The Future of UK Farming Joel Salatin - Polyface Farm

I have three things I want to do this morning I have 90 minutes I do want to leave some time for questions and so here are my three things I want to do first I'm going to go through about 32 pictures very quickly just to give you context of what we do and our farm secondly I want to run down some of the assumptions paradigms buzz words that were used yesterday by the National Industrial Farmers Union and and kind of dissect a little bit of that for us I just can't help it and then the third thing I'm going to do is conclude with what I call my 10 benchmarks of truth as I fought and thought about what could I add to the to the discussion here as we look at the future of UK farming I think that all of our futures are going to actually be wrapped up in in truth this side of the other side of eternity doesn't really but but eventually truth will win out and and what are those those benchmarks of truth because if I'm going to bet on a horse I want to bet on the truth horse so quickly a context it's always the temptation at a place like this to assume that the other person is successful or can do things because because they have this incredibly unfair environment where you know it it snows only at night the leaves fall into neat little piles you know Camelot all the people in our community want to spend more for food you know you have a spouse that loves crazy ideas I mean they're you know always all sorts of things and so it's important to remember that every single one of us has assets and liabilities in our context some of us have mechanical abilities some of us have communication ability some of us have organizational build ability some of us are great starters some of us are great finishers you know some of us are on hilly land where we can do you know gravity-fed water systems like we do on our place some of us are on flat land where we can pump water long distances cheaply you know the point is that every place has its asset and its liability so just just you know let me let me run through the story here very quickly and bring you up to our context and then we'll we'll embark on some of these other things so yes we are Polyface farm we're not just one faced where many faced heeling the land one bite at a time is our moniker and we do that in order to make sure that our customers understand that that they are directly and and viscerally participating in the land in the landscape their children will inherit one bite at a time it does indeed add up that way we are in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley the breadbasket of the Confederacy during the War of Northern Aggression and we are certified bio terrorists you know our conventional Orthodox neighbors you know I say I trust them with my grandchildren I trust them with my bank account I just don't trust them with the land or my food and and because we're on completely different wavelengths weight completely different paradigms just a couple of things that we do here when we do I'll just I'll just throw some shots here we do when we feed hay in the wintertime we cover the animals with a awning notice there's no sides on the barn those cows are dropping 50 pounds of material out their back end every day it's gushy and it's if it gets dry at vaporises we all know what death smells like if it gets wet it leeches into the groundwater and so what we do is is is put them under a awning so we can feed hay these boxes are on pulleys there's pulleys here so we can raise and lower these feed boxes as I go through this I'm not going to belabor the point but just appreciate that all of these models impact design infrastructure design and a lot of what we do is is how do we create infrastructure to capitalize on these principles of nature so one of the things we need to be able to do is have a design that accommodates b-betty build up nature sanitizes two ways one with rest and sunshine that's the passenger rotational grazing system the other is with vibrant decomposition that's the compost system of Hygiene and so what we're doing here is putting the cows is is laying this bedding build up the cows of course they trap out the oxygen so this bedding pack just builds up behind underneath the cows you know up to weigh over a meter deep I mean you the rubbing their backs on the top of the barn rafters before long and and it's all anaerobic we add corn to it as we build it the corn then ferments in this bedding pack when the cows come back out to grazing we turn in the pig Raiders the pigs then go through this they're seeking the fermented drain and they convert it from anaerobic fermentation to aerobic compost the animals are doing the work not machinery so on our farm what we're trying to do is utilize the animals to fill their unique role as an as an honor as a respect for example here to the pigness of the pig pigs are not just bacon and pork chops they then by doing all this work for us they become co-laborers and partners in this grant land healing ministry and this changes the whole emotional spiritual relational as well as economic and physical relationship we have with them this way instead of putting our money into big compost turner's and machines and petroleum we're simply buying machines if you will the pigs buying machines for $100 and selling them for $1,000 that's the way I like depreciation on machines and and you know and you don't have to change the oil and they don't need spare parts they don't need minimum wage you don't need to pay workmen's compensation for them you know and and and they love to do this this is not something they don't love to do and it fully honors and respects the pig then they go out into Pig pastures and we move them every five to twelve days through these pig pastures using the animals as a as a landscape management accessory okay to create these beautiful Silvo pastures under the under the woods widely spaced trees just as an interesting little side note I can't help but mention it that the the pre burea peon American landscape the forceful economy all ran on small small diameter stuff because when you're before saws what do you do with a big tree you leave it okay and there are stories they're stories of indigenous you know Native American villages spending a week you know running a smoldering fire around a big oak to try to you know bring it down and so for centuries the early American forceful economy was based on using little saplings little stuff diseased crickets and little stuff that could be gathered and bent and that sort of thing and leave the big ones and so there was a genetic movement toward you know cathedral tight trees large big trees when the Europeans came was steel and saws it's a lot more efficient saw a big tree than a little tree and so systems since we're we I'm not saying you we Europeans have come we have now taken the best trees and left the little trees and we have inverted that forestal economy from incentivizing big trees are incentivizing little trees to incentivizing big trees and so we have now run our forest full genetics into mongrelization over three centuries as we take the best and left the left the worst what's exciting to us about all of this carbon-based economy that you just saw the composting we have a chipper we have a big chipper and we we purchase chips on the open market we actually compete with the the carbon you know the carbon market in the area and we use that in our composting program we literally you know we do thousands of tons of compost with the pigs doing all that work we're not turning it we're not double handling it we just handle it one time and use it but if all the money spent on chemical fertilizers were instead spent on on carbon it would recreate this forceful economy where the disease the crooked the weedy and the and the weak are weeded out cold out and that becomes our entire fertility base and it generates fungi in the pastures that of just bacteria which you know creates a lot more microbial activity and we now create not only an incentive to leave the best and take the worst but we also have created a brand new opportunity for vocations for sacred righteous important vocations for all of the people in society who don't aspire to simply do the frenzied harried a Dilbert cubicle commute to town every day to sit on a cubicle punching numbers into cyberspace for a global company as their life's mission a lot of business leaders are very concerned about what to do with the 40% of the population that still wants to give splinters and calluses and actually work with their hands and and in an artificial intelligence future and a service-oriented economy creating noble sacred vocations for people who actually want to be crack do physical craft and artisanship is a is a way to honor and respect the segments of society that is currently being marginalized in our you know in our climb to to the to the techno age you know how many how many of you have ever been to a high school guidance counselor who said you know you're really smart you should be a farmer okay alright so they're creating this wonderful Cathedral alright then we move to the to the cows alright so the cows of course have been marginalized and demonized if not