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Oct. 6, 2025 - Epoch Times
21:51
Why Small Farmers Are Disappearing | Joel Salatin
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Do you notice there's no flies, there's no smell, these are unvaccinated, unmedicated, no pharmaceuticals, none of that.
In this episode, I sit down with farmer Joel Salatin.
He and his family own polypaced farms, and he's the author of 17 books, including Everything I Want to Do is Illegal.
War Stories from the Local Food Front.
You can't have a porta potty, so now you're at 50,000 to put in a certified septic system in order to have a kitchen that passes compliance.
Zalaton believes that what America desperately needs is a food emancipation proclamation.
Which basically says you and I can engage in a food transaction without the government's permission.
In my lifetime, I have watched this erosion of farmer access to retail dollars.
Meanwhile, we're seeing farmers go out of business hand over fist.
The average farmer's now 60 years old.
So in the next 15 years, half of all America's agriculture equity is gonna change hands.
The question is, is it all gonna go to Vanguard, Black Rock, Bill Gates, the Chinese?
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kelly.
Joel Salatin, it's so good to have you on American Thought Leaders.
It's a privilege and an honor to be with you, Jan.
We're here in your milieu.
We're here at Polyface Farm.
So let's see some of the really interesting things you've managed to do here on the farm.
Sure.
Let's take a little tour.
���� Isn't this a wonderful venue?
Oh, incredible.
Oh yeah, look at these guys.
They're pretty beautiful animals.
I mean.
Oh, yeah.
Well, they are.
Yeah, they're they're really like they're really in good shape.
I mean, it's very somehow it's very clear.
No grain.
No grain whatsoever.
This grass is all they need.
Yeah.
So this is, you know, this is like the ultimate grass fed, basically.
Uh-huh.
It's the ultimate grass fed.
That's exactly right.
*music*
Well, that's what you call happy turkeys, right there.
Turkeys actually eat about three times as much grass as a chicken.
And and because of that, they need way more grit.
So this group of turkeys is eating uh 50 pounds of rocks a day for their gizzard.
Of rocks.
Of rocks.
Yes.
We have pans of rocks in there.
Uh it's called grit.
Right.
But it's big.
It's the size of a marble.
They're big, big pieces of rocks.
And then they're they're incredibly intelligent.
And they're very uh they're very personable.
They're very people uh oriented, as opposed to chickens, which aren't nearly as for example, this they almost look prehistoric, don't they?
They do a lot.
I call them pterodactyls.
Yeah.
You know, they're like the like the uh prehistoric pterodactyl bird.
Yeah.
Yeah, they'll they'll they'll clean every piece of green vegetation here that they're that there is.
And this, so and this is kind of once they've just when when once they're gone.
I mean, it really looks it really does look like it's been mowed.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
Like, look at this.
Yeah, yeah, it's but mowed.
This is done, none of this was done.
Like you know, literally looks like someone came in and chopped it.
Yeah, yeah.
Outro Music.
These are unvaccinated, unmedicated, uh, no pharmaceuticals, no no uh wormers, grubicides, no ractopamine, uh, you know, none of that.
Do you notice there's no flies, there's no smell.
It's actually, I would say it's a pleasant smell.
It's a whole different pig world.
Everything's eating and being eaten.
I mean, a compost pile is all about life, death, decomposition, regeneration.
Everything's being consumed by something else, and then essentially regenerating in some other form.
Right.
Okay.
What makes the sacrifice of the pig sacred is the respect and honor bestowed during life.
Right, right.
That that framework, that ethical moral framework hangs on starting to honor the least of these the animals, the plants, and honoring them to create a moral ethical.
That's our relationship with the natural world.
That's right.
That's right.
That will translate into our relationship with each other.
Exactly.
And so is it any wonder that a society that now factory farms are commodifies life?
Yes, commodifies and disrespects life in a factory farm will also disrespect the individual desires of a of a person.
And so yeah, it's I mean it's it's it's very very um similar.
Yeah.
