Thank You, American Farmers

By John Klar, Contributor, The MAHA Report

“Rallying the culture to be interested in, and then to understand, food differences is perhaps the single most important starting point to ultimately Make America Healthy Again.” — Joel Salatin

As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, there is much to be grateful for, starting with the historic partnership between President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and their commitment to Make America Healthy Again.

They said they’d do so by improving the nation’s food supplies, and they are delivering. Since his confirmation in February, 2025, Kennedy has worked tirelessly to eliminate petroleum-based dyes from the food we eat. In the process, he’s learned about the vital importance of our nation’s farmers.

It’s time to reflect on and give thanks to American farmers, from Vermont to California, and many states in between.

And so I turn to a dear farmer friend in Virginia, Joel Salatin, who, like Kennedy, has been shouting from the rooftops about healthy foods for decades. I asked Joel a seemingly simple question: “How do you think MAHA can make Americans more aware of the food quality on their Thanksgiving table this and every year, and how can MAHA better support America’s small farms and attract young people back to the land?”

Those who know Joel will not be surprised that he gave a creative answer. And though he self-styles as a “lunatic farmer,” his response was refreshingly sane.

From Joel Salatin:

“If people were as scared to eat chemical food as they were to encounter COVID, they’d change their food-buying habits. Think for a moment how profoundly people willingly upended their lives to prevent COVID from entering their bodies. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, of course, we now know the paranoia and the subsequent mRNA jabs left more questions than answers.

“What made people fearful enough to cancel weddings, close schools, and line up for unproven genetic manipulation? Simply, fear of the unknown and faith in conventional, accredited institutional messaging. Some 35 percent of Americans didn’t buy the messaging. From refusing to mask up and take the jab to dismissing the whole narrative as a conspiracy, the pushback spanned a whole spectrum of gentle to aggressive. And the other 65 percent? They bought the message.

“What does this have to do with food? As RFK Jr. reveals, U.S. foods contain 10,000 unnatural chemicals while Europeans only allow 400. The conventional narrative is that industrial and chemically-laced foods are perfectly fine for the human microbiome. Michael Pollan’s blockbuster book Ominover’s Dilemma begs the question: if industrial factory farms had glass walls, would we eat what’s grown there? It’s a rhetorical question.

“While our country was fixated on COVID, with such a direct impact on personal health, people dug into the various opinions and informed themselves to make decisions. The MAHA mandate is to generate that same personal interest and the individual informational investment among the populace to dig into food. Pure and simple, that’s both the mission and the challenge. If and when people invest in learning about their food, they’ll buy differently.

“Unfortunately, most Americans have never eaten non-chemical food. They’ve never visited a farm to see what pastured animals and compost-grown vegetables look like compared to industrial, pharmaceutical, chemical counterparts. Rallying the culture to be interested in, and then to understand, food differences is perhaps the single most important starting point to ultimately Make America Healthy Again.

“We will never be healthy eating food that won’t rot and eating food grown in such poor soil it can’t develop nutritional adequacy. Nature has clear patterns. Healthy soil does not develop under chemical fertilizers and herbicides. As Sir Albert Howard wrote in 1950, when we use artificial manures (that’s what he called chemical fertilizers) to grow artificial plants, they make artificial animals and then people who can only be kept alive with artificials. Was he not prophetic?

“Our nation needs to weep with gratitude that MAHA is here to bend the food and farm narrative to a nontoxic, nutrient-dense objective. The time is here to defund toxic and deficient food. It will develop as fast as people embrace the connection between farms, food, and health. The MAHA movement is a launch pad to make people fear unhealthy food and embrace the faith to invest in healthy food. Anyone expecting the industrial food and bureaucratic complex to make their food decisions is like assuming Anthony Fauci is the ultimate authority on our health.

“Fauci was merely the most obvious mouthpiece for a non-biological worldview toward life. But his mentality permeates all government agencies involved with life, including the USDA. If you don’t trust Fauci, why would you trust the USDA? Or the FDA? They all drink the same Kool-Aid. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s an ideological fraternity.

“MAHA stands in stark contrast, which is why Big Pharma and Big Ag hate this cultural investment in comprehensive health. As soon as Americans dig into their food, they will defund these chemical players, unleashing thousands of authentic food producers and processors on the marketplace. That is the key to making us healthier.”

Americans largely remain divided over vaccine safety and efficacy, but they’re increasingly united about wanting healthier food supplies. So, it should be intuitive that when it comes to our health, there are no red states or blue states.

What I found intriguing in Mr. Salatin’s reply to my simple query is that, with passion and insight, he seamlessly ties together diverging views about the Covid jab with the MAHA movement’s fight to radically improve what ends up on our plates.

Thank you, Joel!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

[Joel Salatin and John Klar will be speaking at the Liberty Food Fest in southern Vermont, December 12-13. Details and tickets can be found here.]