The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.000 We hear a lot of noise about how cows are contributing to global warming,

00:00:04.940 which is an idea that's really struck me as rather specious right from the beginning.

00:00:08.580 If you want to talk atmospheric carbon, all it would take is all of our farmland

00:00:13.140 to change 1% in organic matter. We call this mob-stocking, herbivorous, solar conversion,

00:00:20.200 lignified carbon sequestration, fertilization. We spend as much time marketing as we do the entire

00:00:26.300 farm production. Really what you are is a communicator and a network builder. Well,

00:00:31.340 why do I need to be fluent in my communication? Why do I need to write? Why do I need to learn to

00:00:36.960 speak? The people who communicate lead their professions. Become a storyteller.

00:00:42.520 Storytellers are what changed the world. Yeah, right.

00:00:56.300 So, I've been very skeptical about these ideas stemming from the WEF globalist types that

00:01:07.140 there's something pathological about the agricultural sector and the dawning concern as well or the

00:01:15.280 building concern about the notion that pasture animals like cattle, for example, are bad for

00:01:22.380 the planet. That just seems to me to be absurd on the face of it. I'd have to see a lot of

00:01:27.420 data, so to speak, before I would regard that as credible. And I'm also interested in

00:01:36.140 meat-based diets, for example, because they seem to be very health-promoting and highly nutritious.

00:01:44.020 And so, one of the things that I've wanted to do for a long time is to spend some time investigating

00:01:49.460 the landscape of so-called regenerative farming. And I found someone to talk to, and there's

00:01:54.640 other people who I could talk to as well, named Joel Salatin. And Joel has written a number of

00:01:59.240 interesting books, and this will give you a sense of him right off the bat.

00:02:03.520 The latest one was Homestead Tsunami, which is a description of, well, the dawning interest in

00:02:10.500 homesteading as a potential choice of life, let's say.

00:02:14.920 Um, he's also written, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, which I love as a title,

00:02:21.420 Uh, You Can Farm, which is partly what we discussed, and Pastured Poultry Profits,

00:02:29.560 which is a book that documents a particular form of agrarian lifestyle as a solution to the economic

00:02:36.940 problems that young people might be facing. So, it's a pathway to a profitable, sustainable,

00:02:42.640 and socially useful economic future. And so, we spent a fair bit of time talking about all of

00:02:49.220 these things to do today. And so, if you're interested in that, then this is the podcast

00:02:53.700 for you. Well, Mr. Salatin, why don't you start just by telling everybody what you do?

00:03:00.080 Let's start from the beginning.

00:03:01.660 Sure. So, we farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, which is in the western part of the state,

00:03:08.700 known historically as the breadbasket of the Confederacy during the Civil War, where Cyrus

00:03:15.020 McCormick invented the, you know, the Reaper. And, uh, that, that, that part of the Industrial

00:03:19.960 Revolution, uh, really took place in 1837. And, uh, so, we, we farmed there full-time, uh, with a

00:03:28.980 pastured livestock, um, operation that doesn't use vaccines, hormones, chemical fertilizers. Um,

00:03:37.500 my mom and dad bought the original core property in 1961. So, I was four years old. And, uh, we came

00:03:46.020 there, and it was a gullied rock pile, uh, cheap land. And, and dad asked agriculture experts,

00:03:56.400 how do I make a living on this small farm? And-

00:03:59.500 Small being how, what's the size?

00:04:01.000 So, at that time, it was about 100 acres open and 450 in woodland. So, it was very much a forest.

00:04:08.680 It, it, it goes up along, you know, one of those Appalachian Mountains there. And, and then, you

00:04:13.300 know, the, the nice, the bottom land is out, you know, from the base. And, um, so 100 acres of, of,

00:04:19.540 of, of, you know, decent usable land. Uh, that was, one of the gullies we measured was 16 feet deep,

00:04:26.360 16 feet from the top to the bottom. That's a deep gully. Uh, but there were just, you know,

00:04:30.660 the, the, the hillsides were just gullies like that, like corrugated roofing, uh, from back,

00:04:35.220 from erosion back in, you know, plowing, uh, uh, in the day. And, um, and large areas, a quarter acre

00:04:42.800 that were just solid rock, five to eight feet of topsoil had washed off over the years of tillage.

00:04:49.500 And, and there was no vegetation. I remember as a child being able to walk the whole farm

00:04:55.620 and never setting foot on a piece of vegetation. It was that barren. Uh, it was very, very poor,

00:05:01.200 but it was, it, but it was cheap. And, and so that's. And worth every penny by the sounds of it.

00:05:07.720 Well, uh, so, so, you know, dad, uh, dad says, well, how do I make a living on this farm? And it was,

00:05:13.540 you know, buy chemical fertilizer, plant corn, borrow money, build silos, you know, graze the woods,

00:05:19.500 and, um, my grandfather, his dad had been a charter subscriber to Rodale's organic gardening

00:05:25.780 and farming magazine when it first came out in 1945. And so he always, he always aspired to be

00:05:32.360 a farmer, but never got there. Um, my dad was an accountant, mom was a school teacher. And so he,

00:05:40.020 he saw the, the chemical approach as a, as a, as a rat race. Yeah.

00:05:46.600 Because you're always trying to outrun the, it's like a drug addiction. You're trying to outrun the,

00:05:53.140 the adaptation of, you know, the, the, the, the chemicals, they cannibalize in the soil.

00:05:59.780 There's a lot of things that happen there. And so you're trying, you're trying to chase that.

00:06:03.240 You're, you're hoping that human creativity will keep you one step ahead of, of, of biological

00:06:08.440 adaptation. Right. Well, you're also an interdependent web with all of the manufacturers

00:06:13.600 that depended on as well. Right. And they're, they're cutting your, they're nibbling away at

00:06:19.780 your profit margin, which of course they have to do as well to survive. Sure. But right. Okay. So

00:06:25.700 your dad and your mom, your dad was an accountant and your mom was a school teacher. Okay. So they

00:06:31.800 don't know anything about farming. Oh yeah, they do. We actually, dad was, so dad flew in the Navy in

00:06:37.780 World War II and, uh, on GI Bill, went to Indiana university, got his degree in economics. He met

00:06:43.880 mom there. And then he had a dream of farming. His dad never farmed full time, but he wanted to farm.

00:06:49.580 Well, how do, you know, I'm a Midwestern boy, no money, no land. How do I farm? And at that time,

00:06:54.880 this was, this was 1940s and he saw, you know, um, uh, Atlas Shrugged and Rand there, there was a lot

00:07:02.900 of socialism going on in, in America. They're World War II-ish. And, um, he said, you know,

00:07:12.400 I'm going to go to a developing country. You know, it's a, it's a really free market, small

00:07:16.340 government, you know, we can do what we want. So he got on with Texas oil company as a bilingual

00:07:20.680 accountant to Venezuela. And in seven years was able to save enough money to buy a thousand acre

00:07:26.160 farm in the highlands of Venezuela. We started raising thousand acres, thousand acres, started

00:07:30.700 raising chickens. And because our chickens were so clean immediately, he took over the

00:07:36.380 local, the local chicken, you know, how those Latin American, all the farmers come in with

00:07:40.640 their wares and the middlemen, you know, this is, this is 1950s. And, um, and so he quickly

00:07:47.500 took over the chicken market because the indigenous chickens had a, they had snot, they had a nasal,

00:07:54.140 they were running in open sewers and things like that. And, uh, of course, all the farmers

00:07:59.140 accused us of witchcraft and voodoo and that. And so when there was a, I thought witchcraft

00:08:05.920 generally means sick chickens, not healthy ones. Well, well, uh, it's amazing what you

00:08:11.380 can come up with when you're, you know, when you're looking for a excuse. So, um, so then

00:08:16.940 in 1959, there was the, uh, the junta of, uh, Pettis Jimenez there. And when, when you have

00:08:22.740 anarchy like that, uh, it allows scores to be settled. Yeah, absolutely. It wouldn't be

00:08:27.860 otherwise settled under normal times. And so this gave, uh, a way for people to, um,

00:08:35.100 you know, to develop their, their, um, well, to run us out, if you will. And basically the

00:08:41.520 machine guns came in the front door. We went out the back door and we spent another eight

00:08:45.980 months. Dad met with every minister, you know, the secretary of interior, agriculture, treasury,

00:08:51.140 trying to get protection and nobody would, it was all bribe. You know, how much you pay me or

00:08:58.260 they were scared they'd be assassinated. And so the only thing to do was to, dad was there 12 years,

00:09:04.020 love the culture, love the country and, and, and love the language, love the people. But we couldn't,

00:09:10.060 we couldn't, we couldn't stay with no protection like that. So we came back to the States, uh,

00:09:15.620 Easter Sunday, 1961. Now were you, when were you born? So I was born in 1957. So were you ever in

00:09:22.740 Venezuela? Yeah. Yeah. You were there too. Do you have any memories of it at all? Toward the end? Yes.

00:09:27.780 Yes. Um, there's a big difference between being three years old and four years old. Yeah. And so I

00:09:33.320 don't remember the farm, but I remember, uh, Caracas. Of course I spoke Spanish, you know, as well as

00:09:39.280 English. And, um, and, and I remember some of that trauma at the end, like dad turning the car around

00:09:45.320 and running away from gorillas and, you know, things like that. Right. Right. Um, and so there

00:09:49.840 was, there was some trauma there. That was your encounter with socialism. Yes. Yes. Fun, fun,

00:09:54.420 fun. Yes. And then your family moved to the States and bought this. We came back to the States and,

00:09:59.480 and dad was 39, lost everything. And I remember when I hit 39 thinking, if I lost it all, would I start

00:10:07.360 over? And he went way up in my, in my, you know, my respect and honor at that point. And, um, and so we

00:10:14.840 did, but the reason that we didn't go back to the Midwest where both he and mom were from and had

00:10:19.980 family was because he was still hoping to go back to Venezuela. He was hoping that when things settled,

00:10:26.320 you know, um, we, we'd, we'd get a call from the ambassador and by being that close to DC,

00:10:31.780 you know, we could, we could run up there in hours, sign paperwork and be back to the farm in

00:10:38.960 Venezuela. I see. That was his, that was his. So this was an interim plan. This was an interim plan.

00:10:43.280 And it ended up not being an interim plan. He bought a hundred acres that were open and

00:10:48.180 450 woodland. Yeah. So, um, let's, let's let everybody listening and, and watching know about

00:10:55.660 farm size. So compared to traditional farms, let's say of the 1920s and compared to modern farms,

00:11:03.060 how does the farm that your father purchased, how does it, um, how does it, how's it configured in

00:11:09.900 terms of size of comparative size? It would be an average size farm for, for that area,

00:11:15.520 you know, um, 150 acres of, of open land, you know, usable land with, you know, with a wood lot,

00:11:21.900 um, compared to most farms, it had a much bigger wood lot, you know, being 450 acres. That's a,

00:11:27.380 that's a lot of wood. Any commercial utility in the wood? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This is Appalachian

00:11:31.620 hardwoods. This is oak and black walnut and poplar. And yeah, it's, there's some,

00:11:35.980 there's some good timber there. It, it had been timbered though. It had been all timbered. So it

00:11:41.700 was primarily, you know, newer growth. It wasn't large, you know, it wasn't large trees. And, um,

00:11:48.160 so there was really not much value there. There was some, but not a lot of value.

