00:01:47.660And that's on purpose because the whole idea is don't put me in a box.
00:01:51.560and so um so the christian is fairly straightforward but my problem with the christian
00:01:57.500folks my christian friends uh is that in general if you uh if the church is having a potluck
00:02:03.880and you say you know let's uh let's not use styrofoam why don't we go to the salvation
00:02:09.200army get a bunch of mismatched uh plates and we'll wash dishes when it's over and there won't
00:02:14.200be any trash to take out in the average church what are you some sort of greeny weeny commie
00:02:19.860pinko earth muffin you know and so uh so the the in general the faith community is identified with
00:02:27.080dominance exploitation conquistador you know look what the spaniards did in the name of god and the
00:02:32.880queen um and so so each of these has a plus and a minus for me which is why i've jumbled them
00:02:39.660together so christian libertarian politically i'm i'm quite libertarian i think the government
00:02:45.780should be about 10 percent of its size and that big huh maybe smaller we can debate that
00:02:53.660maybe smaller but but anyway that essentially um one of the reasons that things have become
00:03:00.620so acrimonious and partisan in our country is because we have um we have elevated yeah to the
00:03:08.140federal level the 50 state experiment and so we have a k street because everything's for sale
00:03:15.120so my problem with the libertarians i'm not an anarchist i'm not um i'm very much a a right to
00:03:25.340lifer you know i think protecting the unborn is a big deal and um uh but but in general you know
00:03:32.600i'm a very libertarian oriented i would legalize all drugs all of them a government that can tell
00:03:38.000you you can't take cocaine can also tell you you can't drink raw milk so you know i say when the
00:03:42.540government gets between my lips and my throat that's an invasion of privacy um so christian
00:03:47.920libertarian environmentalist um i am a uh a rabid um non-chemical farmer we we compost we don't use
00:03:56.880chemicals vaccines gmos all of those things and i do think that it matters that there's a
00:04:02.400a dead zone the size of rhode island in the gulf of mexico and we had and we have infertile frogs
00:04:08.500and three-legged salamanders and um and i think i think actually the health of earthworms
00:04:16.500is probably more important than the health of wall street as a society i don't think i've heard the
00:04:23.080health of the earthworm thing before are they sick no well uh chemicals kill them yeah okay and and
00:04:31.280of course you know tillage kills them a lot too um but yeah it's just a way to express you know
00:04:37.400When's the last time you went in with a business plan and a banker says, yeah, this is a great business plan.
00:04:42.620But what's it going to do to the earthworms in our community?
00:04:44.800And let's agree that that unseen world that is, you know, 10 billion individuals per double handful of healthy soil, that that unseen, invisible community is not as important culturally as, you know, as Wall Street.
00:05:06.520Just just these are these are also here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's so crazy. Environmentalists, you follow that with capitalists. Yeah. Yeah. Capitalists. So, yeah, I am. I do believe that that businesses should be profitable and that and that we do need capital to invest, to develop, to to do new things.
00:05:27.840But I'm not an amoral capitalist. I think I think amoral capitalism is probably no better or worse than any other amoral economic system from, you know, socialism to whatever.
00:05:40.920And. And so that's just my my appreciation of, yeah, I do believe that business is important and and and the best thing to do for the environment is not to abandon it.
00:05:55.120you know we have this environmentalism by abandonment and um let's agree that you know
00:06:00.960a lot of what we've done environmentally has not been good yeah but the answer to that is not
00:06:05.740abandonment and okay humans can't come here it's to repent in sackcloth and ashes first
00:06:11.860and then dust yourself off and take your take your mechanical ability and your intellectual ability
00:06:17.380and let's now redeem and remediate everything we've hurt um and then finally the the lunatic
00:06:24.300part came after a particularly acrimonious phone call with a guy. And, you know, he called me a
00:06:34.680bioterrorist and a typhoid Mary and a starvation advocate, you know, because we all know compost
00:06:41.820can't compete with chemicals, you know. And this was not the first time. It's happened numerous
00:06:47.620times. And I got off the phone. Teresa was standing there, my wife. And I said, you know,
00:06:51.900I can either be frustrated about this and depressed, you know, Rodney Dangerfield.
