TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #782: Fiat Food Is Destroying America with Will Harris

Starting point is 00:00:00 You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be will harris welcome to the show sir thank you for having me you you were just saying you're uh you're honored to be here before we hit record i'm honored as uh as somebody who's been following

Starting point is 00:00:46 your work um from from afar for for many years now uh like i was telling you we've uh we've We've had a pretty big focus on shaking your rancher's hand here at TFTC over the years. A lot of our audience is going out, meeting their local rancher, buying a quarter cow, half cow, going to their local farmer's markets to support local farmers. And I view you, Joel Salatin, and others of that caliber as really leading the charge. So this is a bit of a treat for me specifically, but I guess let's just jump into it. And starting with white oak pastures, why decide to go from industrial farming to regenerative farming? And I guess we can get into a conversation about the differences between the two. So I was the fourth generation of my family to operate this farm.

Starting point is 00:01:38 My children were the fifth. My grandchildren hopefully will be the sixth. uh my my great-grandfather and grandfather operated the farm uh in a very pre-industrial kind of a way uh my dad born in 1920 took over the farm post-world war ii and he is the generation that really industrialized the farm on his watch he became a monoculture only cattle Previously, he'd done a lot of different species of animals. And he was kind of a pioneer in becoming a link in the chain, the industrial chain that beef goes through from the cow-calf producer to the stocker, out west feedlots to big beef companies. And I don't know that my father would have liked that.

Starting point is 00:02:34 We didn't talk about it. He was cowboy, I was cowboy. We didn't talk about stuff like that, but he was successful with it. And I never wanted to do anything except run the farm industrially, just like my dad. I loved it growing up. I went to the University of Georgia, majored in animal science, came home and ran it industrially for 20 years. And then just, you know, for a fairly short period of time, really got tired of it, really got disgusted with the excesses of it. Yeah. And I think that the excesses of it is something that's become clear to me. And a lot

Starting point is 00:03:14 of the conversations we've had around cattle ranching, particularly over the years, have been around where the centralized points of the industry really lie and how that's corrupting incentives for farmers across the country, where you're really not incentivized to produce the best product but to produce as much product as possible get it to these large slaughterhouses and then distribute it um from there and then not only that but the whole aspect of bringing meat in from from other parts of the world um just to increase margins and that's the big question i want to get out is how do we how do we move from this hyper centralized big farm or excuse me big farm industry here in the United States to a more decentralized, and where does regenerative

Starting point is 00:04:02 play into that? Well, I think you were on the tack for answering that, what you just said. You know, when my great-grandfather and grandfather ran this farm, they raised a lot of different species of animals. They and their employees got up way before day, every day, six days a week, and they killed something. Might have been a cow, might have been two or three hogs, might have been a few sheep or a few goats or something. Loaded on a mule-drawn wagon without refrigeration or without USDA inspection.

Starting point is 00:04:40 Came up the dirt road three miles to Bluffton, the little town that's where I'm sitting right now. And they peddled the meat to the hotel, to the boarding houses, to the more affluent citizens and sold the meat they had slaughtered that morning. And they had to sell it. It was sell it or smell it. There was no refrigeration. And they were incentivized to have a really good product because the consumer knew exactly where it came from. and they would not buy from them anymore. So they were incentivized to make it the best it could be.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Fast forward to now, it's evolved to the point where we meet minimum standards. We don't go for maximum, we go for the minimum. I mean, USDA publishes the minimum standards acceptable for whatever product you're producing. So when you evolve from trying to make your product the best it can possibly be to keep your customer to meeting minimum standards because you're selling into an anonymous market where nobody knows who you are, it's a game changer. Yeah. And how bad has it gotten in recent years, in the turn of the century up to this point? I think it's as bad as it can be. I don't think that's going to get any worse.

Starting point is 00:06:08 I think it's as bad as it can be. Producers are living in total anonymity because they sell to someone who sells to someone who sells to someone. And it winds up being a product that's very distantly removed from the producer. Here on my farm, we breed the cattle. We slaughter the calves. We grow the calves. we slaughter them, we butcher, we sell the meat. But if it's not good, it's my fault.

