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Joel Salatin, America's Farming Heavyweight
SWOOPE, Virginia - A diehard activist for some, a pioneer for others, Joel Salatin is fighting against America's genetically-modified foods and for local subsistence farming.
Joel Salatin is fighting against America's genetically-modified foods and for local subsistence farming. Leading his crusade from the heart of the Shenandoah Valley in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, this anti-globalization messenger who dubs himself a "Christian Libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer" has become the face of healthy eating and agriculture.
"The desire from consumers to eat this kind of food is exploding," Salatin said at his 500-acre (200-hectare) farm in Swoope, Virginia.
Small farmers' markets -- still scarce just a few years ago -- are now in full swing in the United States.
The online Farmers' Market Directory lists 5,274 markets across the country, a 13 percent rise from 4,685 a year ago. The number has grown by nearly 4,000 nationwide since 1994.
"Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food," said Salatin, surrounded by the many cows, pigs, turkeys, rabbits and chickens he raises in methods that remain unconventional in the highly-industrialized US agricultural sector.
"The distrust is very real."
An iconoclast who has authored several books with titles like "Everything I Want to Do is Illegal," Salatin makes regular media appearances and now spends a third of his time at conferences.
But farming is still a family affair built over three generations on the rocky terrain of his "Polyface Farm".
Chickens and turkeys run free here, transported in a chicken coop built on wheels to a different pasture every three days.
The 1,000 cows and 700 pigs raised for meat each year change pastures every week.
Salatin, 53, hails his "healing farming" method, where each animal plays an environmental role.
"The cows shorten the grass and the chicken eat the fly larvae and sanitize the pastures. This is a symbiotic relation," he explained.
This natural approach to farming is just as profitable as industrial farming, Salatin insists, because he saves where big chicken and beef producers are forced to invest in structures, drugs and labor.
His customers are 400 families, about 50 restaurants and a dozen shops in the area. He also charges 800 dollars for a two-hour tour of his farm.
"Yes, the prices are higher, but it's because all of the costs are in the price of this chicken and you are paying it here at the cash register, not paying it in sickness and disease and pollution and stink," he explained.
But his unorthodox methods leave some thinking Salatin is a "terrorist", he claimed, "because the new word is science-based agriculture and this is not science-based."
Salatin's products are not certified as organic -- a booming food sector in the United States, now accounting for 3.5 percent of all food sales -- because he refuses to do the necessary inspections and paperwork.
"We are beyond organic," exclaimed Salatin, observing that government-certified organic meat products do not necessarily come from chicken and cows on pasture.
"Organic doesn't mean what people think it means."
23 Comments so far
Show AllI attended his speech at the DC Green Festival last weekend, he was great. He also said his method of farming builds up the soil so much that is sequesters carbon, and said if every farmer in America did this, it'd sequester all carbon emitted by humans since the Industrial Revolution. I'd love to see the figures on that.
I think he's engaging in a bit of hyperbole. Yes, his method does build soil while also sequestering CO2; and if more farmers emulated his methods, the rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration would slow. IF all hydrocarbon inputs could be completely stopped throughout his whole operation, then if all farnmers globally followed that path we might see CO2 concentration start to fall.
Check it out, the Carbon Farmers of America: http://www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com/
Looks interesting, but the organization seems to be defunct right now from looking at the membership/ carbon offset purchasing pages.
Salatin, his family, and Polyface Farm are featured at length in Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
This guy gives new meaning to the term "sustainability."
America needs 25 million more like him. Forget about high technology, highly technocratic careers, kids. The new growth industry is permaculture and anti-industrial food production.
But, please, don't tell Wall Street.
It nice that he is farming the way he is, but I'd rather not see 25 million more pompous Libertarian Capitalist Christians...
And assuming this article is reflecting his attitudes correctly, I found the "snake-oil-swindler" alarms going off in my head with this guy.
We have number of CSO farms around Pittsburgh and throughout Pennsylvania (particularly the Amish) who like him, are informally "organic" to avoid the paperwork who just go quietly about their livelihoods without all the publicizing.
He definitely tells the truth when he says he's a capitalist: $800 for a farm tour!
Actually he is simply echoing the 'three sisters agriculture' of the Native Americans before European contact.