close to criminalise now I mean you know the the flatulence and the burps of towels is you know destroying the plant me to get rid of them and so I asked what is the reason for an herbivore in nature and if you look at her before it's a nation you see three things they are moving they are mopping and they are mowing okay moving mopping mowing the reason for the herbivore is to prune the biomass back remember of the three kinds of vegetation trees bushes and grass or forages forages are the most efficient at converting sunbeams into biomass in other words they are the most efficacious respirators in the system inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen splitting off the carpet and where does it go well it goes in the plan it goes in the soil and that's your carbon sequestration so so if we really want to build soil that's why all the great soils on the planet from the the American Midwest to the pampas of Argentina to the Serengeti of Africa to the steppes of Mongolia the great soils on the planet are not under forests they're under perennial prairies with herbivores and because these are the most efficacious plans to create biomass out of sunbeams and I like to use the word sunbeams because it's more poetical and the stuff of children's books and fantasy solar energy sounds so you know academic and sterile so so as a storyteller I use sunbeams and kids enjoy it a lot more too so so the reason for the herb of war is as a printer just like a viticulturist would prune a vineyard or an orchard astre prune an apple tree so the herbivore approves the biomass as it reaches senescence to restart that rapid so son beam metabolism process and they do it with moving mobbing and mowing mopping of courses for predator protection moving is on to fresh ground all the time and mowing of course as as I've said is pruning and so the whole idea of the herbivore is for our management is matching the herbivore to this moving bobbing mowing sequence this pattern so that we can use that animal in ecological progression so if we if we eliminate the moving bobbing and mowing we have divorced the animal from this beautiful ecologically synergistic system and all sorts of dysfunction occurs and that's of course what drives the you know the the cow Spira see documentaries and things like that and of course is driving a lot of veganism and vegetarianism is the data points from a completely dysfunctional system if you if you study a dysfunctional system as your benchmark of what is your going to be led to some crazy conclusions and you know we'd be like if we were from Pluto you know we send a couple people down the study education on earth and and so the two volunteers gotten a flying saucer and came down to earth and landed in the worst school district of the worst it's a swore superintendent when a schoolyard of the worst school with the worst principal and went to the classroom with the worst teacher and the worst students in the whole place and spent two days observing went back to Pluto they say well what do you but you find us so well I think earth would be better if they didn't have an educational system and that's what we've got with animal life agriculture right now okay so when it's functional it's great it's not it's not so moving Bobby Boeing we move the cows every single day to a new paddock and this does not take that much time the cows we move them about four o'clock every day cap you know animals love routine and so so we you know we don't we don't have to hurt them we don't have to drive them we don't have to you know cowboy anything we just roll up the electric fence and the electric fence has allowed us hope you appreciate here you know here here's where they were three weeks ago here's where they were yesterday here's where they're going today this creates a beautiful landscape mosaic that's easy to capture on a drone it's extremely visually beautiful and the beautiful thing here is that because because they are moving quilt-like across the landscape only a little tiny piece is being impacted being pruned at any one time the rest of it is blossoming for pollinators we've had a couple of years of Smithsonian working landscape studies done in our farm and our bird life pollinators are studying five benchmarks all of them they're just off the charts because there is there something always blossoming there's always a food source you know meadow birds all these things have nesting spots it's amazing so the mosaic creates a diversified landscape and the beauty of this is we don't have to give up productivity to do this we our county averages 80 count days per acre or count days with one cattle eating today so all the food that you eat today to put on a plate that's one person day of food our our county average is 80 count day so an acre will support 80 cows for a day a year or one cow for 80 days a year everybody with me okay and if you don't know the formula its cows times days / acres cow days / Aker it's simple algebra if you can't remember that our gift shop sells t-shirts to help to help you remember this morning Patrick came in from his morning run and he was wearing one of these formulas I don't know if that's because you're promoting it or because you can't remember it but so so that this is the formula and so so the beauty of this is with the technology of electric fencing portable electric fencing portable water systems and portable shade structures we run shade structures with these guys we make nursery shade cloth shade structures and we can move them along so we have portable shade trees portable water and portable control with Electric v we can move these animals around the landscape with the same precision as you could mode with a zero turn mower on a golf course is that not cool that's pretty cool now those cows are dropping a calling card that that encourages pathogenic activity and flies and all that stuff so we look at that and say well goodness before Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson and Merck pharmaceuticals Bayer corporation came along you know what what does nature do to sanitize behind herbivores and so we run chickens behind the cows and and we run our egg Mobile's behind the cows the chickens then scratch through the cow patties and soon you can't even find them and they turn all the fly larvae into eggs the grasshoppers and crickets into eggs you can actually grow more animal protein per acre in insects than in meat and milk and so this layers and additional income behind the cows that's just as valuable as the cows so the cows are generating exper a curve the eggs generate X breaker and so we're generating you know $100,000 worth of eggs as a byproduct of the pasture sanitation program that's called in business circles that's called a hole on whole onic farming where you taking the waste stream and building another enterprise using that waste stream the question is which we drew rather or live next to and so as we move into the future with our with our benefits we're going to see more and more a shift to this kind of farming rather than that kind of farming and I guarantee you if you're a chicken you'd much rather live in this environment than that one so the egg Mobile's our pasture sanitizers the now we move into egg-laying for pasture this is the Millennium feather net this is a skid structure so it doesn't go down the road like the egg mow feels to do the egg Mobile's can go you know they go up the road rubber tires because they follow the cows everywhere this is a standalone portable infrastructure that we move every three days with a thousand chickens in it feed buggy in the front chicken ladder people ladder but we just moved this every three day so there's a 72 day rotation on a six acre field three days per thousand birds and it really it really works using high-tech electric kinetics so this is land intensive the egg mobile is land extensive two different models for two different objectives one is sanitation one is egg production then in the winter they come in two tall tunnels hoop houses you know you can put pigs underneath we've gotten rabbits over here we've got you know chickens on a mezzanine these are eight by four foot tables that we can move in or slap and so that can keep the chickens up away from the pigs the point is that you're using with rabbits pigs and chickens you're using the cubic space instead of just a linear space so none of the densities of the animals is at a point that that that creates pathogenicity problems and you create confused pathogens confused pathogens are really good this is this is diametrical opposed to the linear reductionist single species thinking of the current you know industrial farming system they go nuts over this orgy Curt you know concerned about contamination all the stuff no I'm concerned about pathogens that don't have to think and always have a host available you know a millimeter away to get to alright and so by creating more distance more space we have 40% pigs 40% chickens 40% rabbits 40 40 40 120 percent we're actually producing more per square foot than a factory situation situation but with none of the negatives because the because none of the the densities is at a point dense enough to kick in toxicity and pathogenicity