Starting point is 00:06:45 It's just my fault. I screwed something up somewhere. Yeah. And what about the idea that regenerative farming isn't scalable? Because I think that's the one thing that I've really admired over the years of watching yourself and others like Joel Salatin, again, go out there and improve that regenerative is actually scalable it just needs to be more distributed how how do we get there because that's another thing i think we have to to worry

Starting point is 00:07:15 about is due to the financial stress that many farmers and ranchers are under you have a situation where where the art is somewhat being lost because the incentive to actually go out and do it uh isn't isn't there what we're left is what we're left with is people are just truly passionate about it, unless that's passed down through generations. It's something I think has a potential to be lost within two or three generations if we don't cater to it. The fact is that regenerative farming is absolutely not as scalable as industrial farming. It is not. But it is far more replicatable.

Starting point is 00:07:53 We, as a family, we made the decision a few years ago that we were as big as we wanted to be we don't want to get any bigger we want to do better we won't be but we we are not interested in in getting bigger uh in the commodity market it's all about size you know four companies produce 85 of the beef in this country scalable all about scalability you know there doesn't need that white opacians does not need to get bigger and bigger and bigger There needs to be more and more white oak pastures. And I don't mean I need to own them.

Starting point is 00:08:34 Someone else needs to own them. Today, we ship beef to 48 states, and I don't want to do that. I need to produce the amount of product that I produce, but I would love to sell it in Georgia, maybe Georgia, Florida, Alabama. I'm down here where those three states come together. Now, you know, Atlanta, we're a pretty big grass-fed beef producer, but I couldn't possibly feed Atlanta. I couldn't do it.

Starting point is 00:09:08 You know, I don't need to be shipping beef to California when Atlanta's three hours up that road and I can't feed them. There's a lot that needs to be done in terms of consumer acceptance. You know, consumers have been told such a compelling story for so long that it is highly believable, and the public has believed it, but I think those blinders are falling off. You know, I started, I was pretty early transitioning over from industrial beef to grass-fed beef back in the 90s. And I was lucky enough to be accepted by Publix Supermarket. And they required me to have educational sessions at every store that carried my product, offered to consumers and employees. And no one knew what grass-fed beef was.

Starting point is 00:10:07 In the 90s, that's not that long ago, late 90s. But today, customers, consumers have become far more sophisticated and know a lot more about their product and want to know more. In the 30 years or so I've been in this business, I've vacillated quite a lot. And when I first started, I would not have said this. I wouldn't say that out loud, but I thought, huh, I believe I'm what they call an early innovator in this deal. I didn't say that to anybody, if I did, but I thought it. And I operated for a few years, and then I said, no, I am not an early innovator.

Starting point is 00:10:56 I thought I was, but I'm not. I'm an advanced marketer. We're just a niche marketer. Niche marketer is what I am. I didn't like the way that sounded as well, but it was okay. I mean, I could make a living doing it, and that's what I was about. So through the years, I've vacillated back and forth from thinking of myself as an early innovator. No, I'm a niche marketer.

Starting point is 00:11:24 Well, maybe I'm an early innovator. No, I know I'm a niche marketer and now my two of my children and their spouses have come back in management in my company and they've got children and for the first time it looks, well, it looks more and more like it is an early innovator kind of deal. More people know that there's a difference between this product I produce and what what they're getting about a big grocery and i it's i don't know how to what extent it's going to change but it's changing so i certainly i mean i've certainly changed my consumer tendencies over the last seven years like we buy a quarter of a cow at a time we try to support as many local

Starting point is 00:12:11 farms as possible and i think the the whole meme that really became a thing but particularly within the the subculture of bitcoin five years ago that go out and shake your rancher's hand as has definitely um has definitely taken hold to a certain extent and the people once you do it it's hard to go back and so it's just slowly but surely getting uh an individual at a time over the years and it it's it's incumbent upon us producers to do some things to make it easier for the consumer you know buying a book a cow or half a cow a quarter of a cow is very difficult for consumers that's hard and that's the way i used to sell it and still do sell some we offer those products but we had to make some changes so that we could sell people