00:11:52.860 And how much of the land you talked about the gullies and the rock and the fact there was very

00:11:57.280 little vegetation, how much of the hundred open acres was damaged in that way? You're,

00:12:02.100 you implied that all of it, all of it was, all of it was poor. Um, some of it was, was poorer than

00:12:09.720 others. It wasn't all rock for sure. You know, the, the shale lies in a, it lies like this in,

00:12:16.520 in the ground. And so, you know, you can, you can go down three feet here and then here you're on rock

00:12:21.800 and then three feet here and you're on, you know, it's, it's layers. It, it, it kind of lays in there

00:12:26.640 like that. So, um, so, you know, that's the way that, that's the way the land was, but, uh, dad was a,

00:12:34.780 dad was a, he was such a visionary. And, um, so, so when, when we realized the, the advice from the,

00:12:46.160 the system is not acceptable. Um, and why did he think that exactly? Like, I mean,

00:12:52.720 lots of people didn't take that route and some people make it profitable. And so why did your

00:12:57.300 father, why had he decide what was the alternative route precisely? And why did he decide to take

00:13:02.920 that, especially back then? Right. Well, A, we didn't, he had a tremendous conservation ethic

00:13:08.540 and these gullies he knew. Oh, I see. We, we, we didn't, we couldn't plant corn. I mean,

00:13:12.780 there wasn't enough. That's why we had gullies, you know? Right, right. So we could see that it had

00:13:17.360 been mismanaged. Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. We, we, you could tell that it had been very mismanaged.

00:13:22.460 So we, we started a very aggressive tree planting campaign. We planted about 60 acres in trees over

00:13:28.600 those first 10 years. So we actually shrunk some of the open land. Uh, and we, you know, we put,

00:13:36.140 we put brush down in the gullies and, and, um, and then we start, and he started experimenting.

00:13:42.340 That was to stabilize the soil against erosion? To, to stop, at least stop the erosion. And, um,

00:13:48.900 and one of my most poignant childhood memories was one Sunday, he said, let's, let's take, I met this,

00:13:55.660 I met this guy. I want to go see him. So we got in the car on a Sunday afternoon, took this drive.

00:14:00.440 And I don't remember what the guy, I don't remember whether he had sheep or chickens or

00:14:05.200 pigs or whatever he had. All I remember was coming home. I was what, maybe six or seven.

00:14:10.340 I remember coming home and dad just literally levitating as he drove the car. This guy had

00:14:17.100 portable animal shelters and dad had never seen anything like that before. And it clicked in his

00:14:23.760 head. Wow. Portable animal shelters. Suddenly I don't have to build stationary. I don't have to

00:14:29.440 build a barn. I can build mobile infrastructure. And because he'd already gotten onto this, this

00:14:35.600 moving animals around. So Andre Voizini was a Frenchman who, who wrote, uh, grass productivity,

00:14:41.380 kind of still the Bible of, of rotational or controlled grazing. And where, where you mimic

00:14:48.120 native, native, um, choreography where animals, the animals migrate, the animals migrate, they move

00:14:54.220 around. Right. And, and so, you know, we don't have wolves, um, and they won't let us do fire very

00:15:00.100 much. Uh, and so, but we do have electric fence. Electric fence was just coming in. This is the early

00:15:05.060 sixties. And so dad actually invented a portable electric fencing system to where we could start

00:15:10.180 moving the cows around. And, um, and, and, you know, we moved them, whatever, once every 10 days

00:15:16.440 or so, and gradually got better and better and better until by the, you know, by the time I was

00:15:22.420 a teenager, we were moving them, you know, every three or four days. Then when I was in college,

00:15:26.480 I put in our basic permanent grid so we could move them every day. And that, that was a quantum

00:15:32.080 leap. That, that moved us. When we started moving them every day, everything started to

00:15:36.660 kick in. Okay. So walk us through that. So, so an, an, a, a typical farm would have a fenced

00:15:45.020 off area and the cattle will graze there. And the problem with that is they'll graze the,

00:15:51.120 the vegetation right down to the ground and then that's not good. Right. Right. And so hypothetically,

00:15:57.380 if you could imagine a huge circle, you could rotate them around the circle at some speed

00:16:02.560 and they, and they wouldn't be able to graze at some of it and that it would grow in behind

00:16:06.820 them. That's right. Then their waste products would also fertilize the land and the grass

00:16:11.960 would stabilize, be stabilized against erosion. Yeah. Right. And so, okay. So now you said you'd

00:16:17.960 experimented with 10 days and then four and then one. And gradually got it down to where.

00:16:22.600 Okay. So how do you, how do you build the electric fences and how do you, how do they move?

00:16:26.860 Yeah. So, so the thing you have to understand from a, from an ecology standpoint is if we had

00:16:32.900 a graph and we, and we charted the way grass, the way vegetation grows, it grows in a sigmoid

00:16:38.540 curve. It, it, you know, it's, it's just like a person. Now they start small, little baby,

00:16:43.120 you know, and then they hit teenage years and, you know, they grow real fast and then they quit

00:16:48.000 growing and eventually go into senescence. So I call this diaper grass, teenage grass and nursing

00:16:53.560 home grass. Okay. Just to help. And so if you, if you want to accumulate the most biomass possible,

00:17:01.060 you want to let it go through that blaze of growth. So the whole idea of controlled grazing is to hit

00:17:07.920 it at the second break point, not this break point, not this point down here when it's long enough to

00:17:13.100 graze, but it hasn't gone through this, this teenage growth spurt. So that's what the, that's what the

00:17:19.100 electric fence becomes then a, a steering wheel, an accelerator and a brake on the, on the four-legged

00:17:26.020 sauerkraut pruner to be able to steer them around the landscape to catch this second growth point all

00:17:33.700 the time. And suddenly what happens is by letting the grass go through there, you get a completely

00:17:41.060 different energy flow because now the grass is always at energy equilibrium. It's not. What do

00:17:45.980 you mean by energy equilibrium? What I mean is when the, when the, when the forage gets pruned or

00:17:51.580 grazed, I use the word pruning because grazing is now, that's a bad word. Okay. So, so pruning. All

00:17:57.120 right. When it gets pruned, if it gets pruned too frequently, you actually weaken the plant.

00:18:02.180 And so by, by only allowing, by controlling when the pruner can prune strategically, you,

00:18:14.180 you allow that plant to actually accumulate energy and vibrancy and flourish, just like pruning a

00:18:21.540 vineyard or, you know, an apple tree or anything else. And so, for example, in our area, the average

00:18:27.440 grass. Right. So the optimal amount of grazing in a grassland is not zero. No. So, so rather than

00:18:34.220 grazing, you know, 20 times this long, we're grazing six times this long, for example. And, and so in our

00:18:44.040 county, for example, the average cow days per acre. So a cow day is what one cow will eat in a day.

00:18:50.560 All right. That's a cow day. And in our county, the average is 80 cow days per acre. So an acre will

00:18:57.240 support 80 cows for one day a year, or one cow for 80 days a year. We're averaging almost 400.

00:19:06.000 And we started with gullies and rocks and never planted a... 400. So five times the efficiency.

00:19:11.640 Yeah. Right. Because you're allowing them to graze...

00:19:13.900 Because we're allowing that forage...

00:19:16.460 Why doesn't everybody do that? If there's five times the efficiency gain, it seems self-evident.

00:19:21.760 Because, because they, they, they think it's too hard to move cows.

00:19:25.820 Yeah. Well, it's fair enough. They're big. And they think it's too hard to move cows. Well,

00:19:30.960 we're, I mean, we have a thousand heads, so we're not a backyard operation by any means. Um, but,

00:19:37.040 but most people, because it's new. Yeah. It's, it's, it's just different. It's new. It's not what,

00:19:42.200 it's not what grandpa did. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.

00:19:43.860 You gotta realize that, you know, with America's average farmer being 60 years old, uh, the, the,

00:19:50.100 the average farmer is still in grandpa's paradigm. Right. When land was cheap, fuel was cheap,

00:19:56.800 you know, and, and it was still in this 1950s paradigm. You know, when we talk about...

00:20:02.820 The average farmer is 60.

00:20:04.400 Is 60 years old, which means in the next 15 years, half of all America's agriculture equity is going

00:20:11.180 to change hands. Land, land, buildings, and machines. So that means there's a time for a

00:20:14.920 potential transformation there. Exactly. Yeah. Or catastrophic failure. Yes. Yes. And that level

00:20:20.720 of agrarian equity transfer has never happened that fast in any civilization in history, except in

00:20:28.200 conquest. You know, the Huns come on and run over Rome or whatever. Now I'm not saying we're getting

00:20:33.100 ready to have conquest. I am suggesting that we're in a guinea pig time here. If we can pull this off at

00:20:39.580 peace and have this level of transfer. So obviously the question is, well, who, who, who, who's going

00:20:46.080 to control this land in 15 years? Is it BlackRock? Is it Bill Gates? Is it to Chinese? Is it, you know,

00:20:52.140 what is it? And, uh, that's why I'm a bit on a, on a tear to try to, to try to, uh, germinate young

00:20:59.380 farmers. So to speak. Yeah. Yeah. Young farmers to jump on this because I think we're in an

00:21:07.320 unprecedented time of opportunity in farming because so much is going to become available.

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00:22:07.520 that's shopify.com slash jbp. Okay. So now you have this land, it's all full of gullies. It's not doing

00:22:16.440 very well. You start planting trees to rehabilitate it. What do you do about the gullies? How do you get

00:22:22.440 grassland to grow? How do you introduce the cows? And then tell me more about the electric fencing and

00:22:27.940 how you learn to move them, move the cattle. Yeah. So some of the gullies were on gentle land,

00:22:35.340 you know, pasture land. And those, we actually built, dug ponds, built ponds in low ground and hauled

00:22:44.040 the silt. All that silt that had accumulated down in the valley, we hauled it up and actually

00:22:50.860 literally filled in those ditches, you know, with taking the silt that had washed down.

00:22:58.280 A lot of the real steep... Now you built ponds where you took the silt out of?

00:23:02.700 Yes. Yes. So now... So the erosion had washed the soil and you found where that had washed it.

00:23:09.320 And we actually found 100-year-old fence posts buried 10 feet under silt.

00:23:16.120 Mm-hmm. Okay. And you trucked that? Yes. Yes. And what trucks and what front-end loaders?

00:23:22.980 Yeah. Yeah. A track loader, you know, and a couple dump trucks. And I mean, you're just running it

00:23:28.800 whatever, you know, 200 yards. I mean, it's close. Boom, boom, boom. And so...

00:23:33.480 So you're flattening everything back out. So we're filling in those gullies.

00:23:37.980 Are you filling it in with... Do you fill it in with filler first and then topsoil?

00:23:42.620 How... Or what... You just fill it in with the material you're digging to build a pond.

00:23:47.980 I see. Okay. So you're just digging out, digging out.

00:23:49.540 Okay. So it's relatively straightforward if you have the machinery. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

00:23:52.900 And you had enough capital for the machinery. Well, we hired it. We hired to excavate.

00:23:57.420 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that wasn't done early. That was done much, much later. You know,

00:24:03.060 we just started moving animals around and... On the land you had.

