America’s Beef Shortage Explained | Joel Salatin

0:00Today, we have four companies controlling 85 percent of the meat market. These big companies have ensured that the regulatory climate is prejudicial to small operators and not larger ones. Joel Saladin is co-owner of Polyphase Farms, a regenerative farm in Virginia. He is author of over a dozen books on sustainable agriculture, local food networks, and home studying. I'm suggesting let the market speak and let the people that are in that market respond to market forces. Every time the government steps in and puts their finger on this side of the scale, it skews everything else. In this episode, we unpack to use Joel Saladin's words, the government's war on cows. Why is beef so expensive? What legislation could help small cattle farmers? And what is the Polyphase Farms method for local, ethical, and resilient meat production? If we're going to preserve farmers and if we're going to preserve market options

1:01in the marketplace, what we desperately need is the ability of farmers to be able to value add this product and for consumers to be able to buy from their neighbors without wrapping it in a $2 million federal and suspected facility. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Janje Kelley. Come on in. One of my favorite stores. Yeah. So you know how much I love the ground beef. I'm going to get a bunch of that for sure. Like these singles. Yep. I think I'm going to get teneties. All right, there we go. Bought more to go Arley. Yeah, and one more thing. What's that going to be? A beef roast, but this might have to cook like in a like slow cooker for Orients to pot. I mean this is one of the favorite pieces is eye of round. Let's grab this one. I love it. Perfect.

2:09Joel Saladin, so get to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thank you. It's a privilege and an honor to be with you. I love being at Polyface. I mean I just come just to sit at this table, cameras or no cameras and have some of your amazing food. So we're in this bizarre situation when it comes to beef. Where it's expensive to the point where there's an executive order saying we're going to make an exemption for imports to lower the price of beef. So explain to me why this is. So why are we short of beef? Yeah. Yeah. Why is it expensive? I mean okay, you're already answering the question right? Well, there's there's there's several reasons. So this doesn't just this didn't just happen. It started about five or six years ago in the tremendous droughts in the in the southern tier of the US. Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, that southern tier of the US back in the

3:112020-2021 drought devastated. Well, cows are herbivores. They eat grass. If you don't have rain, you don't have grass. And grass is, you know, you can make hay, but it's way too bulky and expensive to transport long distances. It's not as concentrated as corn or soybeans or something like that or gold. So so so transport becomes difficult. So what happened is a lot of these ranchers and farmers just liquidated salt in a feed. I was in miss I well remember I was in Mississippi doing a conference and I think it was 2021 and met several farmers there and I mean it's horrible. They had actually lost cows that the ground had cracked open so far that cows were stepping in and breaking their legs. Then they'd have to put the cow down because you can't you know you can't put a split on a

4:13cow leg. And I mean it was it was just horrible. So so that that started this this liquidation. Then as if to add insult to injury we have the the aging farmer and the average livestock farmer is about 65 years old. The average American farmer is about 60 but you know you can do cows pretty gently into old age. And so so livestock farmers tend to be a little bit older. And there comes a point in your life when if you can get out you don't want to get back in you know you're ready to you know go do other things like sit on the beach and visit the grandkids. Then we had the rise of the of the whole protein movement. Keto paleo carnivore these are huge movements. They do

5:14conferences. I mean I've been I've been to meat stock in Tennessee. I mean the thing is wild. 1200 screaming people that have never eaten you know carbohydrates for 20 years you know. And then most recently the screw worm that came in from Mexico and so they shut down the border with Mexico. Well that shut down a million that shut down a million had a beef which is generally considered about 5% of the beef slaughter in America originates in Mexico and it comes in to to American feed lots. So so you have this this this perfect storm of things happening you have the aging farmer that doesn't want to start the or expand or start up you've got you've got the drought and you've got Mexico border closed. And and the cattle cycle is a long cycle you know cow has a calf. If you're going to expand your herd cow has a calf it's got to be a heifer calf