00:06:56.660Oh, nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. Or I can play with let's have fun with it.
00:07:01.620Yeah. Yeah, I am a lunatic. Of course I am. We don't vaccinate our cows.
00:07:05.540We you know, we don't use chemical fertilizers.
00:07:08.340You know, so when Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, a fertilizer jumps 400 percent doesn't make you doesn't affect me at all.
00:07:14.780Yeah, I'm a lunatic. And and it's been exciting.
00:07:18.260I'm if you Google lunatic farmer, I'm the only one on the planet, you know, you know, I beg to differ.
00:07:28.400It's cool to create a handle that's truly unique, you know, in the world.
00:07:32.500I mean, people live and die to try to create that.
00:07:34.880So Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist, lunatic farmer has kind of become my my my handle.
00:07:42.560So that when I walk in a room, I developed this over years because as a, quote unquote, organic farmer, legally, I can't use the term because I'm not certified by the government.
00:07:52.880But, you know, I was speaking a lot of conferences around the world and I'd be introduced as this organic farmer, environmental farmer, whatever.
00:08:01.100And it was always assumed, oh, well, he must be for the teachers union agenda, abortion, higher taxes, government, you know, Bernie Sanders, whatever.
00:08:09.740and um and i just got really tired of it and so i created literally created this moniker for my bio
00:08:16.160so that when i walk in a room a people wouldn't put me in a box and b i could with a smile
00:08:24.760um diplomatically take that tension that awkwardness and just dispel it and it's been
00:08:33.340very very effective that's good um so let's talk about you know i uh i have a ranch um and when i
00:08:39.800when i say i'm a farmer somebody suggested i say i'm a gentleman farmer and i'm like i'm neither
00:08:45.240a gentleman nor a farmer so uh i don't know exactly i own a ranch and i own a farm sure
00:08:52.440and uh what i have found is that farmers real farmers that have been doing it for
00:08:58.540long time um they're the biggest environmentalists out there the people who are going and hunting
00:09:05.740uh you know animals for food they are the biggest environmentalists out there because they they know
00:09:12.040how delicate this is right and you can be the best farmer in the world but if you don't have
00:09:17.880a connection if you're not all you can do is pray and do everything right and my crops will fail
00:09:25.080because i didn't get the rain i got too much rain whatever it is well the four horsemen of the
00:09:29.680apocalypse weather price pestilence and disease exactly right it's what every farmer sits on the
00:09:34.460back of his pickup truck and and complains about right so what what happened to us how did we get
00:09:40.640to this place to where we are just i never thought this you know i always thought um
00:09:49.460i always thought people who were talking about you know our food is poison blah blah i just
00:09:55.060just thought they were crazy. And in the last 10 or 15 years, I don't think that anymore. I think
00:10:01.260it is the source of almost all of our problems. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, the Maha movement is real.
00:10:06.680It is. And when I was at the Maha inaugural ball in D.C., a wealthy friend invited Therese and I
00:10:14.040to go, probably our only chance to go to an inaugural ball. So we went. And it was an epiphany
00:10:19.980for me the moment that um del big tree stood up and asked there were 500 of us there uh there were
00:10:28.400there were uh 50 tables of 10 so i know it was 500 people and um and he asked how many of you
00:10:35.320um have vaccine um injured children and um i couldn't count the hands but just being there
00:10:47.620and seeing it probably 150 hands of the 500 people there went up and you could feel I get
00:10:53.960teary and chill bumps even speaking about it because you could feel the tension here were
00:10:59.540people who for 5 10 15 20 years had a child with all the hopes and dreams that come with a child
00:11:07.060you know you think when are they going to walk when are they going to talk when are they going
00:11:10.380to go to the first day of school have their first romance their first job you know what college they
00:11:15.580You have all these dreams and hopes, and suddenly there's no dreams and hopes.
