Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Tyson Popplestone is a Comedian from Melbourne Australia. Join him for a brand new interview each week.
Tyson Popplestone (00:00.11)
Yeah, Joel, was just saying, I was introduced to your work probably two years ago. My brother -in -law, Sam, made the move 10 years ago from Melbourne or from Ballarat in Australia to marry an American girl in Oregon. And I tell you, I think he's got one of the best gardens in Oregon. I was mind blown at how he had just grown so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables and...
had the backyard just looking unbelievable. Had my wife looking at me like, what are you doing? Get your act together when we get home. And I said to him, like, what's the inspiration here? And I reckon seven minutes later, we were sitting in front of the TV, watching one of your videos. And I tell you, I went hard down the rabbit hole there. And the reason for that was in my old place, I had a really good backyard and I came home, started putting things in place and...
I mean, I would have been proud to show you a couple of photos, but at the moment we can talk about this. It was something that I was keen to talk to you about in a much smaller place with a much smaller backyard. And from my perspective, a lot less potential or maybe I'll be corrected, but that seems to be a theme that comes up a lot in your work. People think, okay, I don't have a farm, so I can't do this sustainable farming practice. Maybe you could talk to that to kick us off, Joe.
Yeah, well, you know, I see this whole, you know, participatory, this this visceral participation in the food system as a almost as an imperative, just to just to maintain our sanity in an insane world. And I mean, I feel like our world is heading down to a to a to a Star Trek tick tock of some sort. And and so if we're going
If we're going to stay balanced and stable, we just almost have to viscerally connect somehow with our ecological umbilical, if you will. And part of that is embracing a participatory approach to our own sustenance. And that can be something as simple as a one liter jar. I've got to say liter, I'm speaking in Australia, but.
Tyson Popplestone (02:16.2)
instead of a quart jar, but a one liter jar on the windowsill sprouting mung beans. It's that simple and it's more a mindset than anything else. What can I do with what I've got where I am? obviously, if you live in a condominium in Melbourne, you're not gonna have a cow, you're not gonna have a pig, you're probably not gonna have a goat or a sheep, but you can sprout mung beans on the windowsill.
hang a, you know, these, these little pipes, these little PVC pipes on your porch that have pockets in them. You can pack it with compost and, and grow fresh herbs, you know, on your, on your patio. You can have a beehive on your roof. You can have a vermicomposting little 12, I don't know what centimeters, anyway, 12 inches by 12 inches under your sink. You can,
you know, in my book, Polyface Micro, I actually have a chapter on having rabbits and chickens in a Manhattan apartment where, you know, where the you could have three or four chickens in a footprint, no bigger than a than a a easy, you know, a TV chair, an easy, easy boy layback chair. So, you know, so so these things are these things are very possible. And and mainly it's just the the biggest hurdle, I think, is
well, you a our own ignorance and we're always, you know, we're always fearful of what we're ignorant of. But but two is the the the kind of social, the social prejudice or bias against, against farming against against producing something like that. You know, that's done by by those people, you know, those those those people that aren't very smart.
Maybe they're not white, you know, and we've got that mentality. And I suggest that growing food is one of the most self, you know, it's way more self -indulgent than fashion, you know, because it's working on our inside, not the outside.
Tyson Popplestone (04:39.802)
And so I think there's a status, a status, you will, of knowing I can grow a tomato, can grow a chicken, I can have a chicken and have my own eggs that I produce. There's a certain, I think there's a tremendous status and mystique to such a thing.
Yeah, it's funny. It's funny hearing you describe it as a, almost selfish because it's, it's working on the inside, not the outside. Maybe, maybe that's the foundation for the rest of the conversation because so much of what we spend our time and effort on is the exact opposite to that. Isn't it? We're spending so much time on the outside that to steal your words, perhaps too many of us look at someone who's operating a farm as though they've left something behind or missing opportunity. And it's crazy to me that it could ever be considered something that's,
Considered not smart. I mean you only have to watch a couple of your videos and I'm currently listening to To your book about sustainable one of the books. I'm trying to think about what the name is What is it folks? It doesn't have to be this way. folks But folks folks this ain't normal. Yeah folks this ain't normal. There you go. And I mean, I feel just the opposite I listen to that and I go my gosh I've got so much to catch up on in the world of
how things work together and how to produce vegetables and food. Joel, it's, it's, I say all that, to go back to something you said a moment ago, I, I notice. With my own kids, I've got a four year old boy. I've got a two year old boy. And whenever there's a little bit of chaos, whenever there's a little bit of frustration or tension in the household, the best thing for us to do, despite the size of their house is to take them into the backyard.
and go, all right, let's just have a little bit of a play out here. And it's really wild to see that there's been such a disconnect for so many kids for so long from what is the most natural and almost life -giving thing to them. I mean, it seems to be a fairly accepted idea that kids are better behaved when they're outside, they're burning energy, they're playing in the dirt, they're playing in the plants. I know that's true for me, but it seems as though...
Tyson Popplestone (06:54.562)
Like one thing, when we look at everything that it is that you're talking about, one thing that seems to stand out is that we're losing touch with that, which really does bring a whole heap of life, regardless of the age. And that's something that I noticed you circle back to quite a lot, whether it's the health of the food, whether it's the quality of the land, whether it's the joy of the kids or the people taking part in it. It seems that, you know, when money on an agricultural level, on industrial level,
becomes the real focus. There's a lot of shortcuts and there's a lot of forgetfulness that takes place around the actual personal selfish benefits to what it is that you're doing. Yeah. Well, I appreciate, you know, heading this, this theme. and I would simply say that, that when you get outside, you are suddenly immersed in something that's not human.
that's beyond human. And one of the problems with the, you know, with the urban life, if you will, and certainly being, you know, stuck in an urban high rise all the time, is that 90 % of everything you encounter is manmade. The house, the building is manmade, the streets are manmade, the streetlights, the cars, the, I mean, everything is of human creation.