6:15that's a female. And then you know in a year you can breed it in a year she births in another two years you can butcher it you know you're in this the long it's not like chickens you know you have hatched egg eight weeks you've got a chicken you know you can butcher a chicken no no it's it's a long cycle. And so when you get into a a difficult situation you can't just just have your fingers and get out of it. And so one of the things that's that's happening right now even even as high as the beef price is right now it has not kept up with the increase in labor land costs input costs equipment costs building costs the price of beef right now has not even kept up with all those other costs. From the perspective of the farmer. From the perspective of the farmer. Right. So so we let's just do we really need beef you know all these people are saying hey well you know this is it takes a long time it's cost intensive let's keep

7:19the energy and the you know in the ground maybe chickens will work how do you respond. Oh well the beautiful thing about the herbivore is that it doesn't require tillage to grow it. Tillage or you know or chemical herbicides to kill the grass or what you know the point is if you're going to raise omnivores chickens turkeys pigs if you're going to raise omnivores they can't live on on perennials they require annuals. Anuels are things that you have to one of the annuals are things that you have to plant all the time it'll watermelon squash you know you think of your garden vegetables wheat corn soy beans those are annuals you plant a seed you get a crop that year perennials are like you're one okay there you know you plant it one time and it lasts forever and so so nature doesn't actually have very many annuals it's many perennials

8:24because nobody's around to to till the sodden plant the seeds right there are annuals but there aren't that many of them and so here we are in my view if you really if you really want to cut to the chase on our current beef problem the problem is the subsidies to corn and soy beans. Half of the soy beans America produces are exported we don't even use them almost half the corn we produce goes into ethanol we don't even eat it even animals don't even eat it and half the alfalfa Americans produce on these big center pivot irrigation systems goes to Japan and saw the Arabia to feed race horses I don't know what the percentage is I don't know if it's 30% 40% but it is a huge percentage of American agriculture is not in the food business that's striking to the average person I thought farmers produce food no most of them

9:26you know autumn don't produce food and so here we have this this you know most recent $12 billion bailout for the soybean farmers who supposedly the average soybean farmer lost $100 an acre last year in 2025 growing soybeans and instead of instead of having to face a reality you know the world doesn't need my soy beans well what what normally happens in the marketplace if you over produce well the price goes down and then you say well either I'm not going to produce as much or I'm going to produce something else what where where's there a need and you and you move around to wherever the market is needed no the soybean farmers have this this this idea that I'm a soybean farmer by golly and and and I'm important I'm an important person because I grow soy beans and the taxpayers should make sure that I can grow soybeans and and they're not they're not looking at the you know at the at the at the the flush of soybeans in the world market in fact

10:34China has a 2030 target to eliminate dependency on on imports they have historically purchased over 25% of the American soybean crop now Trump just strong armed the Chinese and got them to take some last year you know after they after they got mad about the tariffs and said now we're not going to take any more you know American soybeans Trump was able to talk them into taking some but this this problem is not going away and and and bailing out the soybean farmers and the corn farmers bailing them out with US taxpayer subsidies just because we want to honor our farmers is is ridiculous what we need what we need is beef and so I actually did I I did a very in-depth

11:37economic analysis because I do this kind of thing I I don't grow crops but I grow I grow animals so I know I have a good sense of what of what it costs to to put in a livestock operation you know what what if we have a what if we have a thousand acres of Nebraska soybeans and we convert that to grass to grow cows that thousand acres my hypothetical thousand acres cost 300 thousand dollars to convert it from soybeans to grass that's fencing waterline seeds for grass okay that's exactly what it costs annually to grow soybeans so here you have a 300 thousand dollar now you know that that's not that's not just pocket change but think about to grow a thousand acres of soybeans it's going to cost me 300 thousand dollars of of annual expense to put that crop

12:37in and harvest it I can do a once in a century 300 thousand dollar investment and return it to perennial prairie poly culture with herbivores cows not bison but cows they work fine under intensive good grazing management and and suddenly in my analysis instead of losing a hundred dollars maker you make a thousand dollars an acre but why doesn't anybody want to do that well A well with cows I've got to be there you know I can't just plant it and go to Bermuda number two there's no subsidy or crop insurance so if they fail I don't get a check soybeans they fail I get a check but but the economic and ecological and I would even suggest the emotional incentives are all there I mean let me tell you you can walk out in your wheat field

