Can You Feed the Masses Without Factory Farming? w/Joel Salatin | Joe Rogan

the Joe Rogan experience a real parallel is when you were talking about these large-scale meat processing plants are a perfect sort of petri dish for viruses to grow so our factory farms so are these farms where your stuff in pigs next to each other you're doing all this unnatural stuff right it's unnatural for people to be stuffed into a warehouse right next to each other shoulders shoulder working all day it's unnatural for them to be stuffed in these homes shoulder to shoulder with bad food and and all the things that you would need to keep your body healthy and strong the same can be said about these factory farms in situations one thing that I find so attractive about the way you run your farm is that there's no weirdness in watching these animals during the day they seem like animals just doing normal stuff if you see a chicken wandering around just pecking at the grass looks normal see a chicken in a cage getting fed out of a little cup or something it looks all kinds of [ __ ] up right it doesn't feel right that's what we you know we we have the phrase respecting the pigness of the pig and the chicken us of the chicken and we know that these diseases are all coming from these place I mean there's a ton of agricultural diseases you know that are based from these factors you have situations where these animals live in these really horrific conditions and then the bacteria jump and look I mean they're they're they're eat look if you ate in your toilet every it would you like to eat your toilet every day right that's that's how they eat you're there breathing in their fecal particulate matter which is you know putting lesions in their tender respiratory membranes making making lesions there Minh and so when you have those kinds of conditions and they're not getting exercise or not getting fresh air and so I mean the the they're not getting salad they're not getting any vitamin D from the sunshine and so what happens is you get an extremely concentrated host host facility for pathogenicity mmm that's what happens you get a very concentrated host facility because there's always a host they're close to each other the pathogen doesn't have to say Wow boy I wonder if I can make it that you know that half mile over to another no other you know they're always right there and so you're right it's like it's like an incubator and so you know if we wanted to sit down look if we wanted to sit down and say let's say we had a James Bond conspiracist you know and said we're gonna form a committee and and make a pathogen friendly farm you know the old James Bond nemesis right and so we form a committee say how can we make a pathogen friendly farm well we would have only one species we'd crowded up we'd take out the oxygen the the fresh air the sunshine we'd give it we'd give it a minimal a minimalistic diet what I've just described is modern efficient industrial factory farming you couldn't design a better system for for conductivity of pathogenicity now here's the big question is it possible to feed all of Los Angeles using your methods can you can you feed big urban areas using these regenerative methods sure absolutely so so so two things to realize is the the bottleneck in the food system right now the reason the supermarket is low on meat is not because there aren't animals in the field it's because of the prot the processing is the but it's not the trucking it's not the production it's not even the it's not even the store shelf it's it's the processing so it's the processing that's the bottleneck and so so so my vision is that so we could get the two questions first of all let's deal with the production with the production absolutely if we if we spread out the production if we if we did for example you know if we took all the confinement chicken houses and put those chickens on pasture no problem okay it doesn't take any more land to grow the feed for a chicken on pasture than it does in a confinement house don't you get a lot more lost due to raptors and things along those lines no no it's no no we put it we put them in in little protected shelters then we move them every day across the pasture well yeah you you can get losses from from Raptors but we use guard geese their guard dogs guard llamas there's all sorts of guard animals there's really cool and there's and there's a lot of research being done to jam the radar of you know Eagles and stuff there I mean really oh yeah oh yeah they Jam the rate I didn't even know they had radar well that's figurative right are they using when they went when Eagle it's just not just their visions insanely good right yeah particularly it really is it really is and so for example I know one guy that's he's it's not it's not ready to sell yet but he claims to have had great success putting reflective coke can bottoms on like a traffic cone hanging it out with his chickens and that splays the sun rays all out and messes up the eyesight of the of the Eagles and the Hawks they they can't zero in really yeah in in fact this was exactly one of the defensive measures the u.s. Navy used and still uses for incoming missiles that they they have a cannon that blows out pieces of aluminum foil basically and it like a graffiti aluminum foil graffiti out of the air and it jams the whatever the you know the the honing devices of a missile hmm the Hawks are the same way what I'm getting at is that there there are we don't lose very much we protect them greatly there are a lot of things that you can do to you know to mitigate that kind of pressure but but the fact is the industry loses tons of birds to in a flood in a heat wave in a whatever you know and and so the idea that these birds in this big confinement house are actually protected from malady this is simply not is simply not German they're gonna be much more of them are gonna get sick sure they might have losses in that way sure sure so so can we produced can we produce the food this way absolutely now one of the things that it would require is many more people on farms so you know I thought a lot about obviously as unemployment has skyrocketed through this right now sitting here it's hard for us to imagine what it'll take to bring you know to fill football stadiums again to fit to film Caribbean cruises to fill theaters you know music venues you know whatever boxing matches I mean right now it's hard to conceive what it'll take people are so terrified it's hard to appreciate how much of this is going to come back the hospitality