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Sept. 19, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:22
'Uber-izing Food.' - Joel Salatin

Polyface Farms owner and bestselling food freedom author and activist tells us how we can have healthier and cheaper foods if we only take a few essential steps.

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Time Text
Commercial Kitchen Challenges 00:04:35
As I mentioned at the beginning, we need decentralization, communication.
Obviously, the internet provides that.
But we also need decentralization in food.
And that's where our next speaker is a master at.
He has a farm two and a half hours away here in Virginia where he raises livestock and sells directly right to people, to consumers, and to restaurants.
He is a big advocate of local, local food.
And, you know, it makes sense.
That's how it should be in the grand scheme of things.
So please welcome Joel Salatin.
Thank you.
It is an honor and a delight to be here with you.
I can't tell you how great it is.
Through the years, people have asked, you know, they're curious about where do you fall in the political spectrum, you know, from all this stuff.
And well, I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican, I'm not a socialist, I'm not a greenie, I'm not an environmental.
And finally, libertarian, whatever.
And you finally, for me, for years and years, the final quick answer is, I'm just a Ron Paul guy.
So those that are wanting to put you in a niche in a box, you know, that tends to work.
All right.
So let's talk about Uberizing food.
So a little while ago, we had a lot of customers wanting, you know, they want convenience.
And will you make a chicken pot pie for us?
I'd like to have a decent chicken pot fine.
Probably not something from Tyson's and all that, feeding you like family.
I don't want a family like that.
But anyway, so we had, actually, we had on our team, we had a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
And she said, yeah, I'll do that.
I'll do that as an enterprise.
We have 22 people that make a living from the farm, but nobody is hourly.
We don't believe in it.
It's either performance-based or subcontractor or just collaboration, that sort of thing.
And so first thing we needed was a commercial kitchen.
Well, a commercial kitchen is not allowed in an agriculture zone because it's considered commercial manufacturing, which is prohibited in agriculture zone.
We can't use our kitchen or the kitchen we use to feed our staff because it needs to be a separate facility.
It can't be your own kitchen.
You have to duplicate it into a different structure.
The kitchen has to have an approved bathroom.
Even though we have eight bathrooms within 100 yards of this site that we wanted to use, it had to be a conjoined bathroom.
We're believers in composting toilets and think, no, it has to have ceramic.
It has to be an approved.
It has to be a water-based system.
Well, now we have to have a septic system.
We have to have a $30,000 drain field and leech field and develop that.
That's just to get a commercial kitchen license.
Well, now if you can get to that point, then you can have an hazardous analysis critical control point license, which measures your hot temps, cold temps, infrastructure for monitoring, and audit paperwork.
And if you can pass all that, then maybe we'll look at doing this.
And I asked the guy, I said, so food trucks don't have all this.
And food trucks make chicken pot pies.
He said, yeah, I know, that's a loophole we'd like to close.
I said, are you telling me if we took our commercial, the kitchen we have here, it's a big commercial kitchen, we use it to feed our staff and everything.
And I said, you mean if I took this kitchen and put it on a chassis, I wouldn't need the toilet, all this stuff.
He said, yeah, that's correct.
Can you make sense of that?
He said, but if you have a food truck, then you can't sell off the farm.
So, you can only sell to people that buy it from the food truck on site.
Well, at this point, our gal, who's now, you know, been into this for four months trying to work through this, finally found a local church, one of these big denominational churches that built for 400 people and are down to 20 now, like so many.
And they had this wonderful big kitchen in the church that they used.
So, she worked out a deal with them.
They were excited to get an increased income.
And so, she went through all the paperwork.
Village's Fear of Oversight 00:10:08
The government officials come in for the last inspection.
She's going to get her stamp of approval.
We're going to be in business next week.
We're six months, you know, into this, being in business.
And the inspector comes, I think I'm the wrong department.
I think you need a different agency.
And she died that day emotionally.
Said, can't do it.
It's too hard.
Folks, that story can be repeated a hundred times a day throughout this country.
It is the enslavement in the shackles of regulatory tyranny in our country.
How did we get here?
Well, very quickly, industrialization removed the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker from the village.
And they became massive in size.
When it became massive in size and segregated, not integrated into the community, they put up razor wire fencing and guard booths and created an opaque food system.
What happens when there's an opaque economic sector in a culture and you can't see into it?
You become fearful.
What are they doing in there?
What are they doing behind that fence?
What are we doing behind the walls?
And when you can't see it, you become ignorant.
And when you're ignorant of something, you fear it.
And when you fear it, then you want some sort of oversight that's bigger than the unknown.
In this case, the federal government.
