The Truman Charities Podcast
Truman Charities is the only podcast that donates $250 to each of our guests' charity of choice.
Jamie Truman, connects with individuals who are making a significant impact in their communities. From New York Times bestselling authors to innovative farmers, we share the untold stories of those who are shaping the world around us. We feature trailblazers, influencers, and innovators who are driving positive change, such as the lawyer who fought Dupont for two decades to protect our water and the vital work of an organization dedicated to supporting women who have been trafficked within the United States.
Jamie Truman is the co-founder of Truman Charities, an entirely volunteer-run organization. Since its inception in 2010, Truman Charities has successfully raised over $2 million for a variety of charitable causes.
In addition to her work with Truman Charities, Jamie is also the author of the bestselling book "Vanishing Fathers: The Ripple Effect on Tomorrow's Generation." This book has generated over $80,000 for charities supporting at-risk youth, as 100% of the book's proceeds are donated to these vital organizations.
The Truman Charities Podcast
Are Corporations Taking Over Our Food Supply? | Founder of From the Farm AJ Richards Ep 110
From The Farm’s initiative to connect consumers directly with local farmers is a direct result of the lack of transparency and sustainability in the food industry. This episode dives deep into the impact big corporations, media and government have on our food choices and culture, including the disastrous consequences of factory farming and AJ's biggest concern: vulnerabilities in the food supply chain.
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From the Farm aims to solve these problems by bridging the gap between consumers and local farmers, helping consumers make informed decisions and build a more resilient food system.
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Tune in to find out how to take control of your dietary health and support local farms!
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Connect with AJ Richards:
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0:01 Navigating Influence and Personal Health
8:16 Regenerative Agriculture for Climate Change
15:43 Food Supply Chain and Sustainability
22:46 Challenges in Food Supply Chain
34:57 Food Transparency and Labeling Issues
43:57 Discussion on Food Industry and Farming
Connect with Jamie at Truman Charities:
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Website
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Email: info@trumancharities.com
This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
Welcome to the Truman Charities Podcast. I am Jamie Truman, your host. This conversation is particularly personal to me. From going completely plant-based over 20 years ago and sold on the fact that it was the healthiest, most ethical way to eat, to recently adding meat back into my diet, I started to wonder about the extent the forces around us, like big corporations, media and government, have on our personal health and well-being. How much control do we really have on what goes on our plates and into our bodies? This is an extremely important question for us to ask so we can unravel the messy web laid before us and make informed decisions that are right for us and our families. Who better to help unravel this question than rancher AJ from the farm, who understands the food industries and all its intricacies?
Speaker 1:Aj's roots are in cattle ranching and agriculture. He also owned a gym where nutrition was always a topic. From vegan, vegetarian, carnivore diet, he has seen it all. Agee's understanding of the food industry and deep concern of it all ushered him into becoming an advocate for small family farms, where he has spearheaded an idea called From the Farm to get consumers in touch with farmers in their areas by local support family farms, but also learn about how their food is grown and raised, so people can gain back control of what shows up on their dinner plates and have a say on how it's done. This conversation has information that will blow your mind, because it definitely blew mine. I learned so much from speaking with AJ, and I'm sure you will too, so listen on for a powerful conversation that will have you thinking twice about the next fad diet. Hi, aj, thank you for coming on today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me, jamie. I appreciate it. I've been really excited to interview you. You have been blowing up on social media. I mean your Instagram has over gosh 130,000 followers. You're on all different kinds of podcasts. You just started from the farm which we're going to be talking about. I love your tagline shake the hand that feeds you.
Speaker 1:I'm really interested to have you on because I think I talked to you a little bit about when I reached out to you that when I was 18, I became a vegetarian and then I transferred into the plant-based side of it, which is vegan, and I actually started a business on that and went back to school for plant-based nutrition. And for 20 years this is what I did and this is what I had a fitness business with a nutritional component to it that was plant-based, and I really truly believed in what I was doing. And it wasn't until maybe about a year ago that I kind of started to see things a little bit differently and I started listening to people like yourself and it kind of opened my eyes to some things. So I'm excited to kind of dive into that. We have a lot to get to. So, first and foremost, I want to know a little bit about you, aj. What was your upbringing like, growing up in a family of cattle ranchers?
Speaker 2:So I grew up in a small town called St George, utah. Well, it was small when I grew up. Now it's blown up quite a bit. My family are fifth generation ranchers. Grandpa lived in a tent with 12 kids before they were homes. He died when he was 96. So you go back almost 100 years. Homes were still being built. He literally lived in a tent with 12 kids. I can imagine that. Yeah, before he got into his house and this was my step-grandpa he had two wives pass away of cancer.
Speaker 2:Utah is kind of known as downwinders from chemical and nuclear testing happening in Utah desert, and so it's a fascinating history. But anyway, my grandpa, biological grandfather, died building a road and so she met the grandpa I knew. Anyway, five generations of ranching on the Arizona Strip family homesteaded the north side of the Grand Canyon in 1916. And so we're a product of that essentially. But I'm the city slicker cousin because I do believe in gender roles as a balanced home, if you can make that happen. And so if my mom was my dad, I'd be a rancher, right. So my mom was in the ranching family but she married my dad, who was from the city, and so that's why I didn't grow up in ranching myself but I did all the cattle drives and brandings and really loved lifestyle and wanted to have that for my life. But my uncle told me something a long time ago if you want to be a millionaire rancher, you need to start with 10 million, so you'll lose it all and then you'll be in a millionaire right. And so that kind of stuck in my head and so I was pursuing all these other businesses to try to make enough money to get into agriculture.