With that sustainable approach, they had by 1492 taken (collectively from North,Central and South America) 120 wild plants and converted them into food plants.
Corn, now feeds the world, as well as supplying thousands of industrial products with their basic materials. It is also the only widely accepted 'domesticated plant' since it no longer has the ability to revert to the wild stage.
It cannot grow or reproduce without human intervention.
The type of agriculture mentioned in this article is exactly the process that needs to be in use now.
The fact that Agribusiness has avoided that 'conversion' is one more indication that it would be highly successful, since that would effectively take the control of food production out of their hands and place it into the hands of people like Mr. Salatin.
For anyone interested in the facts they might wish to find a copy of 'The Seeds of Change' (a compilation of several authors works).
For information on the Archaeological 'evidence' that Agriculture and 'Civilization' began simultaneously in the Mid East(Mesopotamian Valley) and the Americas see' "America's Hidden Cities' by Roger Kennedy.
Native Son...would you be talking about the "Seeds of Change" (isbn 1560980362) that the Smithsonian put out at the time of the Quincentennial?--that book is one of the most outstanding I've seen that gives a people's history of agriculture.... fascinating and informative -way ahead of its time...... and I wish Raj Patel's work would get as much attention as Pollan's (not that Pollan hasn't done a good job bringing some of this stuff to the public's consciousness...if you can make a dent in George Will's receptivity, you must be doing something right!!)---anyhow, Patel's "Stuffed & Starved" is brilliant.... and he's just getting started. The dinosaurs of agriculture aren't going down without a MIC-backed fight, but there's so much going on beneath the average radar that points to a resurgence of human beings reconnecting intimately with the land and coming up with ways to extricate from the hyper-monetized wreckage of the so-called 'green revolution' that the dinosaur demise seems inevitable, though I'll have to admit, this is one exhausting and lengthy death rattle going on. Whether that demise is through human folly of operating lockstep within the confines of a monoculture that unwittingly makes itself vulnerable to any number of possible vectors for destruction or a more organic morphing away from hyper-capitalist policies and actually incorporates a reverence for creation we seek to align our practices with is up to us.... All of us, in all our roles, as 'consumer', 'citizen', but most importantly and proactively as creatures indigenous to this planet need to develop our capacities for healthy cooperation over the myth of "healthy competition of the marketplace" and explore what localizing (or neglecting to) our lives might mean for our grandkids. When access and participation in the marketplace gets cut off to all but the few, that becomes a mother of invention for survival among the many.... the grassroots are not Roundup Ready, but connected to the heart of this Earth. We can go to sleep and numb ourselves with the many addictions available or strive to join the ranks of the Wasichu, the 'ones who steal the fat', OR we can wake up and be human beings who are loving enough of all our relations to do the hard work of not giving up or otherizing... of making it our business to recognize and strengthen those connections of the heart web of humanity so that we can survive as kin to all life, not as delusional rulers of the whole shebang.
Really interesting. I thought about the rolling chicken coop years ago. The cows keep the grass short, the pigs till the soil and eat leftover garden vegs, etc. The problem I haven't quite solved is that I'm not sure if it's a good idea to mix animals in large numbers considering the concentrating levels of manure and possibility of spreading diseases like the swine flu.
Well he does keep his operation small enough to be managed by just a few people. Start off small.
Salatin is very intensive on his land use, yet he is still able to build topsoil. Which is to say he is able to increase his primary asset's value year-over-year. His optimization of natural symbiotic relations results in value being added by his land's productivity.
Remember, everything is coming from the grass!
Keep the size of the mix relatively small. Chickens mix pretty good with cows and horses. I suggest checking out small family farms that advertise "free range" and see how they do it. Llamas and sheep do very well, the llamas watching over their stupid cousins and protecting them. It shouldn't be hard to figure out the right mix and the best size for the land you have. You know, eventually every small farm should have, in addition to farm hands, milker etc, a webmaster or data-sweeper to keep up communication with farms around the world.
I've read that indians led relatively happy lives until the white man showed up.
It is not a problem unless you have too many animals on too little land. That is the problem with modern "factory farming". I admit to getting a bit "long in the tooth, but I grew up with the very system he describes, and never knew of anyone having a medical problem from it.