00:24:08.780 And the choreography of moving them around itself was a tremendous healer. And I watched over my

00:24:17.700 lifetime these, you know, big quarter acre saucers of bare rock, just like a scab on your hand.

00:24:26.060 You know, it heals from the outside in. Doesn't heal from the inside out. It heals from the outside in.

00:24:30.420 You know, it gets smaller and smaller and finally that last little, you know, and you pull it off

00:24:34.100 in your new skin. That's exactly the way the soil was on these barren places every year. You know,

00:24:39.940 18 inches, the soil would come up on the edge. 18 inches, 18 inches till eventually the rocks

00:24:46.080 were not there today. And so why did it come back exactly? Because vegetation decompose... If you can get

00:24:54.080 enough decomposing vegetation, that builds soil. Right, right. That's how you build soil.

00:24:59.440 Right. So blow up, like there'd be dead leaves blow along the edges and collect.

00:25:02.720 And so by letting the grass grow to this second point where we're getting this, you know,

00:25:08.020 Voisin called it the blaze of growth period all the time, we were getting more root structure,

00:25:14.280 water, more biomass, more manure from the animals themselves.

00:25:20.240 So the plants will colonize the rocks, essentially.

00:25:22.540 Yes, the plants, absolutely. And so today, all those areas that when I was a kid, you know,

00:25:28.120 it was bare rock, today has, you know, 16 inches of soil on it.

00:25:31.660 Okay, now I wanted to ask you specifically about that too, because we hear a lot of noise about

00:25:37.100 how cows are contributing to global warming, which, you know, is an idea that's really struck me

00:25:42.680 as rather specious right from the beginning. Because like, the buffalo did that too? Like,

00:25:47.700 I see, so huge herds of grazing animals are bad for the planet. That strikes me as highly unlikely.

00:25:54.240 So, and I know they talk about methane, but, you know, people talk about a lot of things. Now,

00:25:59.440 you said that you regenerated the ground with the cattle and with the careful management of grass,

00:26:07.460 and now you're producing, say, a foot of topsoil on top of this rock. I presume that's also a

00:26:13.720 carbon sink. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Right. Because plants take in carbon because they're like made

00:26:18.920 out of carbon. Right. And in fact, when we look at that, in 1961, the first soil test that we took,

00:26:26.080 we averaged about 1% organic matter. Organic matter is a kissing cousin to carbon. Organic matter is

00:26:32.960 is something is... Right. Because carbon is life-based. Life-based. Life is carbon-based.

00:26:38.360 Yeah. Right, right, right. And so, so organic matter is something that was living at one time,

00:26:43.460 and now it's in a, it's in some state of decomposition in the soil. It's what gives soil

00:26:48.640 its porosity, its bounce, its, you know, it's... It's what segregates it from sand or dust. Yes,

00:26:56.320 yes. Or even clay. Right, right, right. And so, so 1%. Today, we're a little over 8%. So all it would

00:27:08.740 take, I mean, if you want to talk climate, you know, atmospheric carbon, all it would take is all

00:27:15.820 of our farmland to change 1% in organic matter, and we would return to pre-1960 atmospheric carbon

00:27:24.760 levels. Yeah, well, one of the things that's really struck me as incomprehensible about the

00:27:31.060 carbon debate is, so I know, for example, that over the last 30 years, something like that,

00:27:37.480 the planet has greened quite radically, especially in semi-arid areas. And that seems to be a

00:27:45.120 consequence of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, some of which is arguably human-made.

00:27:51.380 But the net consequence of that, it's so interesting to see, is immense green. It's something like 20%

00:27:58.380 of the Earth's area, which is like, that's a lot. And the fact that it's in semi-arid areas means that

00:28:04.600 exactly the desert-like areas that were supposed to expand according to the climate doomsayers have

00:28:11.740 actually shrunk. And then, and I've been thinking that through, again, more recently, I talked to

00:28:18.460 Patrick Moore, for example, and he was one of the founders of Greenpeace. And Moore has produced

00:28:23.000 these, he's not the only one, but he's produced these graphs of carbon dioxide levels across like

00:28:27.240 500 million years instead of 250. And we're definitely at a carbon dioxide low. And so if we

00:28:35.000 tap it up even a little bit, it makes a big difference. But that's all to say that plants

00:28:39.860 like carbon dioxide a lot. And then when there's more of it, they grow and sequester it. And they

00:28:46.820 do that rapidly. And so, and then I read a paper here recently that indicated that the typical climate

00:28:52.400 model underestimates the rapidity at which plants utilize carbon dioxide by 30%, which is like a

00:29:00.040 fairly large margin of error. And so it just seems to me to be self-evident that if we set the

00:29:05.260 preconditions, plants would mop up any excess carbon dioxide in like no time flat. And so you're saying

00:29:11.880 that if we improved even our grazing habits so that grass was allowed to grow longer before it was

00:29:18.980 grazed on, you don't need much of a percentage in how effective the plants sequester carbon to take

00:29:25.600 whatever excess carbon is. That's exactly right. And as pastures, as perennials, and of course,

00:29:32.340 you know, a lot of North America was a perennial, it was a prairie. Okay. That's a perennial prairie

00:29:36.560 as opposed to an annual, which is corn, soybeans, and crops. Okay. Annual crops. Okay. In a healthy

00:29:43.520 perennial... Yes, you don't have to plant perennials. They just grow year after year. That's right.

00:29:47.900 That's right. So in a perennial prairie situation, pasture situation, if it's healthy, there's enough

00:29:54.700 methanotrophic bacteria. This is a special kind of freestanding bacteria, methanotrophic bacteria.

00:30:01.660 And like its name suggests, it's there to pull down methane. There's enough there to metabolize

00:30:09.480 into the soil bank the methane released from a thousand cows per acre. Well, you're never going

00:30:17.320 to have a thousand cows per acre. So, so... So where do these, where do these ideas come from then,

00:30:22.840 given, you know, because we hear follow the science all the time. But then if you look into the science,

00:30:27.360 first of all, there's plenty, there's a plethora of opinions, right, at minimum. And so, and just

00:30:34.080 now and then, you know, when you're looking at data, you kind of have to stand back and use your

00:30:38.780 head a bit. And you start from maybe the presumption that any idea that large grazing herds are bad for

00:30:44.720 the planet is to be regarded with extreme skepticism to begin with, because large grazing herds are

00:30:50.640 exactly the sorts of things that the environmental types worship when they're happening naturally in

00:30:56.160 Africa. So you can't have it both ways. That's right. And so, I just, I've just always thought

00:31:01.520 the idea that pastured animals, properly pastured, being bad for the planet somehow, and that's as bad

00:31:09.100 as equating factory farming with regenerative farming, for example. Right. They're not the same

00:31:13.800 thing at all. No. Okay. So, your experience on the farm was that carefully managed grazing herds

00:31:20.360 regenerated soil that, well, not even soil. They actually made rocky areas into soil that could then

00:31:28.960 be, well, first of all, carbon sink, if you care about such things, but also productive grazing land.

00:31:34.760 Yes, yes. And a big part of the trick there is to manage the grass properly and to move the cattle.

00:31:39.400 Yeah. Okay. And then we began adding the other species. So, you've got the cattle. And so, we look

00:31:45.980 around. So, Jordan, a lot of what developed here was in the mid-60s, dad looked around and he said,

00:31:54.260 well, 10-10-10 chemical fertilizer doesn't build soil. All right. What does build soil? What makes

00:32:02.280 regeneration happen? And it's very simple. You know, there is no animal-less ecology. So,

00:32:09.300 you got to have animals. Well, what about these animals? Well, they move. Well, if they move,

00:32:14.020 then we have to give them shelter, water, and control. And so, all of our innovations that we're

00:32:23.720 now, you know, famous for grew out of not, you know, we didn't sit around in a focus group saying,

00:32:31.160 how can we innovate? You know, it was strictly, how does nature work? So, how do we mimic that on a

00:32:37.660 domestic scale? That was all. We don't have— Right. So, you're basically mimicking migration.

00:32:42.480 Mimicking the choreography. We call this mob-stalking herbivorous solar conversion,

00:32:49.620 lignified carbon sequestration, fertilization. I knew you would enjoy that.

00:32:54.200 Yeah. Yeah. Say that again. That's quite nice. And I did practice that in front of me earlier.

00:32:57.020 Okay. Let's hear it again.

00:32:59.440 Mob-stalking herbivorous solar conversion, lignified carbon sequestration.

00:33:04.180 Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Okay. Well, that sounds plenty scientific.

00:33:06.800 Yeah. Plenty scientific. Yeah. Yeah.

00:33:08.500 So, then we say, well, how does this maintain sanitation? You got all this manure and stuff.

00:33:17.340 And, well, birds. Birds follow herbivores. So, we built eggmobiles for laying chickens,

00:33:24.000 and they follow the cow herd. The chickens scratch through the cow pies, eat out the fly larva,

00:33:28.920 scratch the cow patties into the ground, stimulating the fertility, eating the grasshoppers and crickets

00:33:34.020 that compete with the cows for the vegetation. And instead of where most farmers would shoot...

00:33:39.780 So, the chickens chase the cows. Are they moved too?

00:33:42.620 Yes. Yes. So, they're in eggmobiles. That's what we call them, eggmobiles.

00:33:46.000 Okay. So, the chickens follow the cattle, and you move the chickens as well.

00:33:51.140 Yeah. So, you know, like the egret on the rhino's nose. I mean, look at any herd, wildebeest in nature,

00:33:55.920 and you'll see these flocks of birds following, and they're the sanitizers with the herbivores.

00:34:01.020 So, instead of shooting the cows up with parasiticides and grubicides and things like that,

00:34:07.020 we just collect $100,000 worth of eggs as a byproduct of the pasture sanitation program

00:34:12.640 and the fertility program. So, this then allows...

00:34:15.500 So, why sanitation exactly? Delve into that a bit more, because while the cows are manuring the land

00:34:22.040 as they graze, and the sanitation problem, it doesn't decompose rapidly enough without the birds?

00:34:28.160 Like, what exact role do the birds play?

00:34:30.500 Well, I mean, there are dung beetles, but the sanitation is that the manure is what carries

00:34:36.780 the cattle parasites. That's where the parasites live and propagate to reinfect the cows when they

00:34:46.000 come back through. So, when the cows scatter them, the sun, and now not having enough of a pie to

00:34:54.100 procreate in, to live in, then they don't live for another day.

00:34:59.880 Okay. So, you move the cattle for two reasons then, actually. One is to allow the grass to

00:35:04.240 maximize in terms of density, but also to allow the land to clean so that when the cows come back,

00:35:11.300 they're eating grass rather than their own waste products. And the chickens help with that,

00:35:15.720 and then you collect the eggs. Okay. So, now the problem comes down to,

00:35:19.320 essentially, how do you move the cattle, right? Okay. Yeah. So, we move the cows every day around

00:35:28.100 four o'clock. We like the afternoon move best for a number of reasons, but it's electric fence. One

00:35:34.760 strand of electric fence. Cows are very smart. They don't want to get shocked. And so, we just go out

00:35:40.240 and open a cross fence. So, imagine a ladder with rungs. And so, our permanent wires, our permanent

00:35:49.840 fence is the stringers on the outside. Our portables are the rungs on the inside. And we can expand and

00:35:58.120 contract those based on how big the herd is, how much grass there is, you know, all sorts of factors

00:36:03.700 as to how much we're going to give them. Okay. So, let's get an idea of the, so, let's say we have a field

00:36:10.800 and you want to move the cows. What do you have that's permanent that's fencing exactly?