Speaker 2:But I remember being a kid and my cousins would tease me as being the city slicker and I hated that. I didn't really know what it meant, but I hated it. Now of course I know, because the movie City Slickers is where that comes from. But God works in mysterious ways. I grew up with that experience and what it gave me was the ability to understand the communication between urbanites and rural communities. The ability to understand the communication between urbanites and rural communities. And so because I didn't grow up with a narrow focus of just one way of living, I got exposure to both. I lived in Phoenix for 12 years. I could see the disconnect in communication between our farmers and ranchers and the urban community who rely on the farm. I mean they both, they rely on each other. There's symbiosis there, but we have been separated through large corporations doing the sales and the marketing, and so my background growing up allows me to see that and hopefully bridge the gap in communication so we can build a resilient food supply chain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you're the perfect mix of both. That's why it makes sense that you started from the farm, because you have kind of both of those together. And then I love that you mentioned City Slickers, because I used to watch that growing up. It's probably aging us right now, but I just love that movie, so I want to know what are your thoughts about. Why do you think, in your opinion, that especially young adults, but people in general are attracted to the plant-based vegan diet and taking meat out completely?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I think it comes around to influence. So I would ask you if you could think back to what first influenced you to consider veganism or plant-based. What was the cause of that and what was that moment? And in my experience, a lot of times it's the animal sacrifice.
Speaker 2:I'll use sacrifice as a real humbling description, because that's what it is for me as a meat eater, it is a sacrifice, but I give it the energy of that. And so when you're young and you don't understand that, like we homeschool our kids and they're learning entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship on a homestead is what kind of food can you raise and sell it at a farmer's market. That's the easiest thing to do. So we just bought meat rabbits and they are the cutest things in the world. Like I'm going to admit that myself. And when it comes time to process the offspring of those meat rabbits, that's going to be a real lesson, right.
Speaker 2:And so in that vulnerable age, it would be easy to manipulate the concept of sacrifice for us to thrive as something negative versus considering it as being something positive. You know, everything in the world that's a biological organism eats and is eaten Everything, including us. When we go into the soil, we become food for the microorganisms in the soil to repeat the cycle. So everything eats and is eaten. So to answer your question, I guess a little more directly with that context, I think it possibly is just influence and at that particular moment in their life they heard something that caused, you know, maybe an anchor memory or a feeling or an emotion, and then that leads towards that way of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I think for myself when you say think back there, and it was that I didn't want to hurt any animals Right. And so I think, with young adults, they want to feel like they're doing something to contribute or they're doing something good, so that's something very easy that they can glob onto and say okay, well, you know what? I'm not hurting animals, so I'm doing good for the community, I'm doing good for society, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So what do you think? A little bit about that whole discussion with? They come at it pretty hard with that. Ranching and farming is the issue when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that because it ties into your previous statement of wanting to do something good, and I'm telling you, if you're worried about climate change, the absolute best good you could do is support farmers and ranchers that are doing regenerative or holistic land management practices. I think the climate change conversation has been manipulated. Change conversation has been manipulated. Do I believe there are changes in the climate caused by practices? Yes, but the overall blanket that's being cast I do not believe in at all. Matter of fact, many people will probably haven't heard this, but there was an undercover journalist during COVID that was doing secret recordings and interviews because he was undercover of prominent people in different positions. Well, one of those was the head producer of CNN and he caught him on camera saying our next push because COVID was winding down, their next push was climate change and they were going to lean all in on climate change. So it is propaganda at some level.
Speaker 2:Now let me digress a little bit and just say that I do believe in desertification through the improper application of agriculture, our farmers and ranchers by corporations who paid land, grant universities to promote herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, the practices that are done on large agricultural scales. Now those were taught to our grandparents, to our parents and our grandparents, and they didn't know any better, because my great grandpa was doing multiple species on rotation and like they were raising livestock and food in a way that was holistic. But then somebody came along and basically we had to engineer our food. So we thought we had to engineer our food supply chain to increase production to feed a growing population Right. Increased production to feed a growing population right. And so methods were taught, not for the sanctity of the food that we rely on but for the purpose of mass production for profit.
Speaker 1:What AJ is talking about here is farming. Only one type of crop is grown over huge areas of land, called a monocrop. After harvesting, they often till the soil and leave it there until the next planting season. It's like a straight line from point A to point B. All about efficiency, with the sole purpose of maximizing crop growth and profit. But, as you can imagine, this causes issues with soil and depletion of biodiversity when it's left to bear. Soil and depletion of biodiversity when it's left to bear, which can ultimately lead to the desertification of the land.
Speaker 1:Now, in regenerative farming, it's a whole different story. Instead of sticking to just one crop, there's a focus on diversity. After the main harvest, cover crops are planted to protect the soil and provide nutrients. Then comes the really cool part. We bring in livestock like cows or sheep to graze on those cover crops. Their waste helps enrich the soil naturally, so we don't need as many chemical fertilizers. This leaves the soil nutrient rich and the food grown on these crops are much more nutrient dense because of it. See, it's all about working with nature's cycles. It's about sustainability and mimicking natural ecosystems. It's a win-win for the land and for us.