industry and all that so what's going to happen so so where are the jobs what are people going to do and and I would suggest that one of the things that that people can do is that we can have a lot of these smaller plants and we have way more people actually growing food participating in food production personally is food gonna be more expensive maybe so but you get to be healthy and we have a healthy planet and what's that worth and how much more do you think it would cost for I mean if you just give a rough percentage if you're thinking about food production right now with the current situation there's a lot of automation right a lot of these factory farms they don't require too many people to be working sure sure you would require much more people get you'd have to manage these animals you'd have to do it sort of along the lines the way that you do yeah how many more people you think would be involved in a large-scale farm lots lots be my eye I don't have I don't have a number there but I can tell you that that prices would you know food prices might go up to what they were 30 years ago and it also would it be fair to say that food prices might go to where they should be like a cheeseburger really shouldn't be $0.99 no no absolutely as you're very familiar with the argument of the externalize costs they don't they don't get captured what's what's the cost you know right now 50% of the cases of diarrhea in the US are caused by food borne you know bacteria well what's what's a case of diarrhea worse yeah if we start if you start you start putting dollars on these externalize costs you know the the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the fact that we have you know score hundreds of square miles that don't grow shrimp anymore you know because it's it's toxic from the runoff from the Mississippi from from chemical farming so there's there's a lot of these externalize costs and not only that but if this actually became normal the the the new way the new orthodoxy there would be definitely economies of scale that we don't have right now I mean I'll just give you one example that probably nobody would think of so we play we pay workmen's compensation at our farm so how do you determine the exposure level the risk factor of a poultry worker I mean think about if if you have a Tyson chicken farm and you hire an employee to be in the chicken house think about his workmen's comp risk I mean there's fecal particulate all day long that he's breathing you've got augers chains feed bins electrical connections dust I mean it's it's a very it's a high-risk situation for us a poultry worker goes out in the field and move some move some chickens in a field there's no fecal particulate there's no dust there's no you know there's no augers there's no whatever spinning fans vent shafts you know there's none of this and so so part of the cost the reason that our chicken is more expensive than what's in the store is not only externalize cost but is it is unrecognized unrecognized savings that we offer that can't be captured in a square peg in a round hole hmm I see what you're saying yeah the the overall big picture of health for you health for the food how much is that worth Yeah right that's interesting that we're not really taking into consideration these secondary costs that come about from doing it the wrong way yeah we're not we're not I mean there's there's a lot of those you you can much of much of our increased cost has nothing to do with actual production cost it's it's the non-scalable regulatory overheads and and this and this of course is why we don't have more community small-scale abattoirs around the country it's not because there's not a demand for them it's because the the the paperwork the hasit plants hazardous analysis critical control point plans and the paperwork to be able to launch a business like this require the are so high that the both time and money are so high that it's very difficult to launch a small business hmm you know because you can't spread the overhead of capitalization over is there a solution to that is it well there's a couple solutions certainly one one that's that's being championed right now by congressman Thomas Massie called the prime act he's had it in for five years and amazingly it's kind of just floundered for five years all of a sudden in the last two months he's got 18 new co-sponsors because of this and what the prime act would do it would allow it would allow uninspected custom processed meat in state to be sold by the piece that's not legal right now right now the only way that you can sell a t-bone if you want to buy a t-bone steak for me the only way for you to get is for me to go to a federal inspected slaughterhouse get the animal processed packaged under inspection and put in for you custom houses are where if you want to buy a half a beef a quarter beef alright and it goes in with your name on that quarter and their custom processing it for me yeah then you know then I can buy it and what what congressman Massie is saying with the prime act is why should we discriminate and only allow people to tap into the lower cost and lower lower overheads of the custom processing facility to only those people who can afford to buy a quarter of beef at a time that's that's very poverty discriminatory let's open that up so that people can buy it buy the piece we're not going to ship it interstate we're not gonna sell it at Walmart okay there's but if you and I as neighbors want to do business together as and I'm using a powerful phrasing here as consenting adults if we want to exercise freedom of joy of choice and participate in a consensual relationship of Commerce why should that be a bureaucrats business between you know between two consenting neighbors right so what you saying is as long but is the the regulatory process in place to make sure that people are using the proper sanitation methods making sure that the animals are healthy making sure that all these things are in place so that unscrupulous characters don't take advantage of the system and then screw over the consumer and the consumer gets sick like this is like best-case scenario for the regulation right that it's there to protect us well that's that's the that's the assumption yes and I would simply ask that at some point when you have a very close transparent relationship one on one you don't you don't have you know truckers and warehouses and big slaughterhouses and and and you know supermarkets blah blah blah in between us there is there is a lot of protection in that