You know, and just you know, watching what happened over the last, you know, this is watching over how however many years you'll you kind of getting a feeling that we got it.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
And unless we start correcting that, yeah, we're gonna have a lot of problems.
That's right.
Okay.
All right, big.
All right.
These are big acords, aren't they?
All right.
Carry on, pigs.
So these guys get moved every four days.
We call this the Millennium Feather Net.
The house gets moved every two days, you know, within the oval, and then the whole circle gets moved every four days.
We can uh we can go in.
So just step step high.
There you go.
and you can go in and just see how pretty the birds are.
Hot ladies.
We have been hatching our own layers now for about 12 years.
Okay.
So these are our own.
Wow, right?
These are our own, our own genetics.
Uh we call it functional genetics.
We don't care how big you are, what color you are, anything, all we care is are you old, are you healthy, are you productive?
If you are, we want your genetics.
So we've been selecting those uh now for about 12 years, and these are these are the offspring of that selection process.
And they're over they're not they're pretty good looking animals.
Oh, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this is early in the morning, so they're just beginning to lay.
There is zero smell, no flies.
This is the official way to hold a chicken.
Uh-huh.
Is you put your middle finger between their legs.
That's right.
I've seen it, I've never, I haven't done it.
And you hold them like this that way, if they want to scratch, they're just out in the air, you know.
People that they hold them up here like this, well, then they can scratch, you know, all this.
But you hold them like this and just let their let their breasts sit in your hand, and uh they get real they get real content.
Don't you?
There you go.
So these are roosts.
Daniel came up with this.
We we when we started with this, we had a hoop, we had hoop house.
Okay, and but the problem with the hoop house is it doesn't have any structural integrity up high, so you have to put all the bracing down at the ground.
Well, then that becomes something that can catch a chicken, you can trip over, that sort of thing.
So Daniel came up with this design that puts all the the structural um integrity up high so you never run over a chicken and you don't have anything to trip on because you're pulling this into the new area.
Yeah, yeah, so it's on skids, pipe skids, yeah, and it just it just moves, yeah.
So you you hook up here with a tractor to the feed buggy, this is all hooked together, and it just trains in.
So this is a thousand, a thousand layers.
Yeah, and you can't use two geese, yeah, or they form a clan.
Right.
So it's only one goose, and and and that way the goose knows my only friends are these chickens.
But the goose is the ultimate um security agent.
The goose hates everybody, hates me, hates you, hates uh hates the world.
Uh totally non-discriminatory.
He hates everything, and apparently everything you want to be doing here is illegal.
Well, yeah, just about uh, you know, it and and it's not it's not just food regulations, it's just other things.
I mean, for example, we have we have 700 acres of Appalachian hardwood forests.
You know, this is the belly of oak and um black walnut.
We can legally cut a tree and mill it into boards, but we can't legally make it into a chair and sell it because that's manufacturing.
And we're an agriculture zone.
Agriculture zone that prohibits manufacturing.
So, you know, uh there's everything from food safety to, you know, we'd love to, we'd love to make chicken pot pies for our customers.
You can't do that without an inspected kitchen.
Well, what do you have to do to get an inspected kitchen?
You have to have an approved septic field.
You can't have a composting toilet, you can't have a porta potty, so now you're at $50,000 to put in a uh a certified you know septic system in order to have a kitchen that passes compliance so that you can make uh summer uh a chicken pot pie.
You know, we we we when we started, we used to uh we used to have um you know six, 15, 16-year-old apprentices.
But we can't we can't have somebody under 18 running a power tool legally.
Now, you can put that 16-year-old behind 3,000 pounds of steel so that they hurtle at 70 miles an hour down the interstate, that's perfectly safe.
But a cordless drill in the hand of a 16-year-old, no, that that can't work.
You just live every day wondering, well, you know, what infraction did I make today, or who do I have to ask permission for today?
We we really are uh just suffocated in this uh morass of uh regulatory oversight, and and the bottom line is you can't have successful small business with big government.
Big government and small business don't go together.
Big government and big business, that goes together really well.
