Joel Salatin owns and runs Polyface Farms, a pristine organic farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. If you’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, you’ve read about him. If you’ve seen Food, Inc., you’ve seen him interviewed. Salatin and his family approach farming from a standpoint of environmentalism and stewardship, thereby producing extraordinary beef, turkey, chicken, eggs, and rabbit—and sustainable lumber. The free range cattle eat grass—like they’re supposed to [1. Most of the beef we eat these days is produced on corn, which cattle can’t naturally digest, which is part of why they get so sick and need to be pumped up with other additives. That’s Monsanto and gov’t subsidized corn’s fault.] The free range chickens follow the cows, picking through the pasture, thereby cleaning it up—like they’d do in nature. Free range pigs aerate and help create compost, because that’s what pigs do: snarffle around and aerate. Salatin’s operation is so rare that he’s constantly needing to do battle with government slaughter regulators because he kills his chickens extremely quickly and humanely in open air slaughter houses, rather than giant kill houses shellacked with white paint so that they can be more easily hosed down. Everything is free range. Everything is healthy and happy. Every being on the grounds is taken care of and respected.
So what’s my problem with all this? Nothing but that it’s legitimately news worthy! What has become of us that we have gotten so far away from producing livestock and other farm products naturally, humanely, and healthfully that one of the men who is actually wise enough to do so is all over the media? This man is a superstar because he does the right thing. What an embarrassment that Joel Salatin and the Polyface way of farming is anomalous.No wonder 67% of American adults are overweight. We have no respect for what we put into our bodies so it has no respect for us. How can we make Joel Salatin one in a million? [2. Mr. Salatin, if you’re reading this: I think you’re awesome.]---------------Tweet