But when you're out in nature and you're with the trees and the grass and the cows and the tomato plants, you suddenly realize that there's something way beyond human going on here. And I think that we do ourselves an injustice when we, for example, raise our children to think that all of life is simply a video display panel away.
you know, that I can just, as long as I'm clicking my thumbs correctly, I can manipulate all this however I want to. so you grow up with this hubris. mean, think about how unrealistic it is to, for example, you know, play a video game. You're driving a car and a car, you know, runs off the road, hits a tree and, know, the little video screen has a little, you know, explosion. And in two seconds, it gives you a new car and you're back in on the road.
Tyson Popplestone (09:19.022)
How un -lifelike is that? That is so, when you're 16 and you wrap your car around a utility pole, life doesn't give you a brand new car in two seconds and you walk off into the sunset. so, the more we live and look, I love imagination, I love fairy tales and all that. But when you are immersed as much as our children are, I mean, in the US now, the average
12 year old is spending 8 to 10 hours a day on screen time. 8 to 10 hours a day. And in the US, the average male between 25 and 35 spends 20 hours a week playing video games. mean, it used to be that that time was spent reading or being out or gardening or milking a cow or splitting wood.
you know, doing something visceral and tangible that had to do with the real foundations of life. And as we've moved away from that, I think we developed this very unhealthy hubris that, well, I can just click my fingers and fix everything. And life isn't that way. That's one of reasons I'm so in love of
of children's gardens, even if they're tiny, that, you know, when a child has that little garden, has a tomato and a pepper and maybe a lettuce plant and the aphids get it or the bugs get it or the heat gets it or the fungus gets it. And they have this, you know, crying, no, you know, my tomato plant died. Well, you know, the garden doesn't give you a new tomato plant all of a sudden.
And that's life. It's important to learn that life has success and failures. It has death and life. There are these cycles and seasons and real things out there that we can't control. So this leads us into, as we connect with these things bigger than us, it leads us to a place of humility, of...
Tyson Popplestone (11:44.078)
of wonder, of wonder, you will, to that we can, you mean I can step into this world, this cosmos that's so much bigger than me and I get to participate? That's pretty cool, you know? And I think there's a lot of spiritual, emotional and mental, in addition to physical health, in addition to all this.
Yeah, it's funny. I've, he seemed to be born with that. don't you, as I mentioned, like my young kids, they're teaching me a lot about just reeducating myself or giving me a fresh sense of wonder on a lot of the things that they're just pointing to as like, dad, of course this is crazy. Like the amount of times we'll walk around and they'll see a bird or a tree or a flower and I go, my God. And I go, I, yeah, I actually.
I lived here five years and I'd never noticed it. It's kind of, it's kind of refreshing. There's something beautiful. You seem to be born with that or, and then you grow out of it or you're trained out of it. Well, I think, I think our Western reductionist mind, you know, as opposed to the Eastern mind, which is more holistic and a little more mystical, our, our, our very, you know,
scientific, rigid, Greco -Roman, Western reductionist, linear, compartmentalized, disconnected kind of thinking, we lose very early, for example, awe, the moon. As soon as you learn that the moon is this many miles away from the earth, and it's made of this substance, and it's just minerals, and it's a big rock hanging there, suddenly, okay, it's the moon. Who cares? But
until you know that it's this floating orb in the night sky that changes size, it changes configuration, and it's a thing of wonder. And I think it's unfortunate when we lose, I don't think it's wrong to know that the moon is so many miles away from the earth and it rotates and all this stuff.
Tyson Popplestone (13:58.302)
I'm not saying that's wrong, but I'm saying that as adults, especially in a techno -sophisticated culture like we are in a Western culture, we actually have to work. We have to work at maintaining the wonder of a tomato plant, the wonder of a kiwi.
Tyson Popplestone (14:27.276)
the wonder of a potato. These are things of a grapevine. These are things of wonder. Why did it grow a branch there? I just think you have to appreciate that wonder. I'll give you a couple just little examples to show you how, whatever, sentient, how sentient all this is.
For example, we have a lot of maple trees here, sugar maples. So we tap maple trees for maple syrup. And a maple tree, so in the spring, the sap starts coming up, you tap it, and it comes into a bucket. And if a heavy wind comes up, the maple tree stops giving sap. Because the maple tree knows if a branch breaks, it needs to be able to send its sap out to the broken branch to cleanse that wound.
When the wind stops, the sap starts running again. Now, if that isn't a thing of wonder, I don't know what is, you know, that's just amazing. And there are those kinds of things all over. We've enjoyed it here on our farm. We're pulling back some woodland, there's been woods for ever since we, for 60 years and creating some pig pastures.
So we cut not all the trees, but some of them down enough to get some sun in there so we can get pasture under the trees. It's called silvo pasture. It's widely kind of a park like is widely space trees with grass underneath. And we've never planted any grass seed. And yet these things just come right up in grass seed. And the grass seed, even some of our
you know, experts in the area, forage experts, they've never seen this grass before. It's going back to pre -European, pre -European grasses that was here, you know, with the Native American, the bison and the elk. And those seeds, those seeds have been in the seed bank waiting, waiting for us and the pigs and the disturbance and daylight. They've been waiting for
Tyson Popplestone (16:50.894)
400 years, 500 years for their habitat to change. And then they make a decision, okay, we can come out now. You know, it's time to germinate. mean, think about that. That's on a scale that we can't even conceive. That is wild to think about, isn't it? Like that, potential of a seed to produce life like that is sort of maintained for such a...
such a crazy long period of time. But what, like when it comes to industrial farming, a lot of the time, something like that would just be seen as a nuisance, as something that we have to get rid of rather than work with. And so like, it's just never given that opportunity to flourish. Yeah. Well, well, the reason that it didn't, that those grasses have not grown for so long is because we don't have, we don't use fire anymore to thin out the woodlands.
