Epoch Times - Why Small Farmers Are Disappearing | Joel Salatin
Aired: 2025-10-06
Duration: 21:51


=== Ultimate Grass Fed Tour (02:26) ===

[00:00:00]  Do you notice there's no flies, there's no smell.
[00:00:02]  These are unvaccinated, unmedicated, no pharmaceuticals, none of that.
[00:00:07]  In this episode, I sit down with farmer Joel Salatin.
[00:00:10]  He and his family own Polyface Farms and he's the author of 17 books, including Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, War Stories from the Local Food Front.
[00:00:19]  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.
[00:00:28]  Salatin believes that what America desperately needs is a food emancipation proclamation.
[00:00:34]  Which basically says you and I can engage in a food transaction without the government's permission.
[00:00:39]  In my lifetime, I have watched this erosion of farmer access to retail dollars.
[00:00:46]  Meanwhile, we're seeing farmers go out of business hand over fist.
[00:00:50]  The average farmer is now 60 years old.
[00:00:52]  So in the next 15 years, half of all America's agriculture equity is going to change hands.
[00:00:58]  The question is, is it all going to go to Vanguard, BlackRock, Bill Gates, the Chinese?
[00:01:03]  This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellek.
[00:01:08]  Joel Salatin, it's so good to have you on American Thought Leaders.
[00:01:12]  It's a privilege and an honor to be with you, Jan.
[00:01:14]  We're here in your milieu.
[00:01:16]  We're here at Polyface Farm.
[00:01:17]  So let's see some of the really interesting things you've managed to do here on the farm.
[00:01:23]  Sure, let's take a little tour.
[00:01:33]  Isn't this a wonderful venue?
[00:01:35]  Oh, incredible.
[00:01:38]  Oh, yeah, look at these guys.
[00:01:40]  They're pretty beautiful animals, I mean.
[00:01:42]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:43]  Well, they are.
[00:01:45]  They're really, like, they're really in good shape.
[00:01:48]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:48]  It's very somehow it's very clear.
[00:01:51]  No grain, no grain whatsoever.
[00:01:54]  This grass is all they need.
[00:01:55]  Yeah.
[00:01:56]  So this is, you know, this is like the ultimate grass fed, basically.
[00:01:59]  It's the ultimate grass fed.
[00:02:00]  exactly right that's what you call happy turkeys right there

=== Why Chickens Need Marbles (15:39) ===

[00:02:26]  Turkeys actually eat about three times as much grass as a chicken.
[00:02:31]  And because of that, they need way more grit.
[00:02:34]  So this group of turkeys is eating 50 pounds of rocks a day for their gizzard.
[00:02:40]  Of rocks.
[00:02:41]  Of rocks.
[00:02:42]  We have pans of rocks in there.
[00:02:44]  It's called grit.
[00:02:45]  But it's big.
[00:02:46]  It's the size of a marble.
[00:02:47]  They're big, big pieces of rocks.
[00:02:49]  And then they're incredibly intelligent and they're very personable.
[00:02:55]  They're very people oriented as opposed to chickens, which aren't nearly as for example.
[00:03:00]  This fella.
[00:03:01]  They almost look prehistoric, don't they?
[00:03:03]  They do a lot.
[00:03:04]  I call them pterodactyls.
[00:03:05]  You know, they're like the prehistoric pterodactyl bird.
[00:03:10]  Yeah, they'll clean every piece of green vegetation here that there is.
[00:03:18]  And this, so, and this is kind of the best once they've just.
[00:03:22]  Once they're gone.
[00:03:23]  I mean, it really looks, it really does look like it's been mowed.
[00:03:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:26]  Right.
[00:03:26]  Like, look at this.
[00:03:27]  Yeah, it's been mowed.
[00:03:28]  This is done.
[00:03:29]  None of this was done.
[00:03:30]  Like, you know, literally looks like someone came in and chopped it.
[00:03:37]  These are unvaccinated, unmedicated, no pharmaceuticals, no wormers, grubicides, no ractopamine, none of that.