13:41you know it's nice or your soybean field yeah they can brush your knees but they don't you go out with your cows and they lean into you and they respond to you you know there's an emotional aspect to to to the livestock element to that I would argue but but you know the biggest the biggest enemy right now keeping beef prices high in my view is the subsidies to the corn and soybean farmers that are letting them live with you know with rose colored glasses thinking we don't we don't need to look at the market so there's it's skews the market I do are arguing massively yes yes imagine imagine half a dozen soybean farmers sitting and I know I'm hitting on soybean farmers and I'm sorry and and I don't I don't hate them but I but I really don't like bad farming and I don't like

14:50my taxes which I've earned going to stupidity okay and so can you imagine six soybean farmers they're sitting around and they say you know we really like electricians electricians are important for our country we should make sure we have electricians now there's a project going on up the road here that's a big construction project that takes 20 electric they're going to take 20 do use 20 electricians but let's go up there and demand that they use 30 electricians because we like electricians and we need electricians and I know it only takes 20 to do this project but we think you should do 30 because electricians are important no soybean farmer would say that not the project only takes 20 you know you're going to take and and and our taxes certainly aren't going to help you pay for another one two or three extras just to have an extra electricians that's the way they're looking at the soybeans they're looking at

15:51themselves and they're saying I'm a soybean farmer you know and the world should honor me and respect me and it doesn't need me doesn't need me but I'm an important person and I like soybeans and I want to grow soybeans and you should make sure that I grow soybeans this is the two thoughts one is you know in effect the government is saying we need soybeans by you know that by providing the money right and effect the skewing that they are talking about the other part though is that if I may right I mean you're a beef farmer and you think beef farmers are important I do but but but we don't get a dime of subsidy we don't get any we don't get any insurance and you're not asking the other part is though you're not asking for it either you just know I'm not asking for it I'm not asking for it I'm suggesting you know let the market let the market speak and let the people that are in that market respond to market forces that's all I'm

16:53asking and every time the government steps in and puts their you know puts their finger on this side of the scale it inherently apes and manipulates what the market would just do you know Adam Smith's you know invisible hand invisible hand of the market it it moves things it moves people out of Sir pluses it moves people into innovation it just does that it doesn't require you know government intervention and if we you know if if beef prices go down then eventually it'll you know if too many people come in eventually it'll drop enough that then some people will get out and and and I've watched that in my lifetime I've you know historically there's been about a 10-year beef cycle if you look back to like 1860 when they started measuring these things it's about a 10-year 10-to-12-year fluctuation it's a long cycle and this one is aberrant and I think it's because

17:56the confluence of the aging the aging farmer and then you have the issue of of young people not getting in into farming that's another whole discussion when young people can't get in old people can't get out and so we have you know land costs we have you know introductory costs things like that of getting in but you know there are lots of ways to get in I mean we just we just had a conference here at the farm last weekend actually launching young farmers that we had eight that were the slogan was I was 20 I was 20 years old no land no money and I'm full-time farming at 40 without government help and eight of them told their stories and it was fantastic so you can still bootstrap but you don't you know you don't have to own land you you can you can rent right now 47% of America's farm land 47% is leased that means whoever's managing that land doesn't own it 47%

19:02that's close to half close to half and and that's indicative of of the aging farmer that that that can't get out because young people can't get in and so you know what we've done here is I think provide provide entrance ramps that actually work that young people can bootstrap their way and generally it doesn't involve buying land buying where I am right now on that issue is that land ownership is is now more and more toward people who have money and want to keep it as an economic defense I've got money I don't want to lose it so I buy land as an economic defense land management is for economic offense I don't I'm not rich I don't have enough to buy land but I can manage it

