Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: As Make America Healthy Again transitions from slogan to policy, Maha is actually on a collision course with Maha.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to the Dust or Mud podcast.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: I'm Shelley and I'm rich.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: After 25 years of fighting for freedom in the US Air Force, we started a regenerative farm fighting the food situation in this country. And today we want to talk about farming and food as it relates to this collision course you're talking about.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, this one's going to be an interesting one. Hang on, guys, it's got some twists. We're going to ask you to hang with us.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I even confuse myself when I'm talking about the subject, you guys.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: All right, so here's what's happening. On May 22, we're expecting a Maha commission report, Make America Healthy Again Commission report. There's an Axios article out right now that discusses this report and what we expect to see in this report.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Well, the big thing that we're looking at is the usage of glyphosate on our crops and whether or not glyphosate is going to be, is going to be allowed to be continued to be used. Right?
Well, is that what they're doing right now?
[00:01:23] Speaker A: The thought is that RFK Jr, who is the Health and Human Services Secretary, is going to make glyphosate a centerpiece of the Maha movement and the agenda on chronic disease.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: And in this Axios article, they actually quote, kali means we produce and ingest 25% of the world's pesticides, many banned elsewhere.
So the idea here is that they believe that as Maha transitions from slogan to policies, these commission type reports are going to show, or at least recommend that things like glyphosate be shown as, or they expect them to name it as a top environmental toxin.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: So you said from slogan to policy, really kind of fringe. Some people don't even know what all of this is yet. You know, a lot of people have heard of it, but so many people are really going about their everyday lives and are not necessarily tuned into what's going on with Maha. And one of their main talking points, though it used to be friends, it's becoming more mainstream. One of their main things is the glyphosate in our food system.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that overuse of herbicides and pesticides and all of the sides, all of the poisons that are being used within the food system could be, are maybe a, a driver for the ridiculous amount of chronic disease in the United States of America.
And if you look at the data, the usage of all of these sides the herbicide, pesticide, fungicide, all of the.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Sides, things that kill things.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Things that kill things. The usage is very high in the United States.
And as they are wrestling from the Health and Human Services secretary position as RFK Jr. Is wrestling with, why is it that America spends way more money than anyone else on health care, but yet has less healthy citizens, is dealing with way more chronic disease.
And it looks like the report that's going to come out on May 22 is going to name environmental toxins like glyphosate as a driver for the chronic disease epidemic in the United States.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: So it would seem like a lot of the people within the Trump A administration and on the conservative slash Republican side who are definitely backing Trump a lot with a lot of these, with the nominees, with the secretaries they've put, he's put into place and really getting that backing that most of his quote, people would be solidly behind.
What is going on within say the HHS and what's. What the, the, the, the commissions that they've put forward, the things that they're trying to uncover and the changes that they're trying to make across these departments.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Right, Absolutely. It would seem that way.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Okay. So it doesn't always turn out to be the case though. Sometimes we run up against walls or barriers or sometimes as you said, other trains on the same track.
And it turns out that oftentimes the person or the people that you have to fight the most are within your own house.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: So here we introduce the twist.
The caucus chair. The leader of the caucus of the Make America Healthy Again.
So the Make America Healthy Again caucus in the Senate was started by, led by US Senator Marshall from Kansas.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Okay. Kansas is a well known agriculture state in this country.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: They grow loads of row crop stuff.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: They have loads of feedlots. They are ag full up.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Now Senator Marshall is a Republican from that state. And, and he's also a doctor.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Right. Like on his website he, I mean they refer to him as Doc Marshall.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Right. And so he's even spoken before certain subcommittees on food as medicine.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: He believes that good food can heal your body.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Right. That's what he says that he believes.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: And thus being the head of Make America Healthy Again movement makes perfect sense.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Right. Because I mean even the means, Casey and Callie and RFK Jr. Like the, the, once you drive them to a solution of Make America Healthy Again, they get to food and good food and healthy food and real food, like that's, that's all the way at the foundation of their belief of what it takes to make America healthy again. So it would absolutely make sense that the caucus leader, the Make America Healthy Again caucus leader in the Senate, would believe that food is medicine.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Here's the problem.