Starting point is 00:13:04 that wanted fillets we could sell them fillets or ground beef or stew beef in a chicken and some bacon, and it's going to be incumbent upon we producers to make it convenient for customers. We're already asking them to pay more, and we can't get away from that. It costs more to produce beef or produce to farm this way than it does industrially. So we're already asking them to pay more. We can't ask them to be inconvenienced. We've got

Starting point is 00:13:40 But we've got to do what it takes to make it easy for the consumer to buy it from us. What ideas do you have around that? Well, the first thing we did is our online store. And that was not successful to begin with. When the pandemic hit, it became very important to us. And it's where we make most of our money today. We still sell to some wholesale grocers. It's not very profitable for us.

Starting point is 00:14:15 Last Saturday, we opened our first retail location in Atlanta, and we're excited about those possibilities. It's a company from Austin, Texas, acquired an old industrial plant and turned it into a seven-day-a-week farmer's market. So we get that cause list to have to have employees in Atlanta. I got 170 employees on this farm, and I've gotten used to that. But now I'm going to get used to having three or four in Atlanta. But if that works, then we'll have another one, another one.

Starting point is 00:14:57 And I don't want to see how many I can have, but I need to have enough to sell what I produce. Again, we're not trying to get bigger and bigger. We, as a family, discuss the fact that if we grew this business much more, we would need to hire a CEO. And we don't want that. A CEO is going to be understandably focused on the month, the quarter, the year. And as a family, we're focused generationally. And we do things on this farm that we know will not pay off in a month or a quarter or a year, but we believe our great-grandchildren will be benefited by it.

Starting point is 00:15:43 So is that the local pastures model that you're bringing to Atlanta from Shirttail Creek Farms and Sam Moffitt? Say again? local so i lived in austin for four years and i would go to local pastures which was a seven day week uh farm sand shirttail creek farm sam moffitt um who runs that farm in austin stood that up and as somebody um who used it as my local grocery store for for four years that model is incredibly convenient instead of having to wait for the saturday farmer's market being able to go the local cashiers was always... The Austin connection here

Starting point is 00:16:19 is it's an Austin company that bought this old facility and turned it into a beautiful farmer's market. I went up and looked at it when they bought it, and it was first of all, it had been sitting idle for 50, 40 years.

Starting point is 00:16:36 And then on top of that, it was just a concrete industrial facility before that. So it was ugly. but they've made it beautiful it's nice now um bringing this back to the consumer you mentioned that the consumer is getting smarter over the years what are some of the largest misconceptions that that broad-based consumers still have about big agriculture and the food that they're eating on an everyday basis you know big big agriculture uh i ain't got big

Starting point is 00:17:06 big food let's call it big food or they're they're they're just brilliant people i mean they've got It's just billions of dollars. They are great people, fantastic marketers. And as sophisticated as the American consumer is, a very small percentage really understands the hardships that industrial meat production places on the environment, on the welfare of the animals, on local rural economies, on probably the health of the consumer. I don't talk about that one much. There's people that are more qualified to talk about that.

Starting point is 00:17:53 But I am very qualified to talk about the impact on the rural community, on the welfare of the animals, and the horrible things it does for the environment. You know, the way those, the direction that those food companies have led farmers and food producers is tremendous amount of use of tillage, which destroys the structure of the soil, pesticides. You know, homicide means kill people, right? Pesticide means kill pests. and the pests are all the plants all the insects

Starting point is 00:18:34 all the animals all the microbes and the use of pesticides is horrible what it's doing for us is horrible you know we've driven countless countless species into extinction

Starting point is 00:18:50 plants, animals, microbes you know and every I believe that every creature in an ecosystem has a role. We know that bees pollinate flowers, but I think that every single species, plant, animal, microbe, has a role in their ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:19:15 We may not know what it is, we may haven't studied it, but I think they have one. And when we drive a species into extinction or near extinction, we change that ecosystem. It operates differently. It may be very subtle,

Starting point is 00:19:27 And I think that we have done a lot of it. We continue to do a lot of it. And I think that the degradation of those ecosystems will be what gets us. So, freaks, this rip was brought to you by the motherfucking Cash App. They're back. Been using Cash App for years. Makes it easy to buy, sell, send, receive. Top up to stack Bitcoin.