00:36:15.880 Well, the edges, the edges. The edges define, like, between the field and the forest or the field and a creek,

00:36:23.040 field and a pond, all right? So, you... Okay. So, that's permanently fenced off. That's permanent.

00:36:26.960 Okay. And then you simply run, you know, you had a little reel, okay, with a polywire on it. And you run

00:36:33.120 that across from side to side. And that gives, that then gives you... That demarcates an area.

00:36:38.180 That demarcates an area. And you're simply giving those cows a segment of that, you know, we call it a

00:36:46.000 paddock. Yeah. Every day. And the beauty is that in no time, the cows respond to you coming. I mean,

00:36:56.160 think about your dog or your cat. When you bang the dish, they come running. They know what that is.

00:37:03.400 Well, the cows, when we go out to move them roughly, you know, we try to do it as close to

00:37:08.920 four as possible. You know, if you got called every day at four o'clock for a bowl of ice cream,

00:37:15.040 about 345, you know, your tail would wag and your ears would wiggle too. And so, the cows are ready

00:37:21.320 and we go out and we just call them, come on, cows! And they just come running through. We close

00:37:26.560 behind them. Why? Why do they... Because they know the food will be better? Because they're...

00:37:30.160 Because, yes. Because they've got a new salad bar. Okay. So, they've learned that. They've got a new

00:37:33.660 salad bar. They've learned that. And then... And it doesn't take them long to learn that. They learn

00:37:37.160 that very, very quickly. And so, they just... So, you don't have to herd them. You know, you don't...

00:37:41.120 Now, they're advantaged to doing it at the same time every day because you establish a habit...

00:37:44.560 Animals love routine. Animals love routine.

00:37:46.880 So, do people, as it turns out. Yes. Yes. Even though they think they don't.

00:37:50.360 Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. We are creatures of routine. So, that's... So, the moving them...

00:37:57.860 But you have to understand...

00:37:59.260 So, why do you need defenses at all then?

00:38:02.780 During this holy season, I'd like us to take a moment to think about something amazing.

00:38:06.660 You. Psalms tells us that God carefully knit you together in your mother's womb. He saw who you

00:38:11.560 were meant to be before you even existed. At Preborn Ministries, they believe each person

00:38:15.640 is made in God's image and that all life is sacred and eternal. Maybe not all pregnancies

00:38:20.320 are planned, but that's okay. Whether they're planned or not, all life has incredible value.

00:38:24.760 And God has a purpose for everyone. Each day, they're here. Today, I invite you to thank God

00:38:29.220 for the gift of life and to remember the babies still in their mother's womb. Their lives matter,

00:38:33.420 too. Last year alone, Preborn's network of clinics helped save over 67,000 babies from abortion.

00:38:38.660 Your tax-deductible donation of $28 sponsors one ultrasound, which doubles a baby's chance

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00:38:49.500 baby. Or visit preborn.com slash Jordan today. Again, to make a donation and sponsor one ultrasound,

00:38:55.280 visit preborn.com slash Jordan. Thank you for supporting this life-saving work.

00:38:59.000 Why do you need defenses at all? I mean, it stops them from going back. It stops them from going

00:39:08.880 into tomorrow's dinner. So basically, we're giving them one day's plate of menu every day.

00:39:16.400 Right.

00:39:16.620 One plateful. If somebody came and gave you five platefuls of food for five days, you'd probably

00:39:26.900 just pick out the good stuff and leave the stuff you didn't want, and you'd be a lot more...

00:39:31.780 Right. So they have enough.

00:39:33.200 So they have enough, yeah. And they actually change their behavior to eat more aggressively

00:39:40.860 and with less prejudice on the liver and onions, if you will. And so this actually is healthy for

00:39:52.020 the cows to actually increase their palatability index to eat things that they wouldn't... So

00:39:58.700 they'll eat thistles and they'll eat all sorts of things that are actually good for them that

00:40:03.620 they wouldn't eat...

00:40:05.020 If they had more choice.

00:40:06.060 If they had a lot... If they had all the choice.

00:40:08.260 So how did you figure out what to plant as well? I mean...

00:40:11.100 Well, we never planted anything.

00:40:12.720 Oh, so this is...

00:40:13.660 Oh.

00:40:14.000 This is natural seed bank. Whatever's there grows. And so...

00:40:19.100 Oh, okay.

00:40:19.640 So the management affects the type of vegetation you have.

00:40:24.760 Okay. So how did that get started then? I mean, because we were talking about the gullies

00:40:31.560 and the rocks.

00:40:32.060 Because there's a seed bank.

00:40:33.780 Already in nature.

00:40:34.760 There's a seed bank in nature. It comes in on bird wings, deer hide, possums waddle across.

00:40:41.340 The ability of nature to spread seeds is almost incomprehensible.

00:40:47.380 Right, right, right.

00:40:48.080 It's almost incomprehensible.

00:40:48.900 Of course. Well, all the plants that weren't good at that don't exist.

00:40:52.460 That's right.

00:40:52.960 Right, right. So that's crucial.

00:40:54.420 So the seed bank is here.

00:40:56.460 So the seeds will come all by themselves.

00:40:58.080 So the key is for us to create a habitat that will allow as many different kinds of plants

00:41:08.640 to flourish as possible. And so that's what revegetated these fields.

00:41:15.420 And why as many different kinds of plants as possible?

00:41:18.680 Because each one of them creates a different enzyme, a different...

00:41:25.260 Makes it more resilient to it.

00:41:26.520 Some have spreader roots, some have tap roots, some like sun, some like shade.

00:41:32.300 So they take advantage of all the available sun and resources if you have a diversity of plants.

00:41:36.140 And not only that, but the research being done by the Bionutrient Food Association right now,

00:41:43.880 they're two years into this beef study.

00:41:48.060 It's being done at the University of Utah, the lab.

00:41:53.160 And they're measuring 150 different nutrients in beef.

00:42:00.700 And what makes one have more than the other?

00:42:05.260 You know, what makes beef different nutritively?

00:42:09.620 And interestingly, there's no difference in organic.

00:42:13.420 There's no difference in breed.

00:42:15.880 No difference in age.

00:42:17.840 The only metric that makes a big difference in the amount of riboflavin,

00:42:25.100 the amount of, you know, niacin, whatever, you know, 150 nutrients.

00:42:29.800 The only thing that makes a big difference is how many different types of plants did the animal eat?

00:42:37.700 Right, right.

00:42:38.180 So that means...

00:42:38.920 Oh, so that's so cool because that means that you can...

00:42:41.600 So the diversity...

00:42:42.820 Right.

00:42:43.220 So you can maximize for biodiversity at the plant level.

00:42:47.240 Yes.

00:42:47.560 And that means that you have a mix of plants that can take advantage of different kinds of soil

00:42:52.320 and different growing conditions.

00:42:53.800 Yes.

00:42:54.180 And your pasture is resilient because there's multiple species.

00:42:57.640 And so some will grow better in dry years and some will grow better in wet years and cold versus warm.

00:43:05.160 And so your plants are resilient.

00:43:08.460 And then the animals, because they have a varied diet, can derive from that variation the balance of nutrients

00:43:14.540 that will make them grow best and be healthy.

00:43:17.240 And that makes them more...

00:43:18.800 That gives them a higher nutritional value.

00:43:20.540 That's correct.

00:43:20.960 So that's a good deal.

00:43:21.880 And you don't have to plant.

00:43:23.260 Okay, well...

00:43:23.740 That's correct.

00:43:24.060 Let's go back to the planting idea just for a minute.

00:43:26.280 I mean, are there ways that you could augment the productive quality of your pasturing

00:43:33.960 by doing some planting?

00:43:35.720 Or is it just better to leave it natural?

00:43:39.200 Jury's out on that.

00:43:40.420 I mean, there are certainly people who have planted things in their fields.

00:43:44.640 In general, if I'm going to convert, for example, a cornfield into pasture, I'm going to plant.

00:43:51.200 I don't have time.

00:43:52.420 I don't have time to wait.

00:43:53.700 I don't have time to wait.

00:43:54.700 You know, in 20 years, yes, it'll be a pasture, but I don't want to wait 20 years.

00:43:58.240 Right.

00:43:58.420 So in that case, I would certainly plant.

00:44:00.340 You would plant what?

00:44:01.860 Alfalfa maybe?

00:44:02.620 What do you plant?

00:44:03.200 No, I would plant a cocktail.

00:44:05.780 You know, two clovers, three grasses, some plantain, some, you know, some...

00:44:12.180 You just sprinkle that together?

00:44:13.400 Yeah, yeah.

00:44:14.220 I see.

00:44:14.640 So you'd make an artificial diverse plant.

00:44:16.640 Artificial cocktail.

00:44:17.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:44:18.440 Okay.

00:44:19.720 And then it'll gradually diversify, you know, over time.

00:44:24.900 Okay, how does the dollar return on your cattle, say, compare to what you could make while using the land for other purposes?

00:44:33.800 If you had a monoculture, for example, if you planted corn.

00:44:36.780 And I'm very curious about the economics of this because farming is famously a very low margin, high labor enterprise, very difficult enterprise.

00:44:46.880 And so there's a variety of things you can do with land.

00:44:49.880 And obviously, many people plant massive monocultures and they use chemicals and they use chemical herbicides.

00:44:56.440 And I'm not a priori critiquing that.

00:44:59.860 You decided to go with cattle and chickens.

00:45:03.080 And what else do you raise?

00:45:04.320 More than that, we went two things.

00:45:08.260 One, we went multi-species.

00:45:10.380 So we have cows, chickens, both meat and eggs, pigs, lamb, rabbit, duck.

00:45:22.360 So multi-species.

00:45:23.460 Okay, okay, okay.

00:45:24.700 That's for the ponds, the ducks, I presume?

00:45:27.480 Yeah.

00:45:28.480 I mean, well, it's for eggs and meat.

00:45:33.160 That's a small—we won't do a lot of those.

00:45:36.600 Our main is beef, pork, and chicken.

00:45:38.960 I mean, that's our main thing.

00:45:41.160 Rabbit, duck, lamb, those are all kind of peripheral things.

00:45:44.380 But the other part of this is that we elected to direct market.

00:45:51.440 Yeah, okay.

00:45:52.160 So remember, Dad was an accountant, and he understood very early on that as a small farm, the commodity margin, the commodity business, the whole goal is to become the least cost producer.

00:46:05.900 Yeah, at high scale.

00:46:07.620 At high scale.

00:46:08.240 Yeah, yeah, right.

00:46:08.860 Okay?

00:46:09.200 Right.

00:46:09.820 And as a small farm, he understood we can't compete at that.

00:46:13.680 So I'm sure you've heard farmers say, well, the middleman makes all the money.

00:46:17.780 Yeah, of course.

00:46:18.320 Well, that's typical for many, many, many enterprises.

00:46:21.120 Exactly.

00:46:21.740 So he realized, well, in order for us to compete to actually make a living on this small farm, we need to become a middleman.