00:14:26.240the petroleum uh came so we didn't have to worry we didn't have to rely on draft power anymore
00:14:32.220you know horses and mules and all that oxen and um and it liberated us from the alleged
00:14:40.220constraints of biology of life and and we were able to take this mechanistic view toward life
00:14:48.060to its extreme point to where now well you're just some dna we can take a little bit of salmon
00:14:55.020and a tomato and a little bit of a poison ivy plant and we can we can make something new you
00:15:00.780know genesis starts everything will be made to bear seed after its kind there is an order
00:15:08.460and when you start and there are a lot of boundaries in life to make sure that things
00:15:16.640Don't jump the traces. Yeah. You know, look, if you see if if the sexual organs don't match up, that's like a that's like a it's a boundary.
00:15:29.420It's a boundary got established, you know, and and so we have been able now to override that and and create life forms that didn't occur because we take a very mechanistic view.
00:15:45.940But as you know, life is not – there are mechanics.
00:16:38.080And the problem with that is going too far down that to where you start viewing life as a God rather than life as an expression of God's fearfully and wonderfully matedness.
00:16:57.500So for me, physical creation is an object lesson of spiritual truth.
00:17:04.320So when people come to my farm, I want them to drive out the lane saying, oh, oh, that's what mercy looks like.
00:21:22.920Because if we want our kids to honor the glory of God and understand his distinctiveness and how do we honor his omniscience and divine attributes into our life, it starts with an object lesson.
00:21:41.320And that object lesson inculcates into us then a discovery process.
00:25:09.260And so when we raise these animals, our first question is, well, how can what what is unique and and distinctive about this critter?
00:25:18.960How can we create a habitat that allows it to express its, you know, its distinctiveness, its uniqueness?
00:25:25.620And so, for example, cows, we don't feed cows any grain.
00:25:28.820um the herbivore uh in nature yes it picks some seeds off you know seeded out grasses or whatever
00:25:36.180but it doesn't eat grain as a as a large percentage of its of its diet at all and so we
00:25:42.560grass finish so we're in we're in the grass finished uh business and what's interesting is
00:25:48.220um the the bionutrient food association is has just completed basically two years of study
00:25:56.340where they're looking at what is the single most common denominator
00:26:01.360that determines the nutrient density of beef.
00:26:06.860They started with carrots, then they did broccoli, and now they're doing beef.
00:26:12.180And more important than climate, weather, breed, you know, rancher, farmer,
00:26:19.660any of those things, the number one determinant is how many different plants
00:26:25.040did the cow eat its variety its diversity of sward we now know on the american plains when
00:26:33.160the bison were there before the europeans came there were roughly 60 species of grass
00:26:38.760and some over a thousand species of forbs which we would call weeds but they were edible edible
00:26:46.040you know flowers i mean from right from plantain to chicory or whatever and so that variety was a
00:26:53.500was a huge distinctive and so on our farm we're doing everything we can to facilitate
00:27:00.960more diversity and variety within the sward uh to create this this um this diverse ingestion
00:27:09.400um you know we could go on with the pigs and the chickens the chickens you know we move them every
00:27:13.700day to a fresh spot the pigs you know they get uh they run through um you know paddocks of grass
00:27:19.880and forest and acorns and stuff along with feed as well but what's interesting is over the years
00:27:25.860we've been in this now for half a century on on our farm and um we've serviced a lot of very very
00:27:33.420um upscale restaurants oh man we don't sell to mcdonald's
00:27:38.100so i wouldn't assume you did you you provide meat
00:27:42.980Yeah. We service a lot of these upscale restaurants. And what we've learned from them is that over time is that all of our stuff cooks 15 percent faster than regular supermarket stuff.
00:28:00.080Well, why is that? Well, because in a concentrated animal feeding operation, you know, a big confinement chicken house or a piggery or a beef feedlot, whatever, the social and dietary aspects of that are stressful on the animal.