when the animals come out they have debugged and fertilized in there and we can go in there with vegetables into the same structure bug free and and pathogen free so about the time we start getting bugs in the plants the animals come in about the time we get bugs in the animals the plants come in are you with me so if you're going to use infrastructure you want to use multiple use infrastructure you want to use that infrastructure for a lot of different things so we do rabbits as well these are this is a hairpin okay hairpin has a slapping floor we use it as a molar around the orchard trees and you can run it through the vineyard and whatever in the rabbits you know one acre of grass put through rabbits is worth forty thousand dollars so you don't need a lot of land to make money farming you just need to think more creatively our problem is not money our problem is not resources our problem is creativity our weak link is always between our ears as my son daniel says he says our problem is constipation of imagination then we move to to the chickens the broilers these are our broiler shelters there's they're 10 feet by 12 feet by 2 feet high and we move them across the pasture with a very simple dolly here the chickens just move on the ground to the next spot they just walk as we move it along one person in 60 minutes can move five thousand chickens they're their shelter from weather they're sheltered from predators and so just with a scent without starting a machine or anything no more than that little dolly and a little bit of exercise one person can move five thousand chickens an hour so it's extremely efficient very protective of the birds from an animal welfare and a protection standpoint so you get the with the mobile infrastructure you get the the salad bar the daily fresh move and salad bar along with the protection that's critical we knew turkeys as well the turkeys this is a simple gobble to go here you know it's as light as a wheelbarrow almost for 200 turkeys we also have them for 400 turkeys as well but we just move them along and the turkeys of course they eat more grass and they can you know need a little more room to run so we put them in the netting now the turkeys never get the electric net they never understand what spark is and so there's a window of opportunity to to you know give give them the net it's about six to seven weeks when they're big enough that they can't go through the holes but small enough then they won't walk over it because they never actually learn about the spark but but the turkeys are wonderful there as well so we get a chicken that's unbelievable in the world of the pasture I mean the polyunsaturated fat is higher the saturated fats lower the omega-3s are higher the riboflavin I mean it's all different okay so then we move into some of the more stuff that we're doing these days those are some of the basic prototypes I haven't showed you all of them I want to just zip through this very quickly so some of our most important work now we feel like is germinating young farmers and so we run a very formal intern apprenticeship program and young people come in and this is Nathan he had no money no land and he proposed to us how about letting me take one of your rental farms I'll move your big cow beef herd and you an exchange give me enough acreage to start a little raw milk herd shared area and so we did he did and he's now out on his own farming full-time the beauty of these models is that they allow a person to go from zero to fully employed farming in 24 hours with no debt okay this has been well this has been but this is one of Ben's pigs and been one of the farm no money no land okay so we worked out a deal with your rank with arrangement with the neighbor and see ferret pigs and ran chickens over on the neighbor's place the neighbor was thrilled he got brambles turned into a nice pasture he got fertilizer on his fields he didn't have to pay for and bins full time farming pigs and chickens dan came to us this isn't Dan this is Dan's mushroom and Dan wanted to take over the gardens and do do shitake mushrooms okay good so so all of these things are totally independent entrepreneurial fiefdom they're not employees nobody works by the hour we don't we have 20 people nobody works by the hour everybody's based on performance and so he did she talk to you mushrooms breed wanted to stay she said you know you're not doing school to work we do school tours I love kids okay breathe do it and so we started she started a business called grass stains tours and she's layered tours and now we have thousands of urban kids that come out for farm tours she does all the curriculum does all the the mark getting does everything we just take a little bit of royalty but she gets the lion's share of it and of course all those kids go home with a little coupon to buy food for you know it's a it's a as a synergistic marketing outreach so none of these young people had any money had any land and every one of them full-time farming in 24 hours with no debt building building their own enterprises and their own entrepreneurial options on our farm one of the fun things we do is go to wellness fairs food fairs and we cook sausages on-site and put them on toothpicks and hand them as samples to the children of vegetarians [Music] and we've found we've got a lot of recovering vegetarians as customers and you know the the thing is the kids the kids are not nearly as whatever doped up on all the you know the who as yesterday told me they get a new name for vegetarian is called um urban urban disease or urban and urban disease yes an urban disease anyway but the kids they you know the kids aren't all doped up on all the stuff the parents have been reading but they're but their brain cells are struggling for nutrition and so when they eat this stuff they just you know go nuts and so it's good stuff we do market to about 4,000 families in the urban sector through an online shopping cart system and we make drop points and people show up there to pick up their stuff it's not a CSA they have complete freedom of choice to buy what they want but but what we go into the city we service about 50 restaurants so they can then take our story to their to their restaurants so I hope by now you're realizing this is an extremely people centric operation and you know this is this is not what farmers typically typically are good at you know we're farmers because we don't like people and so all this marketing and people activity if this doesn't float your boat what we're looking at is how to have partners that will that will take this story for us and I'd love to do a full marketing seminar but we'll have to do that another time but the whole point is to actually get that retail dollar where the middleman has very happily and whatever pieces we don't find a partner a collaborator who who is willing to work on commission or on performance orientation some sort of bonus arrangement so that we can have shared stakeholders and and and and create a team where one plus one equals three at the end of the day it's all about what do the kids want to do when they grow up because to me ultimate regenerative agriculture is when the next generation takes over and if we don't have farm models that will attract our best and brightest children all the earthworm's in the world and the soil building in the world and the acted oh my CTS and animal welfare everything else that we talk about doesn't make a hill of beans if the family doesn't enjoy it and so that takes economic emotional and environmental support so that we can get to our dreams I don't know what your dream is today but I think if we continue to pursue truth we'll find those dreams at the end of our rainbow ok that's enough of an introductory context with a little bit of what we do now let me change gears here a little bit I got I got it I got several gears here this more okay so now I'm gonna change gears a little bit and deal a little bit with some of the the buzz of the buzz words we heard yesterday so the first thing when we heard several things one of the first things we heard was a celebration of where we've been for the where we've come for the last 20 years and one of the things that was celebrated was per capita expenditure on food has dropped from 30 percent to 12 percent and this is really good I would simply ask well what's the yet another 18 percent being spent on does anybody ask that healthcare that sounds like a good trade-off I'd much rather buy cheap food and be sick then buy expensive food be well wouldn't you this is such a well I'll I'll try to be diplomatic I've been Great Britain after all we have in America in the last 30 years we've exchanged 18% capita expenditure on food and 9% on health care to 9 percent on food and 18% on health care I don't know about you but that doesn't sound like a good trade to me and so to just stand up here and celebrate while we're spending a lot less on food it has no context today are you with me it's it's a completely spurious point it assumes that cheap food is good and other expenditures I mean yeah the seafood is good and other expenditures are better I mean that that's the assumption you know the the Bible says it will be destroyed by vain