Small government and small business, that goes together really well, but big government and small business don't go together well.
Joel, we're gonna take a quick break right now, and folks, we're gonna be right back.
And we're back with farmer and author Joel Salatin.
You you're kind of become the face of this sort of small regenerative agriculture, healthy, you know, don't you use minimal kind of external product type operation, and a lot of people gain a lot of inspiration out of that.
Uh, I'd like to go back.
My grandfather, my dad's dad, was a charter subscriber to Rodale's organic gardening and farming magazine when it came out in what 1945, just right there at the end of World War II.
As an economist, he understood that as a small farmer, we could never compete at the low margin commodity level because we couldn't produce enough commodities.
We had to become the middleman, the processor, the marketer, the distributor, in addition to the producer, you know, the middleman that makes all the money.
We needed to wear those hats so that we could get the full retail dollar because we couldn't turn enough pounds or widgets or bushels or whatever to compete at a at a at a low margin volume.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We began uh direct marketing throughout high school.
Uh I got my first chickens at 10 from Sears and Roebuck and uh started selling to neighbors and people at church and a couple restaurants and schools.
By the time I was through high school, I had 300 laying hens and had a and a big garden and was selling produce and different things.
This entrepreneurship was just pushed right from the beginning.
Right, absolutely, right from the beginning.
And our prices, Yon, our prices were exactly the same as Kroger as a supermarket.
We weren't jacking them up because it's organic.
No, because we were able to wear all those hats and do it here at home.
We didn't have to put our animals on a trailer and take them up the interstate to get them slaughtered.
Guess what?
We were able to compete at price with the store because it was so efficient being done here.
In my lifetime, I have watched this erosion of access, of farmer access to retail dollars.
Meanwhile, we're seeing farmers go out of business hand over fist.
The average farmer's now 60 years old.
So in the next 15 years, half of all America's agriculture equity is going to change hands.
The land, equipment, machinery, buildings.
The question is, is it all going to go to Vanguard, Black Rock, Bill Gates, the Chinese?
I mean, who's gonna do this?
And meanwhile, America has gone to a convenience food addiction.
Well, you can make a chicken pot pie without MSG.
It doesn't need MSG.
You can make you know, uh pickled beets without red dye 29.
You know, you can you can do all of this stuff, convenience food without any of these um questionable additives.
And you can do it economically, and uh that's the bottom line.
Absolutely.
Except that this red tape comes in and exactly.
Yeah.
And suddenly these these regulatory practices uh requirements make it make it so prohibitively capital in capital expensive to comply with the infrastructure,
the paperwork, the licenses, the hassle plans to be able to sell legally that the small organization can't get a seat at the table because you you can't justify spending half a million dollars to make a five-gallon bucket full of charcuterie.
When you look for solutions in a society, we we you know a culture's got a problem.
Asking for a regulatory solution is it is the worst option possible.
Yeah, you want a market solution.
That's what you're asking about.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
You you you want a liberty solution.
You want can we solve this with freedom?
What I do want is a viable underground railroad, so that those of us who want to escape the shackles of the of the regulatory system and and take ownership of our of our food choices can do so.
And if we did, the the price of local food would drop by 30 or 40 percent.
Um so suddenly now really good food is available to non-wealthy people.
Food deserts would go away because empty lots could be turned into um you know food things and people could make food in their kitchens and um and and and and offer it there in the in the community.
Uh and and there would then there would be an on-ramp for thousands and thousands of young farmers with small acreages to be able to make a full-time living on their farm.
I mean, I would argue that they these, you know, we call the oligarchs, let's just say the large-scale operations that are you know, sort of deep deep in the system and and you know, providing the food to America as we speak.
I mean, it would help them to get better, and I think that's positive.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, I do too.
I mean, yeah, philosophically, absolutely, if they were suddenly pressured by a hundred thousand little competitors, you'd better believe you we would see changes very fast.
And this is really the best part of capitalism, isn't it?
Yes, right.