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Starting point is 00:22:31 regard to farming that that solves the problem that pesticides are are looking to solve it's just takes from what i understand meticulous attention to detail and effort to create an ecosystem. It's a complete opposite of mindset. When I was an industrial cattle producer, I didn't want any animal on this

Starting point is 00:22:55 farm except cows. I didn't want any plant on this farm except Tifton 85 Bermuda grass. And I didn't think I wanted any microbes on the farm. I know better now. But I think I was

Starting point is 00:23:11 a really good cattleman. I was raised my good cattleman, my degree was in animal science. Every day I went to my pasture. Every day I went to my pasture. And I looked for something to kill. That's the way I thought you did a good job raising beef is look for something to kill that was standing in the way of that. And I might find an insect

Starting point is 00:23:40 eating my grass. I might find a nematode that was causing problems. I might find some parasite in my animals. But I could find something to kill every day. And I knew how to kill it. I knew which pesticide, again, that means kill. I knew how to do that. I think I was good at it. And I would kill something. And fast forward to today, I go to my pasture every single day, and I'm looking for a way to keep

Starting point is 00:24:16 things alive. I want the pasture to be teeming with life. I want there to be some insects. I want there to be some nematodes. I want there to be some a lot of

Starting point is 00:24:32 species of plants growing out there. But that is a complete opposite of the way I was 25 years ago. What led you to come to the opposite conclusion? Well, this is not very flattering, but I was, I think I woke up to it because I was a very extreme industrial cattleman. I was if the label instruction said put a pint per acre I would put a quart per acre

Starting point is 00:25:07 if the label instruction of the medicine said give them one cc per hundred pounds I would give them two cc's per hundred pounds I was of the mindset that if a little will do more good little do little good, more do more good

Starting point is 00:25:22 and that caused me to be heavy handed and i think it opened my eyes to the negative unconst unintended consequence of using those sides against that means kill yeah what um when it comes to like a rich sort of diverse environment what benefits does that have not only for the animals but for the the environment broadly i mean again comparing this to the monocultures like the soil that exist on the farms that are only growing one crop, using pesticides heavily. It seems like that's not sustainable in the long run or good for the environment.

Starting point is 00:26:08 I believe that, again, pesticide means kill pests. I believe that the role of the farmer, rancher, producer is to optimize the cycles of nature. You know, the cycles of nature are the energy cycle from the sun, the water cycle from rain, the microbial cycle, the carbon cycle, the mineral cycle, the grazing cycle, on and on, many, many cycles, some of which we probably don't even recognize. And I believe that when those cycles of nature are operating optimally, it produces an abundance. You know, all that coal and oil and gas, natural gas in the ground, that was all stored. That energy was stored down there in the era of the dinosaur when the cycles of nature were rocking and rolling at an incredible efficiency. and what we have done with modern farming is decide that we didn't want the cycles of nature to be operating optimally we wanted to break the cycles of nature

Starting point is 00:27:28 to produce whatever one commodity we were trying to grow that season and i think it had horrible unintended consequences you know the the organic matter in my organic matter is talked about a lot organic matter is at one of the good just one of the good indicators of uh ecological health it's not it's not the only one but it's one that's measurable the organic matter in my soil on my farm that it's been in my program for 25 plus years is five and a half percent. Five and a half percent of the top four inches is organic matter. The land that I buy that is new to me, that's been farmed industrially, is one half percent organic matter. Now, again, organic matter is not all that matters. That's not

Starting point is 00:28:34 we care about, but it's a good indicator. One percent organic matter will absorb a one-inch rainfall. A one-inch rainfall is about 27,000 gallons of water per acre, and one percent organic matter will absorb that. Now, we get four, five, six-inch rainfalls in the coastal plains of Georgia. Not often, but at least once or twice a year. My land will pretty much soak up all that water. The land that I acquire, this Hapson organic model, won't even start. The water