philosophy and so what I want to do here is zero in on some of the background philosophy of this stuff because boy you start you know trading I'll I'll trade you a dollar for two you know playing a big cycle playing some sort of a big Monopoly game and and I think it's important to drill down into the background assumptions the paradigms behind these assumptions because they are deadly a cheap food policy does not give us a good food policy that's the fact and I would suggest that that if we if we had a value system that rewarded better food we would have a better system and we would have better care taking of our air soil and water our Commons number two she said 50% of British house halls are on an austerity budget well I'm not a British household but I'm on an austerity budget and this this this just just throw out this thing that 50% of our on austerity budget just assumes that everyone who is financially stressed is a victim of something beyond their control and you know it begs the question is it possible that anyone who's financially stressed is responsible for the antigen financial redress I mean really okay you know should it be that some of these folks are spending money frivolously or not saving money or maybe they're just not good with money and they need to learn a new set of budgeting but you know to just to just assume that since fifty percent are struggling financially we need to make sure they have cheap food doesn't penetrate to all the context of why 50% of people maybe maybe it's because they're being overtaxed in order to give money to parasites thirdly she said a country that can't feed itself ceases to be a country now that's an interesting statement a country that can't feed itself ceases to be a country and then about two minutes later she said that Britain imports 50 percent of its human and animal feed stocks well apparently Great Britain is no country so my question is what I worry about exports let's just figure stuff I mean think about the gymnastics the policy gymnastics being done to sell to you know Argentina or Sri Lanka or whatever and I'm a firm believer I've traveled a lot around the world and and I'm a firm believer I agree with her I think that a country that can't feed itself isn't I think that is a in general a positive or right the correct statement but if that's the case just let's how our own garden who cares about world standards just feed yourself number four we should only help efficient business now this is a good one we should only help efficient business you know it's interesting she said we should only help efficient business but that doesn't make the con the the connection to inefficient money management for people who are financially distressed in other words all people who are in poverty are victims but any fish and farmers are not victims right are you with me that this is this is called in debate this is called intellectual schizophrenia okay and I would just suggest that efficiency is not nearly as important as effectiveness the problem is she's confusing efficiency with effectiveness you know you can be really efficient about the wrong things stan Parsons the founder of the ranching for profit schools since we've become incredibly adept at hitting the bullseye of the wrong target you know does anybody go in to surgery and your last question to the doctor is are you efficient I mean think about you know my brother is an airplane mechanic he's a certified ap airframe powerplant the airplane mechanic and growing up he was always the one that fixed the stuff that I broke and because I'm you know choleric let's get her done you know cut the tree and ask if we should have cut it later that sort of thing and and so so anyway this was this was always a joke if you wanted something done get me to do it and and my brother can fix it and this is an ongoing thing and and now you know he says and people still joke about you know how I'm always in a hurry and he never is in a hurry and he just looks at them and grins and says when I'm fixing your airplane want me to be in a hurry [Music] you know efficiency efficiency in and of itself is a is an extremely subjective idea okay besides this is a very it's a very clever way to insinuate that if you don't agree with me you're not efficient you know she's talked about her I need a hundred percent of my cows to be bred I don't want a herd of my cows to be bred you know it takes it costs as much it costs as much to go from 85 to 95 percent conception that 10% cost as much as going from 0 to 85% my cows work for me I don't work for my cows and so anybody that's asking for 100% bred cows is losing money what you want is balance nothing nothing is efficient when it's floored not a race car not your car not anything it's never it's never most efficient you're looking for that sweet spot of balance fuel efficiency you know where it's everything's purring you know a Jeff doesn't a Jeff doesn't run in takeoff mode all the time if it ran in takeoff mode it could actually get where you're going a lot faster but a lot more wear and tear on the engine are you with me efficiency is a is a highly subjective term next she said we all have the right to nutritious affordable food now I know so if you're gonna is American I'm not sure about this guy you know when we say everybody has a right to we throw that phrase around and I want to dissect that a minute okay so I'm going into Washington a couple you know a while back riding in the Metro and a guy comes in six next to me he's 400 pounds he's got a pack of cigarettes in his pocket you know a like a two kilo soda pop that he's going and I had a bushel basket size of Dorito potato chips is it too unloving to say [Music] I'm sitting there and thinking and people think I am supposed to be responsible for his health that's an insult that's an offense I mean even in the Bible that says if a man doesn't work doesn't labor neither should he eat well in the american declaration says unalienable now everybody reads that inalienable it's not an alien it's unalienable a lien is what a banker or a lender puts on your property until you pay the mortgage right that's a lien and so unalienable rights are rights that no power no king no Parliament no Congress no president they are rights that nobody can put a lien on you for they are part of your humanist part of being a part of the human family okay and so there really aren't very many of these the right to have your property protected that somebody doesn't come and take your stuff that's why whatever your stuff is if it only if all you have is a pencil but your pencil nobody hasn't why why is that such an important right because how we steward our possessions is a measure of our character okay and and if we don't have anything we're not responsible for any stewardship okay the right to worship as we please the right to speak and not be throttled in our in our speech and you don't have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater all right here's somebody push back on that real quickly but but these are these are rights these these are basic human expression rights are up there obligatory on society to or your actual humaneness is not able to be exercised does everybody follow me so when we throw around right to this right you've got to be careful okay I mean because if I have a right to food well then I probably need to have a right to a car so I can get to work and I need a right to an iPhone so I can take my class at the college and communicate with the professor and I have a right to uh to a stenographers pad so I can take notes in class I can't do that are you with me you when you start flippantly throwing around rights you better you better be really careful about cheapening real rights with a plethora of fake rights are you with me so then there that you have because you're human that you don't have to do anything to have it okay next we're trading one protectionist scheme for another well I would just ask do we really need protection all protection comes with a price there was a famous American founder named Ben Franklin and one of his famous lines was anyone who's willing to trade freedom for security gets neither you know we we we assume that farming can't be a viable business and I I disagree with that and I don't think that land ownership is necessary for farming but all protection comes with a price if we're going to protect something let me go where angels fear to tread here if we're going to protect something how about protecting the right of neighbor to neighbor freedom of food choice to participate in food commerce neighbor to neighbor as voluntary consenting adults without a bureaucrat getting involved you know we if we're going to now I'm not saying that we should be able to export without regulations or put it in all these without regulations or whatever I'm just saying if I want to come to your farm ask around look around smell around and as a voluntary consenting adult exercise my freedom of choice and these are powerful words today I mean we're in the time of choice right where we're all you know we're all free to make choice choices where we're free ism as a driverless car and a train and a trackless train and we know we can make all these