00:28:20.540You know, there aren't supposed to be 20,000 chickens in one house breathing fecal particulate all day, blocked out from fresh air and sunshine.
00:28:28.080That's not the way a chicken is supposed to be raised.
00:28:30.860And so in that stress, what happens when you're under stress?
00:33:04.080Right. Who would have thought that? So, yeah, I'm telling you, you know, I've been in this space all my life.
00:33:09.440And the changes we've seen in the last year. I never I never thought I'd ever see in my lifetime.
00:33:17.440I mean, I mean, you know, the the just the recognition that we've gotten everything upside down and and it's it's frankly quite exciting.
00:33:29.800It really is. It really is exciting. It's really exciting. It's a scary time to be alive in some
00:33:34.800ways, but it's a really exciting time to be alive. It is. I mean, think of what RFK Jr.
00:33:39.160has brought to the American public. I mean, I felt like I was fairly informed, but I didn't know
00:33:44.380that $12 billion of SNAP benefits went to Coca-Cola. I didn't know that eight months ago,
00:33:52.420nine months ago. I didn't know. I knew there were a lot of food additives,
00:33:56.900but i didn't know that america that the fda allowed 10 000 and the eu only allows 400
00:34:04.420i mean that that's incredible and so and so the man for all of his you know flaws and
00:34:12.240imperfections has just peeled off this truth and and um and i can tell you having i mean we you
00:34:21.800know we ship we ship nationwide from our farm as well and uh all my life i've gotten up every
00:34:28.320morning and okay who who can i sell to today who can i who can i take a sample to you know
00:34:32.440marketing marketing marketing and how do we and in the last 24 months suddenly you don't need to do
00:34:39.180that no no it's it's just yanking us it's hard to keep up and and it's the same you know for my
00:34:45.500friends in in this space i'm seeing essentially the same thing and it's it's very very exciting
00:34:50.620Because the logistics of distribution have plummeted, you know, FedEx, UPS, doorstep delivery, that cost has plummeted and the cost of bricks and mortar retail interface has escalated.
00:35:10.200the cost of a cashier the the the the cost of insurance to make sure the snow is swept off of
00:35:18.120the you know walk out front so nobody breaks and sues you so as the one cost has soared the other
00:35:24.520cost has dropped and so we can you're ready for this from our farm if you told me this two years
00:35:29.840ago i said you were crazy from our farm right now in the you know at the end of a little pothole
00:35:34.660dirt road in rural virginia we can ship four dozen eggs to any city in america cheaper than
00:35:42.220they can get them at farmer's market you gotta be kidding me because cities are expensive places to
00:35:48.920do business defund the police crime uh high taxes high regulation i mean they're all blue
00:35:57.080right and i mean you look at the map of the u.s you know it's red but you know you've got these
00:36:03.080they're all urban centers and those are expensive to do business in and so here we are kind of an
00:36:09.960inversion of the old it's almost i feel almost like a voluntary colonialist
00:36:15.200you know here we are in a in a low tax low regulation um you know basically conservative
00:36:25.040little pocket you know leave us alone and if we can get stuff on a ups truck
00:36:31.280literally the food system can completely circumvent the supermarket system
00:36:36.140and that's the first time that's been possible
00:36:39.700at at cost and at scale make you nervous at all what we learned at covid though
00:36:47.340oh oh my goodness yeah yeah i mean uh while i you know and i for the record i didn't take the jab
00:36:56.160um good yeah yeah um but but that that you know i would i would like to think
00:37:07.580that if that rears its ugly head again you know the world economic forum and what i don't want
00:37:13.880to get all conspiratorial there's a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy fact that's a conspiracy
