Episode #234
Episode Swap: JM Fortier Interviews Dave Chapman, Round Two
Our Jean-Martin Fortier interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:
In this second interview swap between Real Organic Project and the Market Gardener Institute, Jean-Martin Fortier interviews Dave Chapman about the evolution of food politics and the urgent need for decentralization in agriculture. From the counterculture movements of the 1970s to modern debates over nutrition, climate, and corporate control, their conversation reminds us that change begins locally—with soil, with people, and with courage.
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JM Fortier + Chris Moran interview Dave Chapman for the Market Gardener Podcast in Quebec, April 2025:
JM Fortier 0:00
The movement – I don’t know where it’s going. That’s something that I’m quite confused about.
Dave Chapman 0:04
You’re supposed to be confused.
JM Fortier 0:06
I’m confused.
Dave Chapman 0:06
Yeah, that’s the goal. If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention. We already have a huge wave of ill health – so many problems from our diet. At some point, all the moms and dads are going to say, “What are we doing? I won’t tolerate it anymore.”
Dave Chapman 0:12
I don’t think we normally win when we try to make a deal with the devil. We’re just not powerful enough, smart enough, or whatever enough in order to do that. I think we’re getting to see, “Well, okay, let’s destroy the system and see what happens.”
JM Fortier 0:37
But was it different in the 70s? “Let’s destroy it” – that’s a pretty strong word.
Dave Chapman 0:42
I think it was different in the 70s, because the people who wanted to start over didn’t have any power. They didn’t run the government. They weren’t being supported by the richest men in the world. So, it was truly a grassroots movement, and it was saying, “You know what? We’re just going to do it differently anyway.”
Linley Dixon 1:12
Welcome to the Real Organic Podcast. I’m Linley Dixon, co-director of the Real Organic Project. We’re a grassroots, farmer-led movement with an add-on organic food label to distinguish crops grown in healthy soils and livestock raised on well-managed pasture, all without synthetic fertilizer or toxic chemicals.
Linley Dixon 1:29
Today, we’re sharing another special episode swap with the Market Gardener Podcast. Earlier this year, we aired episode number 223, where Dave Chapman sat down with farmer and co-host of the Market Gardener Podcast, JM Fortier, at his studio in Quebec.
Linley Dixon 1:44
During that visit, JM also interviewed Dave, and today we’re sharing their extended conversation, which touched on so much, from nutrition to politics, soil health, gluten intolerance, and the relationship between the early days of organic and the counterculture. This episode got a big response on their show, and we hope that you enjoy it too.
JM Fortier 2:13
Okay, folks. This is going to be a good one. We have one of our favorite guests, Dave Chapman, an organic pioneer. We can bring that in. Is it okay if I say “Father figure” of our movement now? Am I allowed to say that?
Dave Chapman 2:31
I always feel like I’m too young to be a father figure. But yeah, Eliot is a father figure.
JM Fortier 2:36
I think you’re like Eliot. I think you’re just the same in terms of legends and in terms of passing down wisdom. The last time you were here, we talked about the Real Organic Project movement, regenerative, and all of these things. I don’t know what we’re going to be talking about today, but I’m really happy to see you again, Dave. Thank you for being here.
Dave Chapman 2:56
This is great to be here, JM. It’s such a nice drive to come up from Vermont. It’s beautiful.
JM Fortier 3:02
We’re neighbors.
Dave Chapman 3:02
We’re neighbors. It’s very close.
Chris Moran 3:04
How far is the drive exactly, Dave?
Dave Chapman 3:06
It’s two and a half hours. All easy.
Chris Moran 3:09
Not bad at all. That is a nice drive. I suggest that anyone listen to the past episode because, of course, we’re not going to just repeat everything. But could you give us the quick setting of the table on the Real Organic Project, just so people understand what it is and what the movement is?
Dave Chapman 3:25
Sure. The Real Organic Project was born out of defeat. I was involved in a movement that we called Keep the Soil in Organic. It was an attempt to reform the National Organic Program, where there was a good law – the Organic Food Production Act – which was an excellent law. You can’t imagine having such a good law passed in Congress, but it was passed before there was any money in organic, so nobody cared.
Dave Chapman 3:58
Then, as money came in, a lot of challenges came in, as is always the case. Money always brings corruption. We can’t be sorry that money came in. Money came in because people wanted to buy organic, and that was a good thing. But the corruption was not good, and we really tried to reform the NOP, the National Organic Program, and we failed.
Dave Chapman 4:25
After a big meeting down in Jacksonville, Florida, it became clear to me and a number of people that we were not going to win this. It almost didn’t matter. It didn’t matter who was the head of the USDA or President. Maybe if Bernie had been elected, truly it might have been different, but otherwise it didn’t matter: Democrat, Republican…
JM Fortier 4:47
When was that in terms of dates?
Dave Chapman 4:49
That was in November of 2017. It was a big showdown. We lost. People were crying, and calling me crying from across the country.
JM Fortier 5:04
Was there a vote?
Dave Chapman 5:04
There was a vote.
JM Fortier 5:04
And the reform got turned down?
Dave Chapman 5:06
It got turned down, yeah. It was an attempt to basically reaffirm the 2010 recommendation to prohibit hydroponics in organic.
Chris Moran 5:18
Basically, that was it.
Dave Chapman 5:20
That was one of three big issues with the National Organic Program. One was hydroponic production being certified. Two was confinement livestock being certified. And three was tremendous fraud in organic grain imports that was getting through. That was just blatant fraud, breaking the law. The other two were more complicated – it was the lack of enforcement by the USDA.
Dave Chapman 5:20
The law said, “No, you can’t do that.” But they said, “Well, our rules say you can.” We lost on those three things. After that meeting, I and a group of farmers got together in Vermont, just down the road from here, probably an hour and a half away, in an impromptu meeting.
Dave Chapman 5:20
Thirty farmers came to the NOFA headquarters and said, “What are we going to do? Are we going to shrug and say, “Well, this is still something we need to make a living, but we know it’s not what we mean anymore”? Or are we going to create something new?” A 100% consensus was that we needed to create something new. We didn’t want to give up organic as a meaningful movement.
Dave Chapman 5:23
There was not consensus about whether it should be a standalone – let’s start all over again, not be connected to the USDA – or make it an add-on in the way that so many have done in the EU, where they create, like Naturland, as an add-on to the EU certification. We ended up going with the add-on, because we didn’t have $10 million a year to create a standalone, which it really would have taken.
Dave Chapman 7:11
At that point, it wasn’t clear it would be national. It might just be Vermont, or the Northeast was very likely, because organic is protected in the Northeast – there’s no big organic there.
JM Fortier 7:24
Yeah, there’s no big ag.
Dave Chapman 7:25
There’s no big ag, so there’s no big organic. In California, it’s a very complicated discussion. So, that was it. We started the Real Organic Project officially in February, I think, of 2018, and we have been working ever since.
Chris Moran 7:44
Yeah, and working hard. You have a podcast as well, for anyone who doesn’t know. It’s one of the best out there, if you want to get into the minds of so many fascinating people. The level of educational height that you reach in that podcast is awesome. How long have you been in the organic movement?
Dave Chapman 8:09
I probably started in about 1980, I’m guessing.
Chris Moran 8:21
Did you already feel like you were coming in late, or do you feel like you came…? Where do you feel like you stand in sort of the…?
Dave Chapman 8:29
It was interesting, Chris, at that point. Everything was kind of busting loose. It was the aftermath of the Vietnam War, which was hugely significant in terms of the changes it created in American culture. There were a lot of people in the organic movement who go, “Well, I had nothing to do with that, and I was not any kind of hippie. I’m a fundamentalist Christian,” whatever. Nonetheless, we were all impacted by that cultural wave.
Chris Moran 9:08
And being part of the counterculture.
Dave Chapman 9:11
The counterculture is a huge thing. There’s a wonderful new book coming out this week. I highly recommend it. It’s by Matthew Ingram, and it’s called “The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture.” The title refers to Joni Mitchell’s song, “Woodstock” – “Got to get back to the garden.”
Dave Chapman 9:32
As a confession, I’m in it, but it’s a great book, and it’s just got so many threads that it pulls together and so many people. It’s 500 pages long, and I’m still reading – I’m on about page 380 – and I never thought I’d read it all. I thought I’d read a few pages, but I keep going. I wasn’t interested in the New Alchemy Institute. I knew about it. You guys probably never heard of it.
Chris Moran 10:00
I’ve heard of that name.
Dave Chapman 10:04
Yeah. If you were five years younger, you wouldn’t have heard of it. That’s the way things are. Our history gets forgotten, of course, because we’re busy living our present. But I didn’t think I would be interested in it. I knew a bit about it, but he makes everything interesting, and you see the impact and the connections of this and that, and…
Chris Moran 10:25
Was Will part of that?
Dave Chapman 10:27
No, he’s a British guy.
JM Fortier 10:29
He’s a British guy.
Dave Chapman 10:30
Yeah. He talks about things in Great Britain I had never heard of and people I didn’t know, and some I do.
Chris Moran 10:35
Does he mention Adrian Bell at all?
Dave Chapman 10:37
No.
Chris Moran 10:37
Okay. He’s British writer I love.
Dave Chapman 10:39
No. He mentions a lot of music. He likes music, but he interviewed Eliot. He writes about the Nearings, “Silent Spring” and Rachel Carson, and Henry David Thoreau, which was really interesting because you think of Thoreau… The impact of Thoreau was great, but “Walden” – when he spent a year living at Walden – wasn’t out in the wilderness; it was in the suburbs, essentially.
Chris Moran 11:09
In like a little wood lot next to the town.
Dave Chapman 11:11
He walked into town twice a week for dinner with his family.
Chris Moran 11:14
I’ve always thought that was fascinating about that. It’s talking about a guy going to the woods, and he’s in a little woods next to a town. It doesn’t sound as romantic as you might imagine it once you understand the thing.
Dave Chapman 11:14
I think Thoreau wasn’t pretending otherwise. But it’s significant in representing, to a lot of people in my generation who were going back to the country from the city – not me. I started in the country, but a lot of people were, and it was one of those books that inspired people.
Dave Chapman 11:50
He wrote a book called “Civil Disobedience,” which inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He spent one night in jail for not paying his poll tax in protest of the Mexican War, and his aunt bailed him out. He didn’t want her to, but she didn’t ask his permission. So, this guy who spent one night in jail in civil disobedience wrote a book that inspired people who changed world history. That’s interesting.
JM Fortier 12:20
It’s the butterfly effect.
Dave Chapman 12:21
Butterfly effect, yeah.
Chris Moran 12:22
It was a big web of interconnected thing.
Dave Chapman 12:23
That’s right.
JM Fortier 12:26
Dave, but I want to know, because a book about the counterculture of the 70s is bringing your attention to this right now. You’re reading that. Why? Because with everything that’s going on right now, why would anyone want to read a book about what went down in the 70s? What’s the connection there?
Chris Moran 12:49
Or in 1968?
Dave Chapman 12:51
Because it isn’t over, and it’s a big part of how we got here. It’s not that we have to be historians, but it is helpful to understand that things aren’t just the way they are; they change to become that, and they will continue to change. So, yes, we’re in a dark moment right now in world history, and I think it’s going to get darker, but it will change, and things will get better, and they will get worse.
Dave Chapman 13:23
I think we have a responsibility to carry on regardless. I think sometimes you carry the torch, and it’s very dark outside, and you’re handing the torch on to some other poor bastard and saying, “I did my best to carry on, but it’s been a…” We have a long history as humans.
JM Fortier 13:49
You’re somehow saying that it would be good for us to revisit what happened and how this – our movement, if we can frame it that way – began, and how it was led to be what it is, and that could be helpful to understand where it’s going?
Dave Chapman 14:10
Yes.
JM Fortier 14:10
It’s pretty bizarre for me, as someone that’s in it right now, the movement, I don’t really know where it’s going. That’s something that I’m quite confused about. It could be one way, it could be another. I’m seeing interests. I’m confused about words. Like when you were here last time – regenerative, all of that. I see so much energy going there. So many summits, and I’m like, “What are they talking about? I don’t get it.” I’m confused.
Dave Chapman 14:44
You’re supposed to be confused.
JM Fortier 14:46
I’m confused.
Dave Chapman 14:47
Yeah, that’s the goal.
JM Fortier 14:48
I’m like, “I know that getting young people into farming is something that’s very necessary, and I’m dedicated to that, but for the rest, I don’t really know where this is going.”
Dave Chapman 15:04
As people, we will always be involved in politics, and I don’t mean Democrat and Republican politics, or whatever the Canadian version of that is. I mean we will always be involved in a struggle over values about how we should live together, not just on a mountain alone, but how we live together and build an economy together.
Dave Chapman 15:32
I think the reason to study where we came from is to realize that everything is fragile. Everything that we do and that we think seems so solid, but they aren’t. They’re basically – was it Lily Tomlin who said, “What’s reality but a collective hunch?”
JM Fortier 15:55
And it can change fast.
