Speaking

Joel Salatin, 65, calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson. Those who don’t like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlatan, and starvation advocate.

With a room full of debate trophies from high school and college days, 15 published books, and a thriving multi-generational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. He’s as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as addressing CEOs in a Wall Street business conference.

His wide-ranging topics include nitty-gritty how-to for profitable regenerative farming as well as cultural philosophy like orthodoxy vs. heresy. A wordsmith and master communicator, he moves audiences from laughs one minute to tears the next, from frustration to hopefulness. Often receiving standing ovations, he prefers the word performance rather than presentation to describe his lectures. His favorite activity?–Q&A. “I love the interaction,” he says.

He co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.

Salatin is the editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, granddaddy catalyst for the grass farming movement. He writes the “Confessions of a Steward” monthly column for Plain Values magazine, the “Homestead Abundance” column for Homestead Living magazine, and three columns a month for the e-magazine Manward. He also co-hosts a podcast titled BEYOND LABELS with co-author of that book Dr. Sina McCullough.

A frequent guest on radio programs and podcasts targeting preppers, homesteaders, and foodies, Salatin’s practical, can-do solutions tied to passionate soliloquies for sustainability offer everyone food for thought and plans for action.

He also hosts his own podcast with Dr. Sina McCullough called BEYOND LABELS after their book of the same name.

Mixing mischievous humor with hard-hitting information, Salatin both entertains and moves people. Seldom using a power-point and often speaking from an outline scribbled in a yellow legal pad, he depends on theatrics, style, and compelling content to hold attention and defend innovative positions. The rare combination of prophet and practitioner makes him both a must-read and must-hear in a time desperate for integrity leadership and example.

ECOFARMING

AMBASSADORS FOR RESOURCE STEWARDSHIP

An introduction detailing the gullied rockpile of property that germinated Polyface in 1961 provides a stage to honor and celebrate all soil stewards. The ethos of soil stewardship is dependency and development. The economy is all about carbon and hydration. The elegance is integration, innovation, and symbiosis. Finally, empowerment comes from vision, coaching, and a climate of experimentation. If you believe soil is important and you’re committed to its health, this is a tribute to you and the mission.

SMALL FARM CELEBRATION

In a time when “too big to fail” is a cultural mantra, perhaps “too big to operate” is equally valid. Paradigms exceed their efficiency. In farming, small is beautiful for many reasons and in today’s climate, the advantages are compounding by the day. From being more bio-secure to more neighbor friendly, small farms are perhaps more viable and needed today than ever before. Rather than brushing off small farms, let’s celebrate and honor their distinct contributions.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

At its core, what is sustainable agriculture? It’s one that romances the next generation. It requires balanced goals—often seemingly opposing goals. It rejuvenates local food systems. It is all this and more because in the great scheme of things, it honors prophets as much as technicians. Industrial agriculture is known for how to do things; sustainable agriculture dares to ask why, and that is the difference between technicians and prophets.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRASS-BASED AGRICULTURE

With nutritional awareness on the upswing and mainline farmers aging out, never have forages offered a more viable farming opportunity. From production to marketing to animal welfare, grasslands can be profitable, productive, and pleasurable. With new infrastructure like electric fencing, water lines, and portable shelters, eliminating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) is now not only possible, it’s imperative. Ecology benefits too.

CULTIVATING EXCELLENCE: FARMING TO SERVE THE COMMON GOOD

Conventional industrial agriculture serves a few big corporations and certainly doesn’t deliver healthful sustenance for either people or the land. Good farming tries for excellence, not mediocrity. It serves the commons and bolsters the common good, not a few mega-outfits with headquarters far removed from the farmers and customers who serve the business. Agri-industrial outfits chew up families; farming has the highest suicide rate of any occupation in the country, including ex-military. The time to cultivate excellence rather than destruction is now; and this is how we do it.