00:46:30.680 Yeah.

00:46:30.940 We need to own that.

00:46:32.380 So basically, the retail dollar is divided into producer, processor, marketer, distributor.

00:46:39.100 Those four basic—

00:46:40.220 Say that again.

00:46:40.880 Producer, farmer, processor, marketer.

00:46:43.680 Marketer and distributor.

00:46:45.280 Right.

00:46:45.480 The marketer is the one who lets everybody know that the products exist, which is very important.

00:46:49.600 Yes, yes.

00:46:49.700 And then the last one?

00:46:51.000 Is distributor.

00:46:52.100 Right, of course.

00:46:52.840 So it's got to get to the retail interface somehow.

00:46:56.200 Okay?

00:46:56.460 Of course.

00:46:56.600 So the retail dollar is divided those four ways in different commodities.

00:47:01.140 There are different, you know, percentages in each of those four categories.

00:47:05.000 And tremendous competition between them.

00:47:07.080 Yes, tremendous competition.

00:47:09.880 The farmer, there's only one part of that that is subject to what I call the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

00:47:18.800 Right, right.

00:47:19.080 Which is weather, price, pestilence, and disease.

00:47:21.940 Right.

00:47:22.660 That's production.

00:47:23.760 Right.

00:47:23.940 So he takes all the risks in the natural world.

00:47:25.540 He takes all the risks.

00:47:26.720 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:27.560 Whereas, you know, when the grasshoppers come, they don't eat the tires on your delivery vehicle.

00:47:31.540 When the drought comes, it doesn't eliminate your Wi-Fi connection to your customers.

00:47:35.320 So these other three, the three, the processing, marketing, and distribution are relatively immune for weather, price, pestilence, and disease.

00:47:43.260 But they're also not dependent on any single farmer.

00:47:46.480 That's right.

00:47:47.200 That's right.

00:47:47.700 So their risk is distributed.

00:47:49.200 That's right.

00:47:49.880 Right.

00:47:50.480 So we began, when we headed into this, we established a direct marketing persona.

00:48:01.240 Eventually became our brand, Polyface, P-O-L-Y-F-A-C, Polyface Farm, Farm of Many Faces.

00:48:08.000 That became our brand.

00:48:10.240 And we now sell to restaurants, institutions, boutique groceries.

00:48:15.300 We ship nationwide.

00:48:17.720 We have a farm store.

00:48:19.500 We direct sell into about 35 drop points in the urban sector around Northern Virginia, D.C., Richmond, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg.

00:48:29.780 And those are those drop.

00:48:31.760 Tell me about those.

00:48:32.900 Are there urban drop points?

00:48:34.500 Farmers markets?

00:48:35.620 No, no.

00:48:36.480 We're not involved in any farmers markets.

00:48:38.400 Oh, you're not.

00:48:38.840 And I'm not opposed to farmers markets.

00:48:40.540 Yeah.

00:48:40.720 But I just don't think, in general, they're not a very efficient interface because they're primarily social circles.

00:48:48.120 Yeah.

00:48:48.240 They're primarily social clubs.

00:48:49.420 Relatively low volume, I would presume, too.

00:48:51.580 Yeah.

00:48:51.880 It was because—

00:48:52.600 So they're like a boutique product.

00:48:53.980 Yeah.

00:48:54.460 Because most of the people who go are there to show their support of local food and assuage their guilt from taking their—

00:49:02.320 Yeah.

00:49:02.420 And have a nice day at the farmer's market.

00:49:03.920 And have a nice day.

00:49:04.220 Yeah.

00:49:04.500 And show off their newly clothed little poodle dog, you know, that they had done.

00:49:07.780 Right, right.

00:49:08.120 And so they can only buy a little baby food jar with a pink ribbon on it of kimchi or some, you know, special thing.

00:49:14.980 They're not buying bushels of green beans or bushels of apples or things.

00:49:19.240 And so we just found farmers markets a very inefficient retail interface.

00:49:22.980 How do you build your customer network?

00:49:25.560 That's work, man.

00:49:26.960 Yeah, it is.

00:49:27.920 It is.

00:49:28.220 We spend as much time marketing as we do the entire farm production.

00:49:32.600 Yeah, well, marketing is such a funny enterprise because people—first of all, it's not even named very well because what you're doing when you're a marketer, really what you are is a communicator and a network builder.

00:49:46.920 And, you know, people say things like, well, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

00:49:52.680 And that's a lie.

00:49:54.080 You're absolutely right.

00:49:55.640 It's not true because, first of all, it isn't obvious they want a better mousetrap, and they're pretty set in their mousetrap habits.

00:50:02.760 Plus, they don't know your damn mousetrap exists, and they actually don't care.

00:50:07.560 And so, you know, one of the things that shocked me when I started making consumer products, which was like 30 years ago, was—see, because I thought I'd invented this process with my colleagues that help people identify and hire more effective employers, employees.

00:50:25.640 And the first error I made was thinking that large companies actually cared about that, which they don't at all, which is quite a shock.

00:50:34.440 They say they do, but they actually don't when it comes down to it.

00:50:37.180 But then, but more than that, I also realized that if you have something new, that's actually a risk and not an advantage because most people are so risk-averse, they won't try anything new.

00:50:50.000 They want to know that many other people are using this and haven't died because of it.

00:50:55.580 And then, no one knows your damn product exists.

00:50:59.660 And so, I would say for the average enterprise, you tell me what you think about this with regard to your enterprise, the product is 5% of the problem, and communication about the product is 90% of the problem?

00:51:13.180 I know that leaves 5% for noise, but, like, it's exactly the opposite of what most people would think.

00:51:18.900 Marketing is communication, and it really matters.

00:51:21.900 So, you guys figured that out.

00:51:23.560 Messaging is everything.

00:51:26.100 So, and the messaging always has to be in terms of the possible buyer.

00:51:33.400 Right.

00:51:33.640 In other words, it's not about you.

00:51:35.720 No, not at all.

00:51:36.440 It's about their need, describing their need.

00:51:39.700 What's their problem?

00:51:40.400 What's their need?

00:51:41.080 What can I fix for you?

00:51:42.500 Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:43.400 And that's a hard thing when I'm not like my normal consumer.

00:51:50.040 Right, definitely.

00:51:50.600 I have a big garden.

00:51:51.680 I walk out the back door.

00:51:53.300 I've got eggs.

00:51:53.960 I've got cows.

00:51:54.720 I've got, you know.

00:51:55.820 So, you don't even exist in the landscape where the problem is.

00:51:58.380 Exactly.

00:51:58.780 So, for me, I almost have to get into some sort of a, you know, a yin position or something to, okay, how do I think when I don't have these things?

00:52:11.220 How do I think like my consumer, like my customer thinks?

00:52:13.520 Very difficult, yeah.

00:52:14.600 Very, very difficult.

00:52:15.740 But when you can get into that position, you can absolutely message it.

00:52:20.960 Okay, well, tell me how you guys did that.

00:52:23.060 And I'd like to know more about the details of your network.

00:52:25.700 You talked about many inroads for sales.

00:52:29.820 So, remember when we started, so I came back to the farm full-time September 24, 1982, okay, 1982.

00:52:38.740 I left, I was a reporter, an investigative reporter at the local newspaper for two and a half years after college.

00:52:47.200 So, you know, now I'm wanting to come back to the farm full-time.

00:52:49.940 Now I'm working in town, you know, trying to, how do I come back to the farm full-time?

00:52:55.700 Teresa and I got married.

00:52:57.160 We remodeled the attic of the old farmhouse.

00:53:00.580 We didn't call it the attic.

00:53:01.860 We called it our penthouse.

00:53:03.880 And we lived on, we drove a $50 car, lived on $300 a month.

00:53:11.200 And within two years, we were able to save enough that we could live for one year without an income.

00:53:17.180 And so, September 24, 1982, I walked out of the office.

00:53:22.100 I didn't think we'd make it.

00:53:23.800 Why the hell was your wife on board with this?

00:53:26.280 Like, why did she think this was great?

00:53:27.060 Because I married the greatest gal in the world, man.

00:53:29.940 I mean, she is the ultimate home economist.

00:53:33.420 She cans 800 quarts of stuff a summer.

00:53:36.020 She can sew clothes, make.

00:53:38.100 I see, I see.

00:53:38.960 She was interested in doing all of that.

00:53:40.660 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:41.500 She, yeah, she, yeah, I mean, she thought I was pretty sharp.

00:53:46.000 Now, so, but you were working as a reporter and she was working as what?

00:53:51.820 Well, we had, we had Daniel.

00:53:53.740 So, she, she worked at a, at a fabric store for a little bit, clerking.

00:53:58.860 But Daniel came very early.

00:54:00.540 And so, she stayed at home and I'm working at the newspaper.

00:54:04.020 Okay, but both of you wanted to go have a farm life.

00:54:06.580 Oh, yeah.

00:54:07.100 Oh, yeah.

00:54:07.400 Why did she want that?

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00:55:27.740 I mean, did she come from a farming background?

00:55:29.760 She wanted to be with me.

00:55:30.760 Okay.

00:55:31.180 Oh, well, fair enough.

00:55:31.860 I mean, is that fair enough?

00:55:32.780 But did she come back?

00:55:34.000 Yeah, but still.

00:55:35.160 She grew up on a farm.

00:55:36.480 Okay.

00:55:36.800 Okay.

00:55:37.080 So she had some familiarity with that.

00:55:38.820 Yeah.

00:55:39.180 Yeah.

00:55:39.380 Okay.

00:55:39.680 And she had, she'd bought into the idea that you had put forward.

00:55:42.740 Absolutely.

00:55:43.060 And she was enthusiastic about it because that's important.

00:55:45.200 Yeah.

00:55:45.340 I mean, you want your wife to be seriously on board with this.

00:55:49.040 This is hard work.

00:55:50.180 The single biggest reason farms fail is contradictory visions of husband and wife.

00:55:59.620 Well, that's probably the biggest reason is marriage fails, all things considered.

00:56:02.820 Right, right, right.

00:56:03.000 But I can see it being particularly acute with a project like this because it's all consuming.

00:56:07.620 You don't go to work every day.

00:56:09.920 You know, you're with each other.

00:56:11.480 Yeah.

00:56:11.880 And so, yeah, those.

00:56:13.960 And you've got the four horsemen of the apocalypse nipping at your heels all the time.

00:56:17.360 Yes, yes, exactly.

00:56:18.360 Right, right.

00:56:18.760 So we, so I came back to the farm full-time.

00:56:23.220 Now I'm there.

00:56:23.500 82, right.

00:56:24.400 In 82.

00:56:24.920 82, and it took us three years, Jordan, until we could, so I say, we could exhale.

00:56:32.400 I think we're going to make it.

00:56:33.540 It took us three years.

00:56:34.440 Yeah.

00:56:34.840 But that little man.

00:56:35.760 Well, that's not too bad to start a new business.

00:56:37.580 No, no, that's right.

00:56:38.220 That's right.

00:56:38.560 A lot of new businesses fail, and the first part of it, when you're not making any money

00:56:42.840 and you've got no network, what do they say?

00:56:45.280 Getting from zero to one, that's very hard.

00:56:47.720 That's right.

00:56:48.200 One to two is still hard.

00:56:49.860 Two to three is getting a little better.