Dave Chapman 15:57
It can change fast. There’s somebody I listen to, Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian, and she’s great. She puts a daily blog out and also records it so you can listen if you want. It’s basically in response to Trump, of whom she has not been a big fan.
Dave Chapman 16:22
She reminds us that in 1850 the slaveholders of the South controlled the presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. They were strong in Congress, but they didn’t control Congress. She said it appeared at that point that the entire country of the United States was going to go and completely embrace slavery, and all the western states were going to be slave states, and it was like we had lost.
Dave Chapman 16:59
She said within 10 years the Republican Party had been born. It didn’t exist in 1850. It was an anti-slavery coalition of many different points of view, but they all agreed on that. They had Abraham Lincoln as president, and the Civil War had begun to end slavery. Two years later the Emancipation Proclamation came out. It was an almost unthinkable progression in 10 years. So, she says, “We know what has happened; we don’t know what will happen, and we should remember that.”
Chris Moran 17:36
There’s a lot of forgetting, isn’t there? In history, it seems. I also just listened to a series about 1968 and the amount of things that happened in that one year in the United States was – I don’t want to say it was shocking, but a little bit – because someone of my age, yeah, I know about the assassinations that took place, but to dive into the details and understand the details, I thought, “Oh, my God. I think people at that moment felt like we do right now.”
Chris Moran 18:09
A lot of them thought, “The US is imploding, things are falling apart, and there’s going to be violence. Are we on the brink of a civil war?” I wanted to say all this about forgetting because I wanted to ask: What are people forgetting right now in the world of organic? What is being forgotten that we risk losing if we don’t try to bring it back to remembrance?
Dave Chapman 18:39
At this point, the world of organic is a very busy place. It’s like Grand Central Station. It’s under assault, of course, from the chemical companies, as always. The chemical companies are the most powerful companies in the world, so it’s not a minor thing. But there is a very mixed-up bag, a very confused community of people, and not even necessarily a community.
Dave Chapman 19:14
But I think that, for me, the core foundational beliefs of organic are very important and are easily forgotten. One of the things that’s happened is that organic, as defined by the National Organic Program and as embraced by Big Agriculture, has come to mean replacing chemical inputs with organically approved inputs.
Dave Chapman 19:46
That is not what organic meant, and it’s not what it means to me. I don’t think it’s what it means to you. The organic sales continue to increase, as they should, and we must celebrate that people are seeking an alternative to chemical agriculture, and what they want to put in their bodies. That’s really good.
Dave Chapman 20:12
What’s unfortunate is that there’s a basic ignorance among a lot of the organic industry, as opposed to the organic movement, that organic is anything more than the cessation of using toxic chemicals to grow food. It certainly is that; that is an essential part of it, but there’s this whole other part, which is the real part.
Dave Chapman 20:45
The reason you don’t need to use the toxic chemicals is because you’re growing in this – now I am about to sound like a poster – but microbially diverse, living soil, with so much happening in there, and that creates real health. The same is true: the soil microbiome is the same as our body’s microbiome, the same as the plant’s microbiome.
Dave Chapman 21:13
We all have this kind of microbial diversity when we’re in a state of health, and when we abandon that by eating a bunch of Doritos, Pepsi, and crap, which does not favor our personal microbiome, and it not only is destructive to it, but also we’re not feeding it with the good things that it needs in order to flourish. That is a huge answer.
JM Fortier 21:37
Can we pause there?
Dave Chapman 21:39
Yeah, please. I didn’t realize I go trotting off.
JM Fortier 21:44
I think that a lot of young people are on board with the story that you just said: living soils, and the mystic of soil. I think that’s a popular thing. In the movement right now, there’s a lot of interest in looking at soils through microscopes and understanding soil ecology. It’s even a bit far-fetched, in my opinion, but there’s interest in that.
JM Fortier 22:13
I think that’s a nice story. The story that you just said is a nice story, and it’s a real one. I don’t think that story is out of style. I think there’s going to be something about that. I do feel that we have a point there.
Dave Chapman 22:29
We have a great point, and science – real science, not corporate science – is completely embracing and explaining the point. Will Brinton once said to me, “The amazing thing, David, is that in the whatever, 80 years since Albert Howard and his two wives were writing and explaining their observations of health – human health, plant health, and soil health – science has basically supported all of it.”
Dave Chapman 23:06
Science is a big word, but let’s say the science of biology and ecology has completely supported it. That’s happening even faster. On the way here, I was listening to William Lee, who’s a great doctor, and he’s studying human health and the gut biome. What does it mean? He’s pretty clear that you need to eat organic food. You need to eat whole food, but it needs to be organic, and he has very eloquent explanations about why.
Dave Chapman 23:40
This is back to that thing. I quote Michael often on this – that Michael Pollan said about five years ago or something. I said, “Michael, in the 15 years since “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” is the food system getting better or worse? Because I’m confused; I can’t tell.” He said, “The public conversation and awareness are getting much better, but the food system is getting worse.”
JM Fortier 24:02
Okay. I want to pause there too, because on this podcast, we never talk about politics. It’s just hasn’t been a subject of ours, but I can’t help myself.
Chris Moran 24:14
Yeah, I don’t think anyone can now.
JM Fortier 24:15
Because there’s RFK now, that’s there, and whenever I listen to him, I’m like, “‘Wow, this is incredible stuff.” Linking health to the food system and making that connection just in itself, saying, “We need better food if you want to be healthier,” which is probably something that is new to Congress and politics. What are your thoughts about that? Can I ask that?
Dave Chapman 24:40
About RFK or about what he’s saying?
JM Fortier 24:44
Both. I could rephrase that. We’re in a coffee with you and me, Dave. I don’t follow that much. I follow from a distance. What do you think about this? Is it positive? Is it not so positive? Your opinions.
Dave Chapman 25:03
When RFK talks about food and agriculture, I completely agree with him, and he completely agrees with me. There is no distance between our perspectives on this.
JM Fortier 25:17
And it’s novel that somebody’s talking about that.
Dave Chapman 25:19
It’s novel that somebody in politics is talking about that in a serious way. Bobby Kennedy is enormously eloquent. He’s no dummy. He’s a smart guy, and he’s talking about things that aren’t just political talking points. He’s believed this for a long time. He knows a lot. He’s fought lawsuits against CAFOs and won some of them. He’s fought against pollution of our waters by agriculture. He’s deeply informed.
Dave Chapman 25:56
So, about that and about what he says, I completely agree, and he says it very well. I don’t agree with all his other perspectives. For me, the real question is, how do we feel about him joining Trump in order to pursue that agenda.
Chris Moran 26:21
That McDonald’s photo just after the announcement was made, to me, was an emblem of maybe how that relationship would really be. It was just after, and then there’s a photo of them on a plane, all eating McDonald’s. I was like, “RFK, how could you do that?”
Dave Chapman 26:39
He was forced to. I’m not excusing it. This was a way of Trump telling him, “Take the knee. Kiss my ring. I understand what you believe, but you will eat the Big Mac. You will do this to show that I’m the boss.” It was just the way Elon Musk got up with his kid in the White House office and said, “I’m the boss. You’re sitting there. I’m standing towering over you.” So, these are very important signals.
Dave Chapman 27:13
I know lots of people who are still very excited about Kennedy – organic farmers and strong supporters of what we do – and I know many people who will spit at his name. So, let’s agree that he’s very divisive. I don’t mean that he’s trying to, I just think that…
JM Fortier 27:36
His means to an end is is questionable.
Dave Chapman 27:39
When he embraced Trump in order to get a cabinet seat, to me, that’s a deal with the devil. We know how that works out in the stories. Faust did not do well in his deal with this – especially in the original Faust. In the nice redo, he gets saved at the end, but in the original, no, he goes down to hell, and it doesn’t work out well for him.
Dave Chapman 28:02
I don’t think normally we win when we try to make a deal with the devil. We’re just not strong enough, powerful enough, smart enough, or whatever enough in order to do that. So, it’s fine. He’s doing what he believes, and I hope he succeeds – I hope Kennedy succeeds.
JM Fortier 28:30
No, it’s like six months in or four months in?
Chris Moran 28:33
No. It just seems that way.
JM Fortier 28:36
It feels like a long time, but it’s going to be interesting to evaluate what policies he’s actually pushing, being able to deliver them, and what grounds they’re based on.
Dave Chapman 28:48
Of course, he’s not the Secretary of Agriculture.
JM Fortier 28:50
He’s not.
Dave Chapman 28:52
That’s a huge thing.
JM Fortier 28:53
That was another thing, because I was, from a distance, not being American and not being that involved, looking there was… Joel Salatin was pushed on a level.
Chris Moran 29:03
That excited a lot of people as well.
JM Fortier 29:05
That excited a lot of people. Can you tell us what happened with that, where it’s at now, and is that interesting to follow or not really?
Dave Chapman 29:13
I think the thing with Joel was just… it’s like these people are reduced to being TV stars. It’s just buzz. I don’t think anybody in the administration was seriously thinking we’re gonna have Joel Salatin be a major influencer in the USDA. Instead, they picked Brooke Rollins, who’s a complete acolyte of Donald Trump.
Dave Chapman 29:46
Everything that she’s actually said and done has been to support big ag. There’s nothing that is friendly to small farmers, or to organic farmers. Fine, she and Kennedy had a couple of photo ops. My point is, no, she’s just another Sonny Perdue, who was Trump’s first Secretary of Agriculture. I have to say, as much as I have completely challenged Tom Vilsack, deservedly so, he was still better than Brooke Rollins is going to be.
JM Fortier 30:21
You guys had conversations – you had a relationship.
Dave Chapman 30:25
I wouldn’t call it a relationship, but I met with him and we talked.
JM Fortier 30:30
Yeah, but there was something.
Dave Chapman 30:31
There was something, but even more, it’s not about me or the Real Organic Project. I think that in Biden’s second term, he was genuinely trying to make everybody happy. So, he actually did give significant financial support to organic. He pledged $300 million to the Transition to Organic Program, as well as billions to climate-smart agriculture, most of which went to just evil commodity chemical farming. But a little bit of it actually went to organic too.
Dave Chapman 31:11
I do believe that it is transformative where the government puts its money. They have a lot of money, and they’re huge players in agriculture. Without the USDA, chemical agriculture pretty much collapses, in my opinion. It operates at a loss. It is maintained by subsidies.
Dave Chapman 31:30
As Linley and Scott Myers just said in the last letter, the subsidies are really subsidizing the chemical companies. That’s who gets the money in the end, because that’s where all the expenses are for the farms.
Chris Moran 31:44
Before we continue, I just want to say for the record… I want to let the viewer know it’s early April when we’re recording this, because by the time they hear it, they might be like, “What are you talking about?” Because who knows what will happen then.
Dave Chapman 31:57
Yeah, that’s right.
Chris Moran 31:58
I want to ask you about the federal funding cuts for farmers, because maybe you have more of a pulse on the organic movement in the US, and maybe you’ve heard from farmers. I’m just curious, are people losing funding?
Dave Chapman 32:13
Oh, yeah. A lot of people are losing funding.
Chris Moran 32:15
Can you tell us some examples or stories?
JM Fortier 32:17
Are these NGOs, like NOFAs…
Dave Chapman 32:19
No FAS, but farmers too. Farmers are losing funding. Out in the Midwest, Linley knows lots of farmers. We just interviewed Liz Grasnick, who’s a great small vegetable farmer out in Missouri. She got funding for maybe a quarter of her crop that went to food shelves and schools. So, they were feeding the kids good food, and they were feeding people who didn’t have food good food.
Dave Chapman 33:27
It was a tremendous support for her farm. She geared up in order to supply this demand. Of course, it was pulled at a moment’s notice. She knew she’d have to lay off a quarter of her team, and she had plants she would probably just throw out because she couldn’t plant them, because she had no market for them. That’s just one example of one program that got hit.
Dave Chapman 33:27
One I know of is kind of big. It’s not directly on their farm, but – I can’t think of their name now, I’m sorry – they’re a New Hampshire farm, and they have a nonprofit. They got a $35 million grant to promote good biological agriculture, and they lost it. They had it. It wasn’t like they were applying for it. They had been granted it, and it was taken away. You can imagine the amount of rebooting that’s required when losing a $35 million funding source for a small operation.
Dave Chapman 33:27
I’ll say one thing, which is that the Real Organic Project doesn’t get any of its money from the government. I don’t say that pridefully; we’ve just never been there, and so when it happened, there was no direct impact on us. We have lost some funding because of the debates around Kennedy, and it’s very political.
Dave Chapman 33:27
We certainly have strong followers and funders who believe in Kennedy, and strong followers and funders who spit at the mention of his name. It’s a complicated world out there.
Chris Moran 34:42
We do, too. In our circle of followers, there’s a lot of division as well.
JM Fortier 34:46
Here’s my lecture, and I might be wrong, but I want to share it here. I feel that, contrary to when it was the 70s, where obviously the young generation was not at all inspired by the old generation, there was a clash. Young people with new ideas were coming up with a new sense of how we should be living. I feel that there’s a lot of young males that are really in Trump’s bandwagon because of so many different things, but they identify with these kinds of values in many ways.