[00:04:00]  Do you notice there's no flies, there's no smell.
[00:04:03]  It's actually, I would say it's a pleasant smell.
[00:04:05]  It's a whole different pig world.
[00:04:08]  Everything's eating and being eaten.
[00:04:09]  I mean, a compost pile is all about life, death, decomposition, regeneration.
[00:04:14]  Everything's being consumed by something else and then essentially regenerating in some other form.
[00:04:21]  What makes the sacrifice of the pig sacred is the respect and honor bestowed during life.
[00:04:29]  That framework, that ethical moral framework hangs on starting to honor the least of these animals, the plants, and honoring them to create a moral ethical.
[00:04:41]  That's our relationship with the natural world.
[00:04:43]  That's right.
[00:04:44]  That's right.
[00:04:44]  That will translate into our relationship with each other.
[00:04:47]  Exactly.
[00:04:48]  And so is it any wonder that a society that now factory farms commodifies and disrespects life in a factory farm will also disrespect the individual desires of a person.
[00:05:06]  And so, yeah, it's very, very similar.
[00:05:11]  And just, you know, watching what happened over the last, you know, this is watching over however many years, you kind of getting a feeling that we kind of get wrong.
[00:05:21]  Right.
[00:05:21]  And unless we start correcting that, we're going to have a lot of problems.
[00:05:26]  That's right.
[00:05:26]  Okay.
[00:05:27]  All right, pigs.
[00:05:28]  All right.
[00:05:30]  These are big acorns, aren't they?
[00:05:35]  All right.
[00:05:36]  Carry on, pigs.
[00:05:40]  So these guys get moved every four days.
[00:05:43]  We call this the Millennium Feathernet.
[00:05:45]  The house gets moved every two days, you know, within the oval, and then the whole circle gets moved every four days.
[00:05:52]  We can go in.
[00:05:55]  So just step high.
[00:05:57]  There you go.
[00:05:58]  And go in and just see how pretty the birds are.
[00:06:03]  Hi ladies.
[00:06:04]  We've been hatching our own layers now for about 12 years.
[00:06:13]  So these are our own.
[00:06:14]  These are beautiful animals.
[00:06:16]  I mean, wow, right?
[00:06:17]  These are our own genetics.
[00:06:20]  We call it functional genetics.
[00:06:21]  We don't care how big you are, what color you are, anything.
[00:06:24]  All we care is: are you old?
[00:06:25]  Are you healthy?
[00:06:26]  Are you productive?
[00:06:27]  If you are, we want your genetics.
[00:06:29]  So we've been selecting those now for about 12 years.
[00:06:33]  And these are the offspring of that selection process.
[00:06:37]  And they're over.
[00:06:38]  They're pretty good-looking animals.
[00:06:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:06:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:06:41]  Yeah.
[00:06:41]  Yeah.
[00:06:42]  So this is early in the morning, so they're just beginning to lay.
[00:06:45]  There is zero smell, no flies.
[00:06:49]  This is the official way to hold a chicken is you put your middle finger between their legs.
[00:06:54]  Right.
[00:06:54]  And I've seen it.
[00:06:55]  I've never, I haven't done it.
[00:06:57]  And you hold them like this.
[00:06:58]  That way, if they want to scratch, they're just out in the air.
[00:07:02]  You know, people, they hold them up here like this.
[00:07:04]  Well, then they can scratch, you know, all this.
[00:07:06]  But you hold them like this and just let their breasts sit in your hand.
[00:07:12]  And they get real, they get real content, don't you?
[00:07:20]  There you go.
[00:07:24]  So these are roosts.
[00:07:25]  Daniel came up with this.
[00:07:27]  When we started with this, we had a hoop house.
[00:07:31]  But the problem with the hoop house is it doesn't have any structural integrity up high.
[00:07:36]  So you have to put all the bracing down to the ground.
[00:07:38]  Well, then that becomes something that can catch a chicken.
[00:07:41]  You can trip over that sort of thing.
[00:07:43]  So Daniel came up with this design that puts all the Structural integrity up high so you never run over a chicken and you don't have anything to trip on because and then you're pulling this into the new area.