And this is where we are in our culture today.
I was out speaking at a college in California a few years ago, and during a QA, I don't know, just spirit-led, whatever, and it just struck me.
I said, I'm going to ask a question.
Said, how many of you had, you know, 300 students in this lecture hall, how many of you think that in order to eat a carrot from your garden, you should get a USDA stamp of a license that says it's safe to eat that carrot?
One-third of the hands went up.
A carrot from your own garden.
This is where we've come to in our culture.
And the fact is that all food safety regulations are scale prejudicial.
If you're small, it's hard.
If you're big, it's easy.
And I suggest that any regulation or law that's inherently easier to comply with if you're big than if you're small is inherently unfair and prejudicial.
Well, somebody asks routinely then when I say this, they said, well, give us an example of one that's not scale prejudicial.
All right.
Speed limits.
It's just as easy to put your foot on the brake of an 18-wheeler as a Prius.
That's an example.
So here we are.
And the fact is that we have a very centralized food system, and we found the emperor has no clothes in 2020.
Does anybody actually believe that 2020 would have gone smoother in our food system had we, instead of being served by 300 mega 5,000 employee centralized processing facilities as a funnel that brings us our food from farm between Farmgate and retail package, if instead we had had 300,000, 50-employee, community-based neighborhood abattoirs, canneries, and processors.
So let's talk about Uber for just a minute.
What was the secret to Uber?
What was the breakthrough with Uber?
You know, if I had told anybody 50 years ago, you know what?
In 30 years, people are going to jump into cars with people they've never seen and don't know, and sometimes can't even speak the same language with, a car that hasn't been vetted by any special licensing agency, a driver that hasn't been vetted by any, you're going to jump in this car and say, take me to, you know, somewhere.
And they've, what?
What are you talking about?
No, we use taxis, we use limousine services, we use, you know, we got to have special licenses and automobiles.
What made Uber work?
What made Uber work was real-time transparency through the automatic audit of rating in real time.
If you're a jerk of a passenger, you won't get picked up.
If you're a jerk of a driver, you won't get any passengers.
It's real simple.
I mean, who'd have thought that the free market would actually work?
It's crazy.
So what made it work was the two things that are anti the industrial, the opaqueness that I just say.
The number one to eliminate.
The number one way to eliminate ignorance is responsibility.
I'm responsible for placing the call.
I'm responsible for getting in the car.
I'm responsible for trusting the outfit that is vetting and putting this together.
The number one way to eliminate fear is knowledge.
I know what the guy's going to look like, or the gal is driving the car, what they're going to pick me.
You know, I understand this.
Airbnb, same situation.
Who would have guessed that in 10 years of the invention of Airbnb, we would duplicate all the hospitality capacity of Marriott, Sheraton, and Hilton globally without pounding a nail?
That's the power of unleashing entrepreneurial transparency free markets on a system that completely circumvent and exit the system, disentangle from the system, and build a viable alternative on their own.
The internet then has recreated the village voice of yesteryear.
The reason we didn't need these kinds of food police back 500 years ago was the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker were embedded in a village.
What happens is in the industrial system, we disembedded them and segregated them to the fringes of society behind guard towers and razor wire.
And suddenly people didn't trust the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick anymore because they didn't go to church with them.
They weren't related to them.
They couldn't see their house living up over their shop and the village voice that said, that guy's a charlatan, that guy's a craftsman, that guy's pretty good, that guy's all right, but not very, all that kind of village vetting went away.
But through the internet today, the uberization of the free market has given us a new opportunity to recreate the village voice of an embedded butcher baker and a candlestick maker with a global voice in real time.
So how do we uberize food?
How do we uberize food?
How do we build a disentangled system?
Well, one way is do-it-yourself production.
You know, right now, America has 35 million acres of lawn and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses.
Now, I'm not against horses, okay?
But that's 71 million acres.
That's enough to feed our entire country without a single farm.
So don't tell me we don't have enough land, we don't have enough food, and starvation is around the corner.
No, we have gardens.
In 2020, 1 million flocks of backyard chickens started.
And those 1 million flocks of backyard chickens, I did the computation, that only accounted for less than 5% of our egg supply.
But it was a lot more than half a percent.
And it was a step in the right direction.
And this is one of the things that's driving what I call the homestead tsunami right now.
If you're not aware of it, there is a homestead tsunami going on.
People, the most common phrase I hear from people is, how do I disentangle from the system?
How do I eliminate dependency on the system?
I think right now the whole world is like, you know, that wasp nest on your back porch that's sitting, you know, it's there the size of a softball.
You know, you go in and out of the back porch all the time.