00:37:20.420fact what's the difference in the two is uh six months is that right yeah it's exactly right
00:37:25.200it's exactly right so uh uh so that that really um was an emperor has no clothes moment i think
00:37:35.280in our culture and and the distrust now that that i it's ubiquitous in the cult the distrust of
00:37:42.760government institutions the distrust of of the big the big food what i call the the chemical
00:37:49.200industrial food complex the distrust of the colleges the elitists you know the the mainstream
00:37:56.340narrative if you will um is just glorious it really is glorious yeah if it doesn't if we can
00:38:06.040fix it and not just burn it down to the ground right right you know that's the scary part because
00:38:10.440there's some you know there's some good things that that we we need we just need to re we just
00:38:15.840need to rethink this and you know people are you know these companies are making billions and
00:38:20.760billions and billions of dollars and nobody's interested in retooling unless they absolutely
00:38:25.320have to and yeah um and they you know they they'd much rather throw money at it and can you protect
00:38:31.720us make this go away look at look at trump right now and and you know and i'm i'm for the record
00:38:36.900i'm happier trump's in there than kamala okay i mean just but i mean here he is throwing 12
00:38:42.520billion dollars again at the soybean farmers to you know two years ago they got another 12
00:38:46.720billion dollar bail out and the soybean we don't we don't use soy half of the soybeans produced in
00:38:53.820the u.s are exported half of them the world is the world is awash in soybeans we don't need that
00:38:59.960many soybeans and almost half of the corn we grow in the u.s goes into ethanol just so so so so here
00:39:06.920we are subsidizing these six things well crop insurance it's changed crop insurance now it
00:39:12.680sounds a little better than subsidy but um but here we are um you know subsidizing uh you know
00:39:20.980rice sugar cane wheat corn soybeans um that that we have an overabundance of meanwhile
00:39:30.580we're way short on beef you know beef prices have i mean if you followed that you know
00:39:36.260the beef herd is is lower than it's been since 1950 wow who would have seen this coming we're
00:39:43.060all getting older and i don't know about you but i have definitely felt the aches and pains that
00:39:47.500come along with that sort of thing um i used to suffer from really horrible pain in my hands
00:39:53.220pretty much all the time you'll notice i said i used to um i tried everything i went to some
00:39:59.280of the best doctors in the world and nothing nothing that we tried worked until that day
00:40:05.480that something actually did, and I have to thank my wife and Relief Factor. My wife said, I'm not
00:40:10.860going to listen to you whine anymore unless you try everything, and I didn't think Relief Factor
00:40:13.920would work. It's a daily 100% drug-free supplement that just doesn't mask your pain for a short time.
00:40:19.840It actually helps your body eliminate it for good. It works with your body. It uses a unique formula,
00:40:26.700all natural ingredients. It helps support your body's natural response to inflammation. Over a
00:40:31.660million people have tried Relief Factor. Two out of three keep taking it, and I'm one of the two
00:40:36.120out of three. Give Relief Factor a try. Their three-week quick start, $19.95, less than a dollar
00:40:40.900a day. 1-800-4-RELIEF. Relieffactor.com. After 19 years, they're back. Frankie Muniz,
00:40:50.560Bryan Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite in Malcolm in the Middle, Life's Still Unfair.
00:40:55.520After 10 years avoiding them, Hal and Lois demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party,
00:40:59.920pulling him straight back into their chaos.
00:41:02.500Malcolm in the Middle, Life's Still Unfair.
00:41:17.220And, you know, it's all organic, you know, grass-fed.
00:41:21.920We just bring them out to the pastures, let them eat.