[00:08:00]  Yeah, yeah, so it's on skids, pipe skids, and it just moves.
[00:08:05]  Yeah, so you hook up here with a tractor to the feed buggy.
[00:08:08]  This is all hooked together and it just trains in.
[00:08:12]  So this is a thousand layers.
[00:08:15]  And you can't use two geese or they form a clam.
[00:08:19]  So it's only one goose, and that way the goose knows my only friends are these chickens.
[00:08:25]  But the goose is the ultimate security agent.
[00:08:28]  The goose hates everybody.
[00:08:29]  Hates me, hates you, hates the world.
[00:08:35]  Totally non-discriminatory.
[00:08:37]  He hates everything.
[00:08:43]  And apparently everything you want to be doing here is illegal.
[00:08:47]  Well, yeah, just about.
[00:08:49]  You know, and it's not just food regulations, it's just other things.
[00:08:54]  I mean, for example, we have 700 acres of Appalachian hardwood forest.
[00:09:00]  You know, this is the belly of oak and black walnut.
[00:09:06]  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.
[00:09:16]  And we're in agriculture zone, agriculture zone that prohibits manufacturing.
[00:09:21]  So, you know, there's everything from food safety to, you know, we'd love to make chicken pot pies for our customers.
[00:09:28]  You can't do that without an inspected kitchen.
[00:09:30]  Well, what do you have to do to get an inspected kitchen?
[00:09:32]  You have to have an approved septic field.
[00:09:35]  You can't have a composting toilet.
[00:09:36]  You can't have a port-a-potty.
[00:09:38]  So now you're at $50,000 to put in a certified septic system in order to have a kitchen that passes compliance so that you can make a chicken pot pie.
[00:09:51]  When we started, we used to have 15, 16-year-old apprentices, but we can't have somebody under 18 running a power tool legally.
[00:10:04]  Now, you can put that 16-year-old behind 3,000 pounds of steel so that they hurdle it 70 miles an hour down the interstate.
[00:10:11]  That's perfectly safe.
[00:10:12]  But a cordless drill in the hand of a 16-year-old?
[00:10:15]  No, that can't work.
[00:10:16]  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?
[00:10:24]  We really are just suffocated in this morass of regulatory oversight.
[00:10:32]  And the bottom line is you can't have successful small business with big government.
[00:10:38]  Big government and small business don't go together.
[00:10:40]  Big government and big business, that goes together really well.
[00:10:43]  Small government and small business, that goes together really well.
[00:10:46]  But big government and small business don't go together well.
[00:10:49]  Joel, we're going to take a quick break right now.
[00:10:52]  And folks, we're going to be right back.
[00:10:55]  And we're back with farmer and author Joel Salatin.
[00:10:59]  You're kind of become the face of this sort of small, regenerative agriculture, healthy, you know, don't use minimal kind of external product type operation.
[00:11:11]  And a lot of people gain a lot of inspiration out of that.
[00:11:13]  I'd like to go back.
[00:11:14]  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.
[00:11:24]  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.
[00:11:33]  We had to become the middleman, the processor, the marketer, the distributor, in addition to the producer, the middleman that makes all the money.
[00:11:42]  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 low-margin volume scale.
[00:11:55]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:56]  We began direct marketing throughout high school.
[00:11:59]  I got my first chickens at 10 from Sears and Roebuck and started selling to neighbors and people at church and a couple of restaurants and schools.
[00:12:08]  By the time I was through high school, I had 300 laying hens and had a big garden and was selling produce and different things.
[00:12:15]  This entrepreneurship was just pushed right from the beginning.
[00:12:18]  Right, absolutely, right from the beginning.
[00:12:20]  And our prices, Jan, our prices were exactly the same as Kroger as a supermarket.
[00:12:27]  We weren't jacking them up because it's organic.
[00:12:29]  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.
[00:12:38]  Guess what?
[00:12:38]  We were able to compete at price with the store because it was so efficient being done here.
[00:12:45]  In my lifetime, I have watched this erosion of access, of farmer access to retail dollars.