Speaker 2:Nature was designed by God and God works in a hole, holistically right. And if you remove one piece of that hole you've now broken the cycle. So holistic management is just to look back and say before we had tractors and tools and we were focused on maximizing yield, what was the practice here? Like in the West, we had 60 million bison roaming through the West on an annual cycle, right, and so you had all of these bison roamed through. They ate all the vegetation.
Speaker 2:There's journal writings that would say that if you followed a bison herd your horse would starve to death because they cleaned everything up. But what they did was they pooped and peed everywhere and then left for a whole year and didn't come back until the following year. And the reason for that is predators were always pushing them, always pushing them. So wolves and bears and just whatever predator might be for that particular animal. They always were on the move so they couldn't just sit and hang out and overgraze and wear out the land they were on. So by the time they came around the next year, all their manure, all their urine, all their saliva, even their hoof prints in the soil, worked as bowls. So when it rained, the rain would sit in and then soak in versus wash across the land. It all worked in symbiosis. So by the time they came around the next year, grass was up to their backs again, the birds had come through and spread seeds around. So that's what kind of a holistic looks like.
Speaker 2:Well, we've now put fences up, we've removed all these massive herds and so now we're seeing desertification happening. We break the water cycle. You'll drive through. There was a. The Escalante Catholic party went through Southern Utah, where I'm from, and they wrote in their journals in like the 1700s that they'd never seen more beautiful forage and land anywhere in their travels than Utah. Well, now, utah is a desert, it's desertifying, and if I drive from Southern Utah, where I'm from, to Salt Lake, I can drive for four hours and count a few thousand head of cattle and that's it on hundreds of thousands of acres of land that should have ruminating animals on it.
Speaker 2:So, to simplify, you've got a very focused way of farming that you're doing one thing and one thing only, and you're going to use all these chemical inputs and fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides. You know, glyphosate is a huge topic right now in our food because glyphosate is it's in Roundup what we buy at the store and it is proven to cause non Hodgkin's lymphoma and they didn't tell us. And then we eat it. And when you hear people like well, we didn't have ADD when we were kids, we didn't have celiac when we were kids. You didn't because you didn't poison your food like we do now and these chemicals cause that.
Speaker 1:So why do you think that it has shifted so dramatically when it comes to farming?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the internet has allowed us to learn from others like we couldn't in the past, right so before we had the ability to connect. One of the guys who I learned from early on that really inspired me. His name is Alan Savory. If you look up Alan Savory TED Talk, it was a massive moment of shift for me because I used to look, I was subject to hearing the desertification scare and the climate change scare and I'm like we are screwed. My I'm going to watch my kids starve to death because the planet is over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of people think that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and probably a similar feeling I had when I was in school when I heard about acid rain which didn't come to fruition right, or the hole in the ozone that didn't come to fruition or all of these different things that we've heard. But I'm now a father watching my kids and I spent time in Iraq, which is a desert, which we did feed some families while we were there with care packages. So that was a weight on my mind, like I'm going to live in a desert like Iraq and not know how to feed my family. So I saw Alan Savory's Ted talk and it was like a miracle. What we do to mother nature in a hundred years with our poor management, she will restore in five to 10 with the proper management. I mean it is absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2:And so, because I now have access to this Ted talk on YouTube from Alan Savory, I can learn something, and he's in South Africa. I can learn something in the deserts of Southern Utah and start implementing those practices that I would have never heard of before. Only only what the salesman who had the dollars to come around and promote products to me ever got in front of me on right, because that's what happened Grandpa was growing. A certain way. Somebody showed up in a shirt that had a label on it and sprinkled some magic fairy dust, which would be fertilizer, and all of a sudden he see this massive yield increase and he has no other information to really find out if this is good or bad, because he doesn't have access to it. So it's like, wow, that's magic, I'm going to use that, not knowing what it's doing to the soil and the destruction until years later.
Speaker 1:Right, and let's talk a little bit about the food supply. Yeah, because I know you talk a lot about this on your social media.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. That's probably my biggest concern, because the food supply is controlled by man. You know, nature will do its own thing and we can be a positive or negative influence on that, and nature is going to respond in kind right, however we treat it. The food supply chain is 100% manipulated by man, controlled by corporations, and corporations' job is to maximize profits. Legally, they have to maximize profits. And so if beef in the United States, for example, costs more than beef out of Brazil, as a company owner I'm going to try to find a way to buy more Brazilian beef and sell it for a higher profit in America, because that's required of me as the CEO or chief revenue officer of my organization. And so the supply chain in our current situation is so dire because the only influence since Reagan lifted the antitrust laws in 1980s has been maximize profits, maximize profits, maximize profits. Nobody's cared about the sustainability of that. Nobody's cared about what it's done to our farmers and ranchers If the supply chain breaks is the only ones we can rely on. And so I talk a lot about food supply chain, because my greatest concern is not that nature isn't there for us to provide our food, it's that we are so dependent on structures of supply chain created by corporations that if there's a black swan event like COVID, we could see ourselves in real situations of famine.