And so here in the Eastern United States where we get, our Eastern United States is similar to New South Wales and Victoria. It's similar to the East coast of Australia. And that's where we get good rainfall. it does go farther inland than it does in Australia. It goes through to the Mississippi, you know? But anyway, that's our band.
here, these dense oak, we have these very oak poplar, hickory forests. And if you if you don't thin, they become so thick that that nothing grows underneath. You know, it's just it's just a tree and leaf litter underneath. You know, I've been to I don't know, I've been to Australia 16 times. And
And so I've been all over Australia, not in the outback, but everywhere on the eastern and western coast. And been out to Manjumup below Perth and all those. And the Australian trees are much lighter. They're not as dense a canopy. And so lots of times a little bit of stuff will grow under those
Tyson Popplestone (19:15.616)
under a lot of those trees, whereas here, the canopy is so opaque, nothing grows under them. when the Europeans came and the Native Americans were pushed out, the management, the greatest estate, we had the same kind of thing here, and that management left. so these thick forests,
of Eastern United States were not here before the Europeans came. They're very much a European thing because the Native Americans, they didn't like dense woods because people could sneak up on them. Another tribe could come up and raid them. So they wanted to be able to see out their ways to make sure that they were protected and secure. And so these seeds have now just been opaque under this opaque canopy.
and have been just lying there for all these years until our pigs, till we cut a lot of the canopy down, exposed the soil to light. And then when the pigs threw, the pigs then disturbed the soil. in one one millionth of light is enough to germinate a seed. A seed needs light to germinate. One one millionth of a second of light is enough to germinate a seed.
Isn't that wild? Isn't that wild? mean, it's so, one thing that I love about hearing you speak is you do speak with such wonder and joy about the work that you do. And I can imagine that what you've had to navigate your way through with the industry. I've, I mean, I've heard so many, so many horror stories about, you know, big corporations, just trying to shut down smaller businesses in the name of profit, despite
the fact that like the health, the quality of the food, the quality of the livestock, the quality of the actual practice is so much higher. But you seem to speak about all of it without any cynicism. I'm just curious to pick your brain around that as well, because I mean, I can't, I feel like sometimes on your behalf, I fire up and want to light buildings on fire and like just get angry right back. But you seem to have managed to navigate your way through what must be such a frustrating process sometimes.
Tyson Popplestone (21:42.936)
Well, you know, I did write a book, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. And to, you know, to tell the stories, because we've had our battles, lots of battles, and some we've simply chosen not to fight. You can't fight every battle. And so some we've just chosen not to fight. But in general, this is one of the reasons I took the handle, the lunatic farmer.
because, you know, I, yeah, the industry just abhors what we do. They feel threatened by it. mean, I've been told that I just want to kill half the planet because we all know half the planet would starve to death if we didn't use chemicals. And so I'm a, you know, I'm a doctor of death and, you know, those kinds of things.
and, so, you know, I, I, I basically came to the conclusion. can either be angry and get ulcers and be upset about this all the time or Hey, let's just embrace it and have fun with it. And so I decided to just call my, sure. You know, they think I'm a lunatic. All right. I'm a lunatic. Great. You know, and just, and just have fun with it and embrace it. So now, you know, I'm a lunatic. If you Google lunatic farmer.
I mean, I own that handle. didn't copyright it. I didn't patent it. I didn't trademark it. But I am the Lunatic Farmer. And it has served me very well. We now have a great big amphitheater here at the farm where we host gatherings for different organizations and things. And it'll seat 400 people. And it's the Lunatic Learning Center, the LLC, the Lunatic Learning Center.
And everybody wants to go to the lunatic learning center, you know, of course. and so, so let's just, let's just embrace it. Look, we're already unorthodox. We're already questioning the conventional narrative. Let's have fun with it and not be frustrated about it. So good. Yeah. It's, mean, I've never seen more clearly as I have here in Australia, the last couple of years, thank God we've moved on, but during the COVID period here in Australia, which was incredibly embarrassing. I mean, the amount of name calling that was thrown out.
Tyson Popplestone (24:07.768)
just to eliminate any honest discussion was quite wild. Like if you didn't wanna have a conversation and genuinely address someone's concerns, you just call them an anti -vaxxer, make them look like a nut job, and then just move on with your business. it's, I mean, it worked for a lot of people. It was wild to see a lot of people sort of crave to the, so it crumbled to the name calling. But I mean, that idea of leaning into it is incredibly powerful.
It's weird as well. Like I love the idea of leaning into it. I love the idea of tapping into it, but there's no chance that anyone who is being honest when they're calling you a doctor of death or whatever, that's purely an opportunity just to take your reputation for people who haven't taken the steps to actually listen to you firsthand. Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think that the folks who the industrial food system,
They really believe, I don't think they're playing games. They really believe that people like me pose a threat to humanity because we're not keeping up with the technology. And of course, now we see this with artificial intelligence and the new buzzword is precision farming and...
and there's a move along to try to get every square foot of farmland under the purview of a monitoring network. And so, no, I think they're serious. I I'll you a story. was at a hearing in our state capital in Richmond, Virginia, on a cottage food law. In other words,
letting, you know, letting folks use their home kitchens to produce some food for neighbors, you know, who wanted to just come over and buy food. And, and our head of the, the agriculture service came up to me during a break in the hearing. He was very nice guy. He came, he said, he said, Joel, he said, we can't, we can't give people the choice to make their food choices.
Tyson Popplestone (26:28.066)
If we did, we couldn't build enough hospitals to handle all the sick people that would be getting bad food, tainted food from farmers. And then he went on to say, you've got to understand, listen to this, now just imagine this. He said, you got to understand, I am personally responsible for every morsel of food that enters the mouth of every single person in our state.
