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Who is Joel Salatin? Part I

If you’re a homesteader in the United States, you’ve likely heard of Joel Salatin. He’s considered one of the leading experts in the field of regenerative and sustainable farming. Joel is an author, speaker and podcaster, in addition to running Polyface Farms and participating in training up the next generation of American small farmers. He’s currently being considered for a position with the USDA in the incoming presidential administration.

I recently reached out to Mr. Salatin and he was gracious enough to grant me an interview. In this interview, he discussed everything from food security to raising all types of animals and the benefits of regenerative practices. 

Please enjoy learning from a master. Here’s our first installment, an excerpt from my interview with Joel Salatin.

Q: What are the core principles that guide your work at Polyface Farms?

JS: 

1.  Animals move.  That means  you need portable water, shelter, and control.

2.  Carbon drives soil fertility.  Decomposing biomass, whether digested in the innards of an animal and excreted or broken down in compost, is what drives all agronomic performance.  

3.  Glory of life.  Every animal and plant has a distinct contribution and physiology.  Offer each a habitat that enables it to express that uniqueness.  Also known as “honoring the pigness of the pig.”

4.  Symbiosis.  Diversity isn’t just about variety; it’s primarily about relationships.  Putting the right plants and animals together in the right relationship makes 1 + 1 = 3.  5.  Animals do the work.  Chickens eat worms and insects.  Pigs plow.  Cows mow.  Ducks eat bugs but don’t scratch. Turkeys eat bugs and can cover lots of ground quickly.  Sheep eat weeds.  We capitalize on all these gifts to reduce machinery and labor.

5.  Animals do the work.  Chickens eat worms and insects.  Pigs plow.  Cows mow.  Ducks eat bugs but don’t scratch. Turkeys eat bugs and can cover lots of ground quickly.  Sheep eat weeds.  We capitalize on all these gifts to reduce machinery and labor.

6.  Integration.  Starting with the forestal, pasture, and riparian areas, everything is integrated rather than segregated.Trees within 200 yards of all the fields so birds have a place to roost and shelter.  Ponds along pastures, in the woods. Trees for biomass to make carbonaceous diapers for livestock housing and composting in the winter.  The farm into the city by hosting 15,000 visitors a year for tours, seminars, and events.

7.  People centric.  We purposely reduce dependence on capital intensive, energy intensive, pharmaceutical intensive procedures in favor of more people.  While tax policies oppose this, we believe it makes us far more nimble and adaptive.

We’re not stuck with single-use depreciable infrastructure and debt burdens on obsolete infrastructure.

8.  Multi-use everything.  From stacking multi-enterprises in the field to building structures that can house animals in winter and square dances in the summer, everything we build or buy should be multi-functional.  Hoop houses for chickens, pigs and rabbits in winter grow vegetables in the spring, summer, and fall.  

9.  Self-reliance.  We do as much as we can for ourselves.  We heat with wood.  We have a sawmill to generate our own lumber for building projects.  We have an industrial chipper to handle biomass for bedding, compost, and mulch.  We’ve installed 12 miles of water line from high terrain ponds to give gravity-fed water over the entire farm without any pumps or electricity.  Our staff includes a mechanic and maintenance tech who can fix and build almost anything.10.  Germinating young farmers.  No business is sustainable unless it has a viable succession plan.  We offer a formal stewardship (5 months, May 1-Sept. 30) and apprenticeship (12 months, Oct. 15-Oct. 15) program to launch a new generation of farmers either working with us or other places. 

10.  Germinating young farmers.  No business is sustainable unless it has a viable succession plan.  We offer a formal stewardship (5 months, May 1-Sept. 30) and apprenticeship (12 months, Oct. 15-Oct. 15) program to launch a new generation of farmers either working with us or other places. 

Author’s Observations: From a homesteading point of view, every species you raise requires a specialized set of nutritional requirements, housing and veterinary care. Many homesteaders only specialize in raising one species, at least at first. 

Mr. Salatin speaks to why having diverse species gives a more favorable result in setting up sustainable practices and contributing to farming success.

Two of the main reasons people decide to go back to the land and homestead or farm are for independence and food security.

Mr. Salatin talks about how everything is interrelated and the benefits of biodiversity in creating sustainability and food security while maintaining independence as an individual farmer. Stability is created when all the systems are working together in symbiosis.

Q: What are your thoughts on the future of food security in relation to sustainable farming?

JS: The most stable and secure farms are the ones decoupled from outside dependency.  While no farm is a complete island, reducing off-farm dependency is possible on many fronts. 

 For example, when Russia’s Putin invaded Ukraine and fertilizer jumped 400 percent, it created nary a bobble on our farm because we don’t buy chemical fertilizer.  Instead, our trees provide the biomass for our chipper to create the carbon for our massive composting operations.  

Our farm’s grains come from local GMO-free producers, not imports routed through Istanbul.  Our farm’s gravity-fed water system does not rely on electricity.  Perhaps the most profound security comes from raising animals in a habitat that facilitates a robust immune system to eliminate pharmaceutical, both drug and vaccine, dependency.  These are doable, specific systems that create more secure production.

Q:  Can you talk about the connection between sustainable farming practices and food quality?

JS: The nutrition debate is over.  Chemicals do not make nutrition.  Plants can never be better than the soil they grow in and animals can never be better than the plants they consume.  In my book FOLKS, THIS AIN’T NORMAL I put in the nutritional charts of our eggs compared to the supermarket.  From omega 3:6 to minerals to vitamins, food quality is a direct result of soil quality and the diet the animals eat.  An ongoing study right now conducted by the Bionutrient Food Association has found astounding differences.  From the worst carrot to best carrot, you’d have to eat more than 50 poor ones to get the same nutrition as in one of the best.  Ditto broccoli.  In beef, the single most important determinant of nutritional quality is the diversity of plants the cow ate.  Monocultures and simplistic diets do not make high quality animals.

Q: How important is biodiversity in the success of sustainable farming?

JS: No natural ecosystem is monospeciated.  All natural systems form communities, or guilds, that practice both complementarity and competition.  Each plant and animal occupies a necessary niche, performing functions and offering service to the whole. Because mono-speciation is such an assault on nature, it requires massive amounts of energy  and time to maintain. 

 In general, the more diversified the flora and fauna per acre, the more productive, more stable, and more profitable it is. This includes buildings and multi-use equipment.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this interview as much as we did.

Come back for our second installment where Mr. Salatin discusses animal health and welfare, maintaining soil health and the use of technology vs. traditional farming practices, coming soon to HEC.

Here at  http://homesteadeducationchannel.com/, we are dedicated to helping you find resources, education, and information regarding all aspects of the homesteading lifestyle.

Want to learn more from Joel Salatin? Go to http://www.polyfacefarms.com

Find him on his YouTube channel “Farm Like a Lunatic” and listen to him on the Beyond Labels Podcast, Tedx talks, and guest appearances on various homesteading channels.

2 Responses

  1. What an amazing and informative interview. I am definitely coming back to this!!!! It gave me so many ideas!!!!- Tanya

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