JM Fortier 34:48
I don’t feel that it’s like a younger generation revolting against an older; I think it’s really mixed. When I listen to Joe Rogan, he’s so influential, and he’s so popular among males from 16 to 45. He’s very influential, and I like listening to him, but I wonder. It’s not the same. I don’t see that we’re just going to uplift these old white men in power. I don’t think that that’s the structure currently. I’m confused about where this is going.
Dave Chapman 36:09
Yeah. The interesting thing, of course, is that older people tend to have… No. That’s not true, is it? I was going to say that they tend to have more money. Certainly, the people who have money tend to be older, and so there is a power base there, and that goes both ways.
Dave Chapman 36:32
For me, most of the younger people that I have encountered either were pretty blue or weren’t going to vote at all. That’s a fascinating one to me, but that is, for sure, a real thing now, and it has kind of a libertarian bent. Not too carefully thought out…
JM Fortier 36:59
There’s an urge for something like that.
Dave Chapman 37:02
There’s an urge for something different, right. I think we’re starting to see, “Well, okay, let’s destroy the system and see what happens.” That’s what’s going on.
Chris Moran 37:07
People wanted that.
Dave Chapman 37:12
Yeah, they wanted it. It’s like, “Let’s destroy it and start over.”
JM Fortier 37:19
But was it different in the 70s?
Dave Chapman 37:22
That’s a great question, JM.
JM Fortier 37:23
Was it like, “Let’s destroy it.” That’s a pretty strong word.
Dave Chapman 37:37
I think it wasn’t. I think it was different in the 70s, because the people who wanted to start over didn’t have any power, and they didn’t run the government. They weren’t being supported by the richest man in the world. So, it was truly a grassroots movement, and it was saying, “You know what? We’re just going to do it differently anyway. We’re going to do it our way, and we don’t really care what you think.”
Dave Chapman 37:36
That’s how I felt at the time. I remember the first time I was invited to speak to a bunch of extension agents, I was like, “I don’t want to speak to extension agents. They’re the enemy.” That’s how I felt about it. Now there’s many wonderful extension agents, not all, but there are some wonderful. Vern Grubinger in Vermont is a huge resource to organic farmers.
JM Fortier 38:19
He did a lot of work.
Dave Chapman 38:20
He is great, right?
JM Fortier 38:22
I’ve read all his books.
Dave Chapman 38:23
And a great human being too, I would add. Now it’s different because now it is the government destroying itself, and it is the greatest wealth in the world destroying the markets that make it wealthy. It’s kind of crazy talk right now. What happens next nobody knows. I’m sure that the people who are leading this change have no idea either. They have a plan, but they don’t know what’s going to happen.
Dave Chapman 39:01
I’ll say one thing about revolutions: they usually don’t end very well. I think of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution, and the American Revolution was okay. It didn’t end well for everybody; slavery continued for a long time.
JM Fortier 39:23
A lot of blood, though, between brothers and…
Dave Chapman 39:26
A lot of blood, yeah. I don’t mean that it was like a great solution. Actually, I look at Canada, I go, “Why don’t we just do that?” You guys are completely free. You have your own country and government. You didn’t have to kill anybody. You just were a little more patient about getting there. I understand the Americans, but it’s not like the French, the Russian and the Chinese, where as the revolution goes along, “Let’s kill all the leaders who started the revolution.” It got crazy.
Chris Moran 39:49
Can we bounce back in time a bit on your timeline?
Dave Chapman 39:51
Yeah, of course.
Chris Moran 39:51
Because we had started at that, you entered the organic movement in 1980. I want to ask a few things. One you said, and I’ve heard you say this before that, big ag hated you. I think people still feel that today to some degree, but definitely less so. It doesn’t feel as adversarial, perhaps, at least, I think so.
Chris Moran 40:22
Could you just talk a bit about what that even felt like like? Did you feel that you were really a rebel? Was there a sense of a true adversarial relationship there, and what did that feel like?
Dave Chapman 40:33
Great, Chris. First of all, I would say that some big ag has come to join organic, and some has not. But big chemical has definitely not. Bayer-Monsanto and Syngenta hate organic. So, it’s not that we don’t have such powerful forces arrayed against us. But to talk about how I felt about it at the time, I didn’t have what I would call a very developed political awareness; I was just kind of looking for the party and a life with some meaning.
Dave Chapman 41:21
We weren’t a bunch of farmers when we started. I actually grew up on a farm, but most people couldn’t even start a tractor, and we were finding a new way of doing things, because it was clear that the old ways weren’t working. It was clear we had been lied to and it was clear that we didn’t like the outcomes of that old path. I don’t want to over glorify it.
Dave Chapman 41:29
We were just people, and we happened to be at that point in this cultural wave, and we did a lot of screwed up stuff, but we also thought new thoughts that were important, and I think are still important, and that those thoughts are still developing much later.
JM Fortier 40:34
I remember Eliot telling the story of going to the library to research how to grow, what kind of strategies, crop rotation, this, that, and whatever, but nothing existed. Then he would debate with these extension agents and university professors, and they would try to disclaim. It’s so different from now. You can go to the Market Gardener Institute and take a class, and it’s like everything’s available. Back then, it wasn’t.
Speaker 1 41:57
See, you say Eliot and I are the same, but we’re not. Eliot was 12 years before me, and at that point, I’ve talked to people who were in academia who came to organic, and they said, “No, I think these guys have some good stuff here.” Stuart Hill from Canada, from McGill, and Bob… I won’t remember everyone’s name. But it was hard.
Dave Chapman 43:06
The guy who became the first soil scientist at Rodale, he was from, I think it was the University of Maryland, and when he went back to the university for something, and he’d walk along the hall, his former colleagues would go to the other side of the hall and look away. They thought it was terrible what he was doing. They felt it was anti-science.
Dave Chapman 43:38
They paid a hard price. Some of those early pioneers had to be pretty rugged people, and they weren’t always the easiest people to live with because they were pretty rugged. They had to say, “I don’t care what everyone tells me. I’m going to do it, because I think this is right.”
JM Fortier 43:58
A real contrarian.
Dave Chapman 43:59
A real contrarian, yeah. Eliot’s a real contrarian. He’s not hard to live with, but he certainly is somebody who’s got a great willingness to follow his passion wherever it leads, and he doesn’t really care what everyone else thinks. I think that those early people, and this isn’t just particular to organic agriculture – my wife was a mathematician. She left that long ago, but she wrote a book about women in mathematics, and it was the same.
Dave Chapman 44:36
The very early adopters – the very first women who went into this totally male, hostile environment – it was hard. They were treated badly. People didn’t like them and didn’t want them there. Then the next generation was accepted a little more, and they could kind of get along.
Dave Chapman 44:56
Now the current generation of women in mathematics almost has no idea what we’re talking about. They go, “I don’t encounter any ceilings. My department chair is a woman. Half the students are women. What are you talking about?”
JM Fortier 45:12
That’s always how I’ve felt with my practice. I’ve never had to fight to demonstrate that my food was somehow better. I just go to market, and people come, and people know about organic, and they buy it.
Dave Chapman 45:25
That’s success.
JM Fortier 45:27
It was always like that for me. I felt that yes, starting farmers’ markets, yes, developing the models, but it was never something where I needed to convince people that organic was somehow better for them – it was there.
Dave Chapman 45:42
The thing that I think is easy to forget is that it’s still a movement, and we are not there yet. In America, 7% of the food is certified as organic, and I’m sure there’s another 2% that’s not certified. I’m sure that 2% of what is certified, I wouldn’t call organic anyway, so we can have that. But we have a long way to go to take over the food system and to make it that…
Dave Chapman 46:13
Linley just came back from BIOFACH in Germany. She said it’s amazing over there. They have large chain supermarkets where everything in the store is 100% organic. These aren’t like co-ops; these are supermarkets. We can’t even imagine going to Whole Foods and thinking, “Oh, thank goodness. Ten percent of it is organic.”
JM Fortier 46:39
It could have been like that, because when I go to these stores in France, they also have them. But it could have been, but it isn’t.
Dave Chapman 46:49
It could be. We have a long way to go to that, though.
JM Fortier 46:52
Do you think Whole Foods could be 100% organic?
Dave Chapman 46:55
I don’t know if it’ll be Whole Foods; maybe it’ll be somebody that puts them out of business. What I’m saying is we’re still in a movement, and we need to build the movement. These issues are real; these are not… Joan Gussow talks about how she would go and testify to Congress, and the New York Times would say, “Joan Gussow, food faddist.” They would call her a food faddist because she believed in Whole Foods, and in organic food.
Dave Chapman 47:24
It’s so derogatory and dismissive that… Again, it’s not by mistake. There are a bunch of professionals thinking about what to call Joan Gussow to make it seem like what she’s saying is silly, stupid, or this religious fervor of these whack jobs who are promoting alternative food. Well, it’s not. It’s total sanity. It’s backed up by science.
Dave Chapman 47:52
But she doesn’t have a marketing department, and the people she’s against have large marketing departments. When someone gets old or tired, they hire somebody else. It’s okay. When Joan gets old and tired, you’ve lost a national treasure.
Chris Moran 48:09
There’s also huge parts of the scientific community itself that are very unconvinced of organic.
Dave Chapman 48:15
Funded by chemical industry.
Chris Moran 48:17
I know, but it’s amazing how many of them there are naturally in the fitness industry, which is part of my past. I was always so surprised at the amount of hate sent towards organic, because these were people that wrote a lot about nutrition, and they just said, “There’s no difference in the nutritional value, blah, blah, blah. It’s a scam.”
Chris Moran 48:32
Once I got into farming, it was just so obvious that, well, for one, I think they were missing the point in a lot of ways, because they were only considering human health, which, yes, is still a huge part, but they were missing the other aspect that has to do with the environment and the food system. That didn’t matter. To them, the industrial food is fine. Food is there on the shelf. I’m good. We’re good.
Dave Chapman 48:58
Well, we are good.
JM Fortier 48:59
I’m asking all these big questions. I hope you don’t mind, Dave.
Dave Chapman 49:03
I’m having a good time, JM.
JM Fortier 49:05
I’m having a good time too, and I appreciate you being here. Chris and I, we’re doing this podcast, and we have a lot of guests that come in, share their insights, and what they do. But I think we do think that the solution moving forward is a decentralized food system with a lot of small farms everywhere occupying territory, and feeding local communities. To keep it to the simplest form, this is what Chris and I believe is the best outcome for the future of the food system.
Dave Chapman 49:40
I agree.
JM Fortier 49:41
You agree?
Dave Chapman 49:42
I do. It’s not going to be just that, but I agree. That’s the best outcome. That’s the thing to work for. I agree. I agree that the decentralization shouldn’t just be of the food system; it should be of every system. That way we are healthier, saner, and happier. I do agree with “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.” Do you guys know that book?
JM Fortier 50:05
Yeah. I have it.
Dave Chapman 50:07
Okay. A lot of people don’t know it anymore. But E. F. Schumacher (Fritz) wrote that book. The subtitle is, “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.” There it is. He lays it out pretty clearly. I agree. I think that small is beautiful, and food as if people mattered, that’ll probably be the name of my book, “The Real Organic Project: Food as if People Mattered.”
Dave Chapman 50:45
All of these things we scale and centralization, because it’s easy for a few people to make a lot of money that way. It’s not because it’s better quality or anything. It’s just for money.
Chris Moran 51:03
It’s for money, and only for the few people.
Dave Chapman 51:06
Here’s the interesting thing. We talk about capitalism, and it’s very interesting. In capitalism, decentralization is key to it really functioning the way that people like Adam Smith…
JM Fortier 51:24
The magic hand of the market, is that…?”
Dave Chapman 51:26
The magic hand of the market, but it works if it’s decentralized. Then the market says, “We want some blueberries that taste good and aren’t covered in poison.” Hugh and Lisa Kent go, “We have those.” And the market goes, “Great. We’ll pay more for those.”
Dave Chapman 51:44
Right now, the market in America says, “We don’t want them. We don’t care if they taste better. We don’t care if they don’t have any poisons on them. We don’t care if they’re literally bringing greater health to the people who eat them. We want somebody who can supply us year round with an uninterrupted supply, so we don’t have to fuss.”
Dave Chapman 52:08
And guess what? We are consolidated into six giant chains in America. We’re all owned by one company. So one giant company talks to another giant company. This was in the beginning of Austin Frericks’ wonderful book, “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry”. It’s about these families who kind of run our food system.
JM Fortier 52:38
Cartels.
Dave Chapman 52:39
They’re cartels. He goes, there’s a coffee cartel, a beef cartel, a pork cartel, and there’s a berry cartel. Driscoll’s and Walmart are in there, so there’s a store cartel. In the forward to that, Eric Schlosser, the guy who wrote “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”, he’s quoting Adam Smith, and he’s saying that the one great enemy of capitalism is monopoly.
Dave Chapman 53:12
We have to think about that. They’re saying, “Capitalism itself will encourage monopoly, but monopoly will kill capitalism.” Now capitalism is starting to sound like some kind of Marxist scheme.
JM Fortier 53:28
Yeah, it looks interesting.
Dave Chapman 53:29
It looks interesting.