00:41:24.620um and i've learned a lot by raising beef i think what we went wrong isn't as a nation is when we
00:41:35.780stop putting our hands in the dirt you know so many things just answer themselves you know you're
00:41:42.420better people you're you rely on your neighbor all of this stuff but then when you get to the
00:41:47.720place to where you're auctioning off your beef i believe that the um the big production uh houses
00:42:01.040the the yeah the big packers the big yeah the big packers the big four yeah um they seem more like
00:42:08.980the big one and they are they've been screwing our farmers and our beef uh farmers for a very
00:42:17.380long time i i brought it up to the president before i've brought it up to rfk somebody's got
00:42:23.160to break that up because we are we have such a shortage of beef and i'd like you to talk about
00:42:30.280that for a second but at the same time beef farmers are barely making it yes beef is at an
00:42:36.100all-time high but they're not getting paid for it yeah yeah well and when trump came on there
00:42:41.480two months ago berating farmers for their high high you know prices feeder cattle you know four
00:42:47.440bucks a pound there uh it really angered a lot of farmers because nobody's nobody's helped beef
00:42:52.940farmers when the price has been under you know yeah under profit so um so it's still close it's
00:43:01.120not but it's no beef farmers are not they're just every year they just squeak by yeah yeah yeah so
00:43:07.640so um you've just opened up the door for my um my uh crusade is a bad word but it's as good a word
00:43:18.360as i know right now i'll put my helmet on let's go for my thing and that is so so bernie sanders
00:43:24.760who walks around the country gotta stop the oligarchy gotta stop the oligarchy right he's
00:43:31.180right okay the problem is that the liberal class their only solution to the oligarchy is
00:43:38.980a bigger government bully you know antitrust whatever to come in and break them up the problem
00:43:46.500is the oligarchy is in bed with the government yes they become one exactly in 1906 when teddy
00:43:52.920i call him roosevelt yeah good for you i like that when teddy rooseveltsky got at that time
00:44:01.140in 1906 after upton sinclair wrote the jungle within six months those seven companies the
00:44:09.200seven packers swift armor that controlled fit at that time seven companies controlled
00:44:14.42050 percent of America's meat supply in 1906. They lost 50 percent of their sales in six months
00:44:23.900after that book was published. That's the power of an informed citizenry. People will make good
00:44:30.500decisions if they get the truth. But if they don't get the truth, they can't make it. They
00:44:35.840can't make a decision. And so so the seven big companies came to Teddy Roosevelt. They said,
00:44:40.460please help us. We we've got to get credibility with the American consumer again, set up a
00:44:44.420an agency to put a stamp on our products so that the american public will will say okay this is
00:44:50.660okay and he should have said you made your bed now go lie in it and if he had um independent
00:44:58.280certifiers would have you know um triple a for beef or whatever okay it would but no he gave
00:45:04.900them the food safety inspection service in 1908 and um and since the inception of the food safety
00:45:13.220Inspection Service, FSIS, there's been a steady march of additional regulatory structure within
00:45:22.580the food and especially the meat industry that has added, added, added scale prejudicial
00:45:32.060regulations that make it easy for big guys to succeed and hard for little guys to succeed.
00:45:37.980So we have lost the neighborhood abattoir. We have lost this entire infrastructure of our of our country.
00:45:46.440I mean, does anybody think that the supermarket shelves in 2020, in April 2020, would we have been, would we have had as big a, you know, hiccup in our, especially meat supply, had the country been nourished by 300,000 neighborhood abattoirs as opposed to 300 megaprocessing facilities around the country?
00:46:13.420it's a rhetorical question there's an easy answer um you know when you're when you're in um uh
00:46:19.640rocky waters you want to be in a speedboat a little speedboat you can turn around not an
00:46:24.340aircraft carrier that takes 12 miles to turn around in you know the the business book it's not
00:46:28.540it's not the big that eats the small it's the it's the fast that eat the slow and when you're
00:46:33.260a bureaucratic a large bureaucratic institution movement is very very difficult when you're small
00:46:38.600like we are you're in a little speedboat hey you know we can adjust and the little slaughterhouse
00:46:43.140that we co-own you know we got 25 employees um you know we didn't miss a lick we didn't miss a
00:46:49.540day of work we didn't miss anything and in fact on our farm we sold six months worth of inventory
00:46:54.420in six weeks in the spring of 2020 it was the best economic thing that ever happened to us even
00:46:59.720though we lost almost a million dollars of restaurant sales because they all closed
00:47:03.880but we picked it up on on the retail end so what do we do about this oligarchy about the fact that
00:47:12.620Now, 120 years after FSIS was started, we now don't have seven companies controlling 50 percent.