[00:12:56]  Meanwhile, we're seeing farmers go out of business hand over fist.
[00:13:01]  The average farmer is now 60 years old.
[00:13:04]  So in the next 15 years, half of all America's agriculture equity is going to change hands.
[00:13:11]  The land, equipment, machinery, buildings.
[00:13:14]  The question is: is it all going to go to Vanguard, BlackRock, Bill Gates, the Chinese?
[00:13:19]  I mean, who's going to do this?
[00:13:22]  And meanwhile, America has gone to a convenience food addiction.
[00:13:28]  Well, you can make a chicken pot pie without MSG.
[00:13:31]  It doesn't need MSG.
[00:13:33]  You can make, you know, pickled beets without red dye 29.
[00:13:39]  You can do all of this stuff, convenience food, without any of these questionable additives.
[00:13:46]  And you can do it economically.
[00:13:48]  And that's the bottom line.
[00:13:49]  Absolutely.
[00:13:50]  Except that this red tape comes in and nothing.
[00:13:53]  Exactly.
[00:13:54]  And suddenly, these regulatory practices requirements make it so prohibitively capital expensive to comply with the infrastructure,
[00:14:10]  the paperwork, the licenses, the HACCP plans to be able to sell legally that the small organization can't get a seat at the table because you can't justify spending half a million dollars to make a five-gallon bucket full of charcuterie.
[00:14:28]  When you look for solutions in a society, you know, in a culture, it's got a problem.
[00:14:35]  Asking for a regulatory solution is the worst option possible.
[00:14:42]  Yeah, you want a market solution.
[00:14:43]  That's what you're asking.
[00:14:44]  Exactly.
[00:14:45]  Yeah, you want a liberty solution.
[00:14:47]  We solve this with freedom.
[00:14:49]  What I do want is a viable underground railroad so that those of us who want to escape the shackles of the regulatory system and take ownership of our food choices can do so.
[00:15:03]  And if we did, the price of local food would drop by 30 or 40 percent.
[00:15:08]  So suddenly now really good food is available to non-wealthy people.
[00:15:14]  Food deserts would go away because empty lots could be turned into food things and people could make food in their kitchens and offer it there in the community.
[00:15:32]  And 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.
[00:15:44]  I mean, I would argue that 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, you know, providing the food to America as we speak.
[00:15:56]  I mean, it would help them to get better.
[00:15:58]  And I think that's positive.
[00:16:00]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:16:01]  Oh, I do too.
[00:16:01]  I mean, yeah, philosophically, absolutely.
[00:16:04]  If they were suddenly pressured by 100,000 little competitors, you'd better believe we would see changes very fast.
[00:16:15]  And this is really the best part of capitalism, isn't it?
[00:16:18]  Yes.
[00:16:18]  Our biggest showdown was we were dressing these chickens.
[00:16:24]  And, you know, early on, I mean, you know, I'm in my 20s.
[00:16:27]  We're starting this pastured poultry thing.
[00:16:29]  We're selling to local people.
[00:16:30]  They're coming out here to the farm to get their chickens.
[00:16:33]  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.
[00:16:40]  I mean, it can't be dirty.
[00:16:41]  These are people buying their food right here.
[00:16:44]  And the state came in and said, that's illegal.
[00:16:51]  And it never occurred to me that it would be, you know, that's how naive I was.
[00:16:55]  What do you mean?
[00:16:58]  I'm a voluntary farmer.
[00:17:00]  They're a voluntary buyer.
[00:17:01]  We're neighbors.
[00:17:02]  What do you mean we can't butcher a chicken here and sell it to them?
[00:17:06]  And they said, well, the air is unsanitary.
[00:17:11]  And they said, if one fly enters your processing area, then it's an adulterated chicken and inedible.
[00:17:19]  Here was the way they were trying to get me.
[00:17:22]  Your windows have to be covered with fly-impregnable mesh.
[00:17:26]  Their interpretation was that that assumed you had a wall.
[00:17:32]  I said, no, it doesn't say I have to have a wall.