20:03and as an offensive economic model and and that's what we that's what we promote here is an economic offense to be able to actually make a living earn money by managing a farm and we do it very differently than you know conventional thinking but it works and the crazy thing is as you've told me if I I'm raising beef for some other animal I can't actually sell that to my neighbor next door like I there's actually laws that prevent that there needs to be some big kind of a government expensive government inspection that happens before and it really started in 1906 when Upton St. Clair wrote the jungle and exposed the corruption and the the the animal abuse and and filth in the Chicago meat packing industry but it progressed until 1967 68 the wholesome foods act that really shut things down at that time you know our county had a dozen small abattoir small

21:09slaughterhouse operations many of them were located on farms and it was just a farmer who enjoyed doing this for somebody and his family enjoyed doing this and they would just do it kind of for the community but but this has all been shut down you can't sell meat you can sell a live animal you can sell a live animal and process it but you can't sell like a cut you know a t-bone steak a rib eye a pound of ground beef from an animal from from any beef pork lamb goat less this process under federal inspection so this this has come in over the states numerous states have tried to you know do workarounds and things the most recent one is in New Hampshire and the legislature actually passed a bill saying in the state of New Hampshire we're going to allow neighbor to neighbor you know meat sales and the governor vetoed it and so they had an override session

22:16but they couldn't get the votes to override but the whole goal of that legislation in August of of 2026 was actually to force the federal government into court to go to the Supreme Court and determine that intrastate meat commerce is not covered by the constitution that's not a constitutional perclivity of the of the federal government and so now that it you know didn't pass course that's not going to happen but it'll come back they'll be back next year and they'll be loaded you know loaded to go but this this is what all of the you know numerous states y-oming and Utah and Indiana main have these wonderful cottage food laws you know for for neighbor to neighbor commerce that allows a person to take to take food and turn it into convenience food processed food without ownerless government inspection you can do it in your kitchen the problem

23:19comes in the meat the meat has to be and dairy but primarily meat has to be inspected has to be legal meat has three things you can have it custom processed that's that that is I have a steer and I take it to a butcher and say you know would you kill this lottery fabricated put it in a package that's that's called custom processing in the words I'm asking for a custom work to be done I mean for example if you if you want to remodel your kitchen you'd have somebody come in and custom remodel your kitchen so so in this respect the custom work I'm taking an animal to a professional saying I want you to get this animal you know edible for me okay that's custom now the loophole that many farmers have used is that they'll sell an animal live in fact they can even sell it to four even up to eight individuals and those names go on that animal this

24:24you know steer number 32 is owned by Jane Mike Bill Amy right all right and and that can go under this custom this custom exemption because it was it was it's technically not selling meat it's selling a live animal anyone can sell a live animal to anyone anywhere without without any inspection and so that's the loophole that many small farmers have used for a long long time but a lot of people don't want to get a quarter or a half they don't have a freezer for it they don't have enough money for it at one time and so they want two pounds of ground beef they want three rib-by-stakes they want all right and they want a rump roast and so this loophole is is onerous in that the quantity the person has to buy are you know a minimum of a thousand dollars

25:24so this creates a very narrow customer base so that is why Congressman Thomas Massey ever since he went to Congress has been trying to get what he calls the prime act and the prime act would allow a state that if a state wants to allow custom processed meat to be sold by the cut by the piece that that it's a state prerogative we want to do this and the federal says we'll step aside then we'll let you do this in trust date not in terstate but in trust and and you know it still has not passed but it is gradually gaining you know gaining strength see the problem is that the money in food is actually not in production today's farmer only gets 5.8 cents of the

26:30retail dollar that means 94.2 cents it's like a cattle farmer beef no now fortunately beef is higher than that but you know you you probably heard well there's more money in the cardboard of the weedy's box and there is to the farmer that grew the wheat to make the weedy's and that's primarily true so you know the average the average spread the average take of the what we call the farmgate the farmgate value of food is 5.8 percent that I mean just imagine this young that means we can have we can have a national policy tomorrow from now on we're not going to pay farmers anything but just they just work for free it would only change the price of food 5.8 percent that's that's amazing so where does it all go 80 years 80 years ago it was 40 it was 40 cents where does it all go

