Posted on 01/04/2010 7:59:20 AM PST by posterchild
Meet the best, loudest (and only) Christian-libertarian-capitalist-environmentalist-lunatic farmer on the face of planet Earth.
Joel Salatin, self-professed owner of that lengthy honorific, has a personality bigger than the Grain Belt and a genius for farming that has made him a glib, brilliant prophet to a growing movement of back-to-nature farmers from California to Swoope, Va. (pop. 1,326), where his 550-acre Polyface Farm rests at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Mr. Salatin’s agricultural preaching has influenced food author and journalist Michael Pollan (“Omnivore’s Dilemma”) and earned him a prominent spot in the documentary “Food, Inc.,” making waves worldwide.
What makes Salatin so powerful on the farming scene is a unique mix of ingenuity, faith, and business savvy.
Whether making farming lectures feel like religious revivals or handling customers’ questions at the family store, it’s this blend of agricultural potency and inspirational vision that enables him to gross roughly $2 million annually and stand at the front of a growing community of farmers that may look like quintessential American rustics but whose techniques are anything but traditional.
On a foundation of Christian principles, Salatin has built a farming ecosystem where cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and rabbits interact ecologically in a way that goes beyond conservation.
“What we’re looking at is God’s design, 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,” Salatin says.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
sounds like an interesting read.
if it smells like
liberalism,
then it is
liberalism.
As long as he doesn’t think the Fed Gov or EPA should mandate his practices to everyone, more power to him.
Try reading the article - the guy sounds like he has pretty conservative roots to me.
I didn’t get much out of this story other than he is a free-range farmer. Is there more to this guy than that?
The “creative destruction” crowd is gonna show up and start spewing “librul”, and then have the nerve to ask why socialism is rampant. Shumpeter predicted that the gigantism of capitalism would morph into socialism thru managerial beauracracy, and voila here we are in the age of Obama.
I don’t know anything about him outside of this article.
That sounds like a pretty good description from what I am reading on his website.
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/products.aspx
Nothing new. For all practical purposes... same thing great grandpa was doing in the early 1800s. seven year integrated rotation. Someone is going to have decide which folks this system will starve... cause starve the majority will.
http://www.agdixie.com/Wheres_the_Food.html
might be a useful glance.
Considering the current system has fed Americans with lower-quality food to the point of widespread obesity and health problems, I'd say the system could use a bit of revamping to put it back into balance.
It will only 'starve' the population if this is mandated as the way all agriculture operates. There is nothing I can find from him that seems to imply he is demanding this be pervasive or replace 'corporate farming'. If he is filling a niche market and doing what he loves without pushing it on others, more power to him. That's freedom.
As long as he doesn’t think the Fed Gov or EPA should mandate his practices to everyone, more power to him
Amen. Am glad to see a farmer, esp. like Salatin, building a succesful operation. Unfortunately, people like Pollan who have made Salatin famous are the leftie-lib types who want everyone to pay $10/gallon for gas and have the Gov’t tell everyone what they can eat. They will claim him as their own.
Admittedly I have not "run the numbers" but 50% or so of all food for sale is tossed; that is a lot of waste, which means that a lot can be cut from production without anyone starving.
Plus, he is not interested in using force to compel anyone to buy from him.
This is a good summary of some of his ideas:
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp03.htm
This is Virginia. I can guarantee that he's got raccoons, foxes, skunks, black snakes and coyotes, even though they're not mentioned in the article. Depending on where exactly in the Valley he is, he may also have bobcats. I live in a subdivision and have all of the above, except maybe the bobcats, and I don't even have any livestock.
We had a neighbor that just threw corn on the ground with a pan of water nearby and she attracted more wildlife then she wanted including black snakes.
Smartened her right up, didn’t it? I used to leave a bowl of catfood on the back porch for any kitties who stayed out at night, then a possum showed up to eat it. I do keep a heated waterbowl out there now - I won’t begrudge any critter a drink of water.
“Smartened her right up, didn’t it?”
Well this didn’t, but her neighbor was so pissed he was finding snakes in his nearby garage he delivered three of them to her front porch with a very strong verbal dressing down. ;-)
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