A Regenerative Agrarian Culture

Running in parallel with a degenerative agri-business

Joel Salatin, one of our favorite people, recently gave a talk at Hillsdale College, one of our favorite institutions. The title was, “Parallel Economies - Agriculture.” Joel opened with the following:

This spring when Russia invaded Ukraine, fertilizer prices increased in some cases 400 percent and global grain shipments sputtered, our farm didn’t feel anything because we don’t buy fertilizer and we don’t buy foreign grain. Suddenly our years of being marginalized by the agri-industrial complex inverted and interest in our methods and madness exploded. Both farmers and non-farmers began asking “how do we disentangle from the system?”

“Just in time,” the darling inventory phrase of recent decades, changed to “just in case” as supply lines fractured. Culturally, a society detached from menial life tasks like farm chores and kitchen duties, suddenly found itself vulnerable to unforeseen fragilities. The food and farming sector goal switched from efficiency to resiliency. In the spring of 2020, as covid’s black swan permeated the world, store shelves went bare. Farmers euthanized (that means killed and threw away) millions of chickens, turkeys, and hogs because mega-processing plants couldn’t maintain operations.

At our house, we neither worried nor feared because we had freezers full of meat and a basement full of canned garden produce. I don’t say all this proudly; I say it gratefully, and as a challenge to everyone: freedom comes from participation.

It’s no exaggeration to say that we are plagiarizing Joel’s work, and that of his family. Actually it’s not plagiarizing, since we give attribution regularly; okay then, we are copying and pasting liberally. This wheel has existed for a long time, and there is no sense recreating it; meanwhile, Joel and company have been perfecting the wheel.

But more to the point of this post, I wrote in The Simple Pass On about what people are doing in the face of high taxes driven by too-generous social welfare programs, indoctrination as opposed to education in schools, and a news media that is one-sided at best and closer to pure propaganda. In the latter two cases “parallel economies” are being developed; alternative news sources, social media, and schools. I had not thought at the time of relatively small, diversified yet integrated, and hence regenerative farms, as one of these parallel economies.

CHEAP FOOD VERSUS PRECIOUS FOOD. If one thing defines American agriculture, it is dedication to cheap food. American per capita expenditure on food is the lowest in the world; our per capita expenditure on health care is the highest.

Joel Salatin

If we want resilience in our economy and our nation, we need to decentralize. Everything. Including our government, and the many, many systems we have become utterly dependent on; including the food system, electrical power generation and distribution, water, sewage, and the list goes on. And on. And on. These systems are brittle; think concrete; concrete is very stiff and can carry heavy loads, but when it finally breaks, all structural integrity is lost instantly. A diamond might be a better example; very, very hard, but hit it in the wrong place and it is destroyed. These are the sort of breakdowns we saw early in the Covid period; take out just a few of these large scale meat processing plants and store shelves go bare.

On farms…Crops required proximate animals in order to receive the blessing of their manure. In 1946, the average morsel of food in America traveled only 40 miles from field to fork. Today, the average is 1,500 miles. And we’ve gone from a calorie of energy per calorie of food to 15 calories of energy to a calorie of food. We’ve become that inefficient, or looked at another way, that segregated.

Joel Salatin

The entire house of cards is built on one thing; cheap and plentiful energy. Interrupt the supply, or increase the cost dramatically, and the whole equation falls apart. No longer can we expend 15 calories of energy to move 1 calorie of food 1,500 miles. The economics just don’t work. And what’s our backup plan? If you’ve been paying attention to Germany since the war in Ukraine started, you can see ample evidence of what I’m writing about. Any engineer can tell you, a single point of failure in your system is cause for great concern. Think about that simple O-ring in the Challenger space shuttle booster rocket. It didn’t end well.

CENTRALIZED VERSUS DECENTRALIZED.  People assume that to feed the world, we need big things.  Big chicken factories.  Big combines.  Big fields.  No we don’t.  A lot of littles can outcompete one big.

Joel Salatin

As to that backup plan…have you heard anything from the federal government, or any state government for that matter, encouraging you to raise chickens in your back yard, or plant a “Victory garden?” During World War II those Victory gardens provided 40% of the food for the homeland. No mention, not from any government that I’m aware of. The simple reason is that they, the government, would much rather have you as a dependent, than have you independent of their “services.”

OPAQUE VERSUS TRANSPARENT. The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker used to live above their shops, attend community functions with others, and be approachable. The industrial revolution expanded the butcher, baker and candlestick maker to a size that was unapproachable. Hiding behind razor wire and security posts, mega-processors and farms became opaque to the populace, which fostered ignorance about what was going on behind those cloistered complexes. Ignorance breeds fear. Fear demanded government oversight.

Joel Salatin

And that is the last thing you want to ask for. The absolute last thing. According to the GAO:

In the United States, 15 different federal agencies are responsible for food safety. Two agencies, USDA and FDA, have primary responsibility. USDA is responsible for the safety of meat, poultry, and certain egg products, while FDA is responsible for the safety of virtually all other foods, including milk, seafood, and fruits and vegetables. Food safety responsibility is further divided among the 50 states, which may have their own statutes, regulations, and agencies for regulating and inspecting the safety and quality of food products. Over the past 30 years, we have detailed problems with the current fragmented federal food safety system and reported that the system has caused inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources. This fragmentation calls into question whether the government can plan more strategically to inspect food production processes, identify and react more quickly to outbreaks of foodborne illness, and focus on promoting the safety and integrity of the nation’s food supply.

GAO, June 2008

Emphasis in italics is mine. What small producer is able to navigate the web of rules from the 15 federal agencies, plus the 50 states and their agencies? Only the food industry giants of course, and that’s the point; make the market impenetrable to competition.

Seriously, we need to wake up. Wake up to the fact that we live in a fascistic nation; the corporate giants write the laws. The government agencies put in place to provide “oversight” have been captured by industry. With every large scale industry, be that finance, food, pharmaceuticals, war materiel, and so on, there is a revolving door between the regulator and the industry that is supposedly being regulated. What could go wrong?

Fortunately smaller producers, like Salatin’s Polyface Farms, are doing it right. We are joining them in yet another parallel economy.