Amish Farmer John Kempf Talks to Monsanto Guy about Amish culture, technology, farming

About this episode

Amish regenerative farmer and Advancing Eco Agriculture founder John Kempf returns for a wide-ranging second conversation with Vance. They open on Bitcoin, with Kempf skeptical about its energy footprint but intrigued by its resistance to monetary debasement, before pivoting to how Amish communities function as a high-trust barter-and-gifting economy that resists the alienation of cash transactions. The COVID section is the episode's most striking material: Kempf describes his Amish community's near-total rejection of masking and social distancing after an initial few weeks of compliance, contrasting it with bank customers queuing outdoors rather than mask up indoors, and cites internal community data showing only two confirmed COVID deaths in 18 months. They cover rumspringa, church structure, dress codes, and substance use before moving into agronomy, where Kempf lays out his theory that insect and disease pressure is rooted in plant nutritional imbalance rather than genetics, and unveils his new "Integrity Grown" certification designed to measure food outcomes (toxin load, nutrient density) rather than input restrictions, aiming eventually to certify entire regenerative supply chains rather than just farms.

“One of the things that we lost as we, as we made money more and more a part of our everyday lives that it was a part of every transaction is that it takes away from high trust communities... in much lower density areas, Amish communities, farming communities, these are high trust. You have to see people day in and day out and you're not interchangeable and bartering and trading, I think really facilitates that high trust society.”

“There was only one business in all of the local area that was successful in preserving its mask mandate. And that was the bank... people would line up for the drive through, they would do it outdoors. There would be a line of a hundred people waiting to go through the drive-through no social distancing and no masking because they refused to go into the bank where they had to wear a mask. But grocery stores they buckled in 24 hours because they were losing a tremendous amount of business because people just simply refused to comply.”

“There's been a lot of noise and a lot of greenwashing already in the space of re regenerative agriculture. And so we wanted to develop a regenerative agriculture verification process that is based on data of what is happening on the farm... organic certification suffered fundamentally from two flaws... it is a negative process certification. In other words, it simply certifies that you don't do these things. You cannot do these things and still produce food that is absolutely abysmally poor quality.”

Key moments

• Kempf explains his skepticism about Bitcoin's energy use and rumored NSA origins, while acknowledging he isn't well-informed on the topic (money).
• Vance counters with the idea of stranded/flared energy being captured for Bitcoin mining, and Kempf pushes back asking why that vision isn't already built out.
• Discussion of Amish barter and "gifting economy" culture as a higher form of trust than even bartering — no one keeps score (trust).
• Kempf details how Amish communities self-fund medical costs and largely opt out of the standard vaccine schedule, citing an estimate of under 20% "fully vaccinated."
• The COVID mask-mandate rebellion story — grocery stores buckling within 24 hours, banks holding out with outdoor drive-through lines forming instead (mob, institutions).
• Kempf cites community-tracked data: 85 deaths in 18 months, only 2 confirmed COVID deaths, both with major comorbidities contracted in-hospital.
• Explanation of rumspringa as widely misunderstood by outside media — not a license for wild freedom but a courtship-and-community-integration period.
• Vance draws a direct parallel between Amish church baptism and his own apostolic Christian upbringing's confession-and-commitment process.
• Kempf unveils the "Integrity Grown" certification, explicitly designed to fix organic certification's "negative process" flaw by measuring outcomes (toxin residue, nutrient density) instead of input rules (institutions, craft).

Notable quotes

“There was only one business in all of the local area that was successful in preserving its mask mandate. And that was the bank... people would line up for the drive through... rather than go inside where they had to wear a mask.”

“In an 18 month period from the beginning of COVID, there were 85 deaths of which six were labeled as COVID, two were verified, four were unconfirmed. And there was no excess deaths.”

“These organisms that we label as pathogens are not inherently pathogenic... they can have a symbiotic collaborative, synergistic relationship with plants as long as they are in the right environment.”

“Organic certification... simply certifies that you don't do these things. You can do... still produce food that is absolutely abysmally poor quality.”

Predictions made in this episode

• Regenerative agriculture will become the mainstream, status-quo global standard for agriculture by 2040, achieved by bringing major retailers and CPG companies into fair-trade regenerative supply chains rather than certifying only farms.