And I thought to myself right then, said, you are either the biggest fool in the world or you can't sleep at night because if you really believe that, there's no way you could sleep at night. mean, responsible for every morsel of food that Virginians put in their mouth. I mean, give me a break. That's crazy. That's, that's irrigating to yourself a crazy responsibility that no, nobody could have even in a
you know, even if they are the most wonderful public servant, nobody can take on themselves that kind of, you know, that kind of responsibility, that kind of mantle. But so, so where I differ with a lot of my, you know, my friends in this, you know, ecological food movement is they're constantly, you know, screaming conspiracy. They're trying to put us out of business, da da da da, all this.
And I don't think so. think they really believe that wellness comes from the end of a needle, you know, that our immune system is deficient and it needs pharmaceuticals to bolster it. Here's the thing, if you demonize them, if you demonize them and you say that they have evil intent,
You know, you're trying to harm me, put me out of business, whatever. If we say they have evil intent, you can't, there's no conversation beyond that. If I tell you you have evil intent, well, where do you go from there? Well, no, I don't have evil intent. yes, you do. I mean, you can't discuss it. But if we both assume, like I do, that these folks have good intent,
Tyson Popplestone (28:50.478)
Now, I disagree with them 180 degrees, but if I assume that they have good intent, then we can sit down and have a conversation. Okay, I appreciate your concern about wellness. What do you think wellness really is? How do you build an immune system?
Tyson Popplestone (29:11.526)
You know, and you can start to go down a path of discussion, but as soon as you bag somebody with your intent as evil, then you eliminate the dialogue because you can't go anywhere from there. Sure. That's a healthier place to start, isn't it? Like the idea of giving him the benefit of the doubt. I know sometimes I'll crumble and go, my gosh, you've got the most evil intentions.
because you think differently to me, but yeah, if you can get on that same foot and go, okay, well, we both desire the same outcome. We both want health, we both want wellness, but just try and navigate what the best direction to take towards those end goals are. That makes a lot more sense. It's very funny. It seems to be a sign of the time that people could genuinely look at the farming practices that you do as a threat to humanity. Maybe that just shows how far we've come from where we started.
in the book that I've started listening to of yours, you were speaking about how forever, like we had to know the area that we were living in. We had to be aware of, you know, threats. had to be aware of plants. had to be aware of like what we could plant at what time, whatever. but I mean, the idea now that there's a bloke in Richmond who thinks that he can be in control of what people put into their body is a, it's just a wild thing. And also such a, it just seems like such an.
like an unguided or unfounded belief to have because it's, mean, I know the body mass index of the average Americans exactly the same as the average Australian. And as you say, you wouldn't be able to sleep at night because you'd be able to see the physique of most Americans and go, okay, this doesn't seem as though we're completely nailing what it is that we've set out to nail. And so it seems that perhaps
This is what's always interesting to me. Whenever someone's stressed in the corporate world, they say, I just need some time out. I'm just going to go away. I'll go for a bush walk. I'll go for a swim out in nature. I'll go down to the beach. There's something about nature that screams health and wellness and rejuvenation. And yet it's so blatantly obvious we seem not to be able to see it. Yeah. I think you're exactly right. The, you know,
Tyson Popplestone (31:32.012)
I mean, for example, let's take immune function. We'll just divorce it from COVID for a moment and just say, how do you build immune function? Well, you don't sit on the sofa and watch Netflix for hours on end. You get up and move and you get out and you get sunshine and you sweat and you socially interact with people.
So their bugs get on your bugs and your bugs intermingle and you get the benefit of, you know, social, know, visceral social contact and you get more sleep and you don't worry and you don't fear and the whole thing about, you know, fearful of this monster and go, you know, jump in your closet and just huddle there for three months.
That whole thing is just, it's completely countered everything we know. What if the government had come out and said, okay, everybody, we're gonna try an experiment for 30 days. We're gonna not eat junk food. We're gonna not eat any high fructose corn syrup. And we're gonna cook from scratch. And we're going to get 20 minutes of exercise and sweat. We're gonna get 20 minutes of sunshine every day. We're gonna get eight hours of sleep. We're gonna drink.
you know, a full liter of water every day, because we're all dehydrated. We're gonna, we're gonna watch two hours of comedy for every hour of serious news we watch so we can laugh off what we just saw. And, and we're gonna make a list of all the people that we hate. And we're gonna write their names down and forgive them all just forgive them. You know, what, what, what, if that, what if that had been a recipe, you know, that we tried, I would suggest we've got a lot farther along than
than we would have with the policies that we had. Yeah. Could you just clarify though in that who makes the money? I don't understand where the money's being made. Well, that's the problem. That's the whole problem. Yeah. The money stays in your pocket. It doesn't go somewhere else. The industry makes it sound like they're purer than the wind driven snow. They've got everything covered.
Tyson Popplestone (33:54.498)
You know, in Australia, it's food safe. Food safe is Australia's... That sounds about right. Yeah. And, you know, their parameters for food safety are all about sterility and death. You know, if it's sterile, it's safe. That's why, you that's why you can drink three Coca Colas a day.
but you can't have one teaspoon of raw milk. And you can get squeezable cheese, you can put on the table and leave it for a year. just sits there. If you get real cheese, you sit on the table and in two days it gets fuzzy and in a week it sprouts legs and walks off the table. So, you know, that's, but we are very fundamentally as humans,
We are fundamentally non -sterile. I mean, we've got whatever it is, 10 billion, microorganisms in our gut, in our systems. We're only 15 % human. We're 85 % non -human. And so we are decidedly non -sterile. But sterility is the new, you know,
nuke it with chlorine, nuke it with irradiation, whatever, and then it's fine. But let me tell you something, if it won't rot and decompose, it probably won't digest. Food is fundamentally living, it's fundamentally life, and of course, lot of food we kill before we eat, whether it's cooking the carrot or cooking the chicken, but if it didn't live at some time, it probably won't nourish us.
because life comes from that cycle of life, death, decomposition, regeneration, life, death, decomposition, regeneration. That's beautifully illustrated in a compost pile and things like that in our own gut. And so the mechanistic view toward life that the industry demonstrates is profoundly
Tyson Popplestone (36:15.374)
unliving, is profoundly unliving in its philosophy. Yeah, it seems to be a theme and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though this has only become a real big phenomenon over maybe the last 70 or 80 or maximum of a hundred years. Like I can't imagine rewinding the clock back to the late 1800s and seeing any of this being a problem. Like surely the idea of raw milk would have been a family staple. The idea of fresh cheese would have been a family staple.