00:47:21.720We have four companies control 85 percent.
00:52:06.140We move them every day, chickens across the pasture.
00:52:08.300They're in little, you know, floorless shelters to protect them from predators.
00:52:12.380Move them across the pasture every day.
00:52:14.620And 600 birds cover one acre, you know, in the course of several weeks that they're out there.
00:52:20.120These are meat chickens, not laying chickens.
00:52:22.320And so if you had two acres and you could raise 1,200 of these and you could sell chicken pot pie to your neighbors as a convenience food, you could take those 1,200 chickens times 200 is $240,000.
00:52:40.140You could make a living on two acres selling a convenience food straight out of your home kitchen.
00:55:48.400Nobody ever gets taken to court for buying illegal food.
00:55:52.800Who gets taken to court is the farmer or the value adder who produced it, who created it.
00:55:59.940So the ultimate hypocrisy of this is that all other hazardous substances that can go between our lips, the prohibition is everything, but food, it's only on the cellar.
00:56:41.040In the next 15 years, that's one five, 15 years, half of all America's agriculture equity will change hands.
00:56:49.460that's never happened in any civilization in peace it's only happened in conquest
00:56:57.340you know the huns come in and take over rome the polynesians come okay but i can make the case that
00:57:03.820is happening that it is the industrial farmer that has made conditions so bad that the young
00:57:09.420farmers the ones who are watching their mom and dad they work this hard barely make it every year
00:57:15.780Yeah. I don't want to work like that. Yeah. Well, the problem the problem is that when when old people can't get out or when young people can't get in, old people can't get out.
00:57:30.920And so these farmers continue to age, age, age. And you're right. The ultimate, we hear the word, you know, regenerative farming now over and over and over again.
00:57:46.560Well, you know, when somebody asked me about regenerative farming, you know, they're thinking soil and earthworms and all that stuff.
00:57:52.320My first reaction is, is it attractive to young people?
00:57:56.220Because you're a third generation farmer, right?
00:57:57.900I'm I'm well, I'm second generation. Our son now is third generation. He operates it. But it doesn't have to be family. I mean, we have I mean, we run a very formal stewardship and apprenticeship program on our farm.
00:58:11.720and uh we just had we just had 135 applicants for 11 spots and these and these are americans
00:58:20.020they're not i mean i don't want to get down that rabbit trail but but the these are many times
00:58:26.160college educated articulate sharp well-spoken and a lot of these young people they they get
00:58:32.420five six years into their dilbert cubicle career and suddenly they're sitting there you know at
00:58:38.200their screen and they're looking and say, man, I really would rather be out running that zero
00:58:43.140turn mower with the landscape crew at the corporate headquarters. And they start yearning for
00:58:48.580something that's visceral that they can touch. We had the most amazing, we had a guy come from
00:58:55.380Chase Manhattan Bank. He worked in the Valley of the Beast in New York. He came as an apprentice
00:58:59.420and he came in one day for supper and he was almost in tears. He was visibly, you know,
00:59:05.120moved i said what you know what's the deal he said well he said he said my career has been working
00:59:10.600you know at this uh cubicle with you know three team members one's in tokyo one's in shanghai
00:59:15.820one's in london and me and we build these you know we build these electronic uh you know whatever
00:59:20.800skeleton you know financial skeletons in cyberspace puts a button at the end of the
00:59:26.040day it goes who knows where and we do the same thing tomorrow tomorrow and he said today
00:59:31.020you know with the team we built a millennium feather net um that's what we call our portable
00:59:36.900laying laying structure millennium feather net named after the millennium falcon in star wars
00:59:41.520and i knew you'd like that and uh the millennium feather net and uh he said he said we we worked
00:59:47.720on it all day and we pounded nails we cut boards we you know we put the screws in and he said
00:59:53.060and he just got all teary he said and tomorrow and he said and my team we we talked we joked i
00:59:59.720could see them we could we could touch we held things for each other and tomorrow morning i'm
01:00:05.600gonna wake up and go out there and it's still gonna be there and he was just you know and and
01:00:11.140and this tactile tactile visceral encounter with life nothing nothing has meaning anymore
01:00:21.280or substance and it's only that is only going to get worse nothing that's right and i i know i
01:00:26.920I bought my ranch when I was in New York city and I just wanted to get out of
01:05:41.280You know, he was eating stuff, but it wasn't nutritional.