27:31it goes to the processors the distributors the marketers less anybody think that you know it's its evil corporations that have done this to us no the American people have moved from primarily domestic culinary arts you know fixing stuff from scratch to now 75 percent of what we eat as a nation is prepared preserved and packaged outside the home it's convenience food and so that carries not only a hefty price tag but the the more the more that's done to food after it leaves the farmgate before it enters the the consumers plate the more the more money is involved in that in that what's called value adding in value adding that product and so if we're going to preserve farmers and if we're going to preserve market options in the marketplace what we desperately need

28:34is the ability of farmers to be able to value add this product and for consumers to be able to buy from their neighbors you know without without wrapping it in a two million dollar federal inspected facility this is this is the problem and over the century the number of of processors has dropped drop drop drop I mean in 1906 people were accusing the meat industry of being an oligarchy and at that time seven companies controlled 50 percent of the meat supply seven control 50 percent that was considered an oligarchy today we have four companies controlling 85 percent of the meat market and we say that's you know free enterprise well it's not free enterprise it's actual capital you know capital cronism as these big companies

29:37have have ensured that the regulatory climate is prejudicial to small operators and not larger ones talking about this prime act right which I understand is tucked into a farm bill that is just sort of never passing but that's a whole whole different discussion but it's but it's there it's there yeah yeah but it hasn't been taken out and it passed the house this could really open things up for selling beef right for like to to to to to kind of reduce that weight if I write of any of the cost of beef trying some things together here is that right and and how and how explain how that would work okay so I happened to co-own a small federal inspector slaughterhouse up in Harrisonburg and and complying with the inspection requirements creating a has a plan hazardous analysis critical control point HACCP has a plan all that licensing it adds about 30

30:4730 percent to the cost of processing and not only that but the has a plan in our plant where we do you know 50 beef a week is exactly the same as at a at a Tyson plant that does 5,000 a day so it costs us $600 what Tyson does for 150 and if if I may jump into something just strikes me as you're saying this right on the one hand if you were doing 5,000 a day I think there's some real case to have that regulated at a high level because you can all sorts of things can be yes kind of suck through but if you're doing 50 what is it oh did you say a week a week a week you know the the basically if you if you're doing something wrong the people buying around are going to give you a piece of their mind and that'll be fixed pretty quick right so yeah it's it's it that's part of the difference right scale absolutely scale makes a difference I mean whether it's classroom size for teacher whether it's keeping your kitchen clean versus you know jolly green giant green bean

31:53factory or or an abattoir that's doing 5,000 a day versus you know 10 a day all right yes scale does does have an effect here the the pushback of course in these things is always food safety so it's interesting that the there have been people that under a freedom of information act have asked for the food safety inspection service FSIS federal food safety inspection service for how many people how many registrants did they had since 1968 that that got sick or had a pathogen had any problem with custom processed beef so this is beef produced with no inspector there's no inspector on site there's nobody you know poking at the liver and you know and looking inside or anything and guess how many zero not 10 not 100 since 1968 zero zero incidents of pathogens recalls sickness or

33:04whatever from custom that that affirms your point these small outfits that do a few and not many it's easier to keep them clean and they don't have the protection of of federal regulators to hide behind what's the first thing that happens whenever there's some you know recall there's I think lettuce recently yeah yeah yeah but I'm thinking I'm thinking meat primarily okay you know whether it's you know rat pee in the in the peanut butter down in Georgia or you know a meat recall the first thing the CEO calls a press conference he stands in front of those microphones with all those microphones and he says we have complied with all the government you know food safety regulations okay that's their first defense a custom operator can't do that it's their reputation it's all on them and so that personal responsibility this is what I call uberizing the food system

34:04okay when you uberize the food system by by putting personal responsibility on the players both the consumer to to find their their producer and the the processor they don't want to have something bad coming out of their facility they don't want to irritate one of their clients did that brought them stuff they don't want to irritate the possible consumer so there's a there's a real interconnected relational entwined intimacy in that transaction that doesn't exist when you go to Costco or Walmart and get and that's why you get zero I mean that's actually astonishing right it is astonishing it is astonishing and and and and so the whole food safety oh what are we going to do if you know is is simply nonexistent it's like a canard basically it is that's what you're saying yeah yeah yeah it is it is interesting so if this legislation passes that allows this intra state sale