He is also in favor of glyphosate use.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: So in 2022, he really reamed Secretary Vilsack, who was at the time the USDA or Department of Agriculture secretary. He reamed him over not standing up for the use of glyphosate. And as the EPA and the Biden administration started zeroing in on glyphosate, Senator Marshall really spoke out.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: Did you not speak to the president of the FEPA about this? Are you not urging them? Do they not understand how important these pesticides are to decrease. Increase the carbon footprint and increase the production of our land? Again, you've been doing this for 10 years. We expected a loud voice. Or maybe you agree with the administration, maybe you agree with the EPA in.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Favor of glyphosate and talked about how it's required in order to use glyphosate and really just sort of beat up the Ag Secretary that he wasn't fighting harder for the use of glyphosate for the farmers. For the farmers.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Against the epa.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Against the epa. That's right.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: I want to follow up with Senator Grassley's comment about the US Solicitor General's statement on federal presumption of pesticide labels emphasizing that glyphosate is used in roughly 40% of acreage. It troubles me. I think you said you weren't consulted on this issue. We expect you to be proactive.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: So there was a very recent Agri Pulse interview with Senator Marshall, and one of the things that he says is that I'm in a position to push back.
As they asked him about Kayce Means taking over as Surgeon General and her push against things like glyphosate.
You could miss it almost.
It was just a little snippet in the interview, but the way he said it was, I'm in the position to push back.
[00:09:20] Speaker C: Why aren't you a louder voice? Why aren't you being proactive? It troubles me that you're not willing to speak up for American agriculture with this administration and push back on the EPA, to push back on the White House's policies in regards to this glyphosate.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: And so what that led us down the road of thinking was, man, we got a collision course happening here because you have the caucus lead of Make America Healthy Again in the Senate who is threatening, I guess, to push back against the Make America Healthy Again commission report that glyphosate is an environmental toxin.
So what is set up here is like, you know, you have the administration, the executive branch over here with the agencies and you have the legislative branch with the senators over here both saying make America healthy again.
One saying glyphosate is a toxin, the other saying glyphosate is required for farming.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Now I'm going to be the devil's advocate for Senator Marshall for just a second.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: He did argue that they're using far fewer pesticides thanks to precision precision agriculture.
So they are being able to do a lot more with a lot less with the precision that they have now. They're cover cropping. That isn't a new concept to them. They've been cover cropping for decades. He says they're going. And regenerative ag uses a lot of natural products. So they go to the dairies and they go to feedlots and they go and collect manure from animals and they spread it out on the fields, put cover crops on them, grow cows on them. There's. So they've been doing that, as he states, for decades in the state of Kansas. And there's not new science and. And he says Roundup isn't used to kill crops, at least not much.
So he's saying in the state of Kansas they're going towards regenerative ag and that they don't use that poisonous. At least not very much.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah, he's saying all of those things. Yeah. It's interesting to me. I won't be able to hit on all of the things that you raise with him. But where I would draw exception with at least a few of the things he talks about, the fact that Kansas has been doing regenerative agriculture for decades and the example that he uses is going to feed lots and confinement dairies in order to gather manure to spread on the row crops.
The feedlots and the confinement dairies are not regenerative agriculture.
I understand that there's a portion there that.
So it's interesting to me that the example that he uses of regenerative agriculture has at its foundation like the epitome of industrial agriculture.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Like that's silly. Okay, fine.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Thank you for using the manure that from industrial agriculture.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And the use of glyphosate, it just what he's.
The words he's saying, while maybe true, it doesn't make it good.
Maybe, maybe the usage is less.
Okay, we'll skip some segments here and go right now into. Here's some stats.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Oh, the statistics.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: And this is coming from the CDC, the U.S. geological Service, the University of Michigan. 94% of Midwest, which includes Kansas water streams, contain glyphosate.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: 81% of Americans test positive for glyphosate in their bodies.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: 87% of children tested had glyphosate in their urine.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: It's linked to premature birth, lymphoma, neurogenerative disorders, and many more.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: So, like the idea that, well, we're using less.
