Joel Salatin

Joel F. Salatin (born 1957) is an American farmer, lecturer, and author of several books, including "You Can Farm" and "Salad Bar Beef". He raises livestock using holistic methods of animal husbandry, free of potentially harmful chemicals, on his Shenandoah Valley farm, Polyface Farm, in Swoope, Virginia. The meat from the farm is sold in a direct-marketed fashion to consumers and restaurants.

His farm is featured prominently in "The Omnivore's Dilemma", by Michael Pollan, 2006. His unconventional farming practices and the beliefs behind them have drawn wide attention in the alternative agriculture community since, particularly where sustainable livestock management is a concern. For example, Pollan became interested in Salatin because he was intrigued by Salatin's refusal to send food to locations that are not within a four-hour drive to his farm (i.e. outside his local "foodshed").

Joel Salatin believes that "if you smell manure (on a livestock farm), you are smelling mismanagement." For instance, Salatin recommends that chicken houses' floors should be provided with one foot of sawdust or fine leaf chippings, into which the birds scratch their droppings, and the droppings decompose leaving no odor.

Salatin, a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer" produces high-quality "beyond organic" meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable methods. Salatin graduated from fundamentalist Bob Jones University in 1979, where he was a student leader and majored in English. ["Vintage" [BJU yearbook] (1979), 366. Salatin was a member of the Inter-Collegiate Debate team, the winner of the Daniel J. Carrison Americanism essay contest, and was named to "Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges".] He considers his farming endeavors his ministry, and also writes on his farming philosophies and the negative impact upon his livelihood and lifestyle of what he perceives as an increasingly liberal socialist approach that the United States government and regulatory agencies take toward farming.

References

Books

Salatin has written the following books:
*"$alad Bar Beef" - (July 1996)
*"Pastured Poultry Profit$" - (July 1996)
*"You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise" - (June 1998)
*"Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament" - (September 1, 2001)
*"Holy Cows And Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide To Farm Friendly Food" - (February 19, 2005)
*"Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front" - (September 17, 2007)

External links

* [http://polyfacefarms.com/ Polyface Farm]
* [http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2007/sb2007088_984272.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_success+stories BusinessWeek article about Salatin]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE7DF173EF932A35756C0A9639C8B63 New York Times article about Salatin]
* [http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?ID=164 Video podcast of Salatin Lecture 24-Feb-2005 @ U.C. Berkeley (2hrs)]