JM Fortier 53:31
I think that the Rockefellers fell under that at one point. If you study history, they were consolidating all the markets. The government said, “No, this is a monopoly. We need to break it down.”
Dave Chapman 53:44
The government several times has taken huge steps. I think that one was probably the Sherman Antitrust Act that caused the breakup of Standard Oil. I’m not positive which one. There were several anti-monopoly acts passed back in the day when people…
Dave Chapman 54:02
The Gilded Age, I don’t know when that was, maybe 1890 or something, and that was a time much like this time – with incredible division, a small number having unbelievable wealth, and a lot of people having a hard time living in poverty.
Dave Chapman 54:17
Ultimately, they happened to elect, almost by mistake, Teddy Roosevelt, and he became the trust buster, and they really changed things. For a long time, things were changed. Now they’ve gone back. Under Reagan, they set aside the Sherman Antitrust Act. They reinterpreted it.
Dave Chapman 54:40
They haven’t said, “The law doesn’t exist.” They just said, “We call it monopoly when the act of consolidation of a producer or a retailer results in higher prices.” So, as long as you’re keeping the prices down, we’ll give you the power to run the government and our lives?
Dave Chapman 55:01
Now, that’s a problem.
Dave Chapman 55:02
Yeah, it is a problem.
JM Fortier 55:04
You talked earlier about not knowing 10 years prior what happened 10 years later, and it was a big change.
Dave Chapman 55:11
Yeah, let me think about what I was talking about. Which 10 years?
JM Fortier 55:16
Just to say that, could we be surprised by what could happen in the next 10 years? Could there be some force out there that reshapes agriculture for it to be decentralized? Is that a pipe dream? Is that something that we could foresee?
Dave Chapman 55:33
I can’t foresee it, but I can hope for it. I’ve quoted that one night, I was driving Joan Gussow home after a dinner at Stone Barns. We’re driving across the Tappan Zee Bridge, and it’s beautiful. I always was terrified of the Tappan Zee Bridge. At this place, you go, “All these cars.” I breathed a sigh of relief when I got to the other side.
Dave Chapman 55:58
But I was going across at night, it’s all lit up with blue lights, and there’s no cars on the road. I’m like, “This is great.” Joan said, “Do you have optimism about what you’re doing?” I know that Joan actually thought about this a lot, because she had spent her whole life fighting these hopeless fights. I said, “No, I don’t, but I have hope.” She said, “Yeah, that’s good.”
Dave Chapman 56:34
Optimism that things will turn out in a positive way, no, but it’s possible. I think we can’t predict the occurrence of human change. We can see where things are at now, and they’re a little terrifying, but who knows? I think we have already a huge wave of ill health, cancer, heart disease, and so many problems from our diet. I don’t think there’s any question, but that it’s from our diet.
Dave Chapman 57:08
So, at some point, all the moms and dads are going to go, “What are we doing? I won’t tolerate it anymore.” Then people like you guys, me, and everybody spreading the good word that it doesn’t have to be this way, we can eat good food, and we will be happier, saner, and healthier in every way.
JM Fortier 57:35
I know I’m talking a lot, Chris, and please interject. One thing that’s keeping me hopeful is I have a 21-year-old, so I’ve been kind of observing a very much younger generation, and they don’t drink alcohol. They don’t drink and drive. They party once in a while, but it’s not like when I was a kid.
JM Fortier 58:00
For me, there’s something there because just understanding that alcohol is a poison, and then if you consume it regularly, it’s a problem. I think there’s an awareness there about health. I haven’t seen in these kids the connection to soil deep down, but I can imagine that some of them will go there.
JM Fortier 58:27
So, somehow, I’m like, “They don’t get the organic, but they get the non-alcohol.” I’m thinking that we might be surprised about some popular choices that might just flip like that and say, “Okay, we want to eat from healthy soils.” Then our work becomes relevant.
Dave Chapman 58:51
We have our work cut out for us. One of the problems is that we succeeded to the degree that we became boring to a younger generation, because it’s like, “I go into every supermarket and there’s organic. My parents are all into it.”
JM Fortier 59:09
It’s not radicals and hippie anymore.
Dave Chapman 59:10
It doesn’t feel like theirs. They want it to be their thing. I’m okay with that, except what I see is like a lot of them are going regenerative. “Okay, I’m regenerative,” and I’m going like, “Okay, I completely love what you mean by that, but you are being used as shrubbery that’s planted around the mansion by Syngenta, Cargill, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Bunge.” Somehow that has come to be presented by the marketers…
JM Fortier 59:50
And by Hollywood.
Dave Chapman 59:51
There’s a reason that it’s blowing up. Some of it is fueled by really good intentions and a desire for change. Climate change and agriculture has to be a part of it, absolutely. But these guys are going, “Great. We can say we’re regenerative, and we really don’t need to change much of anything. We’re not going to stop making and selling toxic substances to spray on crops. We’re just going to say no-till.”
JM Fortier 1:00:22
It’s obvious.
Dave Chapman 1:00:26
It’s so obvious to us, but it’s not obvious necessarily to young people. There was a listening session at EcoFarm a couple of years ago. The real organic listening session, and there were about 25 people in the room. I loved it. Everyone’s sitting around there going around and introducing themselves and saying why they were there.
Dave Chapman 1:00:50
This one young woman gets up and says, “Well, I’m going to say something that I don’t know how you will receive, but I’m from ‘Kiss the Ground.’ I just think that we all want the same thing. Can’t we work together to get it and not be at cross purposes?”
JM Fortier 1:01:09
She said that, or you said that?
Dave Chapman 1:01:11
She said that because she had attended an organic conference and was at the real organic listening session, and she felt that organic was turning away from the regenerative movement. We went around the room, and we came to another young woman, a few years older than the first one. She was a mom and ran an organic farm with her husband.
Dave Chapman 1:01:34
She explained that. She said, “When I watched ‘Common Ground,’ I felt personally assaulted by that film” because it doesn’t mention the word organic once. The major world movement that is challenging the chemical beast was not mentioned once. It wasn’t a mistake. A lot of the people who were interviewed talked about organic. It was always edited out. The first woman looked like she had been struck. She was horrified.
JM Fortier 1:01:57
She wasn’t aware.
Dave Chapman 1:02:05
She wasn’t aware. So, I just say that it’s very effective, because these are our friends. These are our friends in the regenerative movement, and there also are our enemies. Our enemies are paying for it. Like, “Who’s paying the bill on this bar tab tonight?” “Oh, Syngenta is.” “Who’s putting all these stories out in the press?” “Oh, McDonald’s is or Bayer Monsanto is.” I think that it’s very confusing. As I say, if you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.
JM Fortier 1:02:49
I don’t understand all these conferences because, on my LinkedIn feed, I’m seeing all these people going to these summits, and I know none of them. I’m like, “What is everyone talking about?”
Chris Moran 1:03:03
I have noticed that too.
JM Fortier 1:03:05
They’re all super bright-looking young people trying to change the food system. I know none of them. I’m not complaining here. I’m just saying this is what I’m observing. I’m questioning myself, like, “What are they talking about? Are they talking about young people getting into farming? Are they talking about decentralizing the food system?” I don’t understand what they’re talking about. They’re not farmers.
Dave Chapman 1:03:32
They have jobs, health benefits, and they make a decent living. I’m just saying there’s a lot of money in this space. Who’s paying for it? Who’s paying the salaries of all these people going to these conferences and giving talks? One of our supporters said, “I really want you to talk at this regenerative conference.” I said, “Sure, I’ll talk. They won’t love what I say, but that’s okay. I’ll just tell the truth. I won’t be mean.”
Dave Chapman 1:04:01
I talked to some of the organizers, and they’re like, “Yeah, well, we’re not sure.” One of them said, “We know you’re right. I wish it was 10 years ago and I had chosen a different word.”
JM Fortier 1:04:14
But now they’re stuck with their…
Dave Chapman 1:04:16
But they’re stuck with it.
Chris Moran 1:04:18
Yeah, that’s a thing.
Dave Chapman 1:04:19
It’s okay. Look, this happens. It’s happening to organic too. We have to fight for it. We have to defend our community. If they want it to be real, they need to defend their community. I haven’t heard it yet. I’m like, “Well, where’s the real regenerative movement?” Because I don’t hear it. Where are the people saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no. We’re not with them. Don’t mistake us. We don’t mean that. When we say ‘soil health,’ we demand that it not include herbicides.” I haven’t heard it.
Chris Moran 1:05:03
You mentioned earlier that when the decision happened with organic in 2017, that people were crying. That brought to my mind that this was deeply meaningful, and it was enough to move people that much. I don’t know why that stuck out to me, I guess. Some people might think, “Okay, whatever. It didn’t go your way, but really crying about it?”
Chris Moran 1:05:27
What I want to understand is, what were the conditions that led to it being that deeply meaningful to people? What I’m imagining is that people had given their entire life to this. There were people that had been around it for a long time.
Chris Moran 1:05:41
If you could also connect that to kind of the origin of organic itself, why did this even become a thing in the first place? Why was it necessary? I’m sure some people that don’t know any better might think, “Wasn’t it all farming organic once upon a time?”
Dave Chapman 1:05:57
No, it never was all organic.
Chris Moran 1:05:59
But people will say that.
Dave Chapman 1:06:01
Two questions. So, let me do the first one.
Chris Moran 1:06:04
Yeah, absolutely.
Dave Chapman 1:06:04
What happened at that meeting – these National Organic Standards Board meetings are incredibly boring. They’re making proposals mostly about really subtle, picayune standard stuff. Then in the audience, there’s a bunch of lobbyists who are paid by different industry groups to try and promote why their product should be permitted. That’s the norm.
Dave Chapman 1:06:29
Very few farmers go to these things. I had never been to one. I barely knew what it was until we got into this. Then I started going to these meetings. Before it, there was this group called the National Organic Coalition, and they had their meeting the day before. I went into that room, and there were 60 people sitting around a table. I didn’t know any of them.
Dave Chapman 1:06:50
I had never heard of any of them, and they all knew each other because they went to these meetings twice a year. They were good guys. They were our team. They were not farmers. They were all people who worked for nonprofits, and it was their job to try and protect organic, and that’s what they were trying to do. But this meeting was different – 60 farmers came to this meeting from around the country and got up and testified.
Dave Chapman 1:07:18
These were Fred Kirschenmann, Eliot was there. He wouldn’t testify, he says, “I won’t dignify the USDA by speaking,” but he spoke at the rally at lunchtime. This was a big deal, and all the nonprofit people were there, and they’d been fighting on this for years. When we lost, it really freaked people out. I imagined that we were going to lose. That wasn’t a surprise to me.
JM Fortier 1:06:01
Some of them went in thinking, “We’ll win.”
Dave Chapman 1:07:53
Yes, they really thought – some of the farmers, some of the nonprofit people. One of them afterwards, a nonprofit guy said to me, “I just spent the last 10 years of my life trying to have some influence over the USDA in order to protect organic, and now I feel that all of that has been for naught and it’s lost.” I thought, “Well, those are honest words.”
Dave Chapman 1:08:20
That was the feeling and the energy of why this was… It was a big defeat because it was actually a reversal – nothing was passed, only something was defeated. But the fact that it was defeated was a reversal of seven years earlier, when overwhelmingly they said, “Hydroponic cannot be called organic.” That was that. Now the other question was, where did organic come from?
Chris Moran 1:08:49
Yeah. What were the conditions that created the necessity for an organic movement? I’ve heard Eliot even go all the way back to the 1840s, I believe. I think he was referencing something in France. Because, like I said, there are people that think it wasn’t at all organic. I know you say…
Dave Chapman 1:08:49
Yeah, that’s what Alan Savory says to me, “Well, Dave, organic farming has killed six civilizations in the world. Is that enough?” I say, “Alan, that wasn’t organic farming; that was non-chemical farming.” But that’s not what organic means. Organic farming is about exactly what you’re teaching, which is about how we protect the soil, care for it, love it like our mother, and help it to feed us.
Dave Chapman 1:09:35
The first time I knew that there was obviously a problem, I read this in Mark Bitten’s book; it was in, I think, 1910. George Washington Carver, who was a great organic champion, but not with the word “Organic,” was a great advocate for organic farming. He was teaching at Tuskegee University down in the South. He was teaching farmers.
Dave Chapman 1:10:08
It was like an extension that they had created to reach out and say, “You got to hoard your organic matter, always put it back in the soil. These are the ways you take care to keep the life in the soil, and these are crops you can grow, cover crops, all of that.” He was teaching organic farming. It was not yet a political movement. He was teaching a way of farming in order to make a living in a sane way that they could make a living because it was sustainable.
Dave Chapman 1:10:41
Somebody asked him if he would write something against the chemical companies, and he declined as being just a little too politically hot. That wasn’t his work – fighting the chemical companies. His work was teaching the farmers how to actually farm. Okay, that was the first.
Dave Chapman 1:11:02
Then it kept building and building because the chemical companies kept growing and growing and coming more and more and defining agriculture, until they managed through their people in the back room who sat around and said, “What can we call it so people won’t freak out? Instead of chemical farming, we’ll call it conventional.” That’s a real achievement – to call that conventional.