choices but when it comes to food you know if I want a glass of raw milk I can't get it if I want my neighbor's charcuterie if unless it's gotten through you know five inspections I can't get it if I want my neighbor's pot pie that they made in their kitchen and people talk about food deserts you know food insecure places listen a lot of these food deserts are urban or urban fragmented areas where there is land available just imagine you can't you can't food bank your way out of out of food deserts just imagine if if a single model for let's take a pretty you know rough situation of poverty-stricken person single mama for says hey you know we've got a vacant lot right next door I could put a garden in there have a couple of rabbits and chickens and make and make nice pot pies and quiche you know for Mike for my neighbors and so she puts in her garden or kids help her and they you know put this thing together and they make a nice pot pie and they go knock on the neighbor's door you know to sell this pot pie and the neighbors is all man that smells good and I want this this is great maybe she had him over for dinner and they had one the week before so this is so good I would you make them for me to buy well sure you know so she does this within 30 minutes the loss there's going to be five bureaucrats pounding on or saying where's your license where's your business license where's your fire extinguisher on the wall that's not a commercial district it's a residential and we know we don't want to integrate our work in our living we can't have the butcher baker and candlestick maker embedded in the city that'll never here we've got to have the commercial district the residential district the retail district you know and and so we've got a segregate society we can't afford to have integration and and and there would be you know five things she would have to try to try to do and so so you know III I'm not wanting to debate no regulations okay but I am suggesting that there has to be a place for embryonic entrepreneurial market access okay a place define it where you want to me the easiest is neighbor to make neighbor okay and if we just start there it's a good place to start let's protect that okay next she said horticulture at the at the farm gate has not had a price increase in 15 years and then a minute later she said Aldi is putting in 200 more stores and this is the phrase there is a savage war on price that was an interesting use of words Savage and she's talking about remembers talking about food now she's talking about the food everybody has a right to this nutritious and affordable that sound so warm and fuzzy and then on a breath later there's a savage war on price am I missing something here okay so this savage war on price so how does the farmgate price going to change you know it's interesting you know there was no there was no indication that that price was going to change here's the thing you have to understand the farmer is the only one in the food chain who can absorb asset reduction one of the most interesting books on my shelf is a book called vertical diversification written in 1950 by D Howard dome he started dumb management services they were he was actually under secretary of agriculture in like 1910 okay at the end of his life and people said you know could you codify everything that you've learned you know about the farm business and he wrote this book farm vertical diversification in the hole it's it's the first major a farmer needs to be value add Direct Marketing of Dyer adding it and and when he wrote it in 1950 in the US I mean he's got pictures in there of people that are are canning pickles in their home kitchen and and sending them shipping them through the Postal Service to urban customers buy the Box butchering chickens in the backyard and making you know broth and sitting I mean it's really cool all stuff would be illegal today but anyway when he makes the point that you know when the when the the distribution company you know DHL FedEx Amazon comp whatever what they can't afford to run ball tires on their truck when those tires need to be replaced in order to get that truck inspected as a commercial vehicle they need they need to put those tires on the truck okay when they make payroll and they pay their employees they can't tell their employees hey I just I just can't make payroll this week you don't have to work for nothing and but the farmer the farmer can work for no pay you can go get a job in town to support his farm addiction right the farmer can work for no pay the farmer can deplete the soil you know when when the distribution vehicle meets gas in the tank they have to put gas in the tank all right they can't come on empty out when the engine blows they got to fix the engine all right but a farmer can deplete a soil and put off fertility for a while a farmer can defer maintenance what we won't paint the barn is you we won't fix those shingles this year you know we will replace a tractor this year a farmer can use unsafe equipment okay and so the farmer is the only one in the in the value chain that can actually defer all these costs everything else they don't and so I would ask what is your doable practical proposal to change the fact that this farm gate price is not going up and I suggest I suggest bypassing Baldy what's wrong with us just building a separate system what does the separate system look like electronic aggregation that's the that's the new business operative term electronic aggregation bricks and mortar retail interface it's becoming more and more expensive you got to have you know you have handicap parking against handicap I'm just telling you you got to have you got to have you got to have the retail enter and you've got you know huge liability insurance what if somebody slips on the curb and brings their back you know there's all this stuff but in electronic aggregation you don't have any of that liability because the product is aggregated in an electronic interface okay and this allows us to sell the benefits that those of us here want to sell we can use social media to tell our stories and it lets folks withdraw from the current paradigm maybe we don't need 200 more holidays maybe what we need are 200 more farm urban electronic interfaces okay to move product and I know we're going to hear more later today from that kind of thing so I'm just playing a little bit of foundation so we can build direct connections with customers education information all the things that we that we do so I just suggest that we need to offer maybe a parallel system and just just create an an other kind of system just cause does not even have a supermarket I mean in America we didn't have a supermarket up to nineteen forty six we survived pretty good without one for a long time we don't need them anymore we just build an alternative I mean my son and daughter-in-law I mean they can they not get toilet paper from Amazon you know it comes to liver to their door so they don't have to go to the store you toilet paper is crazy and she said the main thing to treat is to treat the British agriculture as a business I would just say that sometimes the moral track record of our businesses is not very good and and just to assume that business is positive is not good there are some really terrible businesses like the human trafficking business okay I mean these are all businesses and just to assume that business has some sort of a moral you know a wonderful thing if we just treat it like a business it doesn't mean anything next she said nitrogen from the cow is the same as from a bag I was sitting up here and I could feel I can feel the gas pen will come up on that you know like the brake well it's empirically not true because the urea in urine from a cow has one more Neutron in the molecule than the urea in the laboratory we have not been able to make urea with that extra Neutron now what's the reason for that what's the importance of that other Neutron anybody here to know why we have why urea from the cow has that other Neutron anybody I don't either so what doesn't matter does no those of us in this room we know that there's a fearfully wonderful maintenance about creation about the world around us we're we're constantly aren't we were amazed that the the secret life of plants the secret life of the soil the the relational or the communication of the acting of ICTs the mycorrhizae and the gibberellins and making the you know glomalin and i mean it man this whole thing is just pulsing with Cynthia's understanding life is just vibrant all around us and to just to just dismiss that Neutron as if I don't understand it I don't know it so I guess it's not important it's the height of hubris besides that bag doesn't give us a lot of other benefits that the cow gives us people say well cows are inefficient yeah of course there any fishing that's why they build soil if they were as efficient as a squash plant they wouldn't build any soil the saliva from the cow acts as a salve covering throwing a bunch of microbes and sab on the grass plant when it's sheared so that it actually stimulates growth you don't get that out of the bag next she says we need to be precision farmers this is another kind of word another code