The Highwire with Del Bigtree - HOW TO CONNECT WITH YOUR LOCAL FARMER

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

CEO of Farmmatch.com, Max Kane, has created a more secure food supply system by bridging local farmers with consumers for a direct connection to fresh organic produce, meat, and more, which supports small producers and also provides families with healthier food.#FarmMatch #MaxKane #BuyLocalBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

A lot of concern about food supply. I think it's something to genuinely be concerned about. Just like Shad said, I'm not telling you to go rush out and buy, you know, 400 tons of toilet paper and, you know, canoli beans or whatever it is you want to do. But we do have to think ahead. And, you know, we've talked about the food forest, which is one of the ways that we discussed how to grow food in your own space. We'll probably even revisit that. But food is going to be a conversation we're going to be having here. But when we're on that conversation, there is a great website and a farmer out there that is made a way for us to find that farm.

This farm match.com, when you're trying to figure out how do I find my local farm, how do I even begin that process? I've never stepped foot on a farm. All of those questions come up. I'm joined right now by Max Kane, who has put this website together. Max, first of all, thank you for joining me. I appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, thanks for having me, Del. So tell me about Farm Match.

How does this work and sort of how did you come up with the idea? Well, Farm Match is basically, as Catherine might call, a food conspiracy, right? It's a way we're taking back the responsibility of feeding ourselves. And what it is, it's connecting people with local farmers in their area. And if we don't have, you go to the home page

and put in your zip code, If we don't have a local farmer in your area on the site right now, at least we have a farm that will ship to you from a little bit farther away. But what we're trying to do is create a secure food system where people have a direct connection with their food so that during the next manufactured crisis, whether that's a pandemic or whatever it is, that people don't have to go to the grocery store and not be able to get food because food isn't like entertainment. Food is essential to life. It's something we need. And I think Joseph Stalin showed the of what happens when the government is in total control of the food system.

How are you choosing the farms that get involved in farm match? Are there certain things that they have to do or agreed to? I mean, is it just any old farms, some giant corporate farm? No, no, no, no, no. Interesting about giant firms, but where I live in Virulco, Wisconsin, interesting enough, one of the big dairy, 2,000-count dairy, just on a side tangent, burned down last night, 2,000-count dairy in Hillsborough, Wisconsin. and I was driving past it.

But getting back to the question, how we choose farms, we only work with small to mid-size regenerative farms that aren't spraying chemicals on the ground or on the animals that aren't injecting the animals with chemicals and different antibiotics and things like that. So we work with farms that are raising animals in a healthy, non-chemical way so that it can support human health. Fantastic.

Fantastic. And I would imagine that this is such a great resource, not just for the consumer, but for those farmers. As we were talking earlier to Shad the rancher, he's talking about how developing these local communities and that we've got to diversify the distribution of food supplies. And Catherine Austin Fitz said we're bottlenecked at these sort of USDA, like this control over a very small group of distribution and packing companies. creating this other avenue in many ways, if we get involved as consumers, we help build that new way forward for the American farmer and rancher. Do we not? Yeah, absolutely. And right now in Pennsylvania, there's an Amish farmer's name is Amos Miller. I've been a food activist for 17 years into trenches. I've been to a lot of court rallies where the government is telling farmers that they can't sell food to their neighbors. It's happening right now in Pennsylvania where Amos Miller has, you know, plenty of customers.

He's been in business for decades. And now the government is saying, well, you can't process meat on the farm. You have to send it to this big USDA processing facility to make the price go up because they know how to, because they know how to produce healthy food and we don't. So that's something Thomas Massey is looking on fighting with the, the Prime Act. I spoke with Massey at a couple rallies recently. I was texting with him the other day. He might come to my event in June on the first.

15th, 16th, and 17th in Virokua. And yeah, but that's what it's all about. It's just basically getting food back and getting in control of our food system so that regardless of what crisis is going on in the world, we can feed ourselves. And it's something that's really important. When the pandemic started, all the farmers that I knew Dell, all of them saw there in the, the grocery stores are empty. They saw their sales just like skyrocketing up because at that point, people realize that they can't depend on this insecure food system with these long supply chains. In fact, if you had a goal of creating an insecure food system, you would come up with long supply chains, you would come up, you would come up with uninformed food eaters. The USDA

allows food to be produced in some ingredients aren't even put on the label. And then in addition to that, you would make it illegal for you to get, buy food from a local farm. So if you were trying to created insecure food system this government boy they did a great job perfect job they have exceeded all expectations all right well look the website is farm match dot com oh I think we just I think I heard we just crashed your website so if you're gonna come on to the high wire with a very active group of people you're gonna have to prepare to be slammed so everybody hang out I'm sure they will get that up and running, so maybe in an hour or two is your time. I think this is such a huge thing you can do.

FarmMatch.com, and of course, you're having that event, Max's party. And this is something, you know, I'm excited. I'm going to be one of the speakers. There's Max Cain's Farm Food and Health Freedom Party, June 15, 16th, and 17th on your beautiful farm in Wisconsin. I'm looking forward to that event. I really appreciate what you're bringing to this conversation. And I do, look, this is the community we have to build now. And it's a beautiful thing. This is a a moment to panic this is a moment to celebrate that we're just being forced to create the options we should have been using all along and supporting our local farmers and getting the best food possible so thank you for sort of making that so easy for those of us that maybe haven't quite you know

mapped out or you know our time correctly as it were that's right people are going to get there it's just a matter of it's a matter of self-preservation people who eventually start waking up and saying hey i got to connect with a local farmer. It's just, there's almost not a way to stop it. All right. Is there a way if someone is a rancher or a farmer or they know somebody that may want to be a part of this process? I imagine that that website is a way to get to you and sort of get added into this group. Yeah, yeah. If you're a rancher or farmer and you want to develop a local following of food eaters that you can provide food to and create that local food community, reach out to us at farmats.com. We will help connect you with local food eater.

in your area. You know, Dell, we spend $1.8 trillion, this is a T, trillion dollars a year on food, just in the 50 states, 1.8 trillion. If you take dollar bills and you stack them up, that's going to create a stack of dollar bill 17 times the diameter of planet Earth. So if we just take our food dollars and like every time you spend a dollar, you're voting, you know, if we just take our food dollars or our ballots, you know, here's a $5 ballot, and we direct those toward the small-scale farmers, regenerative farms in our local area. Wow, what a better

world we're going to have. Fantastic. All right, Max Cain, thank you for your work. I'll see you and just over a month now on your farm. Anyone wants to join that. That information will be on our website as well as yours. Take care and thank you for all your work. And thank you for a solution today. I really appreciate it. You're welcome, Del. Thank you for having me on. Have a good rest of your Thursday. All right, take care. This is an issue that's really important to me. As I said, I've got getting involved and I'm working with an organic farm in my area. So, so excited to know where the meat that my family is going to eat is coming from. So I'm going to be doing a lot of events. I'm doing Max Cane's events. I'm also going to be up in Virginia at Polly Face Farms.

If you want to check out Extraordinary and the Ordinary, Joel Salinger, if you don't know who he is, I mean, Salatin, he's doing so, Salatin is doing so much great work. One of the sort of pioneers of regenerative farming there, Sally Fallon. So that's going to. going to be a great event. You know, all of these things are so important.