But the idea of hand sanitizer and Coca -Cola were not yet conceived. it's wild to me how quickly we gain confidence in our own structures that for all of human history has never really been considered. Well, yeah. And that's why I wrote the book, folks, this ain't normal, because we view all this as being normal, but we have very short memory spans. It wasn't very long ago that
that we didn't even have supermarkets. If you didn't grow it, you couldn't eat it, or you needed a friend that knew how to grow it. mean, in Australia, I think they say that the Aborigines ate, what, 1 ,000 different kinds of plants and critters and bugs and things. And today, the average person only consumes something like 40 different varieties of anything. That's how undiversified our microbiome is now compared to
you know, compared to our not all that far back history. And somebody will argue, yeah, but look at our life expectancy. Well, but our life expectancy has only increased because we don't have as much infant mortality, childbirth mortality, burns. I mean, in the U .S. in 1900, the single most leading cause of death among women, the first cause was childbirth. The second cause,
was burns burning. Yeah, they had these great big hoop skirts, you know, and you're working on a fire and mama turns around catches her skirt on fire at the hearth and, you know, and we didn't have burn units and burns were very, very, I mean, think about think about trying to keep a burn, a burn sanitary without gauze without, you know, you're just using cotton or sheep wool or something. I mean, yeah, it makes you cringe almost.
Tyson Popplestone (38:43.374)
So, you know, our life expectancy today actually in 1950, worldwide in 1950, 43 % of all children never saw their fifth birthday. And a lot of that was a lack of sanity. was infectious disease, whooping cough, cholera, dysentery, typhus. It was from open sewers and lack of ability to, you know, to bathe and have...
know, clean water and those kinds of things. So, you know, these these childhood diseases were cured not by they weren't cured by vaccinations and medications. They were cured by electricians and plumbers with refrigerators and freezers and and and and you know, bathtubs. And so so, you know, that's that's not that long ago. And so actually, as long as we know history, essentially, if you
If you live past your fifth birthday, then your life expectancy was the same as it is today. And your life expectancy did not include cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and things like that. It was a very, you know, you live right up until, and then, you you suddenly have this, you know, two month plunge off the end, then you're done. And that's kind of the way that, you know, that,
societies did before modern medicine was able to kind of slow death by the piece. And that's kind of where we've come to today. That's true. It's such a good point. Like the idea of paying rent on the longer life definitely seems to be true. mean, I'm 37 and I've got clear memories of being in school. And even in the mid 90s, I've
I honestly don't think I can name one kid at my school who had any form of allergy, who had any form of, yeah, probably allergies is the best description. But I mean, at the moment I used to be a school teacher and I mean, the seriousness with which they take allergies and the amount of allergens that are out there and kids are susceptible to here in Australia, I'm sure it's the same in America is absolutely mind blowing. And I'm sure
Tyson Popplestone (41:05.016)
I mean, a number of what you just mentioned could have something to do with the massive increase in vaccinations, the massive reduction in the quality of food, maybe like the lack of exposure to certain foods. I'm not a hundred percent sure what it is, but even when I take my boy, he goes to kinder two days a week here for a couple of hours. And when I go there, there's big signs on the wall, just letting you know that it's really important you don't have these foods in your lunchbox because certain kids can't handle it.
I mean, even that seems wild, but I've always get confused Joel. I'm not sure whether it's because we're not exposed to it or whether there's something in our systems now, which just refuses to accept it. Or is it like certain pesticides and certain sprays that are being used on our food that we're actually having a reaction to rather than the foods itself, maybe all of the above. Well, yeah, I think it is all the above. My quick layman's response to that is simply
that when you disrespect food, when you disrespect life, if you will, as profoundly as we do, in other words, look, when I say disrespect food, look, we're not asking how to grow a more nutritious tomato. We're asking how to grow a tomato that's shippable. know, our selection of cultivars has nothing to do with nutrition or taste even. It has to do with how long...
How many miles can this thing bounce around in the back of a truck without turning to mush? And what kind of a tomato do you get when you breed for that? Well, you get cardboard tomatoes that don't taste good. And then kids don't like the tomatoes. And you wonder, why don't you like your tomatoes? Well, because they taste like cardboard. so that's where we've come. The same thing is true with essentially everything. Nobody's asking how to make a happy pig.
It's how do we grow them faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper? There's no interest in better nutritional quality or more balance or anything like that. so what's happened is we have so disrespected life in this respect that when we abuse life from that respect, nature bats last. Nature has its own balance sheet.
Tyson Popplestone (43:28.11)
I would suggest that everything from food allergy to Listeria, Campylobacter, Listeria, all of these things, these are, that are now in everybody's lexicon that didn't exist 40 years ago in the lexicon. All of these things are essentially nature on her knees begging us enough, asking enough. Look, you've abused me enough.
But instead of backing off and saying, okay, okay, let's make happy cows and happy chickens and happy tomatoes and happy, instead of doing that, you know, in the US, we're funding research to try to figure out the porcine stress gene so we can pull the stress gene out of the DNA and we can abuse pigs more, but at least they won't be stressed about it. And I would suggest that a mindset that has that as an objective,
is not far from a mindset that is equally disrespectful for the Toms, the Susans, the Peters and the Marys of a culture. It's how we respect and honor the least of these that creates an ethical framework on which we respect and honor people, the greatest of these. And so if we're going to have that kind of ethical moral abuse,
then it's going to bleed over into society. Yeah, don't you think it's so funny? I can't help but think the person trying to remove the stress strain for that pig is just a frustrated vegan who really wants to go back to bacon but can't justify it because of the cruelty to the animal. What a wild setup. For sure, for sure. We've seen a lot of converted vegans come with bacon. Bacon's like the...