Starting point is 00:29:10 flows. Sorry about that. It's okay. We're good. Sorry, somebody was calling. No problem. In fact, if you want to go to my website, whiteoakpassage.com, there's some pictures, some videos in there of water coming off my farm

Starting point is 00:29:31 and my neighbor's farm. and it looks like it's from two different planets the water coming off my farm is pretty clear there's not much of it the water coming off his farm is a torrent and it's muddy water and not only that i mean if you're spraying pesticides on your plants it's leaking into the water as well and so i think when you're talking about the ecology um of these of these landscapes that was one of the most jarring videos i saw i saw that video when you're on joe rogan of the differences in water flow and it is pretty incredible just to see your farm compared to those around you and and the pesticides are part of that but chemical fertilizer is a big

Starting point is 00:30:18 part of it tinge is a big part of it it's the whole industrial complex that the land-grant universities and others have formulated through the generations to maximize monocultural production of corn cotton soybeans wheat oats peanuts well that that does such incredible damage to the soil yeah and the the other misnomer again maybe not a misnomer but the one of the Things that made me pretty perturbed is the whole push. I think it's waned quite a bit in recent years, but the whole idea that cows are contributing to global warming, cataclysmic climate change, if you believe that. And the whole push to reduce cattle ranching because cow farts, the methane was leaking into the atmosphere and increasing greenhouse gases is completely insane. And I think it neglects, I think, greening via cattle ranching is something that is very underexplored.

Starting point is 00:31:35 The way cattle specifically, and pigs to a certain degree, can, if managed properly, can be incredibly beneficial to revitalizing. And that's, I think, the thing about regenerative farming that really excites me is this avenue towards topsoil regeneration via grazing cattle and introducing more diverse ecosystems to farms that have been monocultures for a long time. That discussion deserves to be addressed. And we cattlemen gave the anti-beef people the bullet to use against us. In a feedlot situation, understandably, I think it's horrible for the land. I think it's horrible for the atmosphere. when those animals out there are standing on bare dirt, eating feed, urinating, defecating.

Starting point is 00:32:38 I think it's horrible for the environment. And the anti-beef people seize that and use it as a broad brush to paint that all beef production is bad. And we let them get away with it. We shouldn't have, but we didn't fight back. I don't know. I guess we just didn't. But now I'm prepared to.

Starting point is 00:33:04 The fact is, I just told you the organic matter in my soil has gone from half a cent to five and a half a cent. You know where that organic matter came from? Greenhouse gas. those plants the way that works is my plants in my pasture grass and forbs breathe in carbon dioxide and capture it and create fats proteins and energy some of which grows the top of the grass this is ground from the top of the grass grows it up and when it does that it's growing roots down If it grows this much grass at the top, putting that much roots down. Properly grazed land allows the plant to mature.

Starting point is 00:33:57 They put the animals through, let them bite it off. When they bite it off, they turn some of it into manure, some of it into urine, some of it is converted into beef. and that root that's carbon under the ground sloughs off a bit and the top's been bitten off. That carbon is sequestered in the ground. Much of that urine and feces is brought down into the ground through dung beetles and other fauna out there. Then we don't graze that land anymore for X period of time,

Starting point is 00:34:37 60 days in my case. Others are different lengths. Realize that those plants act like a poop, bringing that carbon in, bit off, sequestering it, and it works. It works. It's been working since the beginning of time, and it's inarguable. There's no arguing that. Come on, I'll show it to you. But we animal people, cattle people have let the anti-beef, anti-cow people get by with that for way too long

Starting point is 00:35:19 It's not true It is true in an industrial feedlot model Yes, I admit that That's not what I do No, I deny I do that So it's just not right how do we get away or is there a way to get away can we get away from the industrial feedlot in your opinion well i did i mean i used to i used to run an industrial

Starting point is 00:35:44 feedlot uh it's uh if consumers will selectively uh choose grass-fed beef it won't eventually won't be any more industrial feedlots industrial feedlots take young cattle and fattened them up into obese creatures that the consumer had gotten used to, and in doing so, did a lot of ecological damage. It's still big business, but I think it's under fire. How much of this is on the large buyers of this beef, like McDonald's, McDonald's, fast food chains, large supermarkets? Are they going to have any say in this?