01:05:46.520And so many people, many people don't trust what they see in the store anymore, but they don't know where to turn.
01:05:56.200And I'm telling you, based on the thousands of farmers and homesteaders that I encounter every year, if we had a food emancipation proclamation, there would be an atomic explosion of value added convenience opportunity in neighborhoods all over this country.
01:06:14.660And suddenly that good food would be affordable because all food regulations are scale prejudicial.
01:06:23.180It's easier to comply if you're big than if you're small.
01:06:26.200I mean, we own a small federal inspected slaughterhouse up in Harrisonburg.
01:06:30.480It costs us $600 to do what JBS, one of the big four meatpackers, what it cost them $150 to do.
01:06:39.620Because we have the same HACCP plan, the same paperwork, you know, but we spread our inspector and bathroom and all these special, you know, inspection overheads.
01:10:24.440Because of the internet has re-embedded the village vetting voice in a global situation.
01:10:33.120So agriculture and food were the last to join the industrial revolution.
01:10:39.080I mean, the beginning, yeah, I said it was Cyrus McCormick's Reaper, but technology really went, you know, communication, transportation, okay,
01:10:49.160all that farming and food were kind of the last to join that that technological uh um revolution
01:10:57.780and because of that it will be the last to exit and so you know i say the food emancipation
01:11:05.660proclamation i'm also happy to say we need to uberize our food system i mean you you can come
01:11:10.860at this from from numerous threads uh and in fact you know um i i've just uh finished the rough draft
01:11:16.780of my 18th book um uh just literally this morning as i was waiting to come here i had another thought
01:11:24.060for another chapter and hopefully it'll be out this summer and the title is food emancipation
01:11:28.960unshackling america's sustenance and and i want to present these arguments as an idea as as a as
01:11:37.300a liberty freedom oriented idea to what has been the foodies the food the environmental food
01:11:45.280movement if we just broadly environmental food movement has been um on the liberal side of the
01:11:51.120of the spectrum and and the problem is wonderful people and of course i have deep deep friendships
01:11:59.380all through that that sure that realm but the thought that we can beat that we can beat the
01:12:07.900oligarchy with freedom and not with a bigger government agency a bigger government hammer
01:12:13.080is just never enters their mind no the answer is always you know and and i agree i don't know who
01:12:21.800said it you probably know uh some famous said that the only way there can be a monopoly
01:12:26.820is with collusion with the government in a free market monopolies can't exist because
01:12:32.220there are too many eager beavers yapping at the heels of a of a of an outfit right and um and so
01:12:39.320i tend to i tend to agree with that and and so uh if we if we want to chip away if we want to
01:12:45.720actually you know create movement a um a pathway of entry for new young farmers uh which enables
01:12:53.600an exit for old farmers um a a pathway into um healthy food by people who want to get healthy
01:13:04.960food and to chip away at the power of the oligarchy the answer is liberty the answer is open up the
01:13:16.520market for these all these friends of mine plus me that are chafing at the bit to just offer an
01:13:24.400alternative to the oligarchy to our friends and neighbors people at church
01:13:28.380you're fabulous i can't wait for your book to come out thank you uh and i will i got to get
01:13:37.480a copy because if i see the president i will pass it on to him i think you're on to something
01:13:41.680yeah one of my previous books written 15 years ago is the title is everything i want to do is
01:13:46.960illegal and and and that articulates many of the frustrations that we've you know got abandoned
01:13:56.020about today, but this one, this one is going to be the solution. Yeah, that's good. Thank you.