It's like the gateway, you know, the gateway item. And you can do with a lot of, without a lot of things, but boy, that bacon, it'll speak to your stomach. it's so true. Yeah. There's a pasta that I listened to from time to time. He says it's terrible for the body, but great for the soul. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure. Good bacon is great. A lot of people, you know, became
Tyson Popplestone (45:54.348)
became centenarians eating bacon. you know, I'm not. Yeah, perhaps it's the bleach. Yeah. kind is it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good point. Joe, I would love to know, like, I'm sure there's people who've come out of big industry and have come and learned from what it is that you're doing, like to see the difference in practice that you've got out there at Polyface must just be so eye -opening to maybe even people who have just not been out to a farm before. Like are there some common things that
people comment on when they come out and see what it is that you're doing that sort of catches them off guard or by surprise or they didn't know was possible or all of the above? Yeah, I think probably the number one thing is this farm doesn't smell. It doesn't stink. And, you know, one of my little things that I say is good farming should be aesthetically and aromatically, sensually romantic. And if it's ugly and stinks, it's probably not good farming.
And I mean, God gave us our senses for a reason, not to just put a clothes pin on the nose and cut out our taste buds and put blindfolds over our eyes. And so the single most common thing that industry folks, that conventional folks say when they come is this doesn't smell like a farm. It doesn't stink like a farm. And that's always a, you know, it's.
It's a compliment. It's great. The reason it doesn't is because we move the animals all the time. They're constantly moving to a fresh spot. That's in the summer. And in the winter, in the middle of winter, when it's snowing, they're housed on deep bedding. We call it a carbonaceous diaper that can absorb all the manure and the urine and everything with carbon. So again, it's a huge carbon sponge, so there's no smell.
And we think that's characteristic of good animal husbandry is that it doesn't stink. Yeah. How much land have you got there? So we own 950 acres, which would be 400 hectares. about one third of it is open and two thirds of it is forest land, woodland. Yeah. Yeah. Who'd you speaking in one of your books about
Tyson Popplestone (48:18.818)
So my mom's got a fireplace up and running down in Gippsland where she lives here in Eastern Victoria. And she was complaining the other day cause we went down and it's been pretty cold. And she said, I just can't believe how much firewood costs. I thought that's a good point. But it was another thing. I mean, the thing with what you speak about is I feel like the further you go, the more layers are peeled back. And you realize that everything is perhaps maybe more complex and more simple at the same time than what you ever realized it could be.
And I thought, man, it wouldn't have been that long ago where, well, firewood's expensive because someone's got a good little business selling firewood. But firewood's not expensive when you know how to look for firewood, the kind that burns, the kind that you need on a particular time. But that separation that we have between the fireplace and the actual forest where the wood's gathered is probably just enough where you go, you know what, I'll just pay the $150 because I'm not 100 % sure what I'm looking for.
There seems to be a lot that fits into that category. There's a lot that we're paying for that you probably don't need to. And I think it was the example of your son who, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you were saying that on the land that you have now, your son and his wife and kids, they built their own place and they pretty much just did it off the resources of the land. Yeah, that's right. That's right. When he, when they got married and he built the house, we went up to the woods and, and,
and cut some trees. have a band saw mill. And so I cut the lumber on the band saw mill and built it himself. yeah, it was very much an in -house thing. We had a friend who knew how to wire things. He wired the electrician. We had another friend who knew plumbing, so he plumbed it. But Daniel did all the construction and the woodwork and everything else. And it's a wonderful.
wonderful house, but I think you're onto a neat thing there. And let me tell you a recent situation. was just with Theresa last week. My wife, we were up doing some errands. She had to run by and pick up something for a friend in a grocery store. I don't go in the grocery store very much. I go in the grocery store about twice a year maybe. And when I do, of course, she goes shopping and
Tyson Popplestone (50:42.366)
gets the stuff and I gravitate over to the poultry and the beef and the pork and the meat counter. And here I saw a little pocketed clamshell thing of six, it was three eggs cut in half, hard boiled eggs. So six halves, six halves in this little pocketed clamshell, hard boiled, cut in half.
for $8. That's $32 a dozen. And yes, that's US dollars, not Australian dollars. But I'm sitting there, I'm looking at that. I was just mesmerized. Three eggs for $8.
hard -boiled, how hard is it, how hard is it to cook a dozen eggs, hard -boil them and peel them? And I was just struck. And what you just said, you know, spoke to that, that we have become so ignorant about some of these most, whatever, elementary facets of life that
You know, we don't know how to use a screwdriver. We don't know how to boil eggs. We don't know how to peel eggs. We don't know. so what happens is people end up spending way more than necessary. For example, right now, you can buy a whole, pastured, GMO -free, vaccine, medication -free chicken from us for less per pound than a boneless, skinless breast at Walmart.
or in Australia, would be, know, Woolies or, Woolies or Coles. And, and if my memory serves me right, I can't wait to get back to Australia. You know, I was, I was scheduled to go there in 2020. I had, I had six, six international trips scheduled, you know, to do seminars and stuff in 2020. And of course, all of them, all of them were canceled and they're gradually coming back. You know, I'm, I'm, doing some now, but boy, it's, you know, it's, it's slow coming back. But, but, but anyway,
Tyson Popplestone (52:56.058)
When I tell people, you want to save money buying food, build up your pantry, get a freezer, buy bulk, buy unprocessed. Because processed food is expensive. To get microwavable, heat and eat, ready to go stuff is very expensive. But convenience rules the day, it seems like. And people are willing to do just about anything for convenience.