word it's a code word for everything else is imprecise you know compost is imprecise when I spread compost that's imprecise you're just you're just throwing it out you're not putting a little dab of intravenous chemical on the potato and viewing farming this way it eliminates the art of farming anyone here who's a farmer you know that we can't precisely do everything okay you can be precisely wrong okay there's nothing about precision that's actually right I mean can you imagine going to an artist you know and they're painting hmm yeah I'm not sure you're you know was van Gogh precise there's a lot more than precision and finally the last one sciencebase boy that's a red flag science-based again the implication is if you don't agree with me you're not science-based you know as if as if science can empirically measure everything well it can't there's a lot of my life that's not science-based the stuff that's most meaningful to me is immeasurable because you can't measure the heart okay so to just say we're going to we're going to reduce everything biologically to science and to measurable empirical stuff is just is to deny the heart and the emotion of what we do number three very quickly very quickly benchmarks of truth number one this is this is we we created this on our farm as we were struggling with with what is what is our truth what if we if we could measure what we're looking for is looking for a compass a compass true north we want true north here so as we make decisions and as we're tempted to do things whether it's to buy something to to grow something to develop a market to whatever our policy is what is a benchmark of truth that keeps us from veering to one side of the other so here's ten very very quickly number one does it build soil in my view everything science-based efficiency you know farm gate price all this stuff if it doesn't build soil it's not acceptable you know when's the last time somebody went in for it to the banker for a business loan and the banker says who was this is a good business plan I think you're going to be a millionaire in fact you're gonna be a millionaire so much that I want to beat your partner but before I loan you a million dollars well pounds I've got a question for you what is this business gonna do to the earthworm's in our community has anybody ever asked that of course not of course not and so I would suggest that that any model anything that we do has to debt that becomes a that's a standard are you building soil or not building soil and if it's not building soil it's not acceptable it's not it's not true and the beautiful thing that we as farmers can can can enhance this through carbon centricity through grazing management through all the things that were that we know now that we can do we have this idea that that environmentalism requires abandonment the only way to actually be environmentally sensitive is to get people off you know don't desecrate the land with human breath you know because as we look back through the annals of human history what we see is a lot of ecological destruction correct so let's repent in sackcloth and ashes yes my ancestors did this I'm sorry I repent but that doesn't mean the answer is I'm no longer going to participate and so what I'm proposing is environmentalism by participation and that's the joy of my life that I can walk out the back door every day into a nest of abundance that is not a reluctant stepsister that I've got a hog you know get it a half-nelson I'm gonna make you do this for me and grow this as if as if nature is some sort of reluctant partner no nature is a benevolent lover to be caressed okay how do i caress bill soil number two is it child friendly child friendly does it captivate the imagination which isin the place where child children want to be another way to say this is it aesthetically and aromatic Lee sensually romantic if our farm stinks if it's ugly if we bring kids from the city and go to the farm and and every little thing there's ooh and there that's it's nothing that's not acceptable okay for farm kids just got to be emotionally enjoyable not embarrassed it's got to be economically enjoyable growing salaries stacking on stacking businesses it's gotta be ecologically enjoyable for kids the mystery the beauty the mod of us to be able to optimist to be able to come around a corner and see yeah you know a nesting bird child-friendly my favorite sign I've seen recently was in Australia I went to a farm and they had a silent at the farm gate it looked like a no trespassing silence I got up closer to it where I could read it it said trespassers will be impressed [Music] is that not cool we have one now at our farm hope you don't have a copyright on it I didn't ask permission number three benchmark of truth being honoring all right does it honor the being in other words doesn't honor the pigness of pigs does it honor self-actualization does it does it honor that the tomato you know we we have our tomato cultivars for the last whatever forty years have been chosen not on the basis of nutrition not on the basis of taste they've been chosen on ship ability and when you choose tomatoes on the basis of the fact that they can you know rattle around at the back of a truck for five hundred miles as your you know your your genetic selection process what are you gonna get you're gonna get cardboard and then you're going to get kids that don't like vegetables I guess actually tomato is a fruit into that that's always a big mistake but you get what I'm saying okay yeah why don't kids like this stuff because there's no taste because we have not honored the ace the essence the sacredness the the the pheno typical expression of that sacred thing number four equity is immaterial equity is immaterial stay with me here what we're looking for is then we want a why more than a Hal and in our techno centric cultures in the Western world we have become extremely good at tearing things apart compartmentalization separation disconnection and technically building and creating and innovating things on the how we have not been good and asking why the problem is that you and I are so clever we're able to innovate beyond our physical mental spiritual emotional capacity to metabolize what we've innovated so we innovate things and the next thing you know we spend three generations trying to remediate the damage that our innovation did okay so we want to have our equity primarily in knowledge skill and patrons knowledge skill and patrons not in just infrastructure number five does it empower innovation does it empower innovation okay you know we're hardwired for negative negatives easy it's easy to complain you know who has come back from town saying hey honey I just went through five go lights [Music] we don't call them go lights we call them stoplights why because we remember what stops us not what makes us go and so when we talk about empowering innovation what we mean is that the whole what we want is a model and when we talk about future of British act policy what we want is a model that empowers innovation empowers diversity empowers a lunatic fringe hope gently to your orthodoxy du jour okay all right because when we look at innovation it's always out there on the fringes it's always and and and you know Gandhi said you know in any movement at first they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you and then you win where are we in this food movement I think this New York Times Oil P shows they're not ignoring us anymore I think it shows that they're not laughing at us anymore I think we're in the they fight you so in the in the fight in the fight remember what the next step is we win because truth wins okay you know the Romans had this idea they had this idea that you could tell the strength of a civilization by the number of laws that it had I mean god only need to ten okay pretty simple all right and they said that what happens is is us as a society weakens it makes more and more laws because that's all they can do we can't fix anything but we can we can sure legislate it and so more and more laws are created and as we create more laws they reduce the ability of innovators to access the market okay many of us here are struggling with the fact that we can't that we can't bake bread at home and sell it to a neighbor we can't make pepperoni at home uh sell it to a neighbor or sausages or whatever and it takes a five hundred thousand dollar quintuple permitted you know million dollar facility to sell one bucket full of stuff alright so all of our regulations need to be scale independent number six it increases the Commons by this I mean everybody can do it I call this a whosoever will on benchmark of truth okay you know can everyone do this it's ultimately additive rather than extractive okay it builds community and runs on trust it increases the Commons number seven it's easy to enter and easy to exit you see the reason the average farmer is 60 years old is because when the impediments are to entry are so high that young people can't get in old people can't get out okay so both generations are stuck so to have multi-generational low capitalization lower threshold things is you know is critical which is why on our farm we have mobile modular