Name: Investigative Journalist Nate Halverson | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #510
Uploaded: 2024-06-13T15:00:16.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Investigative Journalist Nate Halverson | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #510' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Investigative Journalist Nate Halverson | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #510' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-13. Transcript available.

Investigative Journalist Nate Halverson | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #510

Today's guest is an independent writer, journalist, and reporter.
He contributed to the documentary The Grab,
which is all about the money and power controlling the food industry in America
and beyond.
Outside of that, he writes for the Center for Investigative Reporting.
I'm really fascinated to spend time with today's guest, Nate Halverson.
Shine that light on me
I'll sit and tell you my stories
Shine on me
And I will find a song I've been singing
I'm going to stay
Nate Halverson, thanks for coming, man.
Dude, are you kidding me? Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, I appreciate it, man.
I watched The Grab, which is the documentary that you guys are putting out.
And just so I'm clear, what was the goal of the documentary?
Because to me, it seemed like you're trying to show that a lot of land or arable
land.
Is that land that can grow crops?
Yeah.
A lot of land that can sustain crops is being bought up by different countries,
that it's kind of like a land grab for that land right now because they're not
making more of it.
That's it, man. I mean, it is in the 21st century. It's looking more like, you
know, oil was the commodity of the 20th century. You know, gold, diamonds,
these things. But in the 21st century, it looks like the rich and powerful are
increasingly turning to control food and water as you know, like the basic
necessities.
And we're just seeing a ton, whether it's foreign governments, you know,
wealthy Wall Street corporations are all beginning to turn to it. You know, I
think now Bill Gates, his family, they're the largest farmers in the U.S.
Right. Like they have, they're now the largest farmland owners in the U.S.
Right. And that's interesting because he's obviously a guy with a lot of foresight,
a guy who's able to kind of envision the next step, obviously, from his past,
from his history of being able to like acquire companies that are doing that in
different realms.
You kind of broke this story that this was happening years ago.
Yeah, because before this, I mean, before I started working on this, dude, I do
nothing about any of this. Right.
Like I came into a cold turkey and I was asked to look at China's largest meat
company buying the world's largest pork company, which was based in Virginia.
And at the time, Congress was kind of freaking out, you know, like is China
buying, you know, our meat supply?
And so I started, I was asked to look into it because I had this background and
dig it into Hong Kong financials where this meat company was publicly traded.
And I went to China, I talked to folks in the U.S., I talked to people in U.S.
intelligence and it turns out, yeah, like the Chinese government was behind
this purchase.
That's effectively one in four American pigs.
And the reason is because the Chinese government kind of clued into something
before other folks, which is that in the 21st century, food is power.
Right. Like you need to control food to control your political future.
And so the Chinese government began putting into these five year plans that
they put out an effort to go overseas and begin buying up food and water
resources so that they could control it.
So it's a strategy that was happening.
Definitely. Right.
And so they want to get the pigs because that's a source of food.
Yeah, it's a source of food.
And that's a source of, you know, for China, political stability.
Right. If you have food, then the people will eventually follow you.
It's like, yeah, you'll do anything to eat.
Yes, that's exactly it.
And and, you know, like I've now traveled the world.
That was like the first one that the first food story that I looked at, you
know, and I thought like, OK, it's a story about food.
It's a story about farming.
You know, so I was surprised when I'll, you know, then I'm talking to U.S.
intelligence people.
Right. And then I'm talking to like people in the defense department.
Right. Like all of a sudden food is this like big national security.
And so as I began traveling the world, I mean, I began going to other countries
where those governments were using the food supply to control the population.
Right. And I think that's what people are worried about going forward into the
21st century is that by controlling the food, you can control the people.
Right. They're just thinking, OK, how do we need to control the people next?
How do we still have control over people?
And they start to look at what could become a scarcity.
Yep. Yeah. And they believe it's food.
Yeah, exactly. And so like the country I had gone to was was Venezuela and
Venezuela at the time was having all these food riots.
Right. Like people, people, you'd go and you'd work your nine to five job and
then you'd come home and there'd literally be a one mile line long line to get
into the grocery store.
And there's no way you're going to work like a 10 hour day and then stand in
line all night.
Right. And then go back. And so, you know, I was talking to these guys that
were working class that had jobs and they were literally eating out of dumpsters.
I saw these dudes eating raw meat. Right. And he's like, I've got a job. He's
like, I just can't afford food.
And so then I went to this, you know, like secret location, this this this
warehouse full of food after watching people like starving people, people
scraping by trying to survive without food in Venezuela.
I went to this government warehouse full of food on a Sunday when it was
supposed to be closed.
And who was there? It was a bunch of Venezuelan military and police.
They were open. The government has opening it up. And these guys, these big
buff dudes were wheeling out cartfuls of food that like I hadn't seen in like
my one week there.
And they were giving the authorities like the authorities were giving the
police and the military, the guys that were knocking down the population food
so that they would, of course, continue to control the population.
Wow. But how do you start to see that it becomes a bigger story, though?