Yeah, man. Firstly, I'm impressed. think you're the first person from the States I've ever spoken to who had an awareness of Coles or Woolies. hey, bonus points to you. Secondly, man, I can't wait for you to get back over here. was, I've only just started to tell people with pride that I'm Australian again after how we responded in 2020. And the third thing, one thing you just mentioned, which I've got a, not a super close friend, but sort of a friend of a friend who runs a cattle farm down here and also doesn't vaccinate any of his animals.
And he was talking about the controversy that comes with that decision, because you've been told forever that you want to fight off disease and illness then, okay, well, as we touched on earlier, this vaccine, do you take it to do that? But when you were speaking earlier about big industry coming at you and having a go and, you know, looking at what you're doing with criticism, I genuinely was trying to rack my brain as to what it might've been that they could have a problem with. And that would be something I'm sure for whatever reason, and due to a whole lot of...
well -donated or well -structured marketing and campaign money from vaccine companies. That'd be something that a lot of people I'm sure would have a huge issue with. Like, how do you respond to the criticism around that one? Because, I mean, I've heard from plenty of people that you don't need to vaccinate animals to have incredibly healthy animals. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true in a lot of cases. So it's just something that I think could be news to a lot of people and something I find interesting. Yeah. So, so our, our basic
philosophy is that nature is fundamentally well. And if it's sick, we probably made it sick by something, our improper diet, improper management, improper hygiene. There's a million things that you can do to derail the immune system. So when in animal husbandry, the way to determine if an animal is healthy or not,
Tyson Popplestone (55:21.922)
Let me back up. Let's say I was picking a team to run a race. you're a captain of one team, I'm a captain of another. And everybody that's going to run the race is standing there on crutches. Well, I'm going to go out and kick out the crutches. And the ones who stand, those are the ones I'm going to pick for my team. How do I know who can stand on their own unless I kick out the crutches?
And so when it comes to animal husbandry and genetic selection and immune function, how do I know who is healthy and not if I give everybody, if everybody's wearing a crutch? And so I view vaccines from that perspective. If everything gets vaccinated, there are lots of animals that would never need a vaccine that have a great immune system. It's functional, it's flourishing. They would never get sick from anything.
How do I know who those are unless I knock out the crutches? Now, you it sounds harsh. It sounds. hey, you know, wolves are harsh. Dingoes are harsh. know, nature is is harsh in many ways. And this is this is the big problem right now with avian influenza. And I know Australia is having issues, you know, regarding the avian influenza stuff and and the official policy.
is if one bird in a house of 20 ,000 chickens has avian influenza, you immediately kill all the 20 ,000 birds in that house. That's the official policy. It's the same there, it's the same here. My thing is, every single one of these houses, and of course, I don't believe in the houses anyway, but without regard to that, every one of these houses, there are always survivors, always.
Even in the worst outbreak, not all of them get sick. We actually had a flock of turkeys one time, and turkeys are terribly susceptible to respiratory issues. And these were young turkeys. We had to get them out of the brooder because we had chicks coming in. So it was cold and wet. I took them out to the barn. They got chilled. There were 300 turkeys, 299.
Tyson Popplestone (57:46.508)
got pneumonia and died. One didn't.
Now, it seems ridiculously reasonable, sensible to say, man, there's a super turkey. 299 brothers and sisters died from pneumonia. That turkey made it. We need to breed that turkey. Let's find some, you know, let's breed that turkey. And so, again, common sense would dictate that in these, you know, these factory houses where
they have a hundred survivors or a thousand survivors, we'll take those survivors, breed those, let's get their genetics. And in no time, we'd have good, healthy, robust immune systems. But no, what do we do? We exterminate the healthy with the sick, exterminate them all, and look to some sorts of mRNA or some concoction to solve the problem. And that puts us on
a merry -go -round because when you start down the medication path, then you create superbugs. Then you create adaptability within the disease and you create a mutated stronger disease. If you don't do the pharmaceuticals and you just let the ones die that are gonna die and then you breed the ones that are surviving, soon you're gonna get the A -team.
And that aren't, isn't that what we're after? We're after an A -Team. For sure. I mean, that's one thing that the horse racing industry knows very well. You find the best horse and you find a breeding partner and hey, best of luck with the genes and hopefully you train it well. It is interesting. What's the objection to something like that?
Tyson Popplestone (59:38.258)
the objection is that if you don't exterminate, it'll spread faster and more chickens will die. Another one is, of course, that it's cumbersome. But there's not a real sensible answer. It's easier just to kill everything and hopefully.
get some sort of mRNA jab, a pharmaceutical that'll deal with it. But mainly, it's the fear that, well, if we don't exterminate, it's going to spread more. Well, A, I'm not sure that that's the case. And B, even if it is, well, maybe it's better to have some short -term shock and long -term real solution, a real cure.
than it is to get on this, this pharmaceutical treadmill that once you're on it, you can never get off of it. Yeah. It's interesting. How, how's your relationship with the local, with the local government there? I'm sure over this many years, there's some kind of familiarity between the two of you, which is seen a few highs and lows throughout the relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm kind of known as the junkyard dog and so
You know, we've certainly had our skirmishes and our battles, but you know, it's interesting the economic development folks, you know, the folks that want to increase tourism and economic activity, they love us. They love us. I they've actually, I've actually worked with them on economic analysis and impact to do presentations for the Chamber of Commerce and stuff to show what, you know, what a polyphased farm does as an economic impact in a community.
And because we value add everything. mean, we support 22 salaries here. so folks are coming out to the country for their day of work instead of driving into town. It's like the reverse, it's the reverse commute. so, we think that's a really positive thing and it populates the countryside. gets money out of the city, into the country. There's a lot of positive things.