management intensive infrastructure I hope seeing the slides here you noticed well first of all all of our infrastructure is mobile okay now mobile infrastructure has only been enabled in recent in recent times you can have mobile infrastructure a hundred years ago because our building materials we didn't have erector sets to be able to build on a you know structure now we've got rubber tires we've got axle we've got berries we've got we've got a band sawmill so we can mill you know half inch by one inch laughs all right you couldn't do that a hundred years ago when your kerf was three eighths of an inch and you you know if you milled lab all you had was a big pile of sawdust and a little stack of boards at the end of the day so you could build stuff out of tinker toys and erector sets today with our modern technology and spun woven polyethylene fibers and stuff we can make now very simple mobile infrastructure and that allows us to eliminate owning land because mobile infrastructure can be placed anywhere land you own land you rent land you squat on or whatever it's modular modular which means you can add modules as your cash flows instead of having to build a $500,000 facility to grow one chicken or one big or whatever milk one gallon of milk instead you can start with modules and if you like it did you then you can add modules of scale and fine and and then it's management intensive which substitutes capital intensity for people so it's we substitute capital intensity energy intensity pharmaceutical intensity for people which moves our equity from physical depreciable infrastructure to non-physical skill information and customers and there's not a banker in the world who's ever come to us and I'm gonna foreclose on your skills okay I'm gonna repossess your information number eight ain't Michael truth it's consistent across all fields spiritual ethical economic and ecological so if it violates if it violates belief if it violates ethics if it violates economics of the violate psychological any one of those is a failure and what this means is that we're that we're moving toward a system based on faith not fear so much of what we do is a defensive measure against what we fear instead of instead of just going out here and visioning what do we vision for the future what's what's our vision and then building positively in faith for that number nine it's appropriate and viable in both developed and undeveloped countries rich and poor countries all right you know an example of this is compost compost is is viable and and affordable and doable whether you use a machete or you use a pig Raider or a compost Turner it's equally viable across all rich and poor cultures whereas chemicals chemicals impoverished and impoverished farmers a with me this is why you know grass-finished beef is so good all right and finally number ten number ten benchmark of truth it scales both up and down it is not scaled prejudicial okay profitability is not size dependent and this is where a lot of our you know regulatory structure comes in because it is scaled prejudicial I was just in Austria and listened to a farmer talk about how in Austria the the EU subsidies for farmers kick in and at two hectares well he has a one hectare Market Garden now a two and a half acre Market Garden is a pretty big right I mean you know being Hartman in Ohio makes $150,000 a year on a you know a point nine acre farm one hundred fifty thousand dollars on a one point five one point nine I mean I'm sorry a point nine acre farm that'd be like a what do you want to point three that their farm and but what happens is because the subsidies are scaled prejudicial he now has to compete with the neighbor that happens to have two back tears who could get all the subsidies he can't get one because he's not considered he's not big enough to be a farmer you with me so so truth is about scale independence so it works for big guys and little guys and that creates a whosoever will option okay Mitch marks of truth I'll quit there [Applause] thank you I'll do I'll do my blessing yeah but right now I think we'll take some questions we have a couple minutes real couple men here we've got if we slightly go to the coffee break group we've got a little bit more than that I just want to say one thing about Manette what was powerful about her being here was she's very she's a politician but surely right and she was listening and she experienced the force of the collective imagination and intuition and innovation that is represented here and in no way am i trying to demean her she she but but but the she's absolutely well well intentioned and and unlike many of many of my kind of you know organic farming friends they don't like that I'm not willing to say it's a conspiracy you know no it's not a conspiracy it's a it's a fraternity of ideas that we're dealing with okay you know wonderful sincere heart of people you know but but our paradigms are you know it's like Mars and Venus okay we're on and here would it but maybe nobody please here we are you know she actually came here said of ignoring us for laughing at us and and here we are at this point and so so we need to again be wise as serpents and harmless as doves right as we move forward and and realized that we if we do get in the driver's seat we need to we need to not be sitting here managing demons but managing visioned yes because the plastic transition but I don't know how where you are yes David acting this blue planet and the impact that it's that yes it's it's changed everything right and I feel that we might be closer than we think in on the land-based crisis we make tipping tipping points are interesting aren't they a study of tipping points and I mean I mean think about think about Airbnb who would have guessed 20 years ago that an electronic interface could create more rooms than Marriott Hilton and Sheraton combined worldwide in two years without picking up a hammer and a nail so to to you maybe we have tried try to be keep them tight just because we haven't got time and speak to Joe through the rest of the day but who would like to make the point or ask a question Joe we've had someone ask a question a question from Madrid we've had people all around our audience are some questions just betrayed last week we motivate and support farmers to move in this direction with out of mind do you support the measurement of public goods and if so what do you measure it pretty face bar questions do we measure public good what do we measure at Polyface farm okay so there are there are numerous ways you can measure are my favorite way to measure is earthworms vegetation biodiversity I mean when we when we start seeing when we came in 61 and it was a rock pile on a gully ditch I grew up I never saw a turkey now I see turkeys almost every day they're just everywhere okay wild turkeys all right now the industry views that as an avian influenza vector okay you know listen when your paradise views wildlife as a threat that's an incorrect paradigm okay and so so you know we're we're pretty uh yeah let me just MIT we're pretty seat-of-the-pants in our place I mean we you know we're really in tune with it I think we we watch the earthworm and if we're growing earthworms a lot of things are a lot of things are working well but you have the apartment of Estonian study have you gone yeah we cross the border we have it we have a numerous evaluations I mean we anyone that wants to come and study things we give them the freedom so we had a UNC vet student that game and they wanted to know what our soil Salmonella loads were because we've been pasture in these chickens for 50 years compared to a farm that hadn't had a chicken for 50 years and amazingly found our load was zero different than theirs which is a confirmation that our rest period is right so how do we how do we know the size of our shelters and how many chickens to put in how long the recipe it is so we know how much nitrogen a chicken is giving we know generally how much the soil in a climate in our area can metabolize okay and we know how much grain land is required to feed the chickens in the shelter and we've tried different sizes and we found a sweet spot where if we if we put fewer in they don't do as well and if we put too many in they don't do as well and what's interesting is the sweet spot of performance that balance the amount of land to grow the grain to feed the birds in the shelter the amount of nitrogen going on in phosphorus and stuff from the chickens in the manure load all of those things intervene at our density and rest period but some so when you have that many things intersecting you can be pretty sure you're somewhere close to being right but let's build on this question the farm bill at the moment is helping perpetuate a a system which is running out of time there's a discussion going on about crop insurance where it could be related to soil fertility what if you're measuring the public goods which are coming from your farm how can we make the system that's operating your farm become the norm in the United States and Beyond through intervention from sámi perdu and others yeah yeah yeah well this is where you and I always have our little bit of a little bit of tension because I'm a