JM Fortier 1:11:25
Normal farm.
Dave Chapman 1:11:26
It’s so unnormal. It’s so unconventional. The organic movement really was born, in my opinion. Steiner was earlier, around 1920, I think, but Albert Howard in England, about the 1930s, was still in India then learning it from the peasants. He went to teach chemical farming, and then he went, “Oh…”
JM Fortier 1:11:54
And farming for 40 centuries.
Dave Chapman 1:11:56
“Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan,” in about 1920, King, who, unfortunately, died later. He worked for the USDA, and he went and did this amazing, amazing tour. I read all these books back when I was trying to figure out, “Okay, how do we do this?” I got them from Eliot and Jake Guest. Jake described reading all these books, sitting there by a wise kerosene lamp, trying to write the first organic standards for the Northeast.
Dave Chapman 1:12:27
They didn’t know. Jake didn’t know. He was no farmer, and he’s like, “Do we allow this? Do we do that? What is organic? We knew we wanted to be organic, but we weren’t quite sure what it was.” But what Howard and those people saw is it was a political movement. They didn’t invent the kind of farming, and they were the first to say so. He wrote a whole book about learning it in India.
Dave Chapman 1:12:55
But they were the first to say, “We have to find a better way. This other way is going to kill us. It’s going to make us sick. It’s going to make our soil sick. This is a better way.” They made it political. It was a political conversation. It was a movement.
Dave Chapman 1:13:14
Actually, they weren’t embracing certification; they were embracing farming differently and eating differently, so making the choice to eat that food. It’s funny, in the early days, it was kind of the Lords and Ladies in England. It was an aristocratic movement, but when it came to America, that was certainly not part of it.
JM Fortier 1:13:41
I read a lot about how Bob Rodale also was pioneer with his magazine.
Dave Chapman 1:13:47
J.I was the first one…
JM Fortier 1:13:48
J.I., yeah. The magazine was like marketing, because it was marketing about organic, which is a big deal.
Dave Chapman 1:13:58
When I was a kid, my best friend’s mom read Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine, and she was an organic gardener, and she grew incredible vegetables. We would eat them, and she would make them. It was all delicious. You can’t imagine that a bunch of kids thought this was good – but it was good, and we did love it. She was very much reading that magazine. That was where she was getting her lead from.
JM Fortier 1:14:24
You should start a magazine, Dave. “The Real Organic Project Magazine.” I would love that.
Dave Chapman 1:14:30
Yeah, in my free time. I know.
JM Fortier 1:14:33
We should get a younger generation of super-stoked people to write that magazine, because a magazine is a good thing.
Dave Chapman 1:14:42
It is good.
JM Fortier 1:14:42
You go through it, there’s tangible paper; you read it, and you read people’s thoughts. I think we should…
Dave Chapman 1:14:51
Okay. I like it. I’ll put that right next to “we need to get 1,000 chefs to join us.” We were talking about 1,000 real friends, where we’re getting people who were eaters rather than farmers to also support us. Dan said, “Yeah, Dave, but 1,000 real chefs. You need to have chefs be part of it.” I said, “Oh, that’s great, Dan.” But once again, I said, “I wonder which lifetime I’m going to get to that.” But it’s right.
JM Fortier 1:15:23
Oh, they’re great advocates, and they have the spotlight.
Dave Chapman 1:15:27
They have the microphone.
JM Fortier 1:15:28
Yeah, they’re super-popular and most of them care.
Dave Chapman 1:15:33
I agree,
Chris Moran 1:15:36
If the USDA tomorrow did a reform, kicked out hydroponics and CAFOs, and just went right back to what it was before, where would you turn your attention to next? Because I imagine, I guess, that kind of issue that spurred on the Real Organic Project would… There’s still a lot of problems, so what I’m trying to say is, where would you really turn your attention to, because it wouldn’t be to reform organic standards – not that it is currently. You have the label.
Dave Chapman 1:16:07
We’re not working very hard at reform, not that I’m against anybody doing it. What would we do? How would the world be different?
Chris Moran 1:16:15
Yeah.
Dave Chapman 1:16:16
First, I’d be very happy for a couple of days. That’s how victory is: you’re happy for a couple of days. Defeat, you’re miserable for a lifetime. But I would just work on celebrating the good, because, as I say, we still need to build a movement.
Dave Chapman 1:16:37
Even if the USDA embraced us and said, “We love you,” we’d say, “Great. Now spend your money to promote this – to teach people, to help people transition, and to market. Let a thousand flowers bloom, let this spread like wildfire.” So, I think there’s a lot of work to do. I believe that farming has a huge impact on climate, democracy, and health. I think that for all these things, we actually want to bring everybody with us.
Dave Chapman 1:17:27
The truth is, if Cargill, ADM, and Bunge are thriving, then democracy – as I believe in it – will be threatened. It’s just how it is. We need to have a vast web of farmers, eaters, and the communities that come with that web. Then we get everything that we actually want. I’m not saying it can’t go wrong, because it certainly can. I look at Nazi Germany as an example of something that went horribly wrong. It was a lot more decentralized than we are now.
Dave Chapman 1:18:12
Actually, the Nazi Party embraced biodynamic farming until about halfway through the war, because Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, supported biodynamic farming. The biodynamic community was divided. Half of them said, “No, we’re not going to support fascism.” The other half said, “Guys, this is our chance to take Germany and turn agriculture biodynamic.” So, the community was very divided.
Dave Chapman 1:18:50
Again, the ones who went with the Nazis had the best of intentions. They saw it as a deal with the devil, saying, “Yes, but we’re going to get what we’re working for.” The others said, “That’s not what we’re working for; we’re working for a community, not just farming practices.”
Dave Chapman 1:19:08
What happened is Rudolf Hess stole an airplane, flew to England, and jumped out with a parachute, he apparently trying to reach the royal family to negotiate a peace deal. Allegedly he did this without Hitler’s permission. He was caught wandering in the countryside and arrested.
Dave Chapman 1:19:34
The English?
Dave Chapman 1:19:40
The English jailed him for the next ten years. As a result, Hitler said, “Anything connected to that guy is out of here – so biodynamics is out of here.” The biodynamic community reunited. This story has been widely told, and I’ve read a lot of research on it. At the end of the war, they could say, “We were against fascism,” and certainly many of them were. They probably all were, but…
JM Fortier 1:20:12
They were looking for how to…
Dave Chapman 1:20:14
How to create that change, and I think that they didn’t think big enough.
JM Fortier 1:20:19
Do you know if Rudolph Steiner was still alive at that time?
Dave Chapman 1:20:23
No, he wasn’t. I think he died in the 1920s. I don’t think he made it to the 1930s. He died fairly young. I don’t know how he would have actually responded to it. He had his own personal challenges in this area. Sorry.
JM Fortier 1:20:45
I’m fascinated by that. I went to his hometown in Austria, and I’m interested in these things because there’s something there. I didn’t know that story, though. There’s a lesson here.
Chris Moran 1:20:46
They don’t include that story in your standard documentary about World War Two and the Nazis.
Dave Chapman 1:21:01
No. The biodynamic people don’t talk about it either. Of course, they’re embarrassed that any of them ever went there, but it was a big deal. Their Secretary of Agriculture, even up until halfway through the war, was a serious biodynamic advocate. He was serious. Do you want the grim story?
Chris Moran 1:21:32
Yeah.
Dave Chapman 1:21:32
Okay. They had a biodynamic herb farm at Dachau. This is true, and they were growing biodynamic herbs to make drugs for the German army, and the people who were imprisoned at Dachau were forced to work in the fields. True story. We don’t hear that one much either. Look, the reason I think of this story, and why I think it’s important – and some of my friends don’t think it’s important – but I do.
Dave Chapman 1:21:50
It’s important to remember what we’re about and that we have to see the really big picture about what we care about – what real health is. Real health is not having the inmates of Dachau grow your herbs. It’s not. It can’t be. Even if they’re doing everything perfectly biologically…
JM Fortier 1:22:34
The energy is not right.
Dave Chapman 1:22:35
The energy is not right, and the world that you’re creating is not right. It helps me because, in the organic community, there are people who go… I’ve been told more than once, “Stay in your lane.”
JM Fortier 1:22:51
Stay in your lane.
Dave Chapman 1:23:00
Yeah. I wrote a letter about Black Lives Matter. I said, “Look, I’m writing a letter from a very personal perspective. Today, I’m not speaking for the Real Organic Project, but I’m speaking as the father of a Black son, who I fear for when he drives around in a car.”
Dave Chapman 1:23:14
I wrote the fine letter, and 50 people unsubscribed, two farmers dropped their certification, and I got a letter from the founder of one of the major distribution companies. He’s retired now, an organic distributor in America, who said, “Dave, stay in your lane. This is not our issue.”
Chris Moran 1:23:38
You know what? It’s not about what you said. It’s about the fact that you said it to those people, most likely a lot of them. They’re like, “Oh, what are you trying to virtue signal, or one of these things?”
JM Fortier 1:23:50
Yeah, but everything’s connected.
Chris Moran 1:23:52
I know, but I’m saying that’s what’s so disappointing about it, is that it’s not even the actuality of what you said. The details might be, “I agree, I agree, but the fact that you’re saying it makes me realize you’re one of those people and you want to preach to me. Stay in your lane.”
JM Fortier 1:24:08
Stay in your lane, wow. That’s not for me.
Dave Chapman 1:24:13
Yeah, so I think we shouldn’t stay in our lane.
JM Fortier 1:24:15
No, I want to drive everywhere. I want to see things.
Chris Moran 1:24:19
Intersections are where everything interesting happens.
JM Fortier 1:24:22
Exactly. And accidents.
Chris Moran 1:24:24
And accidents. Accidents are interesting in a bad way. I wanted to talk about the consumer in our movement, because we’ve been talking a lot about, I guess, the farmers, and we had a woman on the podcast – a French podcast, actually, Julio Bay – who brought up a phrase, “yes, but,” and even devoted a whole chapter in a book to it.
Chris Moran 1:24:47
Just the idea of the consumer is obsessed with this: “Yeah, but.” “Yeah, I hear you, but it’s too expensive.” “Yeah, but we can’t actually feed the world.” I think most people probably would agree that economics is maybe the number one factor in that. So, why is it that consumers are so stuck in this rut of just always saying, “Yeah, but?”
JM Fortier 1:25:14
I’m buying cheap.
Dave Chapman 1:25:20
This is a pretty big question for our species, especially for us in Europe and North America, because we do have – I say “we,” many of us – a level of personal affluence that is unprecedented in human history, and we take it for granted, again. So, if we were to step back from anything and go, “That’s terrible.”
Dave Chapman 1:25:54
How do we handle the fact that it’s cheaper to grow food with slaves? How do we handle that maybe it’s cheaper to grow food covered in poison short term, and it’s definitely cheaper, short term, to go, “I’m going to farm this field for three years and completely kill the soil, but I’m going to make a lot of money in those three years.” There are all these things where we go, “Is that too far for you? Is that too far for you?”
Dave Chapman 1:26:27
There will come a point at which somebody will say, “Well, I don’t care about that, but the first five things you mentioned, yeah, I agree. I can’t support that.” So, I think we have to find a place where people understand that real food is completely in their own self-interest.
Dave Chapman 1:26:50
It’s not, “Don’t eat this food because you’re a nice person.” You might be a nicer person if you choose to eat this food, but you don’t have to be a nice person in order to eat it – you can be a jerk and still go, “That’s the food I want.”
Dave Chapman 1:27:05
I think probably a lot of the titans of industry in New York City, who work in the financial industry, banking, and all, at least have somebody else shopping for them, if not going down to the farmer’s market themselves and getting great food, because they’re not stupid. They want to eat good food that tastes good, and they understand it’s better for their health.
JM Fortier 1:27:30
Yeah, I remember last time you were here, you gave us, I think, the most revolutionary idea ever. It was about just having transparency over the practices of the food that we buy. If we had a little iPad that was showing us how these cows are actually raised, then people would switch to organic overnight.
JM Fortier 1:27:55
It’s that opacity that’s really creating the distance that people don’t know. They just look at the price. They look at the product and the price, and that’s the only information they have. So, product and price – that’s it.
Dave Chapman 1:28:10
One of the things that’s happening now is often the food is grown somewhere else – meaning some other country. Not just out of sight of Quebec, but out of sight of the United States. So, over 40% of our vegetables come from Mexico or South America, and over 60% of our berries. Okay, why is that? We don’t have the climate for it. No. We don’t have the soil for it. No.
Dave Chapman 1:28:49
The biggest single factor is that a worker in America will cost 20 times what a worker in Mexico costs – 20 times. A worker in Mexico is making about $10 a day – long hours, a dollar an hour. In California and Florida, they’re making $18/hr, maybe $20/hr, if they’re on H-2A visas and you have to pay for housing, travel, and all that.
Dave Chapman 1:29:22
So, how is somebody in this country possibly going to compete? But it’s not just about that. That’s just the slam dunk: “I’m sorry, you’re going to go out of business because I can find somebody to do this.” Did we talk about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire last time?