Tyson Popplestone (01:02:02.242)
elements to it. The people that don't like us are primarily the conventional agriculture community who, I mean, they actually think that our unvaccinated chickens are going to get sick and make their, you know, factory chicken houses, they're gonna get, their chickens are gonna get sick because we're so negligent that we don't vaccinate and they're gonna lose their farm because we don't vaccinate our chickens. And it's real. mean, they're not, this isn't
The problem is, what do you do? How do you punch through something like that? just... It's one thing. Listen, this is what the problem was with COVID. I was just thinking they need to have more confidence in their vaccines. Yeah, yeah. mean, right, right. If they're so confident in their pharmaceuticals, then whether I use them or not, who cares? You've got the cure.
But you know, they have this mentality that if you
If you don't use it, you're now a threat. You're a disease threat to the system. And as I was talking to my wife about this the other day, said, know, a lot of things, you know, if you want to drink Pepsi and I want to drink Dr. Pepper, that's preference and it's okay. You you drink your Dr. Pepsi and I'll drink my Dr. Pepper. Or if you want to go to Woolies and I'll go to Coles, you know, we can chop, all right? But...
Yeah, I'm showing my Australian bona fides there by... first. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we have this kind of, you all right, learn to live and let live and with preference is okay. But if your preference, if I view your preference as a fist to my nose, i .e. your preference is going to make me sick.
Tyson Popplestone (01:04:02.284)
That's a whole different ball game. And we have not, as a society, we have not learned how to wrestle, how to metabolize that type of mentality where your preference, just you exercising your preference becomes something that can kill me. That's a different and...
I haven't figured that out. I don't know what to say about it. I don't know what to say to a person like that. I've encountered it and I'm just, just, I don't know what to say. It's a terrible situation that we've brought ourselves to. Yeah. It's a classic, my body, my choice, unless I disagree with you, then we can do what we want to. Yeah. Right. Exactly. know, for a classical libertarian like me, who's
into live and let live and freedom. You know, it takes a lot for me to think that I need to intervene with your choice. You want to jump off a bridge? Well, jump off a bridge, you know. You want to dope yourself up with methamphetamine and cocaine? Fine by me, go ahead. But I'm not going to have a government program to help you. You're going to die on the side of the road. And that's fine. It rids the society of your gene pool, you know? Good.
You've called yourself from society. mean, that's okay with me, but this notion that my choice, my preference to do what I think is right with my body or my cow, and that that now is a physical assault, it's equivalent to me taking a gun over to your house and shooting your cow.
That's, we have not been there before. In society, we have not been there. And I don't think we have the language or the ability to metabolize that kind of thinking. Yeah. I mean, it's such basic knowledge really, isn't it? I mean, you look at essentially what you're trying to say is, right, how do we get the land to flourish, to help us flourish?
Tyson Popplestone (01:06:20.984)
with an open door policy with the way that you got things structured with the sustainability and the fact that human history supports the farming style that you're encouraging. It's wild to me that anyone can even attempt to point a finger and criticise or critique or challenge the efficacy and the morale of what it is that you're doing. It's wild, but I mean, hey, I'm relatively new to it. I've been really enjoying dipping my toes into some areas of what you talk about and jumping right into others.
I mean, the one thing that I've realised over the last couple of years is I've got a long, long way to go. Perhaps we've only got a couple of minutes until I let you go. One thing that I would love to do, like I love the idea of eventually moving into a place that, you know, there's a lot more land to do a lot more with, but the property prices here in Australia, absolutely wild. So for some, and I know there's plenty of people in my position, like are there any just real practical solutions through what you've seen?
to get started outside of, all right, just start with where you're at. Like are there any little hacks to find cheap land that you could help cultivate and help practice what it is you're preaching? yes, yes. And people who keep up with me know that I'm a huge advocate of just getting on land. You don't have to own land. All you have to do is be able to manage it. In fact, there's a lot, exactly, you put your finger on it. With the price of farmland now,
There's a lot of thought that we're actually moving into a more feudal, like a feudal Europe system where you have fewer landowners, but many people who actually manage land. land ownership has become a financially defensive position. I'm going to buy land and hold it as a financial defensive position. But those who manage land are in a financial offensive position.
because they don't have all their capital tied up in it. And they're able to move forward with just management unencumbered by property taxes and by all the encumbrances and the mortgage that owning land can. And so we've actually seen numerous young people launch actually full -time farming operations that don't own land by having mobile infrastructure,
Tyson Popplestone (01:08:45.686)
direct marketing, know, low key. mean, I know even a guy in up in Vancouver, British Columbia, who who does portable produce operations he uses, he uses parts, parts bins. So so these are bins that like, you know, automobile parts and stuff are shipped in. And he gets he gets mushroom mushroom tailings.
uses that as a soil medium. And all these things are forkliftable. They're made with the slots. You can stick a forklift in them. And you can stack them on a low -boy trailer. And he literally, he farms numerous vacant lots, old abandoned parking lots. I was up there. He was on a three -acre parking lot of an old stadium that had been abandoned, an old athletic stadium.
And in a day, he can move these boxes around and they're all set up with drip irrigation and boom, he's up and running in business right now, right in the middle of town, in the middle of a city using just vacant land with portable farming. And so I think the idea of mobile production and now with us with livestock, with electric fencing, with mobile.
know, chicken shelters and mobile pig shelters and mobile cow shelters and all this, can, where we can raise animals without stationary buildings and, and without owning the land, have the farm operation divorced from the land ownership. That is something that, that is, that can be duplicated anywhere in the world in any socioeconomic condition by pretty much anybody. Yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. For everyone listening who's interested in finding out more, I've got a couple of videos that I've personally loved, and I'll link in the description to this video. I'll make sure I link all of your stuff as well there, Joel. But hey, thanks for being so flexible with your time and so accommodating. I was really looking forward to this chat and it definitely lived up to it. So thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. It's been an honor and a privilege. Blessings on you. Right back at you.