Starting point is 00:36:34 Well, so the hamburger, let's just say this, hamburger or ground beef is a little different. When a person fattens calves in a feedlot, the way we just discussed, they wind up with a large percentage of the animal as what's called 50% trim. It's 50% lean, 50% fat. It's the obese part of the animal. And that's not very marketable. Nobody wants to eat that. It's just not marketable.

Starting point is 00:37:13 But Big Beef has discovered that they can import super lean animals. These are usually like old mama cows. Very lean. and their meat will be 90-something percent lean when they grind it. And they can blend the two products, the 90-plus percent lean from the mostly imported older cattle with the 50% trim, 50% fat, 50% lean, and get a 70-30, 60-40, 90-10, 93-7, whatever they want. And that works. It's not very appetizing.

Starting point is 00:38:03 A pound of that meat could contain the DNA of thousands of animals from all over the world. probably would contain the DNA of thousands of miles. But that's what you get when you buy industrial ground beef. That's why it's so cheap. That product can be made incredibly cheap because it takes two almost inedible products and turns them into something edible. So freaks, when you take Bitcoin seriously,

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Starting point is 00:40:31 a taxable event this is worth a serious look go to aven.com slash bitcoin that's a-v-e-n.com slash bitcoin check it out it seemed like the the the onus would be on the consumer to say i'm not going to eat this crap um because i guess that gets into the question of the the nutrient density of the different options too well it is on the consumer but it takes a very careful consumer to avoid that. The way to do it is find you a farmer and do business with them. Buy what they sell. And feel free to ask questions about how that farmer does it. You may not like it.

Starting point is 00:41:17 If you don't, you need to know it and find another farmer. Yeah. Take your rancher's hand. That's advice we'll continue to give here. And I mean, on that part, how could consumers better help farmers? That's one thing that has been really interesting over the years, meeting a bunch of ranchers in Texas when I lived there and I'm back in the Northeast. There's only one thing that the consumers can really do to help financially, economically help their farm, and that's do business with them, buy their product. you know we i built a uh a restaurant and a general store and lodging here on my farm so the customers could come see me yeah it's not profitable it's very breakeven it's just it's okay

Starting point is 00:42:10 but it doesn't make any money pays for itself but the reason we did it is we wanted people to come see us i'm in a very remote uh area we didn't have a lot of services so i i fixed it so people could come and we get a lot of visitors we get business every day and we show them what we do we make them free to go anywhere they want to go and look at anything we want to look at well we have a farm in the uh the tri-state area in the northeast i go to new jersey in in the summers we have a farm in cape may county called uh beach plum farms and it's a it's a great it's a it's a pig farm predominantly they have pigs and chickens and uh about a 20 minute drive from from where we stay in the summer at the beach and uh i love the way that they've done

Starting point is 00:43:02 something similar you can you can stay if you want they do weddings there but the they have a restaurant as well and so probably about once a month we'll go down there buy a bunch of chicken and pork but i have three young boys they can run around feed the chickens feed the pigs and um beautiful gardens as well produce and it's uh it's not a bad it's not a bad trip to take especially if you have young children get into the farm and acquainted with the farmers and getting good quality food at the end of the day and you're welcome to come as often as you want to but you probably don't have to come at one time and really

Starting point is 00:43:38 with the social media being as efficacious as it is you can visit your farm without actually going there you need to know you could go there if you wanted to but we have a lot of customers, online customers that I know

Starting point is 00:43:57 have never been here but they have a lot of confidence because they read all the Facebook, Instagram and all that stuff and it builds confidence in them and they know they can come here if they want to and they probably know somebody that's been here

Starting point is 00:44:13 How on top of all this is the government particularly this administration you think this is an issue that the Trump administration or the federal government more broadly is aware of and looking to fix or I think that

Starting point is 00:44:31 farmers like myself if they're waiting on the government to fix this situation it'll never be fixed this I'm not being critical I'm just telling you what's true consumers will fix

Starting point is 00:44:47 this problem if it gets fixed I think there's probably more attention being paid to the industrialization of food production than there ever has. I don't want to get into politics.