Chris Moran 1:29:42
No, I don’t think so. Or maybe. That does sound familiar now.
JM Fortier 1:29:45
What is it?
Chris Moran 1:29:46
The factory fire.
Dave Chapman 1:29:47
Yeah, the factory fire.
Chris Moran 1:29:48
I know about that fire.
Dave Chapman 1:29:49
Yeah, it was a big fire in New York City a little over 100 years ago. It was in the Lower East Side – right off Washington Square Park, apparently. I didn’t realize that, but somebody just told me. They had locked the doors, and they were making shirtwaists. It was a thing that people wore back then, or whatever. It was an item of clothing, and they had people working in the sweatshops.
Dave Chapman 1:30:19
They locked the doors because they didn’t want people to go out and steal things, so they just locked them in. There was no OSHA. There were no laws or regulations around this. They had a fire, and this gauzy fabric was very flammable. The whole place went up, and these people were trapped on the fourth story, and they couldn’t get out.
Dave Chapman 1:30:41
They went out to the ledge, and all they could do was jump and hope they survived because they were dying of smoke inhalation. All right. They all died. Nobody survived the jump. The fire people were there with nets to catch them, and the nets ripped because the people were moving too fast.
Dave Chapman 1:31:01
This was a big, big deal in America. It happened right in New York City. People were walking by and taking pictures. They were lining up the bodies to try to identify them. This changed America. If it had happened in Nebraska, it wouldn’t have changed America. But it happened in New York City.
Dave Chapman 1:31:27
One of the people who came and saw it was a woman named Frances Perkins. She became a labor activist and ended up working for the governor of New York to create safety standards. Then the governor, Al Smith, was replaced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt became president and said to her, “You were my labor secretary in New York. Would you like to be the U.S. labor secretary?”
Dave Chapman 1:31:56
She said, “Well, Franklin, only if you mean it, and will let me do it for real. I’m not here to be a symbol.” He said, “No, no. I’ll back you up.” He said, “Do you really think we could do it?” She said, “I think we can do it, but you’ve got to mean it.” He did mean it, and they changed the laws a lot, so it became much safer to have a factory job in America. That’s an amazing story about what happens when people are paying attention.
JM Fortier 1:32:30
Yeah, when they see.
Dave Chapman 1:32:31
When they see it. Now, the cheap clothing, and our very inexpensive clothing is made in Bangladesh and places like that. People are still dying every week in little factory fires there, and we don’t see it, and we don’t care. It’s not because we’re bad people; it’s just that you can only care about so much stuff that you can’t see. But if somebody in your town died and you went down and saw the bodies lined up on the sidewalk, you’d go, “Oh, that’s it. No more.”
Chris Moran 1:33:03
Everything stops. This is what we need to stop right now.
Dave Chapman 1:33:05
This is not going to continue. We have this problem, which is that almost everything is made somewhere else, and food is grown somewhere else. So, if you took one of those vegetable places growing hydroponic blueberries in Mexico and put it next to your house, you’d go, “That’s it.”
Dave Chapman 1:33:31
The people who were working there weren’t even Mexicans. They’re from Central and South America, because they can’t get Mexicans to do it that cheaply. They have to get the most oppressed, oh my god, helpless people to come and do the work, or they’re indigenous. We can change things with awareness, but we are exhausted because there’s so much information available, and that’s our movement.
Chris Moran 1:33:55
Yeah, that’s the thing. You can’t throw anything on the nightly news and expect the world to see it anymore. Even if you have millions of people watch, it’s nothing anymore. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, that happened yesterday. A million people watched.” The next day, next thing happens. That’s very hard to…
JM Fortier 1:34:14
Seriously, if you’re in your 20s, it’s time to get to work. We need to expose these things, and people should refocus on these issues. When you’re young and you want to change the world, this is what you should be working on.
Dave Chapman 1:34:30
But I agree with you completely, JM. It’s a call to arms to all young people, but I also love Bill McKibben’s call to arms.
JM Fortier 1:34:38
Tell us.
Dave Chapman 1:34:39
He’s calling to arms old people. He’s saying…
JM Fortier 1:34:43
Come on out!
Dave Chapman 1:34:44
He calls it the third act. He’s saying, “You know what? We’re old, retired, and not broke. Do you remember what it was we cared about when we were 20 years old?” Because most of us did. He said, “Well, it’s the third act. It’s time to keep caring, to show it, and to become activists.” The third act is the third activist.
JM Fortier 1:35:07
I like that.
Dave Chapman 1:35:07
Mckibben is good.
Chris Moran 1:35:09
I like that too, because you could parallel that with the idea that grassroots and top-down approaches, I think, both are, in a way, necessary a lot of the time. If you only have one, it’s the same story over and over again. It ends up in a roadblock. But when you pincer move, and you come from both sides, then you squeeze the middle, and…
Dave Chapman 1:35:30
Imagine if we got together, what we could do.
JM Fortier 1:35:32
The raging grannies.
Dave Chapman 1:35:33
That’s right. The raging grannies and the angry adolescents put it together.
JM Fortier 1:35:41
I love it. Because I’m an optimistic, I think we’re going to come back to these issues. I think that we went a bit sideways. There were other issues that were raised. Anyway, I just think we’ll come back to it. I think these are the real issues of our world right now – food.
Dave Chapman 1:35:58
That’s right. Food is the place where it all comes together. It is the crossroads where everything goes through. It’s the spice road. This is it because everybody has to eat. That’s not optional, and there really isn’t anything like it.
Chris Moran 1:36:22
I want to switch gears to talking about takeaways from your podcast, because you’ve had so many interesting conversations with people and have learned a lot. Maybe you don’t remember at all – that’s fine – but I just want to ask you about certain topics, and you can just tell us some of the best takeaways and most interesting things you’ve learned about them.
Dave Chapman 1:36:44
Okay, I’ll do my best.
Chris Moran 1:36:45
Yeah, but no pressure if you can’t remember details. But what’s the best you’ve heard about human health lately in the organic world? Maybe it’s about nutrient density. I think you had Tina Owens, was her name, talk about nutritional dark matter?
Dave Chapman 1:37:00
That was an interesting interview.
Chris Moran 1:37:02
I would like to hear some about that.
Dave Chapman 1:37:03
Yeah. I have another one coming up with William Lee. I’m going to interview him, and he’s very good. He’s a hitter, and his understanding of health is basically Albert Howard’s understanding of health. He has a whole lot of science. He’s a hitter. He’s taught at a lot of very fancy university med schools.
Dave Chapman 1:37:30
But seeing as I haven’t done that one yet, although I’m connecting with him, I can talk about what came up with Tina. Tina and I are not in perfect alignment. Tina very much embraces the regenerative movement, and great – she believes in scale. By that, I mean she would look at what you did or I did…
JM Fortier 1:37:58
It’s too small.
Dave Chapman 1:37:58
It’s not important, is what she would say. It’s too small. We don’t have time. We need to scale this, so we need to talk to Godzilla.
JM Fortier 1:38:09
I disagree with that so much.
Dave Chapman 1:38:11
Tell me. I’d like to hear it.
JM Fortier 1:38:13
I don’t want to…
Dave Chapman 1:38:14
Okay. This afternoon you will tell me. I don’t agree with it at all either. I think another interview I did was with Will Rosenzweig, and he’s an educator. He started The Republic of Tea, that company, and then he sold it. He started another company, sold it, and then he just teaches at Berkeley. He’s semi-retired now, but he does great stuff.
Dave Chapman 1:38:49
He said, “The answer is not to figure out how to scale it; it’s to figure out how to replicate it.” We need 1,000 or 100,000, not how do we turn it all into one? Because when you do, it always turns into crap. That’s the problem with people, in my opinion, who think that we can only do this by working with General Foods and Walmart, which is a very tempting thing to do.
Dave Chapman 1:39:15
I could go to Davos and have some influence with those people, but I don’t believe it’s the answer. I don’t want to go to Davos. My wife doesn’t want me to go to Davos. I think that the answer is to build a movement. I understand that it’s easy to look at that and go, “That’s silly,” but I don’t think it’s silly. That was a difference that we had.
Dave Chapman 1:39:48
But I learned a lot from Tina. She’s very interesting. Her nutritional dark matter – what she was saying about that – she was talking about the bio-compounds, the secondary metabolites in plants. Gosh, not that long ago, it was big news that there were like 40,000 or 50,000 of them. Now there are peer-reviewed, published articles saying 200,000 to 300,000 compounds that they’re identifying. They haven’t named most of them. They don’t know what most of them do.
JM Fortier 1:40:17
That’s crazy.
Dave Chapman 1:40:18
That’s why they call it nutritional dark matter. But they’ve stopped…
JM Fortier 1:40:22
That’s a bizarre name.
Dave Chapman 1:40:24
Yeah, some guy from… I can’t remember…
JM Fortier 1:40:27
Why would you name it that?
JM Fortier 1:40:28
It was a good name.
JM Fortier 1:40:29
Dark matter?
Chris Moran 1:40:30
I kind of like it.
Dave Chapman 1:40:32
You don’t know what it is, right?
Chris Moran 1:40:34
Because of unknown…
Dave Chapman 1:40:37
Yeah, but we remember “dark matter.” It’s a good name. But what’s interesting is that they used to just call them secondary metabolites, and what they meant by that was that they’re completely unimportant. They don’t serve any function; we don’t know what they do, but if we take them out, nothing happens to the system. Now they’re going, “You know what? Everything matters.
Dave Chapman 1:41:02
We get it. We don’t understand how it matters most of the time. We don’t understand how two of these bio-compounds will interact with each other. We don’t understand how they will interact with our many, many compounds. Some of them we make. Some of them we can’t make. We need to take them in. Some of them are anti-carcinogens. Some of them are carcinogens. We don’t understand it.”
Dave Chapman 1:41:29
The point being, we believe now, and “we” meaning people for whom this has been their life study. I’m not talking about, God bless them, the people who were out there just in the wild looking around and observing reality and going, “Okay, I think this is what’s real.” I’m talking about people who actually were doing science as a way to find the right answer. But it’s not the only way to get to the answer. In some cases, it’s not the way to get the answer.
Dave Chapman 1:41:58
But I think the point is, we’re now understanding that we don’t understand, but we ignore the system at our peril. If we want real health, we need to figure out how to get food that has that stuff, and we have to look at the soil in order to figure that out.
JM Fortier 1:42:17
It’s so simple. You can’t go wrong.
JM Fortier 1:42:21
It’s so simple, and you can’t go wrong, but there will be a lot of people who are paid a lot of money to convince everyone that that’s not true, or that you’re just a food faddist, JM.
JM Fortier 1:42:24
A food faddist. Oh, God.
Dave Chapman 1:42:22
Yeah, I know. I tell this story sometimes. Paul Hawken, who is a friend, talked about the early days when he was at Erewhon in Boston, which was the first organic food distributor. He said they would trot him out and have him be in these public debates with Dr. Frederick J. Stare, who was the Harvard head of the Department of Nutrition.
Dave Chapman 1:42:22
He was fighting against him?
Dave Chapman 1:42:22
Absolutely. This guy was head of the department for like 40 years. They would have these debates, and Paul said, “I lost every debate, and I was always right.” That’s really important to remember, which is that somebody can have compelling alleged proof, and it doesn’t mean that it’s right.
Dave Chapman 1:42:22
You shouldn’t be discouraged just because somebody else seems to have proof that you don’t have, because the proof is often manufactured. It’s often paid for by the very people that you’re saying have it wrong.
JM Fortier 1:43:40
Plato used to talk about that, and that’s how he got killed. Sophiste, as we would say in French, these are arguments that are all correctly structured, but they’re false. They can’t argue against that because…
Dave Chapman 1:43:55
They didn’t like it when he said that.
JM Fortier 1:43:56
Well, he was trying to say that’s exactly what’s going on, and no one’s paying attention. That’s so true today. Marketing, in many ways, can be that.
Dave Chapman 1:44:09
It can be good, but it is often bad because of that strange economic proposition where money tends to consolidate. Zephyr Teachout was one of the people I interviewed. She wrote Break Them Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.
Dave Chapman 1:44:31
She was an anti-monopolist, and she said, “One of the things about monopoly is that another way in which the invisible hand concept is broken is that big companies now use their money not to find better ways to do things, but to further monopolize the market. They spend their money on influence and on shelf space, getting exclusive shelf space, so somebody else isn’t even allowed on the shelf. That is completely contrary to the ideals of capitalism.”
Dave Chapman 1:45:03
Yeah, free market and capitalism.
Dave Chapman 1:45:05
That’s not a free market
Chris Moran 1:45:06
Because then it’s just saying that it doesn’t even matter to do it better, and we’re just going to be the only option. You’ll have no choice but to go through us. Amazon, in a lot of ways, is like, “There might be another place where you can buy the thing,” but Amazon is like, “Yeah, but guess what? It’s going to be cheaper with us and easier.” So, come on.
Dave Chapman 1:45:06
It is. It’s cheap and easy. It’s very hard to resist.