Speaker 2:Let's take my hometown of St George, utah, for example. There's about a quarter of a million people that live there. Now, that's not a big city, I mean, it's a decent size, but in comparison to like Phoenix, where I lived also, it's not that big Right. They only produce 4% of their food that they consume in that town, so if they couldn't get trucks in, there's no food. And I've done enough research in different historical events to know that it does not take very long for panic and social breakdown to happen when people are starving. And so supply chain, I think, is our most dire concern. There are some nefarious decisions being made solely for the purpose of profit of a few that put the rest of us, the hundreds of millions of us in our country, at risk of these potential breakdowns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean think about it, because when everything shut down, I remember going to the grocery store it was so bad and that was just for maybe like two weeks and it was out the door and there was no food and it was really crazy from just having that breakdown for that short period of time. So, and I do think when you're talking about this and this is what got me thinking about it a little while ago is that they're really pushing this agenda. I think that, okay, well, meat's so bad for you. Here are these fake meat patties and here's these fake chicken patties, and these are going to be really great for you because you're going to be saving the planet, you're going to be saving the animals and it's going to be healthier for you. When, if you actually look in, like you're saying, first off, and they're controlling everything with their plants, that they're doing this, and then, second off, if you look at the ingredients, so it's like steak. What is the ingredient? Steak? I mean, it's just it's that and all your vitamins, yeah, and all your vitamins are in there. And then you look at these fake patties and it's you know, 20 different ingredients.
Speaker 1:A lot of the products sold under the healthier, more ethical option. Label that aren't real foods are essentially junk, but these companies are master marketers. This food is usually depleted of nutrition and vitamins, while consumers are being assured at every turn that it is healthier to eat when it's clearly not. This is the power of big corporations and the tight grip they have on the food industry and, ultimately, our health. Take Beyond Meat Patties, for instance, which I personally used to eat for years. They are filled with processed ingredients used to mimic the taste and texture of real meat and has been marketed as being healthier, being sold everywhere as a meat alternative. The company has since changed their recipe after consumers pushed back, but the label is still long and quite processed, where a cut of meat will always just be that meat. I was younger I was like oh, it's fine and it's healthy, and I think it's because your body's very resilient when you're younger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you start hitting and I started hitting like late 30s and everything hurt. I was getting. I work out all the time, I was getting injured all the time, I was getting all kinds of illnesses. I was sick all the time and I started to really look at it and I'm like what am I eating? And then younger people don't understand that eventually it's so taxing on your body that your body just starts to break down if you're not getting the nutrients that it's supposed to.
Speaker 1:And as soon as I started eating meats from a local butcher here and completely changed and I think that people don't kind of understand that and it takes you getting older and your body starting to not be as resilient, I think there's just a lot behind it when it comes to educating younger adults. So tell me a little bit about. So you know that there is a huge issue with the food supply chain and all the things that are going into these different you know fake meats and fake cheeses and all that good stuff. Tell me a little bit about how you came up with From the Farm, what is it and how you came up with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was four years ago this month. It was COVID I'm listening to. I don't remember the exact job I was doing. I was probably driving for Instacart at the time I'm listening to. I don't remember the exact job I was doing. I was probably driving for Instacart.
Speaker 2:At the time, I had a business in Phoenix, went bankrupt, ended up back in St George, utah, where I'm from, and I was just doing whatever I could to make ends meet until, frankly, I could figure out what to do next, because what I was doing in Phoenix, I thought, was the thing I was supposed to be doing, and so it was a pretty challenging time. And I'm supposed to be doing, and so it was a pretty challenging time, and I'm listening to the radio talking about empty store shelves in the cities, but I was selling meat for my family's ranch towards the end of 2019. So it did get to the point where I'm like you know what? I'm trying all these different things to get into agriculture. Let me just go get into agriculture and then work it out from there. So I called my cousin. I said can I sell beef for your ranch? And he's like yes, let's do it. So we started selling for Anchor Brand Ranch and if anybody's interested in what it looks like in the day in the life on an actual cattle ranch, he's got a YouTube channel called Anchor Brand Ranch Nine kids. He was just teaching his 12 year old how to drive an 18 wheeler semi truck so he could feed water tanks. I mean, the kid can't even see over the steering wheel and he's anyway. It's amazing If you want to know what it really looks like in a day in the life. But he's like, yeah, let's do it. And so I'm doing these things to keep some money coming in, and I'm hearing this on the radio. But I'm seeing cattle standing in the fields that are ready to be processed that could feed people, in the fields that are ready to be processed, that could feed people.
Speaker 2:And I had this moment of inspiration and it was that well, there's just a disconnect the ranchers and the farmers. They're so busy doing the job of producing our food that to expect them to then go and build a website and try to reach out to you and learn how to market and get in front of you, which is a more stable supply chain, there's just not enough hours in the day Now. Some people are working it out. But I talk to those people and they're like sun up to sundown on the farm and then midnight working on their technology. That's not sustainable, and so I'm like somebody should create an Airbnb, but instead of short-term rentals. It's local food, so you can pull up a map and no matter where you're at in the country, it's dotted with people that's close that have food to buy, and that's what a decentralized or parallel economy could look like for buying food.