The wasps are just sitting there all the time, just kind of, you know, chilling out.
You know, what are they doing?
Once in a while, you see somebody take off and come back, but they're just kind of sitting there.
And then one day you and your, you know, your beloved probably is saying, hey, let's clean off the back porch.
So you pick up the brooms and you start working, and you accidentally hit the rafter that the wasp nest is on.
Now they don't come after you yet because they're not quite sure where to attack.
What happened?
All they know is their world got shaken.
And I feel like our world is like that wasp nest.
It's been shaken.
And everybody is, or at least intentional thinking people, are, you know, and all those wasps, they suddenly, you know, they don't leave yet, but they're ready.
You know, they're ready to attack.
And that's where we are right now.
And this being able to take charge of your own food system is a big deal.
Another way to uberize is simply to circumvent.
So a friend of mine, John Moody, and I have started about five years ago.
We began the rogue food movement, the rogue food conference, RFC.
We run around the country.
Our next one's going to be in Dallas this fall.
Next one's going to be in Florida next spring.
We move it around the country.
It is gaining momentum.
Rogue Food Movement 00:08:17
Of course, our hero is Congressman Thomas Massey.
He comes to almost all of them.
If Ron Paul is an Elijah who has an Elisha, Thomas Massey is Ron Paul's Elisha.
Those of you who know the biblical story.
But our mantra is circumvention, not compliance, because there's a point where tyranny becomes so difficult to comply with, circumvention becomes more efficient than compliance.
And so things that we're that, so what we're doing is we're showcasing people who have made an end run, a guerrilla war against this tyrannical food police prejudice.
Everything from, so there are numerous options.
A private membership association is a new kind of scheme.
Interestingly enough, that was developed in the 1960s by the white country clubs in Georgia to keep to not have to comply with any of the civil, you know, the racial stuff.
And we're now co-opting it for food because food has become the new slave.
Private membership associations, food church, lady in North Carolina that started a 501c3 food church.
And so if you want food, you join the church, and that's one of your perks.
There's people that are starting to, because of the internet, you can now sell courses.
And part of the course purchase is free food.
See, all of these things are how do we how do we transact food commerce without it being a sale?
Because where the government gets you is if it's a sale.
See, that's why this is not about safe food.
I can make chicken pot pies, take them as a bingo raffle at the local volunteer fire company, making a you know, a donation thing as a nonprofit, and those can be given away all day from my kitchen with no inspection, no regulations whatsoever.
And I'm a great American citizen.
But if somebody who won one of those pot pies out of my uninspected kitchen likes it so much, she comes to me and says, Hey, that's a great pot pie.
How about you making, can you make four or five from me?
You know, we've got guests, whatever.
If I sell one to her, I'm suddenly a criminal.
What is it about the exchange of money that suddenly turns it from benevolent to hazardous?
See, these regulations are not about hazard.
They're about constricting access to the marketplace.
And that is what has caused our centralization.
Realize that when Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle in 1906 and accused the food system of being a monopolistic oligarchy, there were seven companies that controlled 50% of America's meat supply.
Today, after a century of government intervention and manipulation, now four companies control 85%, and that's called the free market.
Another system is the adjuster, where somebody pays me a caretaker's fee to raise my chickens, and I simply process them for free.
That's another caretaking system.
Another one is sell an animal live and give it away for processing.
Another one is self-processing on rental land.
Lady in Michigan, she rents 10 square feet, 10 feet by 100 square feet, 10 feet by 10 feet, and her customers butcher their beef animals on their rental land, so they're actually doing it on their own property.
Pet food is a huge one right now.
A lot of numerous states have started into pet food.
So there are lots of workarounds, and at the Rogue Food Conference, we really bring on people who have punched through these and won and are doing well.
And I would suggest the third one.
So we've got do-it-yourself, we've got circumvention, and the third one, the legislative remedy.
And of course, the best one right now is from Congressman Thomas Massey, who's put in a constitutional amendment to give standing to sue for the right of food choice.
You see, right now in America, federal judges have issued from the bench: do you know Americans do not have the right to choose their food?
We don't have that right.
And so if you're denied glass of, you know, if buying a glass of raw milk is, you can't get it because it's illegal, or my chicken pot pie or whatever is illegal, you can't sue anybody for a remedy because you have no standing because you don't have a right.
And so this freedom of choice among consenting adults to engage in voluntary transactions without a bureaucrat intervening is absolutely a critical element.
And of course, he has proposed another one is the Prime Act, which would allow states, if they so choose, to allow custom processed meat to be sold by the cut in their communities.
I don't have enough time to go into all the little details of that, but it is still in the farm bill, actually.