ECOLOGICAL VS. INDUSTRIAL VIEW OF HORIZONS

Assuming we could look at various horizons, what are the difference between these two? Below the soil, the ecological view sees a teaming food web; the industrialists sees inert material to hold up a plant fed like an IV drip. Above the soil, the ecologist sees solar driven everything but the industrialist sees petroleum driven everything. At the food horizon, the ecologist sees wholes and the industrialist sees parts. At the landscape horizon, the ecologist sees more farmers and the industrialist sees fewer farmers.

BUILDING BRIDGES

While chemical-based agriculture pooh-poohs compost-driven farms, these alternative farmers can develop strategies to build bridges rather than erect higher barriers. Naysaying neighbors may enjoy sharing some labor. You can join a 4-H club or hot a community potluck. The point is to reach out as a friend and not expect those who think you’re a kook to make the first friendship move. Collaborative infrastructure and even looking for shared marketing opportunities can stimulate friendships where animosity otherwise would reign.

YOU CAN FARM

Taken from Joel’s iconic book by the same title, this talk can be compressed into a single presentation or elongated into a multi-hour seminar. It explores the basics to starting a successful farm, building a brand, and marketing the product. It includes mistakes and realities, like a discussion about age and where you are in the cycle of life. It includes best opportunities as well as worst distractions.

SCRAMBLED BRAINS

Our culture’s food and farming goals indicate an addled mental capacity. Cheap food. Size equals efficiency. Fewer farms is good. Life is fundamentally mechanical, not biological. Annuals are superior to perennials. Domestic culinary arts are archaic. Because these ideas dominate the electorate, they infect every political debate on food and farm policy. People simply aren’t thinking their thinking through.

BUILDING A NOURISHING FARM

Too often farms aren’t nourishing. They don’t nourish the ecology, the people, or the community. Joel dissect all these components from soil to systems to species to soul to succession. Every element can and should be nourishing.

WINNERS AND LOSERS IN AN INTEGRITY FOOD AND FARMING SYSTEM

What if everyone in food and farming did the right thing? Another imagination exercise, this presentation lists the winners and losers under such a scenario. Carbon value would increase but chemical value would decrease. Seed saving would enjoy patronage but Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) seeds would tank. Agritourism would be hot; Disney not. Grass value would skyrocket; Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) would go bankrupt. Canning supplies would be a much bigger market while McDonald’s would collapse. What a wonderful world.’

DOING THE RIGHT THINGS FOR PEOPLE, PLANET, AND ECONOMY

You mean we haven’t been doing the right things? No, in fact. We’ve depleted the soil, dehydrated the landscape, segregated farming and food, adulterated biology, encouraged mono-speciation and abdicated our involvement and knowledge in the food system. What’s the alternative, the right things? That would be building soil, hydrating, integration, integrity, diversity, and participation.

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE AND AUTHENTIC NUTRITION

The history of agriculture too often indicates an extractive and degenerative path. We know how to do better. We can build animal and plant symbiosis. We can move animals across the landscape to fulfill ancient productive functions. With modern chainsaws, chippers, and front end loaders, we can duplicate the in-situ carbon fertilization principles nature used to build soils. It requires everyone to participate; no frog croaked “today, I will not participate.” Neither can we.

BROILER CHICKENS: BIGGEST MISTAKES

From his own experience and visiting countless farms, Joel offers a laundry list of the biggest mistakes he and others make when raising meat birds. From too-heavy portable shelters to lack of grit and wrong genetics, he explains encouragingly how to be more successful. Grass can be too tall. Predators can be a problem. Dirty water, deficient feed, and discomfort can all conspire to make your broiler chicken enterprise a headache instead of a joy.

ECO-FARMING: WHERE WE’VE BEEN, WHERE WE ARE, AND WHERE WE’RE GOING

The rising world of ecological farming is fairly new in American agriculture. As a movement, we’re the new kids on the block, charting new territory. We’re countering everything the industrial paradigm created. Then we got discovered—that’s where we are. And now we’re getting co-opted with government certification for organic. With irradiation, fake meat, genetic engineering and global positioning satellites, our side is the repository of everything authentic and native. Agriculture was the last to join the industrial paradigm and it will be the last to exit.