JM Fortier 1:45:25
The podcast, Dave, I haven’t listened to it. I’m guilty of that, and I will. Who are you inviting? What are your metrics for choosing guests? Who are you interested in for this podcast? Are they farmers, food advocates, or contrarians?
Dave Chapman 1:45:46
Yes, all of those. And scientists, politicians, and authors. One of the things that I’ve tried to do in the podcast is triangulate and examine organic from all these different perspectives because if you try to dumb it down, it just becomes platitudes. I’m like, “Well, let’s look at this.”
Dave Chapman 1:46:10
That’s why the people I’ve mentioned are very different, and they wouldn’t necessarily even have heard of each other or listened to each other, but they understand something very clearly from one point of view, and it all goes back to the central crossroads. Marketing? Okay, Seth Godin. I’ve interviewed Seth Godin twice. He’s a brilliant, wonderful, ethical marketer.
Chris Moran 1:46:34
Seth Godin is on Tim Ferriss a lot. Seth Godin is a big name.
Dave Chapman 1:46:40
Yeah, although most of the farmers have never heard of him. And we interview farmers. We never want to leave them out of the conversation. They need to be in the conversation. We pick different farmers. We do it every week. So, we’ve got over 200 episodes out, and maybe a third of them are farmers, maybe a quarter. But we’re even talking about doing a separate Farmer-to-Farmer podcast that would just be all farmers. Chris Blanchard, our hats off to him.
JM Fortier 1:47:20
That would be a nice homage to him.
Dave Chapman 1:47:25
Yeah, he was great.
JM Fortier 1:47:22
People really liked that podcast. They liked him and that podcast.
Dave Chapman 1:47:27
I was on it once, and I said, “Well, Chris, I’d love to do it, if I can talk about real organic.” He goes, “I want you to talk about tomatoes.” I said, “I’ll tell you what: 50-50, half tomatoes, half real organic.” We went, “Okay.” We shook on it.
JM Fortier 1:47:42
It’s funny, I went on his podcast also. It was a really nice time. I don’t know how to say this without sounding flukey, but it was the first time that I realized that I was a public personality because he was saying, “Oh, it’s JM Fortier.” He was so enthusiastic about it, and I was like, “What’s the big deal?” He made me realize that my name was floating aloud out there. He was such a great guy.
Dave Chapman 1:48:12
Yeah, I know. He was really mourned. No one’s quite done what he did. It’s like different people were doing diversions, but he had something that was very simple and pure.
JM Fortier 1:48:27
Yeah, exactly.
Chris Moran 1:48:28
What about environmental health? What’s some takeaways from your podcast that…?
Dave Chapman 1:48:34
Environmental health? Let me think about that. Give me some more hints about what we mean by environmental health.
Chris Moran 1:48:41
I asked before about human health, but what about the impacts of agriculture on the environment? Are there new things that people are sharing with you, or repeated things that just need reminding?
Dave Chapman 1:48:55
Al Gore was certainly…
JM Fortier 1:48:57
He was on the podcast?
Dave Chapman 1:48:58
Yeah.
Chris Moran 1:48:59
Oh, wow. We want to have him here.
Dave Chapman 1:49:01
He’s very knowledgeable. It was interesting. He was more knowledgeable about the impact of climate on agriculture than about the impact of agriculture on climate. That was a whole new perspective for me. He had a worldview. He’d talk about the flooding here and there, and how it hit them, and the drought over there, and how it hit them. That was very interesting.
Dave Chapman 1:49:34
Okay, let me go back to this. We had a whole symposium session on climate. I’m trying to think who we talked about. Certainly, Bill McKibben was one of our guests. Paul Hawken is probably the most prominent person.
JM Fortier 1:50:01
That’s his message.
Dave Chapman 1:50:02
Yeah. He’s big on climate and regeneration of our planet. He means it with a big R and a real R, not a small corporate R.
JM Fortier 1:50:15
I like that, by the way, “Small corporate R.” I love that.
Dave Chapman 1:50:20
I know. He talks about how corporations take good words and turn them into what he calls “weasel words,” like “sustainable.” Paul talks a lot about the impact of agriculture on climate. He just has a new book out called “Carbon: The Book of Life,” which I highly recommend to people. Very interesting and rich love story.
JM Fortier 1:50:45
He was one of the first ones to link those two things – climate change, farming, and carbon. He probably has a different perspective about this now, considering everything that has happened in the last 15 years. Climate-smart farming being…
Dave Chapman 1:51:12
The weasel words, again?
JM Fortier 1:51:14
Yeah, I hate that.
Dave Chapman 1:51:15
I know. We’ve talked about that. Michael Pollan, I interviewed Michael a couple of times, and we actually didn’t agree about regenerative agriculture. I thought that conversation was really interesting, because he said, “Well, organic was really about addressing chemicals in our food, but regenerative is about addressing climate change.”
Dave Chapman 1:51:40
I said, “Michael, why? Why do you think that?” He said, “Well, they say that’s what it’s about.” I said, “That’s just a marketing thing.” When it started it wasn’t about that. Regenerative, when Midwest farmers, the Gabe Browns of the world, embraced it, didn’t care about climate. They cared about making a living as a farmer and using less inputs.”
JM Fortier 1:52:02
And building soils.
Dave Chapman 1:52:03
And building soils, absolutely. So, let’s take a lot of the great stuff from organic, call it our own, fine. Then they went, “A lot of scientists are saying, ‘maybe this is good for climate,'” so they embraced that, and it became the marketing point. But I said, “Well, what about if you use herbicides on your soil? Do you think that’s good for climate? Is that climate smart?” Michael said, “Well, no, no. That would be killing the soil.” I said, “Well, that’s what they do.”
JM Fortier 1:52:40
He wasn’t fully aware.
Dave Chapman 1:52:41
He said, “Look, forgive me. I’ve been working on drugs for the last 10 years.”
Chris Moran 1:52:46
Yeah, coffee.
Dave Chapman 1:52:48
That’s right. Psychedelics, and lots of things. Michael, I have to say, is brilliant and great. He said, “I need to research. I need to learn more.” After, I said, “Do you want me to take that out?” He went, “Yeah, if you want.” I said, “No, I’m asking what do you want?” He said, “I guess leave it in.” I said, “Okay.”
JM Fortier 1:53:15
All right. That’s nice.
Chris Moran 1:53:19
He should write another food book.
Dave Chapman 1:53:20
I think he might.
Chris Moran 1:53:21
He might. I could see that. I followed him too through the years, and it seems like we’re ripe.
Dave Chapman 1:53:30
I think he’s coming back to food.
JM Fortier 1:53:31
I want to say something, though. There’s a moment in time where the right person with the right idea, things connect, and you can’t command that. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” was exactly the perfect storm for everything. I’m not sure if he writes another book, if it’s going to be…
Chris Moran 1:53:55
It would be hard for it to be that.
Dave Chapman 1:53:57
Yeah, but that’s okay. He’s still an enormously talented writer and researcher. The guy can write. Have you ever seen that article he wrote about industrial organic a long time ago?
JM Fortier 1:54:13
I’m pretty sure I’ve read it.
Dave Chapman 1:54:14
It’s a good article. I really recommend it. You can just Google “Michael Pollan industrial organic” or something similar. He wrote about these companies coming in, and asking, “Is this what we meant by organic?” He’s really good.
JM Fortier 1:54:34
He should write about that. He should write something that would not make him popular. That would be an interesting book that I would like to read, not because he’s just… anyway.
Dave Chapman 1:54:45
Good, I’ll tell him that.
JM Fortier 1:54:46
Tell him that.
Chris Moran 1:54:47
My favorite book of his is “A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams.” Do you know that one?
JM Fortier 1:54:48
No.
Chris Moran 1:54:48
It’s all about architecture and building, actually. He dove deep into architecture and the thinking behind what the shape of a window does to your brain and what you see out the window. It was pretty amazing, and I loved it.
JM Fortier 1:55:05
Are you going to be having a guest that’s going to talk about gluten intolerance on your show and the epidemic of that?
Dave Chapman 1:55:13
I will ask William Lee about that. That’d be a good topic for him.
Chris Moran 1:55:18
Has that come up before?
Dave Chapman 1:55:19
Maybe with Bob Quinn.
JM Fortier 1:55:19
I do think that that’s one gateway to get the public aware of farming and chemicals. Everyone that I know who’s gluten intolerant, we go to Europe, we have great croissants and bread, and there’s no problem there. Everyone’s happy.
Chris Moran 1:55:20
A lot of people have that story of, “I can’t eat the food here, but I go there, and I can eat it.”
JM Fortier 1:55:48
A lot of people are gluten-intolerant – a lot.
Dave Chapman 1:55:52
I’m trying to think. I have talked to Bob Quinn about it, who’s a grain farmer. I might have talked to Mark Schatzker about it; I’ve interviewed him several times. This sounds like a William Lee question, so I will talk to him about it. This would be a good one.
JM Fortier 1:56:14
I do feel that that’s like a Michael Pollan point, because there’s probably one person out of five who has a gluten problem or is aware of it. It has affected a lot of people, especially young people. If they would understand why, instead of thinking that their system is wrong, your system is not wrong. Your system is just signaling you that you can’t eat that food. It’s because of how it’s produced.
Dave Chapman 1:56:38
It’s being your friend.
JM Fortier 1:56:42
It’s being your friend.
Dave Chapman 1:56:47
Yeah. JM, have you tried asking friends here in Canada who are gluten intolerant, “Well, why don’t you try to eat this bread or this wheat?”
JM Fortier 1:56:58
I think most of the wheats that are on the market, even the good breads, they’re all…
Dave Chapman 1:57:03
Oh, I didn’t mean buy a loaf of bread; I meant get some wheat, mill it, and make your own bread.
JM Fortier 1:57:08
But I think even getting the DNA of the wheat now is hard to find. I think Dan Barber was working on these projects, but they’ve all been worked on – the DNA molecules of the wheat.
Dave Chapman 1:57:26
You have to go to some heritage grain.
JM Fortier 1:57:29
Yeah, you go to South America or Europe with these non-genetically modified grains.
Dave Chapman 1:57:36
There’s plenty of organic grain here, but…
JM Fortier 1:57:39
But the strands, have been…
Dave Chapman 1:57:41
The strands, I get it. That’s really good. One of the people I interviewed was Dan Barber, and I asked him once, “You love Mark Schatzker, and you both have talked about how our sense of taste is so damaged because of the very polluted food that we get. How do you get people back to where they can trust their senses?” Because Dan always says, “Oh, good taste will save us.” I go, “Dan, they’re very good at fooling good taste.” Doritos, you can’t stop. That’s the whole point.
JM Fortier 1:58:20
It’s pretty good.
Dave Chapman 1:58:21
They’re pretty good at getting cravings going. So, I said, “What would be the gateway food to get you back to being able to trust your sense of taste?” I was really surprised by his answer. He didn’t think about it long. He said, “Bread.” I said, “Bread?” Then I thought, “I’ve eaten the bread that they bake.”
JM Fortier 1:58:43
It must be fantastic.
Dave Chapman 1:58:45
It is fantastic. The last time I went down to Stone Barns to interview Dan, my wife, as I’m going out, says, “Don’t forget the bread. Bring back some bread.” Actually, it inspired me. I’ve been working on figuring out how to make a loaf as good as theirs ever since. I’m going to interview his baker, Eli. He’s very good.
JM Fortier 1:59:07
You’ll need to come back when the Old Mill is open, because we’ve started to make bread.
Dave Chapman 1:59:11
Yeah.
Chris Moran 1:59:13
Have you tasted this new…? No, not the new. I’m growing my own wheat this summer. I’m doing a first trial of it. I’ve looked a lot into it. It’s quite exciting. I’m quite passionate about that.
Dave Chapman 1:59:25
All right. Next year we’ll talk more about bread, because I love it.
JM Fortier 1:59:29
We’re running over two hours into this episode, Chris. What are we doing here?
Chris Moran 1:59:31
I have one final question around rapid fire. I wanted to know about a takeaway from the podcast in terms of cultural movements and social change. Have you had anyone who has spoken a lot about that aspect?
Dave Chapman 1:59:46
Yeah, sure. Leah Penniman is the first one who jumps to mind because she’s so eloquent about agriculture as a social movement. She has her own beautiful program, where they’re trying not just to train, but also to inspire young Black people who want to go into farming, but they have no path for how to get started. So they go to Soul Fire. Maybe they’re just there for a week or for a summer. She’s really working on it, and she’s one of the most eloquent people I have ever met.
JM Fortier 2:00:27
Oh, wow. That’s something because I looked at her and I’m obviously like, “Wow.”
Dave Chapman 2:00:40
She’s great, smart, and articulate. It’s a great combination. Let me think. Other people who have talked about it as a social movement – obviously, Eliot Coleman and JM have both been on a number of times and see it clearly in that context. It’s hard for me to think of…
JM Fortier 2:01:10
Can I take back the question and rephrase it?
Chris Moran 2:01:13
Yeah, a hundred percent.