35:14you know of of cuts right let's say that does that it doesn't immediately open things up because basically people have to start up their businesses but what like are people actually going to do that given the realities that you yes explain to me earlier yes congressman Thomas Massey told me he said that he knows that within just weeks if the prime act passed that within weeks he said I have a list or something he knows a thousand a thousand community abattoirs would either reopen or start new because you can open a custom house at a fraction of the cost of a federal inspected facility so there would be there would be ones who have closed who have just gotten tired of you know owners regulations and new ones that would be built that would start but a thousand now if those thousand did you know let's say they averaged 20 a week that's 20 thousand

36:15beef a week at 50 weeks that's that's a million a year that's a lot of beef and and somebody can say oh but you know that's so that's so small but they as well with big ag says scale they're thinking consolidation centralization and the concentration you know a bigger plant a bigger cannery a bigger slaughter a bigger you know it's it's it's bigger but that's not the way nature scales if nature wants more oak it doesn't make a great big oak tree it makes acorns if nature wants more milk it doesn't make a great big cow it makes calves if nature wants more tomatoes it doesn't make a great big tomato plant it plant seeds and makes tomatoes nature scales by duplication and so this whole notion of scale by consolidation concentration and centralization that we have in in big industrial agriculture is a completely anti nature philosophy it's an anti nature mentality that that doesn't

37:26appreciate the duplication of nature babies seeds goodness discipleship mentorship I mean this is the way nature scales it must be really expensive relatively speaking for you to produce your beef here in this very unique regenerative way that you do and versus you know the factory farm we substitute management for subsidized corn and soybeans essentially so again you know when you look at when you look at cost comparisons we can produce it cheaper but it's it's it's not much because when the feedlot beef goes it's getting subsidized corn subsidized soybeans and often questionable labor we pay an extremely high salary here for our folks and we don't import them from outside the US

38:30we grow them here at home and we want so so we have it we have an extensive labor component so what we have done is we have exchanged energy intensity pharmaceutical intensity you know our cows don't do drugs we don't vaccine we don't medicate we don't any of those things they you know they're eating grass there's no no plow no seeds no herbicides no chemical fertilizer you know when Putin invaded Ukraine and fertilizer went up 400 percent and all the farms are we gonna do you know fertilizer we didn't affect us at all because we don't use any of it and so so interestingly when that happened our stakes ribeye tenderloin or you know pork chops from pork our prices were lower than Costco we have people coming in our farm store saying how can this be well it's

39:32because we are not we are resilient we are we are not subject to those yo-yoing ups and downs of socio-political geo-political you know economic stuff and I'll give you an example the average farmer in America 50 percent of their expenses are for diesel fuel our percentage is 5 percent okay so diesel could double and we'd be okay what we put our money in is people hmm so we exchange all of that pharmaceutical energy you know capital intensity concrete fans all that stuff we exchange it for management which is why we can't necessarily do it cheaper but we can do it much more resiliently and resilience is is as important as short-term

40:33efficiency today it's the difference between efficiency today and long-term effectiveness so bottom line is it's a bit more expensive but it's a lot more durable is that the that's yeah that's that's a good way to say it we're not subject we're not nearly a subject to the ups and downs and we're certainly not asking trump for bailouts well and and you know I think by many means and so let's let's talk about this I mean I I'm biased here I buy by beef from you for a whole because I know how you make it and it's a quality issue right it's not just that the animals are treated well I know that I'm usually well because of this people component because of the philosophy explained to me why people on the carnivore diet that you go to these giant conferences first of all why they pick beef as their number one kind of protein I know that that's that's their kind of the main thing that these carnivore people eat as beef over

41:37everything else and number two from that kind of quality perspective how the beef that would be grown here those how that's you know better than what you get off the feedlot so great great questions so so I would like to I know you love history so let me let me go back a little bit in history to help us all realize that antiquity diets diets of antiquity the the protein was primarily either herbivore or seafood if you live next to the ocean next to a lake you know you fished all right but if you lived away then it was the herbivore whether it was you know kangaroo will debase bison llama alpaca goat lamb camel okay you know when you when you when you look at at animals that have been eaten historically it hasn't been chicken and it hasn't been poor now

