Now on booktv we want to introduce to author joel salatin, the book your successful farm business, you dont write books for a living but a you have written self. Guest yes, 12. But i mainly farm for a living. Host what have your books been about. Guest both how to beef production, chicken production, you can farm, and then some broader cultural things, like offering i want to do is illegal, and folks this aint normal, but our abnormality in our modern day. Nothing like the historical normalcy. Were in an an an abhorrent. And then the sheer ecstasy of being a lunatic farmer and that describes the difference in our farming compared so the average. Tell us about your farm. Guest were in virginia, Shenandoah Valley and were in pastured livestock, so think about tyson chicken houses and smithfield hog factories. So our animals are all out on pasture, and they move every day or every couple of days host that go where they want . Guest no. Theyre controlled with hightech electric fencing but we can be very thankful we have hightech electric fencing so we can mick million the migrational choreography of ancient times and steer them around the landscape to get the synergyisic benefits nature off evidence for a a long time before domestic livestock were the norm. Host what are to the synergistic benefits. America, the big herds of bison, built the deep soils of the prairies and where we livni Shenandoah Valley of virginia. The wolves kept them moving. Native americans lit fires to attract them and to open up grazing areas. And so there was a bird plant sim beeow sis that was sim biois that was managed and maintained. Not a wilderness if a, a very carefully managed landscape by bought climate and people and predation, and so by looking at that temp plat and trying to duplicated it, trying to bring back the abundance thats wear. 500 years ago north america grew more food than we do today. Thats a pretty astounding fact but it is true. And so our desire is, how can we bring back that abundance rather than a dead zone the size of rhode island and the gulf of mexico the erosion, soil loss, the things we have done. Host besides cowed do you do any other type of farm. He candidate, pigs, chingens, turk yes, rabbits, ducks, sheep, and we have a lot of 0 forests so we do a lot of forestry as well. Host thats a big operation. Guest well, keeps us busy. We own 650 acres, and then we lease about another 12 to 1300. So were actually managing 2,000 restaurants, about 5,000 families, and several institutions and direct marketing, everything with dont sell through walmart, dont sell in the supermarkets. We own the customer. We like it that way. Host so, more of a food to farm or farm to table type operation . Guest yes, absolutely. Host why do you not sell to the major chains . Guest because the small farm is hard pressed to get enough to live on with the margins are so small. So by us wearing those notorious middle man hats, the middle man makes all the money. If thats where the money is i want to be one. Sign me up. So we become the processor, the distributor, the marketer, the graphics artist, the person that answers the phone, and by doing that, we can increase our margin per dozen eggs or pound of chicken or whatever, and so a small then, we can actually earn a nice living on a small farm because we own all that chain of that chain between the farm and consumer. Host so, what kind of regulations do you have to adhere to from a federal and state level. Guest a lot of them and theyre not always about food. Theyre often kind of esoteric things like zoning. So were inning a africaal zone, zoned agricultural and that mean its illegal for us, for example, we have 500acres of upland hardwood forest, oaks and walnuts and beautiful appalachian hardwood, and its illegal for us to go to the woods and cut a tree. We have a saw mil so we mill it on our saw mil. Thats all legal until we make a chair and sell it. Then were illegal because chairmaking is manufacturing, and illegal in an agricultural zone. A lot of restrictions are around Food Processing or food valueadding. For example, its illegal for us to smoke our own pork on farm because smoking is a thats a manufacturing process as well. So, those are kind of zoning issues. Technically its illegal for me to write a book from my home office because book writhing is book writing is not agriculture. Very interesting private property stipulations that have come in, but food is of course a big one as well, and we have customers that would love to get, for example, a chicken pot pie, for example. But its illegal for us to make that without a freestanding inspected kitchen with a attached bathroom and a plethora of compliance regulations. So one of the problems of the regular layings is that theyre not size scalable. Theyre size discriminatory. I youre small, very very difficult. If youre big theyre easier. Host do you find the usda to be an ally. Guest oh, no. If i were president i would abolish the u. S. Dish call it the usduh. No federal agency has ever been more efficient at eliminating its constituency. Host how so. Guest most agencies grow theyre constituency. Welfare, housing, education, right . They degree their constituency. The usda has almost eliminated its constituency, farmers, that was the original constituency, where theyve almost theres so few farmers now we have twice as many people incars arrested in prisons in the u. S. As we have farmers. Host how is that been accomplished. Guest in my view, its not all the governments fault. Its the population is complicit in this in that the population likes cheap food. Wed rather spend more money on other things than food. And so the government has been complicit in creating food safety requirements that eliminate neighbortoneighbor commerce among consenting adults. So, because the government defines what is safe, what is allowable in the marketplace, for example, its fine for me to give my child