That. That's not helping. If it's still in 94% of the waterways and over 80% of humans.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: No, not helping.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: So, like. And that's why I say there's a collision course here, because he is so.
It has become ingrained. Talking points. Like the example I used in 2022 isn't the only one. Like, he's introduced bills, and there are a lot of examples of his support for the use of glyphosate.
And if the commission, the Maha Commission report comes out saying glyphosate is an environmental toxin, that puts them directly at odds with the leader of the caucus in the Senate.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Plot twist.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Right.
So that's why we say that there's a potential collision course happening here, because it feels like the Make America Healthy movement is gaining momentum and it's becoming more mainstream and it's getting support from different organizations and moms and, you know, and. And the. Truly, the fringe is becoming policy like it really is.
And as it's gaining momentum, it's about to collide.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
I don't know if you said this a second ago, because I was thinking of my own thoughts, but Callie said that we produce and ingest 25% of the world's glyphosate.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: I didn't mention it.
25% Cali means. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: So where. Where other countries? Not necessarily. Not all or anything, but they have bandit in some. Some areas.
But when we as Americans or one country in a very large world and we consume, use, ingest, whatever 25%, one quarter of it is in one country.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: And you're telling me. But we're not using as much.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: As when, you know, I mean, it's just a.
It's a rhetorical question, but that makes the point.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: That doesn't make it good.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: I'm not using as much cocaine as I used to use.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Right.
So.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: Okay. That doesn't mean that it's good. Right.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: So the legal battles are about to well, there already are many, many legal battles. We can get into that in a second with Bayer and states now, because there have been legal battles for the past decade about people getting sick.
People, lots of. How many millions. How many millions of dollars? 14 billion. Sorry. In damages already paid out.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Right. Bayer set aside 16 billion when all of these lawsuits started happening. They've already had to pay out 14 billion.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: That's a lot of money. Okay. But they're not paying it out because people got sick.
That is not why they're paying it out. They're paying it out because of what? Warning labels.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And Shelly saying sick, it's like cancer.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Right. Lymphoma is a very common.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: It's not just they got a cold or a rash or something. This is cancer. And at the center of the legal battle is the failure to warn is the way they're describing it. And the Supreme Court agreed that Bear failed to adequately warn of the potential hazards of using glyphosate.
Roundup in particular. That's their. You know, glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: And while there has been $14 billion probably, plus at this point, paid out, the battle isn't over. The, the legal.
The legal things going on right now are huge because they're seeking to. They're going all the way to the Supreme Court.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah. They're.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: With their appeal.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah. They're asking them to appeal and remove their failure to warn finding.
Because that's been the center of all of these. These legal cases that Bear has lost.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: So that's at the Supreme Court level. There's also. There are also actions being taken at individual state levels.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: And Missouri squarely in the middle of all of it.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a Senate bill right now that was brought forth by a Missouri state senator who is a Republican. And that bill, basically summarizing it, says if the EPA approves it, there's no other warning labels required.
And what that would do is at the state level, it would take away that failure to warn basis for suing when.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Liability.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah, liability. It takes away the liability. So what Bayer is doing is they are, as well as the Supreme Court, they're going out to all of the states and pushing hard to get each state to enact language like this into law. It has become law in one state. It was overturned in one state. It's on the docket right now in Missouri. But interestingly so there's again with the plot twist, the Maha movement says that, or is probably going to say that glyphosate is an environmental toxin.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: The Maha movement being a part of the current Republican administration, the Republican senator in Missouri is wanting to take away the ability to sue the makers of the glyphosate.
There's a Democrat representative in Missouri and he's introduced a bill that says glyphosate will be illegal to use, period.
Which seems to be more aligned with the Make America Healthy Again movement of the Republican administration than the Republican senator who is trying to take away all of legal liabilities from Bayer.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: So Maha then seems to be turning out to be probably one of the most bipartisan movements that we've seen in a very long time in that no matter which side of the aisle people come from, they can all appreciate good.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Food and health and they can also find something to fight against inside ma.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Isn't that crazy?