[00:17:34]  It says if I have to have a wall and there's windows, they have to be screened.
[00:17:37]  This became the crux of the showdown.
[00:17:41]  And they're saying this is all illegal.
[00:17:44]  We're going to shut you down because you have to have a wall.
[00:17:48]  I said, it doesn't say I have to have a wall.

=== Pivotal Debates (04:00) ===

[00:17:51]  It just says if there is a wall and it's got windows in it.
[00:17:53]  So we went around and around and around.
[00:17:55]  We finally went through the federal inspection.
[00:17:57]  We got our senator, our delegate involved, and our attorney and different things.
[00:18:03]  Anyway, three months later, we won.
[00:18:06]  We won that.
[00:18:07]  Nightmare.
[00:18:08]  You know, I keep thinking about how all of this really started from a grandfather's passion for organic.
[00:18:16]  Yeah.
[00:18:16]  Right?
[00:18:17]  Or non-chemical or however it's called, you know?
[00:18:21]  There's something beautiful about that.
[00:18:23]  There is.
[00:18:25]  It sort of got infused into a young debater.
[00:18:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:32]  And if there are young people listening to this or young parents with kids, you know, I like to tell the story that was pivotal in my early childhood.
[00:18:48]  So, you know, my mom was a, my mom was a health and phys ed teacher before Title IX, girls, you know, girls phys ed, very, very athletic, very athletic.
[00:19:00]  My older brother, very athletic, played football, gymnastics.
[00:19:03]  You know, he was here I come.
[00:19:05]  I'm this, I'm this pudgy late bloomer, you know.
[00:19:09]  And, 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.
[00:19:16]  So I hit seventh grade.
[00:19:17]  I'm going to go out for the, for the baseball team at school.
[00:19:21]  So I got to the baseball team and I don't make it.
[00:19:25]  Okay.
[00:19:26]  And That year, there was a forensics meet, public speaking, poetry reading, prose, you know.
[00:19:34]  And I entered that and won it.
[00:19:37]  And the next year, then I go on up to high school.
[00:19:40]  I'm in eighth grade.
[00:19:41]  I'll go out for the basketball team.
[00:19:42]  They have an eighth grade basketball team.
[00:19:44]  We'll go out to the basketball.
[00:19:45]  So I go out for it.
[00:19:47]  And I still remember today looking at that list, and my name's not there.
[00:19:51]  And at that moment, I made it, okay?
[00:19:56]  Hang it.
[00:19:57]  I'm good at talking, writing, you know, communicating.
[00:20:00]  I'm going to put all my energy in that.
[00:20:02]  And so I joined, I was on the joined the debate team.
[00:20:05]  I was in drama, theater, you know.
[00:20:08]  And so I tell children that sometimes are struggling with something, trying to meet somebody else's expectations or things that they feel like they should do.
[00:20:21]  Take those early failures happily.
[00:20:24]  Embrace them because they help you know what you're good at and what you're not good at.
[00:20:29]  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 weak, you're weak there.
[00:20:37]  You need to work on that.
[00:20:38]  No, actually, their whole model is forget your weakness, get a partner, hire somebody that does your weakness, and instead leverage your strength.
[00:20:50]  Leverage your strength.
[00:20:51]  You'll go farther leveraging your strength than trying to overcome your weakness.
[00:20:56]  And I just think that's profound.
[00:21:00]  And I know in my own life, it was pivotal in me moving.
[00:21:05]  So I didn't play sports in high school.
[00:21:09]  I was on stage.
[00:21:14]  And I honed that communication capacity.
[00:21:18]  And the truth is, today, a lot of our success is my ability to tell stories, to communicate.
[00:21:31]  Because communicators always lead their vocation.
[00:21:35]  Learn to tell stories.
[00:21:37]  Be a storyteller.
[00:21:38]  And people will come to hear you.
[00:21:42]  Well, Joel Salatin, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
[00:21:45]  It's been a pleasure to be with you.
[00:21:47]  Thank you.
[00:21:47]  Thank you all for joining Joel Salatin and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.