Starting point is 00:45:08 I'm pretty apolitical. But I think that increasingly as time has gone on, we've seen more and more and more focus on it, probably more now than we've ever seen. But it's not a political problem. It's a consumer problem. And it's not going to be fixed by politicians. If it gets fixed, it'll be fixed by consumers.

Starting point is 00:45:29 And it will get fixed. It's a matter of when. I hope that things don't get so stinking bad that it's just a disaster. And it will if it's left unchecked. There's a dead zone. I'm about 80 or 90 miles as the crow flies from the Gulf of Mexico, way down in the rural south. And there was a wonderful oystering ground in the Gulf of Mexico. And they stopped oystering because the oyster beds had become so decimated

Starting point is 00:46:14 by the chemical fertilizers and pesticides washing off this farmland right around me. So, look at this. We're doing horrible things for the environment, and it's not going to get any better until we do different. So what does the scale of the disaster scenario on change look like? What does the scale of the disaster scenario that you mentioned look like if we don't change quickly enough? And I guess on top of that, based off of where your expectations were maybe a few years ago when you went on Joe Rogan versus where things actually are today, has progress exceeded your expectations? Has it underwhelmed them?

Starting point is 00:47:06 Are we headed in the right direction? I think that I'll say that recently, in the last four, five, six years, I don't know exactly when, And there's been more positive change than I ever thought we'd see. There's not nearly enough. We're still light years away from fixing it. You know, one thing that I don't think many people appreciate that I try to make clear is fixing degraded land and water and atmosphere is so, so slow. Once you decide, as I did 25 years ago, to fix it, it takes decades.

Starting point is 00:47:50 I mean, it's just so slow. It's not quick. And by human standards, in terms of the millennia, it's just maybe pretty quick. But so, you know, you can't wait until the problem is just absolutely dead serious and then get started. We've got to get it started now. It should have gotten started yesterday. And it's also true that not everybody is going to embrace fixing it. Some will.

Starting point is 00:48:24 I did, and there will be some others. There are others, a number of others. But it's going to be by human recollections. It's going to be very, very slow. It's going to be generational. and that's that's why i mean we talk about a lot in bitcoin bitcoin is a hard money to save in but you have to realize that many people think it's a get rich quick scheme but it really is like a just save in good money slowly over time scheme and this concept of

Starting point is 00:49:03 low time preference being able to delay gratification many years into the future is something that people have to adopt they have to adopt that mindset and it is hard we often say on this show that we live in a high velocity trash economy where everything's driven by like what have you done for me lately what are the quarterly financial results look like how much crop did we yield uh this month compared to last month and that mental rewiring of the brain that is necessary um to take a step back start one day and and recognize that you're not going to reap the full benefits of of this change for many years in the future it's hard and it's it's culturally um not something that's really ingrained in in modern culture which is a shame but i think it's

Starting point is 00:49:51 something uh lowering one's time preference and then collectively as a society lowering our time lowering our time preference to delay gratification is something that desperately needs to happen but a lot of rewiring is necessary um in in this high velocity trash economy i don't know anything about bitcoin but what you described is certainly sounds very familiar with what we do um it's just very very slow. I started a non-profit, the 501c3 called CFAR, Center for Agricultural Resilience. I started it because we had a lot of people

Starting point is 00:50:36 that would come here that are interested in emulating what we do and I wasn't set up to educate them, so we bit the bullet and set up the non-profit. and when they come here it's interesting to me and these are not these are not kids these are

Starting point is 00:50:58 young professional people that have financially could start a farm if they wanted to and they come here to learn and they've studied what they need to study and they've

Starting point is 00:51:15 all got the The focus and excitement is the production out in the pasture, out in the field. What do I do to the land, which is great. That's important. But we tell them there are three legs on the stool. There's production, which you do out on the land. There's processing, making it edible. You know, people don't eat cows and hogs and sheep.