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Right?
[00:21:07] Speaker B: This is, this is a. It's a really interesting time.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I believe it was North Dakota that passed that state legislation. Iowa rejected it. In Iowa. They called it the cancer gag Act. And they really, they really started pushing in the media, social media realm with this cancer gag act. Like I'm not allowed to talk about the fact that this thing gave me cancer. And with that, all of that social media push, they were able to. It did. It failed there at least.
Right.
Yeah. Missouri, like there's a lot of glyphosate used in Missouri. A whole lot. You know, there's a lot of corn and soy grown here in Missouri. And the Missouri, they're in the top.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: I saw that they were in the top 10 of glyphosate use.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: In, in the, in the states.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: That's right.
Yep.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: We don't use glyphosate.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: No.
And it's a.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: You used to, though.
I remember a day whenever Roundup came out. This is in the way, way, way back.
And we were living in, back in our hometown and you were working with, doing things that you needed. Some very invasive weeds killed Soda Apple, if anybody's ever encountered Soda Apple. And this new product came out.
Roundup.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And it was the only thing that you found that would kill it.
And it was like a miracle drug, a miracle pesticide. And that's how this Senator Marshall has even kind of mentioned that it's a miracle chemical that they can use.
So while it's effective and you saw the effectiveness back literally, that was almost 40 years ago.
No, it was almost 30 years ago.
The effectiveness of it is mind boggling. But. But that doesn't make it edible.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: It doesn't mean that we should be putting it on things that we're going to ingest or using it in such a ubiquitous way that it's making dead zones in the Gulf of.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: America.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: America.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: What Gulf were you going to see.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: In the Gulf out there off the coast of Florida anyway? In the, in the Gulf that is the size of a state.
And that doesn't mean that, like we've seen the effectiveness of it, but it doesn't. You wake up and you say, wait, that's, that's a really bad idea.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah. As regenerative farmers, we have chosen not to use it.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: And it, it's interesting to me that the Senator would think that regenerative farmers would choose to use it. That's like, that's odd.
And it does make things more difficult because we're not spraying the weeds that we want to get rid of.
We're impacting them with, you know, animal, animal density per acre and the amount of carbon that we put on that acre with the animals on the acre, and we allow the animals the. Then to trample it and eat it. And we're doing other things. We use a weed eater and we use loppers and we pull it up and they're all in an effort to not be spraying these things that we believe the commission will also believe are toxic.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: So the question is, who's going to blink first?
[00:25:09] Speaker A: So along those lines, something to discuss also is that bear has threatened. Maybe we'll just take this product off the market.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: So they're going to threaten to the farmers who depend on it so much, as stated.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: That we'll just pull it from the market.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And I think what they've done, I think what, you know, as a strategist, I can't. I, I wasn't in the strategy meetings with Bayer, but as a strategist, I would say I could at least come up with a plausible idea of what was going on in that conversation. And it would be, we need people to speak up and say that they need this product.
And the way to get that motivation, the way to get that moving is to say, well, maybe we'll just take it off the shelf.
And then you get everybody that believes that they need it now they're saying, oh, no, we are not.
Now we'll speak up and we'll say how much we need this, and we'll contact our representatives and our senators and we'll talk about how it's absolutely essential that we have access to glyphosate or to roundup. And then now, from the Bear perspective. Look at all of these people that need this product. Right.
So the threat, I think the threat of removing it, I don't know. They've been fighting the legal battles. They wouldn't be fighting in the Supreme Court if they were really wanting to remove it. You know, they're fighting, they're spending a whole lot of money.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: And they're fighting a lot. And now they, now they're just going to say, well, well, maybe we'll just remove it. And it's like, yeah, I don't, I don't believe that for a minute. I think that they're more along the lines of let's get people motivated.
And the best way to do that would be to threaten to take it off the market.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: So the. Who's going to blink first?
I don't know. This may be one where you end up with executive versus legislative branches at odds.
And, you know, while you may be able to do some things with executive order, you might not be able to get the lasting impact of law behind it.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Right. Well, with the innovation of the chemical back, however, whatever year it was, I don't remember.