Speaker 2:And now that we, as the consumers, have an option to get to know the people raising our food, like I think that is the most important thing we can do as a human being is to be personally connected with the source of our sustenance. Right, human beings need three things. We need food, shelter and safety. Now I put water in with food, but so food being the number one most important thing, if you have some profound mission that you are trying to create for the world or for yourself and your family, it doesn't matter if you aren't fed. Nothing in the world matters other than if you don't have at least the foundation of feeding this organism that we live in right. And so I had this thought and I'm like, yeah, somebody should do that. I don't know the first thing about software right, and a friend of mine just posted on LinkedIn that he had graduated school as a full stack software developer and I actually went and found the old voice message I sent to him through LinkedIn. I have this idea. I think you're gonna like it. I would like to share it with you when you have time. It requires a software developer Got on the phone with him and he said no, because it was not his inspiration, right, he had no connection to that Right. And I thought, okay, I tried, you know, moving on Right.
Speaker 2:And then I couldn't sleep because the concern of what was happening was still very present. And then I started seeing the face of the father of the family we fed in Iraq when I would lay down at night trying to go to sleep. I haven't been there for 20 years. I haven't thought about that man or that moment, for I didn't even think, other than just being cognizant of him because we were in his home and cultural respect, you know, for his wife and his kids, like that was what I thought of when I was there. But now, 20 years later, why am I picturing this man's face?
Speaker 2:And I couldn't sleep. I kept seeing his face and what I was seeing was a man watching other men feed his family. So then I said, okay, what do I gotta know? And I started asking around town and I ended up meeting who's now one of my business partners, isaac Barlow, and he built a software and I said I presented to him. He's like it's a good idea, you have some research to do. And that was April or May of 2020. And then my life just took me on some of the most crazy experiences. There's a saying I heard from one of my mentors if God told you everything you were going to be up against before you started, you'd probably not do it. And so, yeah, and so I'm like because I ended up running a USDA slaughterhouse in Cody Wyoming and I had no expectation Like, if you would have told me that in 2020, I wouldn't have started, I would have been like no way.
Speaker 1:What was that like?
Speaker 2:Well, I sucked at it because it was an emergency. As a matter of fact, when I moved here to Cody, my role here in Cody was to create a vertically integrated operation where we partner with ranchers, process them in our own slaughterhouse and sell them with our own label to customers across the nation. So because what happened with my family's operation? When COVID hit and I called to schedule our next round of processing for our cattle, they were booked out 18 months a year and a half. So this is the danger of large corporations of our food supply chain. When COVID shut down the big processing plants because everybody was sick, that created a major backflow issue.
Speaker 2:Because our whole supply chain has been designed to maximize profit, which means just-in-time delivery at every level.
Speaker 2:So a cow has a calf and it goes to a background lot, that background lot feeds it for a minute, then it goes to a finishing lot, that finishing lot feeds it and then it goes to a slaughterhouse when it's ready. I mean when you're talking about. You know, four corporations control 85% of our meat supply chain and they process that amount of beef primarily in about 20 slaughterhouses. So we're talking about 6,000 animals in one facility being processed a day. When that stops, think about the 6,000 the next day that we're supposed to go in and the 6,000 the next day that we're supposed to go in, and they're all stopped. So then it gets back to the small operations that are relying on selling that animal. They can't afford to feed it, so they had no choice but to call the local small slaughterhouses, because it's way easier to store frozen meat than a live animal that's eating so much food every day, and so it backed up every slaughterhouse across the nation. There are still places in our country where it's nine months to a year out to even get processing.
Speaker 1:These long waits at USDA slaughterhouses have become a huge strain on the entire meat industry, especially on small family farms that don't produce nearly close to the amount of volume that certain big players in the meat industry do, who don't have large freezer space to store meat, can't afford to open their own USDA meat processing factory and don't have a consistent slaughter schedule due to demand. This is a prime example of how monopolies are created and maintained, especially after something like a pandemic. However, consumers have a say, or a vote, if you will, to push to keep small family farms in business, and that is worth their dollar.
Speaker 2:I cannot stress enough how vulnerable we are as a nation today with our food supply chain Like famine is still on the table for real. And so that's all. I knew about slaughterhouses, and now I'm in one and running one, and I told him before I moved here I'm not running the slaughterhouse, I'm here for the overall business model. Well, about four to six months in, the guy had to be let go and we're in such a small town. There is no experience here for me to pull from. So as a business owner, I'm like well, or business partner, I'm like well, I. What do you do? You just step up and try to do the best you can. And you know, fortunately had good people there working with us, and I'm like you guys know way more than I do. I'll go grab whatever errands you need to run and handle customer service issues, but I need you guys to do the doing Like I don't know anything about this.
Speaker 2:And that experience also was so needed because I was building this software to help farmers and ranchers and homesteaders connect with consumers across the nation so you could shake the hand that feeds you, and I didn't know a whole lot about our processors or what they were dealing with, we are down to about 2,500 slaughterhouses nationwide that are state or federal inspected. That's it, 2,500. I mean, it's not a good thing. And so I realized like, okay, I need to be able to offer small meat processors the ability to be on the platform as well, because they're not making enough revenue to stay in business. But this could help them so that we can keep them around.