If Big Ag et. al. will simply let these folks alone, we will soon have sustainable agriculture. There are young people in the rural area I live in who are taking over family farms that couldn't make it, and trying new ways to do it. So far, so good.
The scary part is the "food safety(!)" bill that passed the House which is designed to destroy Mr. Salatin and others like him, the Monsanto rep in charge of food safety (does he have to be confirmed?) and the Monsanto guy in charge of agricultural trade policy. Does Obama really think we care about an organic kitchen garden when this is all going on.
This is pretty much the way we farmed in the 60's and how the mixed farmers did it before that. We did not have rolling Chicken coops but we did let them out every day and lock them up at night. They could wander as far as they wished.
We did not use a lot in the way of fertilizers and drugs.
My dad did try a more industrial scale method a couple of years with pigs in small pens we mucked out daily , the intent to fatten them and sell but one year some disease got to them and they all died. The pigs we had in pasture never suffered the disease at all.
This is NOT new stuff. It old knowledge that came about through many thousands of years. Common sense over "Science".
There was an ORGANIZED attempt by the Corporations to get rid of these farms . They wanted to get control of the Food supply AND force these farmers and families off the land so as to get a cheap supply of labor for the factories.
Politicians hated the small farmers because they were relatively independent and able to form powerful Political groups that could counter the Corporate agenda the politicians were pushing.
Farmers parties lead to many of the Socialists parties.
William Greider's book "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve runs the country" tells a lot of the history of Money's hostile takeover of the independent farmer. He talks about the populists. One interesting thing about that movement was that they had the original idea for a central bank to replace the credit cycle that the east coast bankers were bankrupting them with. The populist idea was that an amount of credit would be created based on the value of the nation's agricultural production for the year. Their concept of a central bank got hijacked on the way to implementation.
There has been a long history of boom-bust cycles that always end in fewer independent farmers and bigger banks and agricultural conglomerates. I bet you remember the family farm crisis of the 80s. The cycle by which money consolidates is now so far advanced that the only thing left for them to foreclose on is condos. They will happily let us starve when they can get a better price for our agricultural products in China. Someone call Homeland Security. Ha.
Salatin's sentiment matches that of other farmer's I've met whose farming practices put some of the "officially organic" farms to shame. The official stamp of approval doesn't guarantee food safety or quality nearly as effectively as taking the time to visit or even glean sometime at a CSA or farm in your area. Plus you get a better feel for how workers are treated, what conditions animals endure or enjoy and how much real care goes into the soil and crops before they go to market and whether your farmer genuinely loves his/her community/land. Also volunteering on a farm can help a person learn alot and become a better gardener and inspire new projects to expand one's own food-growing abilities, not to mention come away with some delicious and healthy food for the table.
What a remarkable idea: To work WITH nature.
The scientific method could be used to document, describe and even expand upon the 'common sense' farming methods that Salatin's family use so effectively. But who would pay for it? Corporate money funds agricultural research that will support corporate products and profits. Corporate money buys politicians and media to support its corporate profits. Corporations don't want the costs (pollution etc.) they push off onto the environment and citizens to be documented. Citizens should use democracy to insist university-based agricultural research compare beyond-organic vs. corporate agriculture where ALL of the costs and ALL of the benefits are honestly accounted. Science and common sense are both based upon careful observation and deductive reasoning. Money, politics and prejudice can twist anything.
Joel makes me wish I was young again and had a bit of earth.
Who would pay for it? Maybe WHO. It does involve world health, yes? How about interns, 4-H kids and other volunteers to gather the data and maybe retired statisticians to compile and analyze the stuff? In the last 10 years you may have noticed that the use of the internet has skyrocketed and as a result you should be able to "Tweet" or Craigslist or some kind of social networking to acquire those willing individuals to promote something like sustainable farming. I'm retired, disabled and slower than I used to be but trying in my tired old way to establish a nice set of gardens on our property to grow most of the food we eat. Meat we have to get locally, as well as cheese and we grow our own chickens/eggs, all on less than two acres. My suggestion is that since we can all get together to talk about it, we can all get together online to study it, and publish it also online to reach the most people. We should see if people like Arianna Huffington or Michele Obama have any skills to offer or any interest to peak. Just some off the cuff ideas.
Interesting that it takes a French news agency to put out a story on an American like this.