I mean, I just it was crazy, man, because I just started seeing these dots,
like these stories that you would see around the world, you know, like, oh,
this country is running low on food and its people are migrating out.
Or like this, this country just bought up, you know, like half the farmland in
like Madagascar, right?
You know, like when I think Dai Wu out of South Korea bought up, like made like
a secret deal for like half the farmland in Madagascar.
And then the people rise up and overthrow in the countries in civil war.
And you begin seeing these stories and then you begin being like, oh, my God,
like all of these seemingly separate stories are all connected as part of this,
like, bigger trend.
Right. And that's when I began tapping into people who were beginning to follow
it, like in the shadows.
Right. Like the government, the intelligence community, others were beginning
to sort of piece this together.
But it for my reporting anyway, it appears that like it really was the Chinese
government was probably the first to wake up to this, to really tap into it.
And there's a reason for that. I mean, the leadership of China went through the
Great Famine, right?
Like Xi Jinping has told stories about living through the Great Famine, which
was the late 50s, when estimates are that like, man, 37 million people died as
a result of starvation.
And so when you go through a period where you're looking around and, dude, I've
heard, I mean, like stories I don't even like to tell because they're so awful
about what it's like, you know, if you have 37 million people that actually
died as a result of starvation, that means you got like 100 million people that
are close.
Right. And people are just like doing desperate, crazy things.
And so when the leadership of China can remember that, like they are more keyed
in when that trend starts poking up its head, when there are these, you know,
when there are these forecasts, things are going to get more and more dire in
the future.
They moved quickly to begin to sort of control food and water supplies for
their population.
Right. So they're kind of like, obviously, they're a little more sensitive to
it, but you noticed that they were kind of at the head of the trend.
Yeah.
Yeah. My father grew up in Nicaragua and he grew up there like in the 1910s.
Okay.
And so he would tell me stories about people starving and kids in his village
and stuff, eating dirt and like their stomachs becoming distended.
That's right.
Literally making dirt, like people say mud pies and stuff that kids make, like,
but literally making mud pies and eating them, you know.
Just to like be able to put something, like feel like you're putting something
in.
Yeah.
Where in Nicaragua was your dad?
He's from Bluefields, Nicaragua.
Oh, sure.
Out in the coast.
Yeah.
So I'm not, I know his, some of his family was down there being missionaries
and that's how his parents met each other.
But yeah, he would just tell me stories like that when I was a kid.
And it was just, it was unbelievable.
I mean, I've even thought, I've been on a fast for a couple of days and seen,
and this is a little off topic, I guess, but I seen a guy at Best Buy.
I had been on a fast for four days.
I've been on a fast for five days and I was like, I will, I could, I could eat
that guy.
Yeah.
It wasn't, it was like, I'd never had a thought boat like that before.
I've been to Best Buy probably 70 times.
Yeah.
And I'd never thought, you know what?
I could eat one of these sales attendants or whatever, but it was just in my
head.
It was like a little bit of that hunger was like, what are we going to do here?
If this guy looks the other way.
Yeah, dude.
Yeah.
I know, man, it's weird.
Like, and, and that's what it comes down to.
And that's the thing that like, and then people are surprised.
They're like, why are all these Venezuelans coming to our border?
And you're like, because they're hungry.
They've been staring at other people thinking about eating them.
So they're like, maybe it's time to leave.
Yeah.
You don't even think that that's one of the reasons why people were coming up.
What are some of the other dots you start to connect?
Cause I see in the documentary, there's like land that's bought in Arizona.
There's a huge focus on land that's bought in Africa.
Like, what are some of the other dots you start to connect that really make
this in your mind,
like bring it to a boil kind of besides just paranoid Chinese, like, and with,
with a forethought.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, dude, you're right.
It was, it was all over the place.
It was like, you know, I began thinking, okay, so if China's focused on this,
like what other,
you know, wealthy countries are focused on this.
And, and, you know, lo and behold, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was one, right?
Because believe it or not, even though it's a desert country, it had these huge
underground
water reserves, aquifers underneath the desert.
And that's why, like, you know, there are springs, you know, flowing to the
surface of
the desert that are mentioned in the Bible, 2000, whatever years ago.
And started in like the nineties, they began using their oil derricks to tap
into that water
and actually use that water to grow wheat in the desert.
So this like wheat country by the nineties was the world's sixth largest exporter
of
wheat.
Wow.
Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, but dude, that water doesn't last.
Right.
And, and so that it, they drained it.
And so like those springs that are mentioned from 2000 years ago, they wouldn't
dry.
And so then it's like, where are they going to go?
And that was the question I had in my head.
Okay.
So like, if they drained their water with this program, like, where are they?
Yeah, man.
That's when I found them in like the Arizona desert.
I'm talking like saguaro cactuses, wily coyote, like desert, desert.
Yeah.
And they were doing the same thing, pumping up this ancient water that doesn't
get replenished
from rain.
Cause it's there from like the last ice age or som