relational transaction that beats all the paperwork you can amass on the industrial scale we we recognize scale in a lot of things in life for example in Virginia where I'm from if you want to open a if you want to do day care let's say you want to do a work at home deal you know you want to do a side gig and keep children you can keep up to three in your home without subjecting yourself to the licensing and compliance of daycare regulations because they know if all you're gonna do is keep three in your homes those parents you're gonna have a close relationship with them it's not a this is not a daycare center all right all right the same thing is true with elder care my wife's grandmother spent her last year in a ladies home who is allowed to keep three people as elder care she was an RN she wanted to not have to go to the hospital every day and start a decide gig in her home she cooked for them she took care of them three of them in her home does this vary state by state it does vary state by state I'm just giving you an example of where of where reason where where it's reasonable to appreciate that a different relationship at scale yes can create its own safety in that particular thing can you keep a hundred in your home without a license no but three if you're only going to keep three you're probably going to see them you're probably going to have a direct relationship with each of their of their caregivers they're you know they're people that are signing off for them it's a different relationship and so all I would say is that from the safety issue that there needs to be some place a point at which we can opt to do business with each other without a bureaucrat involved massive is if you wanted to slaughter a cow and then you wanted to give some of the meat away to your neighbor would you have to bring it to some perfectly perfectly legal perfectly legal so this is not a yeah if it were if this were all about safety right you wouldn't be able to do that so the important thing to realize is that the the prohibition here is not on the in fact our neighbor can even buy it legally oh really I just can't sell it so the prohibition is only on one if you can't sell it how they gonna buy it black market so so if yeah if I if I if I did this under the radar okay so I butcher a chicken in my backyard and the neighbor comes over and buys it from me okay it's legal for him it's legal for him to buy it it's not legal for me to sell it but every but everything else in society that we've discerned determined it's a hazardous a controlled substance a hazardous substance the prohibition is both on seller and buyer right and and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole either of I'm a pretty libertarian you know drug let it all go but but but without regard to that the the prohibitions are equal on even possession if you want to if you want to have a ton of cocaine in your house you even if you just want it over there in a corner on a pallet yeah I've got a ton of cocaine here what's wrong with that you can't have that all right right but when it comes to food products the prohibitions are only on one side and they don't include if you give it away so if it was really dangerous you shouldn't be able to buy it you shouldn't be able to possess it and you shouldn't be able to give it away I see what you're saying kinda but the difference is first of all cocaine is illegal beefs not illegal and second of all it's like you're trying to the ideas you're trying to protect the consumer right and I think that they have exceptions for these small situations where you're the farmer and this may be this guy's growing tomatoes and you trade them some filet mignon for some Tomatoes and you have a good deal there that makes sense that they you know I think it's more reasonable they step back and let that happen but it is odd that they can by unregulated beef but you can't sell unregulated beef so it's like well how'd you get that beef I bought it is it regulated no all right don't even go whose it was the criminal selling you their beef yeah that's very strange yeah the far the farmers the one that's liable the the buyer is the customer is not but the same thing is true I mean the important let's appreciate to for example a wildlife I mean right now you can go out and during hunting season and you can shoot a deer and you don't have to worry about temperature you don't have to worry about any inspections nothing or a wild pig right squirrel you can bring that home and there's there's no inspection no nothing over that and you can dress that yourself I mean you know butcher it package it whatever feed it to your children you can have a block party invite all your block and have a and and feed everybody with that food that's perfectly legal but to do a chicken or a pig or a cow and it on your own and and sell that what is what is it about about selling something that suddenly turns it from benign to hazardous well I think it's just protection for the consumer and I think it's also like it'd be fine if it was a small neighborhood where you knew the farmer and yet a great relationship with them but they're talking about doing things at scale when you're talking about selling food to you know a large city it's something you can't really just hope the guy did a good job that's the argument for regulation the argument sugar regulation is when things scale up well you need someone to step in and protect the consumers because if there is one bad actor who's not taking care of it he has the potential of sickening thousands of people right which is which is the argument exactly the argument for decentralizing and the amalgamating as opposed to centralizing and amalgamating is it what is it a land issue though like if you wanted it like the factory farms that i've ever seen in videos whether you have these pigs they stuffed next to each other when his large warehouse and scene with the chickens right how much space would you need to have the same amount of chickens and the same amount of pigs you know if you let them free rein all right here here's my point what you don't see in those videos is you don't see the hundreds of acres growing corn and soybeans to feed them in that house the industry wants you to think that this is some sort of a you know an island you know where we're cranking this out of this house they're not showing you the tractor trailers bringing in the grain bringing in the fan hauling out the manure and the square miles of fields to spread the manure okay they're not showing you how dependent