Joel Salatin
Today the farm, Polyface, Inc ("The Farm of Many Faces") represents a model of America's non-industrial food production. Joel continues to farm the land his parents bought, while refining and adding to their ideas. He strives to develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world while pushing environmentally-friendly farming practices toward new levels of expertise. He passionately defends small farms, local food systems, and the right to opt out of the conventional food production model. His mother Lucille, wife Teresa, daughter Rachel, son Daniel, daughter-in-law Sheri, grandsons Travis and Andrew, and granddaughter Lauryn, work fulltime together on the family farm which services more than 1,500 families, 10 retail outlets, and 30 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products using relationship marketing. Polyface, Inc. has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic and Gourmet, profiled on Lives of the 21st Century series on World News with Peter Jennings and countless other radio, television and print media. It achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. Most recently Joel has been featured in the movie Food, Inc that explores the hidden, and often shocking, side of the nation's food industry.
Joel holds a BA degree in English and also writes extensively in magazines such as Stockman Grass Farmer, Acres USA and American Agriculturist. He describes his occupation as "mob-stocking hervbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization." At a time when concerns about swine and avian bird flu originating in factory farms and e-coli contamination in hamburger, peanuts and spinach are being raised on a regular basis, Joel's humor and wisdom will prove a welcome and informative addition to the NOFA Winter Conference! (Video) Martha Stewart chats with Robert Kenner and Joel Salatin about the behavior and impact of the commercial food industry.
This page was last modified on December 02, 2009 at 8:27:31 AM.
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In 1961, Joel's parents purchased an eroded farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Using nature as a pattern, they and their children began the healing and innovation that now supports three generations. The Salatins planted trees, built huge compost piles, dug ponds, moved cows daily with portable electric fencing, and invented portable sheltering systems to produce all their animals on perennial prairie polycultures.