Speaker 2:Because if we help all the farmers and ranchers succeed and they're now growing enough meat and other foods, but we don't have the slaughter capacity to keep up, then we've got two problems that have to be solved. So we need to create resiliency amongst our processing plants just so we can get it processed. Otherwise, people listening to this, you're going to do that job yourself. Do you want to kill and gut and process an animal or do you like and respect that when you sit down for a steak, you just get to enjoy it? The most you have to do is go buy it and season it and cook it.
Speaker 1:I wanted to kind of go back for just a second about what people are buying in the stores. So what do you know about that? Do people really have an understanding about where their meat is coming from when it's coming from the grocery store?
Speaker 2:No, no, no way. Matter of fact, ground beef from the grocery store could be a combination of a few hundred animals in one pound package. Oh yeah, because it's done in mass production, right? So what goes into ground beef are all is we call it. Trim, it's anything that's not a roast, a steak or some whole muscle that can be sold to a consumer. That that's what they want. So all the extra stuff, and even roasts and stuff, will get thrown into ground.
Speaker 2:But when you're in these massive facilities that are processing 6,000 head a day, they have grinders that could fit dozens of cows at one time, that just mix and grind that meat all together and push it out into single one pound packages or however it gets facilitated. So yeah, because they're mass producing it. That's how it goes. Now, I am not saying that I personally would have a problem if the ground beef I had was a mixture of five cows from the same rancher, right, that would not bother me, because if I ate one ground package of ground beef from one cow today and a different cow tomorrow, what's the difference if they're both mixed? The problem is, or could be, that, when it comes down to the practices of raising that animal. So if you're somebody who wants clean meat that doesn't have antibiotics or vaccines or things like that, you're probably going to have that in there, because it's mixed with a whole bunch of different animals and it will be dependent on what operation that that came from.
Speaker 1:So the great thing about From the Farm is that you're going to know who these ranchers are, and so you're helping them and you're getting a healthier piece of meat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you can ask the rancher, like, what are your practices, they can tell you. You can't go to the grocery store and say to the person stocking the shelf hey, where was this raised? They will have no clue and in fact, most likely it's from a foreign country Brazil, South Africa, Uruguay.
Speaker 1:Why is that? Because wouldn't that cost more for the to produce and ship over here. I don't know, but it just seems like that would be a lot more work.
Speaker 2:Well, cost of living and labor prices in foreign countries are way cheaper, right, so you can actually buy it far cheaper. You know, one of the biggest problems is when we talk about desertification and all this and global warming and stuff like that. The largest meat packer in the world is JBS, and all this and global warming and stuff like that. The largest meat packer in the world is JBS. It's a Brazilian owned company. They're one of the largest in America. They actually bribed 1800 of their federal officials, including their president of Brazil, to scale their business and then they went to jail for that. And it's a privately owned company and they are still in control of it. And JBS will even come to the US and speak to our USDA and other leading organizations, and yet these guys are so corrupt. But the most important part of that is they're leveling the Brazilian rainforest to create more grazing land and in some instances there's been reports of them killing indigenous tribes who fought to keep them from leveling their forest and they would wipe them out. They claim that they are not sourcing any beef from those illegal caballeros or cowboys out there, but we also know that that's not true, and so it's such a massive problem because the pursuit of money I mean that's.
Speaker 2:I don't believe money is evil, I think it's the. The pursuit of money is evil. Right, if you make money because you're being of service and have integrity in what you're doing and the money is a byproduct of the recognition of that service. Great, because the people who lead their organizations that way are probably going to then use that money for more good. But if the only focus is to make the most money, then of course your brain is going to naturally make decisions based off of how you bring in more revenue, not how you make a bigger impact.
Speaker 1:Right, and so how would a consumer know, when they're going into the grocery store, if that meat is from, say, brazil, or if it's from the US?
Speaker 2:You won't.
Speaker 1:Why is that?
Speaker 2:So there was a law in place called MCOOL Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling and so that meant if meat came from another country, they would have to label it where it came from, what country it came from.
Speaker 2:Now, because of trade laws and stuff like that, canada and Brazil complained about that and that law was removed, and so currently what can happen and what does happen is shipping containers on a massive boat full of large portions of beef or other animals, comes across the ocean, gets to our port and then goes to a processing facility in the US, and because they're further processing it in other words, taking a rib roast and cutting it into individual steaks they can now put a sticker that says USA on the package.
Speaker 2:No, yes, and it's so deceitful to the American public, it's so foolish. And here's something that the irony is this I was consulting for a jerky company for a short time and the USDA held up $400,000 worth their product, because on the back of the package it said made from premium cuts of meat, and then there was a little window so you could see the jerky inside the package. Well, the USDA rep held all of that product, saying that that was confusing to the consumer because we didn't actually know what premium cuts of meat that came from. So the largest offender, the USDA, is nitpicking this, but yet consumers are buying millions of pounds of beef with a sticker that says USA, when it's not from the USA approved by the USDA. That is incredible.
Speaker 1:I had no idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our government organizations are controlled by corporate oligopies through lobbies, lobbyists. Our country is not controlled by elected officials. They are bought and paid for by large corporations through lobbyists and that's the only reason why this is happening is the big meat guys lobbied the heck out of our federal officials to get rid of MCOOL and it was a heck of a battle to reinstate MCOOL. So this organization, rcaf USA they are fighting so many of these legal battles to keep food transparency for Americans and to keep our farmers and ranchers around. So they were fighting as one of the groups that fought this battle and it was just reversed.
