Farmer Stories / Joel Hollingsworth: America's 2nd Chance

Farmer Stories is a weekly series pulling the best conversations from the Regenaissance podcast archive. These aren't new episodes — just the best stories from American farmers on their experience of the farming landscape, giving incredible insight into it's systems, polocies, economics, bad actors, good actors, and rural communities. This series aims to encourage thinking bigger picture: Americas productive capacity, middle class revival, & real food as the foundation of it all. Joel Hollingsworth runs Smoke River Ranch in northeast Oklahoma. This conversation talks about why Joel believes we need to keep manufcaturing in America & why Oklahoma's culture of self-governance is a cultural model the country can build around.  Timestamps0:00 — Why build in America, not abroad1:30 — The federalist structure and America's creation story4:00 — Oklahoma's culture of self-governance6:30 — Regen ag as a churn factory7:30 — Triffin dilemma and hollowing out of domestic production9:00 — How crop insurance locks out new farmers11:00 — Foreign cattle and the 30% currency gap12:30 — Land as money, not farmland14:00 — Farm credit weaponized (Dustin Kittle story)15:30 — Average rancher age 58.517:00 — What rural collapse looks like18:30 — Sovereign debt and centralizing riskLinks:Full podcast episode:- YouTube- Spotify- AppleConnect with Joel:- Smoke River Ranch Website- X