JM Fortier 2:01:14
Was there one episode where somehow you didn’t get along really well with the guest? Either the topic, the conversation, or something wasn’t connecting – not in a bad way, but…
Dave Chapman 2:01:29
You’re just thinking of not one; you’re just asking…
JM Fortier 2:01:30
I’m asking, was there an episode where you just went, “Oh”? You went there and were surprised yourself then…
Dave Chapman 2:01:38
Being surprised where we went? Yeah, Dan Barber. We got along, but I thought my first interview would be so easy. I had just read “The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food.”
JM Fortier 2:01:46
It’s such a great book.
Dave Chapman 2:01:47
Yeah, it’s such a great book. I thought, “Well, this will be the easiest interview I’ve ever done.” You ask Dan a question, and he’s like, “Pooh!” off over there. You like, “Whoa, whoa, Dan. Wait, wait, let me catch up.” Then he goes, pooh! over there.
JM Fortier 2:02:01
We have one of those guys, too.
Dave Chapman 2:02:04
It’s really interesting. We always went to places I never imagined.
JM Fortier 2:02:08
That’s interesting, because the person that we have these conversations with is also a chef.
Dave Chapman 2:02:18
They have that wild zigzag ADD mind that’s just going off. I have not done many hostile interviews where it’s like, “I don’t agree with you. Let’s talk about it.” I haven’t done much of that, and I’ve often wondered, “Should I?” Maybe we should do that more. That would be interesting.
JM Fortier 2:02:44
I’m not suggesting it. I myself would not like to do that. I’m not comfortable in that position. Sometimes, if you’re looking for the truth, you need to confront ideas.
Dave Chapman 2:02:57
Tina, we have different attitudes and beliefs about scale and replication, and that was fine. She and I knew we did. We went into it, and she would say stuff, and I would go, “Well, I just want to ask about that.” At the end of it, she said, “Wow, we really talked a lot more about organic than I thought we were going to, because we were going to talk about Food is Medicine, which I find very interesting, but we ended up talking a lot about organic and regenerative.” That was something where neither one of us quite expected to go.
Chris Moran 2:03:36
Yeah, I like those conversations. I think a good conversation should at least a little bit go somewhere you don’t expect.
JM Fortier 2:03:44
I agree.
Chris Moran 2:03:44
I think we did that today. We went to some places I didn’t see coming. Usually, I have an idea of where I want to go, but… All right. Rapid fire. Do you remember that part, the rapid fire?
Dave Chapman 2:03:56
I’m so bad at it.
Chris Moran 2:03:58
Oh, it’s all good. Some of the questions will be repeated, but I thought that would be interesting, because maybe we’ll get a different answer, and that is interesting. I will change this question: What’s a book that has just been constantly coming back to your mind lately? That you keep coming back to, and you’re always thinking about it?
Dave Chapman 2:04:21
A book. It’s funny, I am not very rapid.
Chris Moran 2:04:26
No, it’s not actually supposed to be rapid.
Dave Chapman 2:04:29
I read half of a lot of books because I interview a lot of people, and I want to read their book if they have one, but I don’t have much time. I just got back from Florida. I made some questions for you, JM, late last night because I didn’t have time.
Dave Chapman 2:04:47
I read “Carbon: The Book of Life, Paul Hawken’s book,” recently. The book, which everyone should read if they can is “The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture” – we’ve talked about it. That’s a book that really surprised me.
Dave Chapman 2:05:04
Remind us the name of the author of the “The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture” again.
Dave Chapman 2:05:04
Matthew Ingram. He wanted to come and talk to me, and I thought we were just talking about Eliot. He wanted some background, because he was going to interview Eliot. I said, “Great, come by.” We talked for two hours, and then he sent a copy of the book, and I’m in it. I said, “I didn’t think I was going to be in this.”
Dave Chapman 2:05:06
He was very nice. He really misdescribed me. He called me tall and Regi, and I thought, “I don’t think I am either.” Anyway, it’s a great book. Interesting.
Chris Moran 2:05:34
It’s going on my list.
JM Fortier 2:05:35
Me too.
Chris Moran 2:05:36
What’s advice you heard when you were really young but only appreciated a lot later in life?
Dave Chapman 2:05:45
I don’t know. I might have answered the same way before, but when I think about advice I got when I was young, I explicitly remember a lot of good advice from my godfather. We were talking about going to college. He said, “When I was young, I applied to three colleges, and I’d seen two of them, and I hadn’t seen the third. I picked the one I hadn’t seen because I didn’t like the other two. I got there, and it was terrible.”
Dave Chapman 2:06:15
He said, “But it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter where you pick, it doesn’t matter where you go to college. It just matters what you do when you get there.” I thought that was pretty good advice – don’t be too obsessed with getting this or getting that, but look at what you do have and what you can make out of that.
Dave Chapman 2:06:39
Alan Watts said something kind of similar, which is that he believes in the spirituality of accepting what is and what happens then, that whatever it is, this is what it is, instead of going, “No, that isn’t it. I can’t take that.” That’s a long answer for a short question.
Chris Moran 2:07:00
No, it’s good. What’s advice do you give often to people?
Dave Chapman 2:07:06
I try not to give advice. “Eat good food.” That is something that I may not say all the time, but I truly think that they ought to.
JM Fortier 2:07:21
Why wouldn’t you give advice? Is there like a spiritual practice behind not giving advice?
Dave Chapman 2:07:31
People don’t really like getting advice, mostly, and the ones who want it probably shouldn’t get it. Telling people what to eat is a really good way to create a lot of resistance. I think Margaret Mead said it’s easier to talk somebody into changing their religion than it is to talk them into changing what they eat. I think that that’s true. It’s not that they won’t change it, but it’s hard to come from outside.
Dave Chapman 2:08:09
Because I have what are considered in our culture fairly extreme food beliefs. I don’t think they’re extreme. It’s like “Eat real food.” As I said to Michael Pollan, I gave a talk at Churchtown last year, and I used Michael’s coin, which is, “Eat food, Mostly plants, Not too much.” I wrote and said, “Michael, I added a fourth line to that, which is ‘Mostly real organic.'” He wrote back and said, “Yeah, that’s a good addition.” That’s good.
Chris Moran 2:08:52
I like that. What are people not talking about enough?
Dave Chapman 2:08:57
In our very confusing times, it’s hard to remember to be kind. There’s so much anger from everybody, so it’s nice to remember to be kind, even as we have to also disagree. I don’t think it’s wrong to disagree; we need to disagree, and we need to talk about those things.
Dave Chapman 2:09:24
That was the purpose of the workshop that I was supposed to be giving with the head of CCOF out at EcoFarm to talk about hydroponics. I got COVID. After five years, I finally got COVID. So, I wasn’t there. Linley was there, but it was an attempt to have a difficult public conversation about that from two people who really disagreed.
JM Fortier 2:09:50
I would have liked to listen to that.
Dave Chapman 2:09:52
I would have liked it too, but we didn’t get that chance. Linley did a good job.
Chris Moran 2:09:57
Do you think anger is normalized at this current moment in time, in a way that perhaps…? Of course, if we look through all of history, there’s always plenty of anger going around in humanity, but perhaps in more recent generations, there’s been a moment, it seems, of maybe less – I don’t know.
Dave Chapman 2:10:15
At this moment, I think people are scared, and I think fear leads to anger, to defend ourselves. But I do think, of course, there’s this thing about social media, which feeds on our extreme reactions. The algorithm knows it, so it keeps walking you out just step by step until you’re way over here, and you’re really angry. I am too. I’m way out here, and I’m really angry.
Dave Chapman 2:10:44
When I’m dealing with people, I try to take a deep breath, and I actually try to ask my angry parts to step aside and say, “Let me handle this. I got it. I’ll be with you afterwards. I’m not trying to get rid of you or exile you, but let me handle this.” That is what I do before I talk if I have the wherewithal to remember to sit down for a moment.
JM Fortier 2:11:19
It’s funny, because knowing you’re one of the most likable person I know.
Dave Chapman 2:11:23
Well, you should hear the rest of me.
JM Fortier 2:11:29
Let’s stay on your good side.
Chris Moran 2:11:31
What’s a nature experience that really sticks out in your lifetime?
Dave Chapman 2:11:37
The first thing that came to mind was when I was a teenager, with a couple of other teenagers, and we were camping in Colorado in the Rockies, very high. We were on the top of a mountain, and we would huddle behind a little hut while the wind was howling. I slept in a sleeping bag, and I loved it. It was just pretty raw.
Chris Moran 2:12:06
Were those early seeds of your future self – a love for nature?
Dave Chapman 2:12:10
I grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, so I got to run around outside a lot. It would probably be a very unusual life for a young person now. Even if they lived on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, they would spend most of their time on a device.
Chris Moran 2:12:32
I know. I read a lot of books from the past, and even in the early 1900s, a lot of people were speaking about the lost ways of life. I’m like, “Even then?” There were people saying, “Oh, we’ve lost the way of life in these rural places.” I get really sad when I think about those things – the loss of a way of life.
Dave Chapman 2:12:57
As the Buddhists say, we’re going to lose everything. Everything will keep changing. That’s just the deal.
Chris Moran 2:13:05
What’s something that you are really into at the moment, maybe even obsessed with, that is different from agriculture and organic? Just something else that interests you.
JM Fortier 2:13:14
Fun fact about yourself.
Dave Chapman 2:13:18
I might have said it last time. I do a lot of Tai Chi. My wife and a very good friend practice together, we all teach. We practice together, the three of us twice a week, and then we each teach a lot. I teach around three and a half hours every Saturday morning. I used to practice a lot; now I don’t practice as much. I get a little too busy with the Real Organic Project and the farm.
Chris Moran 2:13:52
All the more reason to practice, Dave.
Dave Chapman 2:13:54
Yeah. It’s really good. It’s so visceral; it’s not intellectual, even though the mind is very present and showing up for it. We have a really great teacher, a Chinese guy, and he teaches us things that are not readily available to the world. You can’t learn this from reading it; it has to be somebody helping you. That’s something that’s meaningful to me.
Dave Chapman 2:14:29
I enjoy the social aspect, which I didn’t used to as much, but I enjoy getting together with people, and I also enjoy doing it alone. I think it really is significant for health as well. I think food is a critical foundation, but our lifestyle, how we move our body, and how we live in our bodies, is a big deal too.
JM Fortier 2:14:51
Getting into the flow.
Dave Chapman 2:14:52
Yeah.
JM Fortier 2:14:53
All right. Well, Dave Chapman, it was a great conversation. Thank you for making the trip. We really appreciate. it.
Dave Chapman 2:15:00
Yes, JM.
JM Fortier 2:15:01
If people want to know more about the Real Organic Project, you can go on the website, realorganicproject.org. I, as an organic farmer myself, would highly recommend that you all join the movement. We didn’t talk about this this time, but I think getting certified is still very important today. I’m encouraging everyone to do so. I hope you all enjoyed this talk we did. We’ll see you next time.
Chris Moran 2:15:28
Do you have anything you want to plug, or anything coming up – events or other things?
Dave Chapman 2:15:33
So many things. Actually, JM is going to come and speak at our conference in Churchtown.
JM Fortier 2:15:39
Yes, this September. Finally.
Dave Chapman 2:15:40
That’s right. That is an amazing event. We have our Farmer Friday, which is a very much smaller.
JM Fortier 2:15:48
That’s June 23 third.
Dave Chapman 2:15:49
June 23 third, I believe. Then the Saturday is a bigger thing in Hudson Valley, New York, and at Abby Rockefeller’s farm there. It’s a beautiful farm. We’ll have amazing people speaking and listening. It’s hard to tell the difference there, honestly. Anybody in the audience probably could be a speaker, and anyone who’s speaking could certainly be a keynote. Eliot will be there.
JM Fortier 2:16:21
Is that on the website also?
Dave Chapman 2:16:23
it’s not up yet. We we’re piecing it together, but we should get…
Chris Moran 2:16:29
By the time this comes out it will be there.
Dave Chapman 2:16:32
That’s right. It’ll be on the website. That’s coming up.
JM Fortier 2:16:34
All right. You heard it first here, guys. I hope you guys are doing well. We’ll see you next time. We’re out.
JM Fortier 2:16:35
Hope you’re enjoying the podcast. These are important conversations, and we’re really excited to have them and share them with everyone. Don’t forget to subscribe to it, download the episodes, and please rate them. It makes a difference for us. We want to know what you think about these conversations. They’re important.
JM Fortier 2:16:46
Check out the work that we do at the Market Gardener Institute. You can check out our website, themarketgardener.com. Our mission is to multiply the number of small ecological farms around the world. We do this by offering training and online courses to new aspiring farmers, but also to seasoned growers. We’re helping them take it to the next level.
JM Fortier 2:16:46
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Linley Dixon 2:17:50
Thank you for listening to the Real Organic Podcast. If you have a spare minute today, the single most effective way you can help us grow this movement and help others find this podcast is by leaving us a rating and a review wherever you listen to our podcast.
Linley Dixon 2:18:04
You can find a video version of this interview on our website or on our YouTube channel, and you can join us every Sunday for a new episode featuring voices from the organic movement. If you haven’t already, please sign up for our weekly newsletter at realorganicproject.org/email. See you next time.
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