libertarian and and so so the way I say to move forward is freedom rather than top-down I want to free up the market so that I could smoke bacon at my house and sell it to a neighbor that wants it if I could do that we would run circles around the industrial food so they don't need just relaxation of some of these regulatory burdens that you would vote for me for me yeah that's my that's my biggest hurdle because it keeps me from being able to access people we've got customers that are dying for you know a pot pie you know chicken broth things like that and unless we go to an off-site because we're in agricultural zones so you can't have a commercial kitchen on a farm because that's that's manufacturing manufacturing is not consist of the agricultural zone so we have all this segregated kind of stuff if we could just if we could just access our neighborhood with value-added product easily okay if we we would be able to spend circles around the industry when I learned to come to the farm as an 18 year old and I wanted to come to the farm back full time we were milking about more milking to guernsey cows and I figured out that I could have milk 10 cows to sell the milk at retail price not not high because it's grass not me this is before the O word was widely used and and and and I Russ I could hand me all 10 cows sell it to the neighbors and make a good living only pop was it was illegal and I've never gotten over I've never gotten over that that it didn't matter that I wanted to do it and that my neighbors wanted it all right I'm not trying to be rushing through that in the food safety I'm just saying that somewhere embryonic entrepreneurial access needs to be available so that innovation or the edges can be started without $500,000 twin tuple paperwork a licensing and then and then you can build a little successful business and then you invest in infrastructure and you know other things so that's we've got a group we have a stop racism gonna take it leads to more questions of maybe please hello job John handouts of State in Essex the last forty years we've seen farms get bigger with fewer people on board working land the average age is now 59 60 yes they were told we can't have a 20 year old we need it now today but we have to have that 20 year vision what is that vision well if you think it's 59 now 60 what would you like to see it in twenty years time and what steps do we need to take now to get to that elevator problem sure okay so so my my look the bit the business axiom for healthy economic sectors is 35 the average age of the practitioner in that sector 35 years old that is a vibrant sector if it's over 35 by business definition it's it's in decline and so that's what I'd like to see I'd like to see let's see 35 average could you make them really quick just relate them for you said 80 counties for the farms around you what are you achieving cool 80 count days the farm around us we're doing 400 Cal days no I'm sorry scared to ask this question but Bill Gates and others are investing in meat that we grow in factories not sentient animals you obviously have some interesting news on vegetarians which is why I'm scared of asking the question what are your thoughts on that and is that actually on biggest threats to our businesses and next 13 years I don't think I don't think creating policy to fight against the threat of Venus and vegetarianism I think it's a fad and it doesn't taste good at all and it has none of these benefits again that means this is New York listen this thing starts this thing the second paragraph goes right to the heart this couple came to a farm and they said we got to get the animals offers we're going to make a wilderness area and the farm went to pot and they brought the animals on and started building soil with it and so so I think I think we need to just forget the vegans that freaky don't don't don't waste your time on that it's friendships it's a fad it's urban disease it's silly okay okay you focus your energy on building soil and using animals to save the planet and also could be an eating disorder but so here obviously it's a dairy senator from Montana I'm looking from the outside it would seem that you've got most of the ideas first how about you consider setting up a franchise yeah I've considered a dessert a franchise for about 30 seconds no I don't want to set a franchise I don't copyright any of this stuff I just want it to be duplicated around the world of people would be successful it's open source anyone can come 24/7 365 from anywhere in the world to sneak anything any time unannounced that's our transparency open-door policy we just want you to do thanks very much philosophical National Student Association you make a very strong and powerful case for deregulation and we know the regulation is restrictive and we also know that many regulations bad regulations leads to a whole range of completely unintended consequences as well I think most people in this audience would agree with that that approach in yet it is ironic that as we're leaving the EU a lot of us would be fighting to maintain or even strengthen our regulation particularly in the area of the diamond and animal welfare and yet yesterday we talked a lot about concern I becomes more and more how can we how can we deregulate get positive outcomes and make sure that we're achieving there comes you want them and not causing problems you have what are the tools that we can use to do that listen it's what a great question all right so so my look you can either you can either regulate or incentivize from the top what you want or you can create a very whatever diversified playing field on the bottom and try to bring from the bottom up through just the disrupt the disruptions of innovation okay like like the loopers ation of the of the taxi world all right air being I mean these are huge discs amazon.com I mean so it's a massive disrupter okay but here's the thing we now have brand new tools we have brand new tools through social media through drone videography all to tell our story it's a beautiful story of pastoral mosaics we can we can paint pictures like our fathers and mothers could never do paint it alright and so so let me just touch with the the the industrialization of agriculture and the food system created industrial opaqueness you know guard gates razor wire right either physical or non-physical opaqueness nobody could see no Michael Pollan said and Omnivore's Dilemma if all the factory houses had glass walls it would fundamentally change our food system he was exactly right the point is that the regulations here's the thing I want you to understand the the the the industrial scale regulations came in as a result of the industrial scale opaqueness in the food system people felt disempowered and they wanted something bigger to control something bit today with the authorization the atomization of the economy we now are creating an obsolescence of industrial scale regulations because we have now reintroduced the village conversation now our village may be across even country borders ok but now the reason they didn't need this back with a butcher baker candlestick maker was because everybody in the village knew who the shyster was they know who the good was they knew the battle was the bad ones didn't get patronized and the good ones got the market voted for what they wanted through industrialization we made everything anti human scale so anti human scale people got scared and said Moo we need something anti human skill to protect us from these guys from from their opaqueness and their shyster is Amanar blah blah blah ok all right now we are moving into the atomization and the democratization of information and the ubiquitousness of being able to explain our stories show our stories and show our environmental benefits and the nesting bird and the and the the calving heifer on grass all right all right we can now do that and that is creating an obsolescence of the of the regulatory industrial structure just like but like the like the feedback loop on uber drivers protects the uber ization from shysters because they register don't patronize this driver guess what that driver doesn't exist very quickly okay and so we now have that democratization of direct access into the marketplace new we haven't had for 60 years and so that is a disrupter that is atomizing our ability and we desperately need now an atomization of access for us in the food sector to over eyes the local food system [Applause] now make all of your carrots grow long and straight then your radishes be large but not Pippi may tomato blossom end rot affect your Monsanto neighbors Tomatoes may the Foxes be struck blind at your pasture chickens make all of your culinary experiments be delectably palatable may the rain fall gently on your fields the wind be always at your back your children rise and tell you bless it and may we all make our nest a better place and we inherited thank you so much government [Applause] you you

Channel: Sustainable Food Trust

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Keywords: farming, food, agriculture

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Length: 95min 38sec (5738 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018