00:56:51.280 Yeah, but 10 to 11 is a lot easier.

00:56:53.900 Yeah, right, right, right.

00:56:55.100 So what I did at that time, fortunately, I was blessed with, and have been blessed with

00:57:03.040 a bit of a gift of gab communication.

00:57:06.160 I'm an extrovert, and in high school, college, I did interscholastic, intercollegiate debate.

00:57:13.240 I've got a room full of debate trophies, and did theater, drama, plays, public speaking,

00:57:19.000 all that.

00:57:19.480 I didn't do the athletic thing.

00:57:22.640 I was a late bloomer.

00:57:25.640 The best thing that ever happened to me was getting cut from the seventh grade basketball

00:57:29.040 team.

00:57:29.620 My mother was a health and phys ed teacher, so she was really athletic.

00:57:33.220 My older brother was very athletic, and here I come along.

00:57:36.020 Well, you know, I've got to be athletic, right?

00:57:37.620 You know, you've got to join a family brand, after all.

00:57:41.640 And so I'm a pudgy, you know, 14-year-old, you know, late bloomer, and I get cut from the

00:57:48.800 seventh grade baseball team.

00:57:50.260 I get cut from the eighth grade basketball team.

00:57:52.160 In other words, I don't make the teams.

00:57:54.000 I'm on the team and get cut.

00:57:55.420 I mean, I didn't even make the tryouts, okay?

00:57:57.620 I didn't make them.

00:57:58.720 And I remember, like, yesterday in eighth grade, looking and not seeing my name on that

00:58:04.360 roster and making a mental decision, okay, athletics is done.

00:58:11.000 I'm a great communicator.

00:58:13.100 You know, I win spelling bees.

00:58:14.620 I win whatever, you know, speaking contests.

00:58:17.500 I'm going to put all my attention on that.

00:58:19.780 So I tell kids, I say, you be thankful for what you fail at early, because that helps

00:58:24.880 you determine your path in life.

00:58:28.500 Well, there's another issue there that you're highlighting that's extremely relevant with

00:58:33.060 regard to our discussion of marketing.

00:58:34.920 It's like one of the things that people don't understand, and this might be more true of

00:58:39.680 people who, like, let's say, have an interest in practical matters like trades or even engineering.

00:58:44.660 It's like, well, why do I need to be fluent in my communication?

00:58:50.160 Why do I need to write?

00:58:51.320 Why do I need to learn to speak?

00:58:52.640 It's like, well, if 75% of your business problem is communication, and it certainly is, right?

00:58:59.980 What are you selling?

00:59:00.800 What do you have to offer?

00:59:02.000 How do you talk to people so you find out what they mean?

00:59:04.360 For your employees?

00:59:05.320 That's right.

00:59:05.960 How do you negotiate?

00:59:07.060 How do you make contracts?

00:59:08.200 All of that.

00:59:08.760 It's like, there isn't anything more worthwhile than you can learn to do than how to get

00:59:13.880 command of the language, and that's so interesting in your situation because you might think,

00:59:19.160 well, that might be true except for farming.

00:59:21.420 Now, I know you shouldn't think that, but it's just not true because communication is

00:59:26.080 so crucial.

00:59:27.440 The people who communicate lead their professions.

00:59:30.760 Right.

00:59:31.280 Across the board.

00:59:32.000 Right, right, right.

00:59:32.800 Exactly.

00:59:33.020 And I have moms come up to me with their little 10-year-old in tow.

00:59:37.360 My son wants to be a farmer or daughter wants to be a farmer.

00:59:40.540 What would you suggest to them?

00:59:41.840 I say, find your local amateur theater group.

00:59:46.100 Enroll them.

00:59:46.620 Right, right, right, right.

00:59:48.240 Get them.

00:59:48.800 Get them.

00:59:49.460 So counterintuitive.

00:59:50.940 Yes.

00:59:51.100 And they look at me like, yeah.

00:59:52.500 Yeah.

00:59:52.680 I say, become a storyteller.

00:59:54.520 Yeah.

00:59:54.880 Become a storyteller.

00:59:55.980 Storytellers are what changed the world.

00:59:57.560 Yeah, right.

00:59:58.060 That's exactly right.

00:59:58.900 And so, obviously, 82, this is before computers, before, you know, internet, any of this stuff.

01:00:06.400 And so, we basically did a three-prong approach.

01:00:09.580 I put together a slide program, you know, the old Kodak carousel, you know?

01:00:14.580 Yeah.

01:00:14.860 A slide projector.

01:00:15.580 And at that time, every city had a very vibrant kind of, you know, Rotary Club, Ruritan, Kiwanis, Toastmasters, Elks, Moose.

01:00:29.280 Right, all these.

01:00:30.120 And they do, you know, weekly or monthly dinner meetings.

01:00:33.280 And they're always looking for an interesting program.

01:00:35.260 And so, I put together a carousel program, how we can heal the planet with pasture-based livestock.

01:00:42.660 And it was the beginning of this.

01:00:44.200 This was, when did you do this?

01:00:45.800 In 82.

01:00:46.700 Oh, yeah.

01:00:47.160 So, okay.

01:00:47.800 So, this was just the beginning, you know, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, were just beginning to, once in a while, put in a tidbit about cow burps.

01:00:56.640 And, you know, there was just the beginning of this kind of demonization of livestock.

01:01:01.080 Mm-hmm.

01:01:01.640 And so, anyway, I put this together.

01:01:05.300 And at the end, I would say, now, if you'd like to participate in this, I'll be glad to add your name to our customer list.

01:01:12.640 You'll get a newsletter and, you know, order blank.

01:01:15.500 And, you know, we can—and each one of those would yield, you know, two, three, four people, you know?

01:01:21.260 So, that was one thing I did.

01:01:22.580 The second thing—

01:01:23.260 Okay, so that's also something that we shouldn't skip over lightly.

01:01:26.560 So, I think the most valuable—I have millions of social media followers, and I don't know how many, 20 million, some, lots.

01:01:35.360 Right, right.

01:01:35.940 The most valuable of all the things we own are our mailing lists.

01:01:41.180 And I think—I don't know what my mailing list has on it, 350,000 people, something like that, which is a pretty small fraction of the total social media network.

01:01:50.680 But it's by far, like, if we're trying to advertise for tickets for a lecture.

01:01:55.760 That's hard.

01:01:56.360 So, you're going out there and you're collecting individual people who are interesting.

01:02:01.160 Like, how many people interested in what you're doing?

01:02:03.540 How many people like that did you need before you were successful?

01:02:08.800 How many did you have to collect?

01:02:10.220 Yeah, well, fortunately, at that time, you know, we, with our low expenses and all that, we didn't need more than, goodness, 100 families, 100, 200 families.

01:02:20.240 Right, okay, okay.

01:02:21.060 So, that's really worth knowing.

01:02:22.480 So, you put together this slide presentation and you collected 150 avid customers.

01:02:28.960 Yes, yes, yes.

01:02:30.140 And if you've got 100 people that are spending $1,000 a year with you, that's significant.

01:02:36.200 Right, right.

01:02:36.900 And so, that's—

01:02:37.880 Especially if they're loyal and they had also talked to other people.

01:02:40.560 Yes, yes.

01:02:40.740 Because word of mouth really matters.

01:02:42.140 Okay, so, the next thing we did was when somebody would call us and say, hey, you know, I heard about you, I want your stuff, you're tempted to say, oh, good, good.

01:02:52.340 Well, what do you want?

01:02:52.980 You know, you want five chickens and three T-bone steaks.

01:02:56.360 My first question was, where did you hear about us?

01:02:59.520 Before I—where did you hear about us?

01:03:01.240 Oh, I had dinner over at, you know, Mary Jane's.

01:03:03.960 Yeah.

01:03:04.180 And so, then I'd go to the customer box and I'd put a post-it note at Mary Jane's to remind me the next time Mary Jane came out and picked up something, Mary Jane, thank you.

01:03:13.820 I'd just hug her, slobber all over her, say, thank you for spreading the word.

01:03:18.200 Yeah.

01:03:18.960 And tell you what, go over and take a dozen eggs home with you for free.

01:03:24.460 Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:24.680 And people are starved for appreciation.

01:03:28.420 They're starved for love.

01:03:29.520 They're starved for appreciation.

01:03:31.300 They will jump off a cliff for you.

01:03:32.920 So, you just said something, like, with both those that's unbelievably worth noting.

01:03:37.200 Because one of the things you can do in your family, well, even for yourself, to promote positive change that's unbelievably effective.

01:03:45.420 I'll give you an example of this.

01:03:46.560 So, there's a famous psychologist, B.F. Skinner, and B.F. Skinner was the father of reinforcement learning theory, and that's a big deal.

01:03:56.420 These large language models, these new AI systems, they're trained with reinforcement theory.

01:04:01.600 So, like, this was a major deal, and B.F. Skinner was a master of this.

01:04:05.060 He, in World War II, he trained pigeons to guide missiles by pecking on photographs as they were flying across the sky, right?

01:04:15.720 So, Skinner could train animals to do anything.

01:04:18.040 Now, he noted that you could use threat and punishment to shape an animal's behavior, but the best thing to use was targeted reward.

01:04:25.880 And so, what he would do is his animals were hungry because they had to be motivated to work for food pellets.

01:04:32.240 And so, he'd have a hungry animal.

01:04:35.260 Maybe you're trying to—so, imagine there's a rat in a cage, and there's a little ladder, and you want the rat to go up on the ladder and then walk across and go down the other side.

01:04:44.640 It's a pretty complicated behavior.

01:04:46.020 So, here's how Skinner would do it.

01:04:48.140 He would just watch that rat, and as soon as it got near—as soon as it made a move near the ladder, he'd give it a food pellet.

01:04:54.740 Then it would start hanging around the ladder.

01:04:56.800 And when it was hanging around close to the bottom of the ladder, now and then it would put a paw up, and he'd give it a food pellet.

01:05:02.380 And then now the rat was doing this quite a bit, and then now and then it would do this food pellet.

01:05:07.080 And so, but the key issue was that he was observing, and then when he got an increment of behavior in the direction he wanted, he signified that.

01:05:18.560 Well, that's what you're doing with your customers, is you're paying very careful attention, and then one of your customers does something that you'd really like them to do more of.

01:05:27.240 You notice, you tell them, you reward them for it, and then—now, the other thing you said that was very cool was that people are dying for this.

01:05:36.920 It's like, if you watch people, you'll see that they kind of do—they do some tentative good things kind of secretly.

01:05:46.460 It's like they're hoping that someone will notice, but generally people don't.

01:05:49.840 And so they'll do something good that's a little bit extra.

01:05:52.340 They'll do this with their boss or with their wife, and generally people are kind of opaque to that.

01:05:57.340 But if you notice that, you say, ha!

01:06:00.460 With kids, you see this.

01:06:02.180 With kids, you see, like, I see that you spent a little extra time, like, putting away your Legos today.

01:06:07.280 And, like, you moved all those Legos from there to there, and that was really good.

01:06:11.760 I'd like to see more of that.

01:06:13.000 The kid is just like—if you can catch them in the air, oh, man, they're so happy about that.

01:06:17.900 Yeah, that's right.

01:06:18.260 And so that's—so now you've got your hundred people who are on your side, and you're watching them very carefully.