I can't believe it's still in there.
But it will be probably, if it stays in, it will be probably the most significant shot across the bow of industrial Tyson Foods of anything that's been done in my lifetime.
And so we have some momentum here.
So when you have these hearings, you know, I've been to Congress in these hearings and things, what happens is the Democrats walk in the room, the Republicans walk in the room, and the Democrats, all they can talk about is we need antitrust.
We need antitrust.
We need to break up these monopoly oligarchies.
And our side says, how do you break up oligarchies?
How do you break up centralization?
You don't do it with a bigger government with a bigger hammer.
You do it by freeing up the entrepreneurial spirit that's alive and well in the countryside.
We'll serve our neighbors.
We'll grow for our neighbors.
You just need to give the freedom to do it.
So, so my third remedy, and this is brand new, I just spent a day, Teresa and I went down and spent a day and a night with Doug and Ancha Casey, international man.
Some of you may know Doug Casey.
And libertarian.
And Ancha had, we were talking about all these issues, and she had this brainstorm.
So I've got to give credit where credit is due.
I'll just steal people's ideas and then talk about them.
She said, what we need is a food right to try law.
Right to try.
In other words, if I want to try your uninspected chicken pot pie, I should be able to do so.
And if folks want to take responsibility, want to take that responsibility and make a choice, I mean, we have choice in the bedroom.
We've got choice of sexual identity.
We've got choice on passports now.
We've got choice everywhere else.
But we don't have choice to decide what to eat.
And what's more intimate than deciding the fuel for my microbiome so I have the energy to go shoot, pray, and preach that we're given those freedoms.
The reason that we don't is because the government owns us.
That's their position.
Because as soon as health care becomes a government intervention issue, suddenly there's an economic incentive to protect me from doing unorthodox things that might impinge on the economic cost of keeping me alive.
Room Full of Frustrations 00:02:31
And so if raw milk is the demon of the day or an unvaccinated riot steak is the demon of the day, then we have that.
So health and food, health freedom and food freedom are brother-sister.
Until we get the government out of the health care business, it will have an economic right and incentive to tell us what to eat.
So I was going into D.C. the other day on the metro.
A guy gets on next to me.
He weighs about 400 pounds.
He's got cigarettes in his pocket, a big bag of legs, potato chips, and a two-quart drink of whatever, Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb or something.
And he can hardly shuffle around, you know.
And the next day, I went up and spoke at a college in Pennsylvania to have a big room full of students.
And again, we're at QA, and something just came over me.
And so I told him this story about this guy who's just gotten on the metro with me, 400 pounds.
He's got late, you know.
And this was just after Obamacare had been passed.
And so I asked this room full of students.
I said, so I want one of you students to tell me why I'm responsible for his health.
And the room got quiet.
I said, I'll wait.
I'm standing up here like this.
One minute goes by.
That's a long time for a, you know, two minutes go by.
You know, now it's getting awkward.
You know, students are kind of looking around.
Finally, one girl here on the front row, she raises her hand and said, yes, ma'am, what?
She said, because your generation made him do it.
Room full of bright college students?
Best answer they can come is it's not his fault.
Agriculture was the last to join the big government, and it'll be the last to exit.
So don't be discouraged.
We are going to win.
When the other side can't procreate because they're full of Dr. Pepper, we will win by default.
Here's the fact that I'm done.
Here's the fact that I'm done.
We could all, if we wanted to, take out a piece of paper and itemize our frustrations right now.
Are you frustrated about some things?
Turn Frustration Into Positive 00:01:49
Absolutely.
We can make a list.
Sometimes it's cathartic or therapeutic to make a list.
All the stuff I'm angry about.
I can't stand it.
Make a list.
That's fine.
But the trick for all of us, and my challenge to each of us here today is to take that list and say, okay, that's the bad stuff.
Now, let me invert all that angst and energy and frustration in a positive, creative way so that my goal is to turn frustration into proactive creativity.
So that we here become hope and help when all else is hopeless and helpless.
That's where we need to go.
And we take that negative and turn it into positive.
In fact, I would suggest that the new 401k is not Wall Street.
It's to invest in relationships and personal improvement to people who know how to grow things, build things, and fix things.
That's the new 401 test.
Come and see us when you can.
I am delighted and honored again just to be in your presence and the presence of this great man.
It's just great to be here.
So now may all of your carrots grow long and straight.
May your radishes be large but not pithy.
May tomato blossom and rot affect your Monsanto neighbor's tomatoes.
May the coyotes be struck blind at your pasture chickens.
May 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 call you blessed, and may we make our nest a better place than we inherited.
God bless you.
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