four glasses of mountain dew every day, but one glass of raw milk, thats considered equivalent to cocaine. And so when the government defines what is safe and what is unsafe, then that and therefore what is marketable and what is not marketable, that immediately puts markability into the hand of awe bureaucracy, which typically will work at the behest of a mindset that is primarily status quo driven. The markplace the big players dont like competition. And so if they can if colluding with the government regulators can keep innovation out of the marketplace, then of course that helps. Host you have written two becomes, you can farm, and your successful farm business. What you have just told us doesnt sound like its an easy gig. Guest no, its not an easy gig but there are workarounds. A lot of workarounds, and so, yes, do we live in a straitjacket whatever tyranny . In many ways, yes, but we still have plenty of still meanty of opportunities, and so rather than dwelling on the problems, these books are about dwelling on the opportunities and the opportunities are that we can either find ways around, whether its to build a little commercial kitchen, collaborate with somebody who already has one, work with a processor that iralready licensed. Those are things we have done. You can elect to just not comply and there are now more and more people around the country who are creating direct farmer to consumer transactional models that are not in commerce. Thats the legal word, in commerce. Can give you a glass of raw milk. Thats great but i cant sell it to you. I can give you a backyard processed pork chop or pepperoni, but i cant sell it to you. So, if we can figure out a workaround to keep out of in commerce, were okay. So theres a lady in North Carolina that started a 501 c 3 food church and if you china the church you can participate in trang actions. An outfed n kentucky that started a country club, a food club. Where you join like a country club, instead of playing golf you get homemade cheese and raw milk and all sorts of cool stuff. And so there are some really cool workarounds, and in fact were going to host a first i an introductory rouge food conference january 25th in cincinnati next year, to showcase these clever workarounds to compliance. Host we often read or hear about bailouts or payments to farmers. Do you accept those . Do you take those. Guest i dont know where the usda office is. Went dont play to the faces. We dont take grants. The grant no order to give you a granted had to be stolen from somebody before so its actually not the governments money. The government government it from somebody else and so we dont participate in any of those programs at all. But by direct marketing and establishing a brand and doing compost instead of chemical fertilizer and doing perennials instead of annuals, and mobile infrastructure instead of stationary infrastructure, theres a whole lot of things that a lot of latitude within the regulations, and so that is what were working on, is where are our in business they callle call it unfair advantages within the system, lets leverage those and see where we can exploit those little cracks in the structure. Host whats your take on gmo and organic. Guest well, gmo, im against genetically modified organisms, however i deeply appreciate the need to research and to science and to try new things. So my take on gmos, unlike many of my organic farming friends who want to outlaw them categorically, i say, let the research proceed, but if one of your patented beings invades my farm, and gives me foreign beings that i dont want, that should be considered trespass. Property trespass. Just as if your bull came over and tromped up my rose bushes. Well, were so convoluted in justice in America Today that not only if your gmo comes over and has a you know, these are inherently promiscuous beings, so if they come over and have a promiss accusation orgy on my far, giving me beings i dont want, not only can i not go down and get the magistrate to get you for trespass but our courts have ruled i have to pay you a royalty for the privilege of your beingings coming over and affecting mying beings. So its an extremely convoluted type of justice that we have today. And so if your property were truly protected that way, like it is from bulls and cars and burglars, if it were protected that would put a break, if you will, a historical and maybe we could even say an organic break on gmo development and expansion, maybe wed have them, maybe we wouldnt. But at least we would be protected from them invading my space, from that fist hitting my nose. Host who is this book written for . Guest that book is written for all of the people who have ever dreamed of having a pleasant life in the country, of being a farmer, but theyve been told by family, friends, business associates, coworkers, youre crazy, you cant make any there aint no money in farming. Its a hard drudgery, bad life, plow blah blah, and so its ultimately a book about how do we take our current situation, our context, and modern times and actually go from scratch and build a profitable, enjoyable farm that is emotionally satisfying, economically satisfying, and environmentally satisfying, within the context of today. Host heres the book, eight called your successful farm business, joel salatin is the author. Thank you heres. Starting soon entrepreneur chris wilson reflects on his incarceration and life after prison. Then buyey ethicist hairat washington looks how environmental hards immigrant pact black communities and later, David Horowitz recalls his path from a radical political activist in the 60s to a conservative commentator today. That begins now. Still a few chairs. Dont be scared. You can be excited. Filled with joy, an anticipation but scared is unnecessary. Thank you all, hello and welcome to book festival, ten years. [applause] my names Hannah Oliver depp and im the owner of the new