01:06:23.480 And if they do—if they put in a good word for you, which they don't have to do, by the way—

01:06:27.520 That's right.

01:06:28.100 Yeah, you want to say, we saw that.

01:06:30.640 We appreciate it.

01:06:31.540 Here's a little gift.

01:06:32.480 Thank you very much.

01:06:33.600 That's all.

01:06:34.140 You don't have to say, please keep doing it.

01:06:36.240 That's right.

01:06:36.800 That gets that exchange going, right?

01:06:38.880 And those person-to-person—like, one of the things, we're very careful on tour, for example.

01:06:43.940 I mean, I see thousands of people.

01:06:45.760 My staff know this particularly.

01:06:48.860 The rule for my staff is, do not ever annoy any of the people who are interested in coming up to me or being at the shows.

01:06:57.900 Wow, that's critical.

01:06:58.780 Yeah, yeah, because if you annoy one person, they will tell a thousand people.

01:07:04.660 If you annoy a hundred people, enough so they start talking about it, you're done.

01:07:09.400 Your business is done.

01:07:10.440 I don't really care the scale.

01:07:11.880 Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of How to Effective People talks about emotional equity.

01:07:16.540 And he says, it takes roughly ten positives, ten praises to take one criticism.

01:07:26.540 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:27.820 That's probably an underestimate.

01:07:29.820 Well, and also people remember the negative.

01:07:32.600 Oh, we're hardwired to remember.

01:07:34.280 Nobody comes back from town and says, honey, I hit five go lights.

01:07:37.840 We hit stop lights.

01:07:38.720 We never call them go lights.

01:07:40.020 Yeah, right.

01:07:40.360 Even though they let us go, we never think about them letting us go.

01:07:44.640 We think about them making us stop.

01:07:46.260 Yes, yes.

01:07:47.080 So I did the slide program, kind of what I call infotainment.

01:07:53.940 Yeah, and the story.

01:07:54.860 The story is so important because you have an interesting story to tell.

01:07:57.300 Exactly, the story.

01:07:57.980 Exactly, the story.

01:07:59.180 And people, listen, people still love to feel like they're a part of a great cause, of a great thing.

01:08:07.580 And so the whole theme here is you can participate in healing the planet, making vegetation,

01:08:15.700 building soil, clean water, clean air.

01:08:18.520 You can participate with what you eat.

01:08:21.520 Here's how you do it.

01:08:22.660 And so people love, they're drawn, they're attracted to this what?

01:08:26.380 You know, all of our little bags at the farm store, our little slogan is healing the planet or healing the land one bite at a time.

01:08:35.700 And we're trying to connect what you're eating to the landscape.

01:08:40.080 And you're actually doing it.

01:08:41.520 And we're actually doing it.

01:08:42.640 All right.

01:08:43.260 So important detail as well.

01:08:45.260 Yeah.

01:08:45.700 Yeah.

01:08:46.000 The thing I love most is when people come to visit the farm, we have a 24-7, 365 open-door policy.

01:08:52.540 Anyone can come from anywhere in the world to see anything, anytime, anywhere unannounced.

01:08:57.100 That's our dedication to transparency.

01:08:59.780 And we love to hear people come and say, wow, it was better than I imagined.

01:09:03.920 Yeah, that's good.

01:09:05.660 That's good stuff.

01:09:06.700 Yeah.

01:09:06.960 So we did that.

01:09:08.560 And then the other thing we did was that when somebody was interested, we gave them a sample.

01:09:17.100 Samples work.

01:09:17.960 If you've got a good product or you've got good content, samples work.

01:09:22.960 And so we'd tease them with a sample.

01:09:24.960 You know, give them a chicken.

01:09:26.280 Give them a dozen eggs.

01:09:27.100 Give them a T-bone steak.

01:09:28.180 Give them a pound of ground beef or, you know, a pound of bacon or something.

01:09:32.400 And because for the very reason that you said earlier, nobody's looking for something new.

01:09:40.620 Nobody goes down the shampoo aisle and says, you know, I've been a head and shoulders guy all my life.

01:09:47.380 But today, for some reason, I've got a hankering for something else.

01:09:51.260 Pantene Pro-V, you know.

01:09:53.140 Nobody does that.

01:09:54.560 You don't want the decision cost even.

01:09:56.500 No.

01:09:57.040 No.

01:09:57.800 Or the risk.

01:09:58.640 Nobody wants to make a decision.

01:09:59.360 Well, the incremental benefit is basically zero.

01:10:01.940 The risk that you, first of all, it's difficult.

01:10:05.740 You know, there's a whole consumer literature on this, hey?

01:10:07.740 So imagine, you might think that if you went into a shop, and here's your options.

01:10:12.940 You have 200 shampoos to pick from, or four.

01:10:15.840 Yeah.

01:10:16.380 Okay.

01:10:16.860 Or one.

01:10:17.720 Okay.

01:10:18.100 People don't like one because there's no choice.

01:10:20.780 Yeah.

01:10:21.480 But they don't like 200 either.

01:10:23.400 And part of the reason for that is, imagine there's the best one in 200.

01:10:27.760 Okay.

01:10:27.960 What's your chance you're going to pick that?

01:10:29.640 You're going to pick the best one.

01:10:30.420 One in 200.

01:10:31.060 Yeah, it's called paralysis of choice.

01:10:33.120 Exactly, exactly.

01:10:33.940 Paralysis of choice.

01:10:34.360 And so maybe you want four.

01:10:36.060 Yeah.

01:10:36.260 Yeah, yeah.

01:10:36.780 Something like that.

01:10:37.540 Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:10:38.740 So we'd give a sample so that they could try something new with no risk.

01:10:44.940 Right.

01:10:45.200 And what we found was, a lot of times, people are naturally, intuitively prejudiced to a gift

01:10:54.300 more than they are something that they bought.

01:10:56.580 Because when you buy something, you have buyer's remorse.

01:10:59.320 When somebody gives you something, there's no remorse.

01:11:02.500 And so you have this feel-good thing.

01:11:04.800 Even if they're equal, the one you were given, you tend to have more positive emotion for than what you had to buy.

01:11:14.160 And so I'm not saying our stuff wasn't as good.

01:11:16.600 I'm just saying-

01:11:17.080 Right, but you are saying if it was equally good, that would be good enough.

01:11:20.240 You tap into, yeah, you tap into these emotional things.

01:11:23.440 So that was kind of our three-pronged approach early on to kind of start and build a patron base.

01:11:31.780 In fact, we don't call them customers.

01:11:33.100 We call them patrons.

01:11:33.920 We call them patron saints.

01:11:35.200 And we address them as patron saints.

01:11:38.320 This is all about-

01:11:39.800 A customer is often someone whose eyes you want to pull wool over.

01:11:44.060 Whereas if you have patrons, let's say, you know, then you treat them properly.

01:11:50.540 You treat them hospitably, and you're damn happy they exist.

01:11:53.860 And you want them to know that, and you remember it.

01:11:57.380 Yes, and we call this relationship-

01:12:00.960 Preborn's network of clinics are on the front lines, nationwide, on standby for women deciding between the life of their babies.

01:12:07.260 Preborn seeks these women out to help them choose life, not just for their babies, but for themselves.

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01:12:27.660 A single heartbeat can echo across generations.

01:12:30.320 Marketing.

01:12:31.220 Yeah.

01:12:31.560 We're really marketing a relationship because they're not buying it because it's a label.

01:12:35.800 They're buying it because they trust us.

01:12:38.500 Yeah, because they trust us, and now with food choice and labeling confusion and what is a cage-free, natural, all this stuff, what is all this stuff, we've now presented ourselves as our patron's food coach.

01:12:57.800 You don't ever have to be confused again.

01:12:59.720 Just buy it from us, and you'll know it's the best, and it doesn't matter.

01:13:02.500 Right, so that's another example of you identifying the problem that people have.

01:13:06.940 Yeah, so the problem is—

01:13:08.520 Because every mom is scared to death, am I buying the best for my kid?

01:13:11.880 Yeah, of course.

01:13:12.020 Am I buying the best for my kid?

01:13:13.400 So I just come in straight away and say, you never have to be concerned about that at all.

01:13:18.640 Right, right.

01:13:18.860 I'll solve that.

01:13:19.620 Right, right.

01:13:19.920 Get it from us, and you never have to worry about that again.

01:13:21.920 Right, so here's some—we're hospitable.

01:13:24.700 Here's some evidence.

01:13:25.720 Yeah.

01:13:25.940 You can trust us.

01:13:26.860 Try our product.

01:13:27.620 You'll see it's high quality.

01:13:28.760 Yeah.

01:13:29.080 Now, because you can trust us, there's a whole bunch of problems you don't have.

01:13:32.820 That's right.

01:13:33.220 Right, so you can solve them all in one fell swoop.

01:13:36.400 Yeah, that's right.

01:13:37.180 Yeah, well, and you said earlier, and this is very useful for everybody who's watching

01:13:40.420 and listening to know, it's like, well, how do you sell effectively?

01:13:43.920 Well, you know, the crooked used car salesman approach to that is sell junk to idiots and

01:13:50.800 laugh at them when you pull the wool over their eyes, and that'll work once.

01:13:54.280 Right.

01:13:54.620 Right, but you make an enemy.

01:13:56.200 And if you do that 50 times, and they tell 1,000 people, you have 50,000 enemies, and

01:14:01.040 you're done.

01:14:02.160 And so, what you want to do instead is tell people the truth and develop that relationship,

01:14:07.940 right?

01:14:08.260 Yeah.

01:14:08.840 And you also pointed out that you want to tell stories to people so that they're interested

01:14:15.340 in what you're doing and so they can come along in an adventure, but you also want to

01:14:19.320 listen to them so you know what their problem is.

01:14:23.500 And so, that's a really good way of thinking about sales is when you go out to sell, you're

01:14:28.460 actually seeing if you can establish a partnership, and you can't establish a partnership if you

01:14:33.940 have nothing to offer.

01:14:35.340 And you have nothing to offer unless the solution you have matches the person's problem.

01:14:41.920 Right, so you go and say, the first thing you want to know from someone new is, well,

01:14:46.540 what's your problem?

01:14:47.620 Yeah, what do you need?

01:14:48.660 Yeah.

01:14:48.900 What are you looking for?

01:14:49.640 What are you looking for?

01:14:50.280 And if the answer has nothing to do with what you're selling, you should find someone else to

01:14:54.960 talk to.

01:14:55.300 You might be able to say, well, I know some people who could help you with that, but they're

01:14:58.340 actually not someone you should partner with because your offering and their problem don't

01:15:03.580 match.

01:15:04.140 And then if you force that by convincing them or lying to them even, then, well, they're

01:15:09.800 not satisfied because you didn't solve their problem.

01:15:12.040 Plus, they're annoyed at you.

01:15:13.620 Plus, even worse, if you do have a partnership with them, they're going to bend you towards

01:15:18.940 their problem.

01:15:19.800 And that's definitely not something you want.

01:15:23.740 So you've got to think of the first sales approach as an investigation.

01:15:29.360 Well, you also have to think about it as persuasion that people don't move too far too fast.

01:15:38.180 People move incrementally.

01:15:39.500 Yeah.

01:15:39.980 So one of the things that we deal with all the time is on a scale of, say, one to ten, one being your food

01:15:48.840 comes from the gas station.

