is gonna love it. So really appreciate you taking the time to join us, and you are always welcome back on the Meat Mafia podcast. So, hopefully, we can get a part two going at some point in the future.

Thank you. Glad to do it. All you gotta do is holler. You know how you know how to get ahold of me. And and thank you for the opportunity and the platform, and, come see us come see us when you can.

We will.

Absolutely. Harry, we should do part two at Polyface, do a live podcast. That would be cool.

That'd be amazing. Let's do it.

Awesome. Well, we appreciate it, Joel. Thanks so much for doing this, man, and hope to, to meet you soon in the future. Okay?

Great. Thank you, guys. Thanks.