42:43there have been chicken and pork around okay I mean chicken kind of developed in the in the jungles in the tropics and and pigs came along especially in in Europe and Italy but what was early on was both milk and meat from the herbivore why well because the herbivore didn't require tillage didn't require grain production think I mean if you look at Thomas Jefferson's farm book if we had the same spread of prices today as Thomas Jefferson had in his day corn and wheat would be $30 a bushel instead of you know $359 or you know $45 well as soon as grain becomes expensive the omnivore becomes expensive the chicken and the pork because they can't just live on grass and so the diets of antiquity were either seafood or herbivore because that's what didn't require

43:48planting grains grain has been the holy grail of civilization because it was always expensive the idea of cheap grain that we've enjoyed in the last century in this country is because we've had cheap energy mechanics and we've come to a land that had legacy soil built from herbivores and perennials for millennia okay that we are still exploiting today there was so that was such a huge resource bank account that we still have it depleted at all we're trying well and we haven't planted some technological innovation to be fair and absolutely I said equipment equipment right and cheap energy absolutely all that has has enabled us to to for the first time in human history I mean literally that was as a blip in geopolitical time to have cheap grain it's never

44:48been possible in human history but now we have it and so the carnivore diet is going back to an antiquity what they're saying is we are far closer to our ancestors of 5,000 years ago metabolically metabolically then we are to spock in Star Trek drinking you know some sort of little you know artificial lab synthesized right right and so that's why the herbivore features so strongly in this is because it is the herbivore is the nutrient dense component of all these diets of antiquity now what's interesting is so what's here between you know one stake and another stake depending on how it's raised so the bio nutrient food association founded by Dan Kittridge up in Massachusetts has now spent almost a decade looking at

45:58looking at nutrients in in various foods and what they're trying to do is come up with a handheld wand using light that you can wand over food and it would give you green light yellow light red light you know with different relative amounts of like 150 nutrients okay the first one they did was I think carrots and they found that in order to get the nutrition of the best carrot you would have to eat like 50 of the porous carrot so it's a massive range that we don't expect basically you couldn't you couldn't tell it by looking at them yeah and in fact it was so far different they thought something was wrong with their machinery so they did broccoli let's try broccoli same thing a 50-fold difference so the next one they did was beef and they've they've done I don't know 500 samples of beef and and again huge you know huge differences but here's the interesting

47:01out of all their data they they they they ask the question what is the single most consistent litmus test for whether this steak is better than this steak I mean nutritionally nutritionally had nothing to do with breed you know all the breeds all angus is better short horn is better you know they all but nothing to do with breed nothing to do with climate nothing to do with age hmm the only consistent factor in making this steak more nutritional than this steak was how many different plants did the animal eat hmm and so on our farm we haven't planted a seed in 65 years I mean we haven't planted a seed we let grow whatever's going to grow we love to see these variety of plants in our fields and the cows will they will select like they're a swarga's board they will select different things at different times of the year and in different

48:04every plant has a palatability moment and then it maybe gets to the tour and and and and so we move the cows every day to a fresh what we call a salad bar which indicates this variety that they get and they get to to choose that salad bar and what we call mob stocking herbivorous solar conversion liignified carbon sequestration fertilization that's farming basically yeah okay um listen this has been a wonderful conversation I can't wait to to eat some of your beef quick final pot as we finish generally all the things that we find frustrating um people step up and and solve fix those fix those issues and they fix them sooner when the government doesn't pick the winners and people are actually able to exercise their freedom of choice as as voluntary um you know

49:09participants in in the great drama of life to be able to bring to whatever the frustration is their own innovation their own ideas and their own um uh free thoughts that's the way they get solved well joe soliton it's such a pleasure to have had you on again it's a pleasure to be with you thank you thank you all for joining joe soliton me on this episode of american thought leaders i'm your host toanyekele