01:15:50.240 Yeah.

01:15:50.500 And let's say we're a ten, okay?

01:15:55.200 You irritate somebody if you try to move them from a one to a ten.

01:15:59.060 Yeah.

01:16:00.060 That's because you're criticizing everything that you do.

01:16:02.340 That's right.

01:16:02.760 That's right.

01:16:03.420 But if we can move them, if as a result of a discussion, a friendly discussion, a non-aggressive

01:16:11.680 discussion, we can move them from a one to a two, well, they're on their way.

01:16:15.280 Yeah.

01:16:15.400 And they might not buy from us, but now instead of buying from the gas station, they're going

01:16:20.400 to the, whatever, organic section of the supermarket or something, okay?

01:16:24.000 And you gradually move them up.

01:16:26.240 And so too many times in persuasion, people try to move people too fast.

01:16:31.240 Yeah.

01:16:31.680 And people resist being moved too fast.

01:16:35.540 Definitely.

01:16:36.020 And that's why you have to start with a question that moves you to common ground quickly if

01:16:45.580 you're going to make progress.

01:16:47.760 Because if you move too fast, then you lose them.

01:16:51.260 Yeah.

01:16:51.520 And now there's no discussion.

01:16:53.440 Yeah.

01:16:53.600 Well, they can't see a way to bridge the gap.

01:16:55.520 Right.

01:16:56.040 Plus, you're criticizing their whole lifestyle.

01:16:58.220 Right.

01:16:58.400 So in marketing, one of the things that we teach and promote through our team is,

01:17:06.020 no sale is an end to itself.

01:17:09.920 Every sale is a springboard for the next sale.

01:17:12.780 Right.

01:17:13.060 Of course.

01:17:13.520 You cannot stay in business finding new customers.

01:17:16.920 Yeah.

01:17:17.240 The only way you stay in business is to please the customers you have.

01:17:22.440 Yeah.

01:17:22.820 Enough that they buzz and tell people about it and bring them back to you.

01:17:26.340 And that's a long-term relationship.

01:17:27.760 That's akin to a friendship relationship.

01:17:29.760 Right.

01:17:30.020 You don't want to play with someone once.

01:17:31.440 Which is why you don't want to irritate somebody at your lectures or your presentation.

01:17:36.160 Yeah, because they're already in the camp.

01:17:38.020 Yeah.

01:17:38.240 Right?

01:17:38.460 They're the last people you want to irritate.

01:17:40.200 Exactly.

01:17:40.760 Exactly.

01:17:41.320 Yeah, yeah.

01:17:41.780 They've done all the work coming to you.

01:17:43.740 Yeah, you need to do backflips to make them happy and meet their youth.

01:17:47.940 All right.

01:17:48.160 Well, look, this has gone by very rapidly.

01:17:50.360 So let me do two things.

01:17:51.520 I'm going to tell everybody what we're going to do on the Daily Wire side.

01:17:55.200 It's something I would have liked to have done on the YouTube side here too.

01:17:58.560 I would like to talk to you a little bit about how people can, I would like to talk about

01:18:04.920 the practical steps that people could take if they're interested in knowing more about

01:18:10.600 this just conceptually or as a lifestyle, right?

01:18:14.360 So let's do that on the Daily Wire side.

01:18:16.360 I want to recapitulate what we've discussed and then give you an opportunity to add anything

01:18:20.740 that you might want to this broader audience while you have the opportunity.

01:18:24.660 So you talked about the fact that, and there's so many things we could have touched on still,

01:18:29.860 that there is an agricultural enterprise, which is roughly termed now something approximating

01:18:37.160 regenerative farming, which requires the use of multiple species and a particular approach

01:18:44.220 to pasture management.

01:18:46.780 The pasture management is a diverse, natural landscape, multiple plants that's grazed upon

01:18:54.640 by herbivores that move like they do when they're migrating, that you mimic artificially.

01:19:00.860 You use multiple species to fill in the ecological niches.

01:19:05.480 You use birds to track the herbivores, the cows, and to sanitize the ground that they've grazed

01:19:14.160 on.

01:19:14.700 You rotate the cattle around your, through use of paddocks around your land.

01:19:20.760 You maximize the amount of product that your grasslands are producing so that that's hyper-efficient.

01:19:27.460 You regenerate the soil so it gets thicker.

01:19:30.140 That sequesters carbon.

01:19:31.700 You produce high-quality meat, and you can do that profitably while you're pursuing a lifestyle

01:19:38.980 that's enjoyable and serving a dedicated and committed customer base.

01:19:44.800 That's about that, eh?

01:19:46.660 Anything else?

01:19:47.740 That's pretty good.

01:19:48.800 It is pretty good.

01:19:49.640 It is pretty good.

01:19:50.500 It is pretty good.

01:19:51.380 And it's a good deal for everybody.

01:19:53.160 And so...

01:19:53.580 It is.

01:19:54.100 Yeah.

01:19:54.420 And so you're still an enthusiastic advocate of this after 40 years as well.

01:19:58.440 Yes, indeed.

01:19:59.180 Yeah, yeah.

01:19:59.580 Why?

01:20:00.160 Why is that?

01:20:01.300 I'll tell you something.

01:20:02.320 Most farmers my age, and I'm almost 70, most farmers my age are lonelier than they've ever

01:20:10.000 been in their life.

01:20:11.100 Their kids are gone.

01:20:12.300 And they've had enough.

01:20:13.220 The kids are gone.

01:20:14.500 It's Matilda and I by ourselves.

01:20:16.700 Yeah.

01:20:17.140 And boy, I can't get up and down off that tractor as well as I used to, you know, that

01:20:22.140 sort of thing.

01:20:22.620 And for me, Jordan, creating this model, this farm that, yes, the multi-speciation makes

01:20:34.520 it different every day.

01:20:36.600 You know, you're different animals, different things.

01:20:38.440 The diversity of ecology, you know, we've built 20 ponds.

01:20:41.900 So there's ducks and there's wood ducks and there's deer and there's bear and there's

01:20:46.820 wildlife and pollinators.

01:20:48.800 And so there's just, there's just vibrant life and earthworms.

01:20:52.740 And, and so you have all of that, you have that aesthetic and aromatic, sensual beauty

01:20:59.760 and attractiveness.

01:21:01.740 And then you add the component of, of the social element, the people, our customers.

01:21:07.360 In other words, we're not just out here hauling grain to a Cargill grain bin.

01:21:12.080 You have a social community.

01:21:13.420 Every day there are people at the farm saying, I so thank you for what you do.

01:21:17.720 You're, you're just, our family depends on you.

01:21:21.300 Thank you.

01:21:22.180 You know, from our day one, our kids grow up, you know, with our customers, pinching them

01:21:26.480 on the cheek saying, we just think your parents are the coolest in the world.

01:21:30.580 And thank you for, for being a part of this.

01:21:32.920 And so here I am, you know, 22 of us now basically earn a full-time living from the farm.

01:21:38.560 And, and, and I'm surrounded now by this, these twenties and thirties year old, you know,

01:21:44.860 the oldest ones are in their early forties now, but, but these team and these young people

01:21:49.280 that are just, just can't wait to do what I've done.

01:21:53.920 And every day they, they, they think I'm cool, you know, and they want to do this.

01:22:00.760 And so, I mean, I just, I just break down in tears when I, when I, I, you know, explain

01:22:08.580 the blessing and the gratitude that I have, that at this stage in my life, I'm surrounded

01:22:14.120 by this youthful enthusiasm.

01:22:17.060 Yeah.

01:22:17.940 Yeah.

01:22:18.260 Yeah.

01:22:18.540 I understand.

01:22:19.480 I understand.

01:22:19.840 To, to, to appreciate what I've spent a lifetime carving out and they will now take it to

01:22:26.880 new heights that I never dreamed.

01:22:28.620 Yeah.

01:22:28.880 Well, and we didn't, there's so many things that are advantageous to this that we didn't

01:22:32.140 even discuss too, because the approach that you're taking, if that was duplicated at a

01:22:36.900 larger scale also makes for a much healthier, healthier livestock with a much higher quality

01:22:42.160 life and much more resilient farms and more decentralized food production and less reliance

01:22:47.740 on chemicals and, and both fertilizers and pesticides and, um, and pharmaceuticals and

01:22:54.440 pharmaceuticals and farm, well, right.

01:22:55.700 And, and, and no antibiotic overutilization, which, you know, which is a very major thing.

01:23:01.140 Yeah.

01:23:01.240 Yeah.

01:23:01.420 Yeah.

01:23:01.540 Yeah.

01:23:01.740 And regeneration of the soil and carbon sequestration and yeah, yeah.

01:23:06.020 So, so, you know, we hear all this nonsense at high levels among the globalists about the

01:23:11.380 fact that agriculture is a net pollutant and that we have to radically cut back, for example,

01:23:17.240 on our meat consumption, which is something that's like, oh, I see.

01:23:20.560 So everybody's going to have a little brain because they eat nothing but plants.

01:23:23.600 Right.

01:23:23.880 That's your damn theory.

01:23:24.820 Right.

01:23:25.300 And so, you, you know, you hear about these rejections.

01:23:28.100 Well, if we're all, if we're all eating beans, that might solve the gas problem.

01:23:31.060 Yeah.

01:23:31.260 Well, that's also, well, I, apparently Bill Gates has a solution to that.

01:23:35.440 It's pharmaceutical as well.

01:23:36.500 Yeah.

01:23:36.620 Yeah.

01:23:36.840 Some, uh, some, uh, Bovira or something.

01:23:39.400 Yeah.

01:23:39.460 Yeah.

01:23:39.880 Yeah.

01:23:40.100 Yes.

01:23:40.620 Exactly.

01:23:41.200 Exactly.

01:23:41.760 There's a put in the cart before the horse.

01:23:43.520 And so it's very optimistic to hear about such approaches because they seem to be producing

01:23:49.720 a variety of social goods simultaneously and as in a truly resilient and sustainable way.

01:23:55.080 So, well, thank you very much, sir, for coming to talk to us today and we'll turn to the Daily

01:24:00.100 Wire side.

01:24:00.700 And I think we'll go more into the nuts and bolts of this, maybe talk a little bit more

01:24:04.440 about the issues of resilience and sustainability as well.

01:24:08.060 But if you're looking for a practical guide to how this sort of lifestyle might be, well,

01:24:12.800 at least participated in, but possibly pursued, then join us on the Daily Wire side.

01:24:18.420 And thank you very much to the film crew here.

01:24:20.580 Where are we today?

01:24:21.820 Evanston?

01:24:23.240 Evansville.

01:24:23.800 Sorry.

01:24:24.380 Story to everybody in Evansville.

01:24:26.160 Evansville, Indiana.

01:24:28.040 Yeah.

01:24:28.340 Yeah.

01:24:28.600 And so I had a show here last night and so, uh, it's a lovely place and we've been happy

01:24:33.180 to be here and it was very good to meet you, sir.

01:24:35.260 It was wonderful.

01:24:35.980 Thanks very much for the conversation.

01:24:37.320 Thanks to all of you on the YouTube side and join us over on the Daily Wire side for

01:24:42.740 a continuation of this conversation.

539. The Truth Behind Cows and Climate ｜ Joel Salatin

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