that is on this massive land base and so so on in the pastured model the decentralized pastured model instead of having 15,000 I mean our farm we're gonna raise like 45,000 chickens this summer we're not we're not backyard by any means but guess what those are in 275 bird shelters that are moved every day across pastures it doesn't take one more acre to produce the feed or handle the manure whether the chicken is outside or inside the difference is when you come and see our operation you see all the land when you see the factory farm you don't see any of the land but isn't it possible that these factory farms are set up where the farms where the animals are raised are completely separate it's a separate business from the farms where the soybeans and the corner yeah well ours it's done on the same property no it's ours just two we we bought we buy our grain from neighbors absolutely but if they had to grow these animals and grow that food would they have enough land to do everything together in the same farm but there's no need to do it on the same farm I'm a big believer in mutual mutual interdependence not complete independence we don't have any intention to grow our own grain we we don't have the soils for it we don't have the equipment for it we don't have the skillset for it so we buy from neighbors who do GMO free non-genetically modified GMO free grain and and we give them more than they would on a commodity on a commodity scale and so they love us because we're giving them more per bushel and they have a nice secure buyer and they're local they're close you know we're not getting it from you know foreign countries and it's all closed so what happens is in in the kind of describing instead of having a fundamentally segregated food system you have a fundamentally integrated food I said that's that that's what happens translation so for example I mean you started the discussion with King Los Angeles you know they're enough land to feed Los Angeles you know that and we and we could discuss whether there's where the Los Angeles should be as big as it is I mean that that's a valid discussion that's a very valid discussion but but but let we can go there but first let me just say that if California for example did not export I don't know what the percentage is but it's huge you know almonds all over the world if California centered on feeding California there's absolutely enough here to feed California okay I mean Iowa Iowa imports 90% Iowa is probably the most fertile place in the world and they only eat only only 10% of the food consumed in Iowa is grown in Iowa and processed in Iowa that's pretty crazy it is crazy Hawaii only 5% 95% comes from off Hawaii I mean they've got ranches they've got I mean why would you have to import stuff if you can grow pineapples pineapples and you know macadamia nuts in your backyard come on you know so there's a there's a huge there's a huge disconnect I mean the the Prada and this is one of the reasons that we're having this I think this this blowback from nature is that instead of having a fundamentally integrated system I mean think of how in Switzerland you know they take the cows up to the mountain pass they milk and the milk flows down at the end they make cheese up there the way from the cheese goes into the into the pigs the pigs eat the way and so instead of transporting milk to a centralized cheese maker and pigs to a centralized processor they're actually making the cheese on-site so all they've got to actually transport is cheese and and and pork so they slaughter they slaughter you know contiguous nearby not on the same farm necessarily but but nearby so you don't have all this transportation what you have is they fundamentally decentralized we could even say democratized can we say food distance food food food distancing that that creates resiliency in the system so instead of being tied to these hundred 150 mega processing facilities were decentralized throughout the land base with how much more money do you think it would cost for food we would kind of touched on this earlier but it's right you're dealing with this more natural based system and it's more complex it's gonna require more people and it's gonna require complete restructuring of the system that's currently in place sure it would I think yeah I don't have a figure I'm not science food I think I think in general it would be probably double which you pay at Costco double mm-hmm yeah that's so for a lot of folks well but but now think about this think about this you oh man where do you start with this first of all you're gonna you're gonna offer a lot of jobs there a lot of people that are gonna be looking for jobs right now so so this offers a lot of job opportunities number two it's much more healing on the land number three you don't have all the the pathogenicity you know you don't have to use drugs antibiotics I mean our meat doesn't do drugs okay our dinner doesn't do drugs people don't realize that you know two-thirds of the drugs used in the country aren't in people they're in animals okay so you don't have those issues there are a lot of issues that you that you don't have and those those add up in the big picture so I always tell people our food is the cheapest aggregate food there is we just put all the costs in all our all our costs are in okay and and so we're not we're not asking taxpayers society the planet we're not asking them to pick up the tab for you know for cheating for for cutting for cutting corners and that's what so is and what's what's interesting is that that forty years ago right now today nine percent of the average person's income nine percent is spent on food that's our average in our country forty years ago it was eighteen hmm forty years ago nine percent of our personal income was spent on health care today that's eighteen percent isn't that interesting how those have inverted yeah very those have inverted in rough-in roughly forty years ever since the US duh called the u.s. duh created the food pyramid and put Twinkies and Cocoa Puffs on the bottom as a foundational and you can track the diabetes you can track obesity you can track all of these things right through from that time [Applause]

Channel: JRE Clips

Views: 1,015,031

Keywords: Joe Rogan, JRE, Joe Rogan Experience, JRE Clips, PowerfulJRE, Joe Rogan Fan Page, Joe Rogan Podcast, podcast, MMA, Joe Rogan MMA Show, UFC, comedy, comedian, stand up, funny, clip, favorite, best of

Id: mfswWSOrWY4

Length: 30min 25sec (1825 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020