Starting point is 00:51:44 the beef and pork and lamb. So you've got to find a way to make it marketable. And then how to get it to them is the structure. I'm right in the middle of Gloucester, Georgia. It's got a population of about 150. I got more employees than this town's got citizens. and you know i can't sell them i can't sell 30 30 million off of the product here i got to get it to them so those are all important things that uh prospective farmers have got to embrace and learn and figure out you know on the subject of prospective farmers are you seeing an uptick in interests particularly around regenerative farming from younger generations because that again like i said earlier i worry and i don't know if the worry is is misguided or completely

Starting point is 00:52:42 out of bounds because it's not true but is there in your mind enough interest in people taking on farming as as a as a lifestyle and a career path and a calling how we accept uh nine, say eight or nine interns per quarter four times a year. No, six. We take six interns four times a year. And we get probably 20-something applications for those six slots. So there's that. We also have three-day

Starting point is 00:53:20 sessions where we teach specific things, you know, pig production or gardening or poultry production, egg production. And those, we have probably, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:53:38 15 or 20 of those a year and usually cap it at 25 people per and those fill up. So there are people that want to do it. and most of these are people that can

Starting point is 00:53:53 do it you can't just get out of school with no money and say I'm going to start farming it's just there's a capital cost of going into it

Starting point is 00:54:08 and these are people that can meet that capital cost but it's a lot to grow it make it marketable and then merchandise it there's a lot to that

Starting point is 00:54:24 how long would you say it takes to develop the three schools of knowledge there to become a confident farmer it's taken me it's taken me towards those years but I'm a slow learner somebody hasn't talked to me that quick I'm just trying to match again

Starting point is 00:54:43 the low tide preference angle if you're getting into farming and how many times you're going to fail before you actually get the hang of things. And it's probably not something you want to go into in your 60s because it's going to take you some time to establish. Well, this has been a great pleasure. I hope we can do this again because I think uh, I think it's a very important topic. That's not, um, it's definitely becoming more popular,

Starting point is 00:55:17 but I think to your point, um, we've made some progress, but there is a lot of progress that still needs to be made. And this has been an ongoing conversation on the show for the better part of six, seven years now. And I just want to extend a heartfelt thank you, um, for doing the work that you do for being the example that you are not only for for other farmers but for consumers who i think i can say very confidently have become better educated because of the work that you've done and um your willingness to to go out and and educate the public on shows like this and others um i think it's extremely important work i think you're having a extremely positive impact and if you're listening out there and you've heard us say go shake your ranchers

Starting point is 00:56:08 go shake your farmer's hand over the years and you haven't done it maybe maybe plan to to find a local farmer and go do that at some point in the near term well thank you for having me on today and i would mention that uh we wrote i wrote a book it's called a bold return to giving a damn And a lot of things we've been talking about will be going into more detail in that book. Where can people buy the book or pre-order the book? Online. Anywhere that sells books will sell it. Okay, awesome.

Starting point is 00:56:42 We'll find a link to that in the show notes. Buy the book. And, Will, I hope you have a great rest of your Monday. And, again, thank you. Thank you for having me on. I enjoyed talking to you. all right peace and love freaks okay thank you for listening to this episode of tftc if you've made it this far i imagine you got some value out of the episode if so please share it far

Starting point is 00:57:05 and wide with your friends and family we're looking to get the word out there also wherever you're listening whether that's youtube apple spotify make sure you like and subscribe to the show and if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms that goes a long way Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad-free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app and go to fountain.fm to find that. $5 a month gets you every episode a day early, ad-free, helps the show, gives you incredible value. So please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time. And until next time.

Starting point is 00:57:48 Okay. Thank you.

TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #782: Fiat Food Is Destroying America with Will Harris

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