Our biggest showdown was we butcher we were dressing these chickens, and you know, early on, I mean, you know, I'm in my 20s, we're starting this pastured poultry thing, we're selling to local people, they're coming out here to the farm to get their chickens.
I mean, they walk right in where we, I mean, we process them in the morning, we clean up, they come and they walk right into where we process them.
I mean, you know, it can't be dirty.
That yeah, these are people buying their food right right here.
And um, the state came in and said um said that's illegal.
And uh it never occurred to me that it would be you know, that's how naive I was.
What do you mean?
We've I'm a I'm a voluntary farmer, they're a voluntary buyer, we're neighbors.
What do you mean we can't butcher a chicken here and sell it to them?
And um, they said, well, the the air is unsanitary.
And they said, if one fly enters your processing area, then it's an adulterated chicken and inedible.
Here was the way they were trying to get me.
Your windows have to be covered with fly impregnable mesh.
Their interpretation was that that assumed you had a wall.
I said, No, it doesn't say I have to have a wall.
It says if I have to have a wall in earn windows, they have to be screened.
This be this became the crux of the showdown.
And and they're you know, they're saying this is all illegal, we're gonna shut you down because you have to have a wall.
I said, it doesn't say I have to have a wall.
It just says if there is a wall and it's got windows in it.
So we went around and around and around.
We finally went through the federal inspection, we got our our senator, our delegate involved, and um our attorney and different things.
Anyway, three months later, we won.
We won that.
Nightmare.
You know, I I keep thinking about how all of this really started from a grandfather's passion.
Yeah.
For organic.
Yeah.
Right?
Or non-chemical or however called, you know.
That's that there's something beautiful about that.
That there is.
There's just it's sort of got infused into uh uh a young debater.
Yeah, yeah.
And and and and uh if there are young people listening to this or young parents with kids, you know, I um I I like to tell the story that was that was um pivotal in my early childhood.
So, you know, my mom was a uh my mom was a um a health and phys ed teacher before Title IX.
Girls, you know, girls, um phys ed.
Very, very athletic, very athletic.
My older brother, very athletic, played football, gymnastics, you know, he was here I come.
I'm this I'm this pudgy late bloomer, you know.
And um, but yeah, I've got you know, mom that's this, you know, health and phys ed, older brother that's this, you know, standout.
So I hit seventh grade.
I'm gonna go out for the for the baseball team at school.
So I got to the baseball team and um I don't make it.
Okay.
And um and and and and that year there was a forensics meet, uh, public speaking, poetry reading, pro, you know, and uh I entered that and and won it.
And um the next year then I go on up to high school.
I'm in eighth grade.
Well, go out for the basketball team.
They have an eighth grade basketball team.
We've got to the basketball.
So I go out for it, and I still remember today looking at that list, and my name's not there.
And at that moment, I made it okay.
Hang it.
I'm good at talking, writing, you know, communicating.
I'm gonna put all my energy in that.
And so I joined, I on the joined the debate team.
I was in drama, theater, you know, and um, and so I I tell I tell children that sometimes are struggling with something, trying to meet somebody else's expectations or things that they they feel like they should do.
Take those early failures happily, embrace them because they help you know what you're good at and what you're not good at.
You know, the entire business program called Strength Finders.
I'm sure you're familiar with it.
Their whole premise is you hear people say, you need to work on your week, you're weak there, you need to work on that.
No, actually, their whole model is forget your weakness, get a partner, hire somebody, you know, that does your weakness, and instead leverage your strength.
Leverage your strength.
You'll go farther leveraging your strength than trying to overcome your weakness.
And um, and I I just I just think there's a I just think that's profound.
And I know in my own life, it was pivotal in me moving, so I didn't play sports in high school.
I didn't, I didn't, I was I was in, I was on stage.
I was on, you know, and um and I I honed that communication capacity, and the truth is today a lot of our success is my ability to tell stories to communicate because communicators always lead their vocation.
Learn to tell stories, be a storyteller, and people will come to hear you.
Well, Joel Salatin, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
It's been a pleasure to be with you.
Thank you.
Thank you all for joining Joel Salatin and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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