So chemicals are created and they come and they go. There are certain chemicals we don't use anymore. We decided that was a bad idea and now we use this one and perhaps it's time for this one to wane and go away.
And with technology exploding literally right now, farming isn't ready for it. But there will be technologies that come on board, like robotic weeders that can just weed the rows without anybody, without any chemicals, without any body touching anything and take care of that, but acres at a time.
We're not there yet, but things really are moving very fast in the AI world.
Talk about precision agriculture. Let's use some of that to enhance agriculture and remove the chemicals. Love it, right?
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: It's going to be very. It's going to be expensive at first, but then it's going to get cheaper.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Yeah, all technology is right.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: And so there are, I think there are ways of, if I can think of that. Certainly they can think of that.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, I mean, we just had a conversation with the CEO of Riggle Brew and the idea of, you know, a worm tea that acts as, you know, a potential herbicide and a fertilizer and really rejuvenating and regenerating the soil. Like there are things that maybe we can do on the positive side that help maybe mitigate the amount of thing of killing that has to be done.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Right.
Well, and it isn't just science either. There's economics, there's legacy involved with this. These farmers are very entrenched in their lifestyle and their way of life and control.
Big Ag is very, very, very big.
They're very, very, very big.
Little Ag is little and Big Ag and big chemical companies are very much aligned with one another, but it's them against someone like RFK junior. And RFK junior needs moms and small farmers and young people and people who want to be healthy in this country to come and voice and, and start rising up and saying, hey guys, we don't want to eat this anymore.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: And this is one where we've heard Representative Massie talk about the way to get your voice heard is not by sending a form letter. It is not by forwarding a form email. It is by picking up the phone and calling.
And you know, he was talking about he receives just a handful of calls a week to his office.
And also this is one where you can't say, well, my area is represented by a Republican, so it's all good, or my area is represented by a Democrat, so it's all good.
The sides of the aisle.
This whole thing is so twisted. This is one where your individual voice actually really could matter because it's not just a Republican or Democrat thing. This is one where the people really are going to have to speak out and say, like some people will say, we must have glyphosate. We have to feed the world. And some people are going to say, we must stop using these poisons. We're killing ourselves.
And I think this is one where you really could take a stand and an issue that a call to a representative or a senator at the US and the state level might be in order to voice your opinion on an issue like this, because it's not one that is just so clear cut that we can just sit back and watch the train roll down the track. This is one where it looks like there's going to be a collision.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Mm, Soon.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Yeah, potentially real soon.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Well, there are no answers right now. I mean, we don't have any answers. We just have our opinion. And what we do here on our farm, we don't spray anything and we use GMO free food.
So non GMO food is by nature, they're not sprayed for weed control with glyphosate. And that's why we use it is because it's not sprayed for weed control, you know, during this life cycle.
So find a farmer if you're interested in cleaner food who is growing Food on pasture that's aren't that, pastures that aren't sprayed.
Find a farmer that's raising their eggs and chicken and pork with non gmo. Look for food in your grocery store that is non GMO verified. There's a little check mark. You can find that, that has come out in the last 10 years so that you can see if the food that's in it was grown with GMO food. GMO, meaning it's been, it can survive the spray.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: It has been genetically modified to survive the application of glyphosate.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Right. And so there are things we can do as consumers to protect our families from the ingesting these what are soon to possibly be identified as environmental toxins.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And from our perspective at Air to Ground Meats, that's our meat store and our website, airtogroundmeats.com we, we ship if you would like some GMO free pork, lamb, chicken. If you want some grass only beef, we're happy to ship it to you. Find somebody in your local area doing the same thing and then it doesn't even have to be shipped.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: And this is one where you can take a stand and it doesn't have to be by calling somebody. It can just be you're voting with your dollars. I choose not to spend my money supporting that industry anymore.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: So we will continue to pay attention to what's going on in Washington around our food supply. And if we see new, new things coming, you know, raising its head, we'll be sure to let you guys know.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks for hanging out with us again, y' all. And until next time.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Bye, y' all.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Bye.