Speaker 2:So now, in 2026, you can voluntarily label the country it's from, but you can't put USA, but you can omit where it's actually from. So the consumer is still going to have no idea. So bottom line is if you are not buying right from the producer who grew it, you just have no idea. Yeah, I just don't know. And then if we get into mRNA vaccine, they have approved the use of the mRNA technology in pork and chicken provisionally and they're pushing for it in cattle. Now, if you can't ask the people who are raising it if they're using it, then you don't get to know. Right, I've seen this is not conspiracy. I've listened to conversations at federal levels or state levels discussing this topic specifically. So it is happening. They are trying to put this in there because they want it to transfer to the gut barrier into humans. That's why they're doing it.
Speaker 1:Now, if you stay like antibiotic-free and organic meats, then you don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 2:Those. Unfortunately, the organic label has been manipulated and ruined so much that it's really kind of worthless. A lot of the early now I'm talking you'll find a big, a large-scale corporate-owned operation that will do that because it's good marketing. But if you talk to the early adopters small farms and ranchers I've talked to so many who have dropped the purchase of that, the right to do that, to call it that because it's been ruined, and so they still follow their own organic practices that led them to that path from day one. But that's what they call greenwashing.
Speaker 2:Greenwashing means I'm going to take this certified organic label and I'm going to work all the loopholes until I find myself back to doing the same practices I was doing before. And so now, if you go to right now, it'll be sad and it'll happen, but right now regenerative labeled or EOV holistically managed labels you can trust that those are going to be the absolute best source of meat that you can find if they have that label. It will only be a matter of time before large corporations find ways to manipulate the label laws and start putting that same label on the package of food that isn't actually done that way. But right now, if you buy from somebody who is labeled approval label of regenerative you're going to get a great product. But again, the whole point is, if you can, if I'm your rancher and you call me or you email me, you're like, hey, these are the things I'm concerned about I can write back to you and say I don't do it that way, this is my operation.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I have to say there's a local farmer that I talk to now and I get my eggs from, and they're so open to questions and what they're doing. I mean, of course you have to ask, but we've been there to his farm, I've taken my kids. It is really great to know and to be really honest. So, for instance, I'll take the eggs, so they have the. I go to the grocery store and they have the organic, cage-free, all that stuff and they taste different than the ones that I get from him.
Speaker 1:You've seen the labels on egg cartons at the supermarket Cage-free, free-range, pasture-raised, organic, enriched, colony, etc. Etc. And if you're like most people, a lot of those words don't mean much or just confuse the heck out of you. So let's break it down and clear the air once and for all.
Speaker 1:Cage-free eggs come from hens that are not kept in cages but are confined indoors, where free-range hens have some outdoor access. Though it varies in size and quality, pasture-raised hens have continuous outdoor access to pasture areas. Organic eggs are from hens who are fed an organic feed with certain welfare standards. And, finally, hens raised in an enriched colony are housed in systems with more space and amenities compared to conventional cages, like many other products on market. A lot of these labels are sometimes used as marketing strategies. So if you really want to know the health of the hens and eggs, the best way to go about that is to find a local family farm where you can speak to the farmer and buy directly from them. It is a difference, even if they're checking all those right boxes that you think that you want for your food, when you get it from the farmer. It is a huge difference. You can tell yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that what we're noticing or what we notice maybe, and we don't know how to explain it, like you're saying, with the eggs- yeah.
Speaker 2:If you take a factory produced chicken and feed it the same thing as a free range chicken and they taste different. I don't think we as people fully understand the implication of nature. So a chicken that's running around on its own out on pasture, even if it's getting the same feed, has a different experience, a different life, a different energy. Its feet are in the ground, it's feeling the energy of the earth. The design of nature is so powerful that we can't comprehend. It's like seeing animals get sort of anxious before a natural disaster happens. How do they know? They're just connected right. So I think that plays into our food as well. So it's one part feed and one part experience of the animal in its life.
Speaker 1:I absolutely agree with that. So why don't you tell everyone how can they get involved within Farm to Farm Like? I've already signed up, I know how, so I am on your list, but I want everyone else to be able to be on your list as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I appreciate that Fromthefarmio it's a website. It's a software we design. In a website, a lot of people get confused and think it's an app Partially my fault, because I called it an app for a long time on my social media and what's interesting is you can find From the Farm as an app, but it's in Egypt and it doesn't work. So it's a website from the farmio. We're committed that this is not a company that we build and sell, which means we have to be cautious and careful of where we raise capital. That also means we have to go a little slower. So anybody willing to support what we're doing, they need to be patient. If you go on there now, you're going to see portions of the country that don't have sellers on there yet, and that's by design.
Speaker 2:We're working through the bugs of what we just launched so that we can make sure, as we bring on more producers and as we bring on more consumers, that it works. With that said, if you're looking to source direct and you're okay having it shipped, the producers we have on there are phenomenal and would love to have your support. So fromthefarmio is the best way to do the purchasing and then, if you want to keep up with what we're doing. Fromthefarmus is our Instagram page and I keep that page more related to what we're doing. My page is a lot more kind of maybe some more politics and with the food supply chain. So that's interesting. It's AJ underscore Richards.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely follow you, because I learn a lot. So you have a lot of informative things that I wouldn't know about. So I would really stress for everybody to make sure to follow both. And so you know, aj, I've had you on for a while. It's just so interesting I could talk to you for hours Before I let you go. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you think someone should know?
