“It is not a victory to be told ‘Fine, you can do that’ by your government. True victory is never needing to ask them permission in the first place” – Andrew Cooperrider, Rogue Food Conference, 2021
These words stuck out the most to me during the 2021 Rogue Food Conference that was hosted at Polyface Farms. The conference describes itself as a one of a kind event that showcases innovative approaches to food and farm freedom in the United States.
On a hot August in the Appalachian region of Virginia, a few hundred people gathered at what I believe was one of the best liberty centric events of the year. People from all walks of life came to learn, or as Thomas Massie puts it: “R&D. No, not research and development. Rip off and duplicate the success of Joel Salatin.” For those of you who may be unaware of who that is, Joel is essentially the founding father of the organic food movement in America. His emphasis is on animals being given healthy grasses in a symbiotic cycle of feeding.
I attended the conference with my good friends Trijiconfucius, Appalachian Agorist, and their families. I didn’t know what to expect other than hearing about the failures of chemical industrial farming as you would expect from a legend like Joel Salatin. What I found and the message they delivered was so much more.
One story that certainly stood out was that from Derrick and Paige Jackson. Derrick was in the special forces for several years where he says his job was to help interdict drug shipments in Columbia. Part of this role was to try and convince local Coca farmers to abandon their ancestral cash crops in favor of fruit or peanuts. These farmers had no desire for this, and the host nation didn’t even care about their crop. The American government did. The US government couldn’t accept the idea that people thousands of miles away were growing what they wanted without congressional approval.
Flash forward to 2019 when the Jackson’s started their farm and were told that they couldn’t raise their livestock the way they wanted, that they should grow things they don’t want to grow. Derrick thought that sounded awfully familiar. The story is theirs and they tell it in such an amazing way that I will recommend you buy the recording of it from the Rogue Food Conference website.
Now, we are told that the Food and Drug Administration and the US Dept. of Agriculture are both responsible for ensuring food safety. That is a noble idea, but what does it really mean? Are the agents of these two regulatory agencies working tirelessly to ensure rat feces are out of our food? Well, no not really. According to the FDA field manual, you can have up to thirteen fragments of rodent poop in a 24 ounce container of cornmeal. You can have up to three maggots in a 28 ounce can of tomatoes. Sixty-five fly eggs and four rodent hairs can be in your 16 ounce jar of peanut butter! These are all acceptable to them, according to the manual.
But what if you wanted raw milk? We call it unpasteurized and it is mostly illegal. If I were to milk goats that I own in the New River Valley then go twenty minutes west of me to a town in West Virginia, well I would be breaking a federal law. Even if I know unequivocally that my goats are healthy and the person that is buying the milk from me knows that its unpasteurized and my goats are healthy, I am still a criminal to the Federal government. This is all for our safety, mind you. You cannot be trusted to provide healthy food, so we will confiscate it and destroy it. Now eat your canned bugs.
While I am yet to find it, there is a report where allegedly the FDA has stated “Americans have no legal right to determine what food they eat”. But don’t you worry, we are the most free nation on the planet!
Why do we not accept personal responsibility for our own food safety? Why do we trust someone else to do it for us? Someone we have never met before who we have no idea if they have our wellbeing or a company’s profit margin in mind.
These are all great questions and points that were put in front of me at the conference. Instead of just learning how to be a better homesteader, they discussed a great idea that I believe we should all work towards.
The idea is that we have to rebuild local communities and local economies. We need to ensure these communities are based on two main principles; liberty, and personal responsibility. By accepting that we are responsible for our own actions, we can bring our world back from the Orwellian edge. By using our purchasing power to buy local, we can return our communities to greatness. We need to stop giving our purchasing power to larger corporations who often send it into foreign markets instead of re-injecting it to your local economy.
In 1946, the average food mile or the total distance a meal will travel from farm to table was 40 miles. In 2021, the average food mile is believed to be 1,500 miles. Only 7% of what we consume on average is produced locally. In order for us to rebuild local communities, we must reduce that distance.
Buy local, from farmers to cobblers to book binders to hardware stores. The more money we keep in circulation in our communities means the greater chance we have at ensuring that our children will have a bright future and that the government can become nullified.
These regulatory agencies have armed agents and SWAT teams. They will and have kicked down farmers doors, arrested them and destroyed their ways of life. The farmers they go after are treated like they are the villain in a TV show, with a vast conspiracy to kill Americans. These agencies are, in reality, nothing more than the corporate security agents who use intimidation and heavy handed tactics on some of the most peaceful people on the planet.
A good take away from the conference was that when you own your farm; always keep your gate closed. It’s not a question of if these agents will ever show up, but when. Make them get a warrant. Government cannot enforce their tyranny if we all stand opposed to them as one.
They are much better at playing this game than we are. That is why we must stop forging our own chains and stop playing their game. We have to play our own.
I had a great time at Polyface farms and the Rogue Food Conference. I will absolutely attend next time it comes to Virginia and I absolutely recommend that you check out one of their events. Let us stop avoiding our responsibility. Let us stop playing a rigged game. Let us be rogue.
You can find Polyface Farms online at:
www.polyfacefarms.com
Polyface Farms on Instagram
Polyface Farms on Facebook