Fascination surrounds the cabinet nominations of President-elect Donald Trump. Amid all the people chosen and speculation of who will become secretaries of this and that, one name caught my attention. Whoever the new secretary of agriculture will be, he will be assisted by six advisers. One of those positions was offered to America’s most famous farmer, Joel Salatin. On Nov. 6, 2024, he accepted this advisory position.

Salatin is an outspoken, passionate critic of the United States Department of Agriculture. He views it as a public enemy. “We would be a much healthier culture,” he asserts, “if the government had never told us how to eat.” He credits “American agriculture policy and, specifically, the government’s wading into the food arena” as the root cause of gluten intolerance, celiac disease and many other public health problems.

For a farmer to speak out against industrial food production means a bitter struggle against the ruling regime. “From zoning to labor to food safety to insurance,” Salatin says, “local food systems daily face a phalanx of regulatory hurdles designed and implemented to police industrial food models but which prejudicially wipe out the antidote: appropriate scaled local food systems.”

Can localized systems of food production feed the world? “Not only can we,” Salatin says, “we’re the only system that can do it regeneratively on the planet.”

Salatin is both disciple and evangelist of regenerative agriculture. This is a soil-first system that mimics nature, encouraging benevolent practices that recover and promote perpetual health-giving benefits of fertile soil. “What we’re looking at is God’s design,” he says. It’s “nature’s template, and using that as a pattern to cut around and lay it down on a domestic model to duplicate that pattern that we see in nature.” He observes creation and credits the Creator. That’s uncommon: Most fail to see the Maker in what He has made (Romans 1:20-21). Salatin observes, “Ecology should be object lessons that the world sees, that explains in a visceral, physical way, the attributes of God.”

Citizens religious and secular, rural and urban, red and blue, from all walks of life with shared concern for the food on their tables, follow Salatin. His appointment within the usda is based not on political preference but on merit, backed by a growing movement desperate to buck failed agricultural norms.

There’s a lot to admire in Salatin: his courage to promote good and expose evil, his methods and their ecological underpinnings, his awareness of the Creator. The question is, what can he accomplish as he enters the heart of the beast? He admits that if the world adopted an ecological approach to agriculture, “it would completely invert the power, position, profits and prestige of the entire food and farming industry.” In the harsh field of farming, this is his toughest assignment yet.

Whatever the outcome of this battle, there is an interesting takeaway from this growing agricultural paradigm shift.

Why does mankind experiment with all the wrong, perverse and selfish forms of agriculture first—heedless of the consequences on human, animal, plant and soil health—before some finally find and embrace a right form?

Mankind seems to love trial and error. When one system fails, he will contrive another and plow right in. Why? Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “Modern scientists assured the world that man had progressed to the point where he could safely dispense with the superstitious crutch of religion and belief in God. Now humanity could rely on the new messiah—modern science. ‘Given sufficient knowledge,’ said the scientists, ‘and we shall solve all of humanity’s problems and cure all the world’s ills.’ The tools of modern science were merely a stepped-up use of those man had employed since the dawn of history—observation, experimentation and human reason. … Are those tools wrong? Not at all. The error comes from rejection of revelation” (The Missing Dimension in Sex; emphasis added).

How naturally delicious would our food taste today, how healthful would the world be, if mankind had simply accepted and implemented the agricultural model established by the Creator?

Here is a lesson that each of us can apply to every area of our lives: Seek God early.

King David wrote, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee …” (Psalm 63:1). God says, “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me” (Proverbs 8:17).

This admonition applies daily to our prayer and study and the need to seek God early each day. But it is not without broader meaning. Why stumble around in the dark doing things our own way when we can go to God for His direction from the outset? We ought to seek God early in every area of our lives: dating, marriage, child rearing, estate planning, education, business—you name it.

Mankind’s failures in trudging along without God well illustrate the need for God to direct all our steps. Our world faces imminent ruin. “No civilization on the brink of collapse has ever changed fast enough to avert collapse,” warns Salatin. That may be so collectively, but it need not be individually. Change now; change fast. Use the little time left to seek God early.