Speaker 2:Well, let me just speak a little bit more about RCAF. So I'm a member of RCAF because I paid the fee to be a member, because I want to support them. There are so many battles to fight in our food supply chain that I'm doing the commerce side and I'm so grateful to know that there are people fighting the legal side Because my belief about the lab grown meat and the fake meat that there's actually an agenda to control our food through intellectual food property. So if they can vilify all natural food think about medicine, for example if I can vilify all natural growing medicine, so you're reliant on pharmaceuticals. I've now captured you for everything, but we didn't have pharmaceutical industries for centuries.
Speaker 2:Right Now, I'm not saying that we don't need our medical field, but there are certainly pharmaceuticals that you could heal yourself naturally with naturally grown plants. Same with food. But if we have that option Impossible Burger Beyond Meat, anybody else and all these new companies that are going to pop up with lab-grown meat they can't control that market. You have a choice. But if we can outlaw the consumption of naturally growing food, so you only have the choice to buy what we make and those recipes are ours privately. I now have control, intellectual property control of that food, which we've seen this happen in crops. Monsanto creates a genetically modified seed. Now they control that seed and there was actually a few cases where the seed blew over the neighbor's field. It grew. They sued the neighbor and won because they were growing their intellectual property seed even though the wind blew it over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So our cast, they're the people who are doing everything they can to fight these battles at the federal level so that we can have the right of food sovereignty. It's a really crazy thing that we live in a time where that's even a topic that I don't have the right, as an adult, to choose where I buy my food. My government has given me all kinds of access to other things and, depending on what state you live in, even hard drugs that are going to destroy my life. I can buy that, no problem, but somehow me sourcing raw dairy or buying eggs from somebody that's a neighbor is now a problem, or growing my own garden is a climate change issue. Like RCAF is somebody that's fighting, and the only way they can do it is through funding, and so I always encourage people.
Speaker 2:You may never attend an RCAF convention, but if you have 150150 to become a member and stay apprised of what's happening with the most important thing you need as a human being, then consider that as a well-spent donation and they'll take good care of it. Again, I've had a conversation with the CEO. I've met a conversation with the CEO. I've met a couple of the people. They have no idea that I'm talking about them to this level, but I need to know that they're doing their job so I can focus on mine.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because it's going to take you know it's going to take everybody involved to keep this from going the direction it's going.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, you have to work as a team, and so it seems like you guys are doing a great job, and so that is why your donation for this, for coming on and being a guest, will be going to our calf, and then all of the information will be on the show notes, along with how you can follow AJ and how you can connect with From the Farm. So, aj, thank you so much for coming on. I've learned so much and I absolutely love what you're doing. I cannot wait until I can find a farmer from the farm over here on the East Coast. It might take you a minute to get over here, but I'm excited for when that happens. I'm on your list, so I'm looking for that notification for when that happens.
Speaker 2:We will have produce on there at some point, and buying produce right from the source will make sure that it's full of nutrient-dense sustenance. The same goes with plants, yeah, same thing. So it's full of nutrient-dense sustenance.
Speaker 1:So the same goes with plants yeah, same thing. So it's their entire food source. So thank you so much, aj. You don't know what you don't know, but when you know better, you do better. That is precisely why this episode came to fruition. My own journey from vegetarian vegan back to carnivore opened my eyes to the reality of what it means to be healthy and, after speaking with Rancher AJ during this episode, I've learned what it means to take back control over the food you eat and the food you feed your family. This is the most important part of this whole conversation doing what is right for you, but first having all the information you need, without all the smoke and mirrors. As you heard in the episode, the best way to go about this is to get to know your local farmers and farms in your community. This single-handedly puts you in control of the food that you eat, because you get to have intimate conversations with the people who are in direct contact with raising and growing your food, versus a large corporation that feels so out of touch. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, as we cover the truths about the food industry so you can start making more informed decisions about your food and take back control of your health and well-being. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities Podcast. Until next time. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode that we just had with rancher AJ Richardson. I learned so much about the food industry and if you enjoyed it too, please do me a favor and rate and review this podcast on your Apple app or anywhere you listen to podcasts. The reviews really do count and I read every single one of them. And while you're at it, please subscribe to the Truman Charities podcast so you don't miss any future episodes.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to follow us, you can follow us on Facebook at Truman Charities. Instagram, jamie underscore. Truman Charities. Linkedin, you can follow us. You can follow us on Facebook at Truman Charities. Instagram, jamie underscore. Truman Charities. Linkedin, you can follow me, jamie Truman. And then, if you'd like to learn more about Truman Charities, go to TrumanCharitiescom. And, of course, if you'd like to purchase my book Vanishing Fathers the Ripple Effect on Tomorrow's Generation, you can purchase that on Amazon or any online bookstore. Remember, 100% of the proceeds from that book go to at-risk charities that help at-risk youths. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode. Don't forget to subscribe.