A SACRED CALLING

Few vocations are as noble and sacred as the mission to steward a piece of land and grow things that bring health and vitality to neighbors. By building community, embracing forgiveness, and opposing cheap food, we extend our influence to create good directions. We can all do things right here and right now, like develop farms that mimic nature. Like develop a relationship with our food.

CHILD FRIENDLY FOOD PRODUCTION

From backyard chickens to vermi-composting and vegetable production, children can produce copious amounts of food for the family. Small animals and garden beds offer appropriate-sized production models where children can learn and thrive. Re-connecting to our ecological umbilical cultivates a respect and awe for nature and God’s design. A passion for earthworms is certainly as valuable as a passion for soccer.

GENETICS AT POLYFACE

Many folks want to know what Polyface Farm looks for in selecting breeding stock. With a long history of trial and error, Joel explores things that have worked and things that haven’t. With many decades of selection under the belt, he’s made a list of prerequisites. For sure, the commodity industrial livestock system is selecting for the wrong things, or at least imbalanced things. Animal behaviorist guru Temple Grandin preaches balance, and Polyface has found that to be the best approach.

WHAT ISN’T IS HARD TO STUDY

One of the biggest problems gathering data is that something has to exist in order to study it. This is a scientific limitation. When researches can’t imagine something, or an alternative doesn’t exist, collecting information on it isn’t evenin the cards. As a result, good farming practices, because they are rare, don’t make it into computer modeling and mainstream data bases. The conclusions in the mainstream community, therefore, are based on data gathered from dysfunctional systems.

DESIGNING YOUR LANDSCAPE

Each property has assets and liabilities as features to be massaged into a working enterprise. The Polyface platform uses a three-pronged approach: access, water, control. If you can’t get there, you can’t manage it. Water is the beginning of everything. And if you can’t keep your livestock where you want them, and move them easily from place to place, everything is frustrating. This presentation walks through all three of these critical development platforms to offer an efficiency and enjoyment.

GRASS: THE BACKBONE OF THE SUSTAINABLE FARM

Agriculture’s holy grain, for centuries, has been grain because it was hard to grow, harvest, and store. Modern mechanization has made grain cheap, which in turn has turned grass from a necessary farm component to feed draft animals (horses, mules, oxen) to almost an unwanted, unnecessary distraction. But from both an ecological and production standpoint, the perennial forage component is the ultimate soil builder and nutrient density insurer. Making grass profitable and even competitive to grain is perhaps the key to ultimate agricultural sustainability.

PRINCIPLES THAT MAKE POLYFACE FUNCTION: WHAT I’M CULTISH ABOUT

Clean animals. Efficiency. Limited chore time. Good fences. Function over form. Multi-purpose everything. Mutual interdependence. Experiments and trials. Cash flow. Marketing. These are the underlying objectives that make the farm a shining example of health, production, and profitability. Joel explores each of these themes based on his experience, successes, and failures during his farming lifetime.

MY ANIMAL DISEASE EXPERIENCES

With 1,000 head of cattle, tens of thousands of chickens, nearly 1,000 hogs and numerous other livestock, Polyface farm uses no vaccinations, has no vet bills, and does not have a normal biosecurity plan. But that doesn’t mean the farm has been disease-free. In this extremely transparent presentation, Joel describes the several sickness outbreaks the farm has experienced over the last 60-plus years. More importantly, he explains why they occurred, with the recurring thesis: “Every disease outbreak was my fault.”

STEMS

THE FUTURE OF FOOD AND FARMING

We hear a lot about lab cultured meat, hydroponics, vertical farms and space juice. In complete contradiction to current futuristic fads, this presentation examines the kinds of systems that will actually work. It starts with integration (production with markets; waste streams with salvage inputs). Then it adds intensification through stacking, multi-speciation, season extension, and farm team building. The next step is innovation with portable infrastructure, fiefdoms, electronic aggregation and time and motion studies. Individualization comes next with producer and consumer freedom. That provides independence from corporatism, ignorance, and fear.

LOCAL FOOD TO THE RESCUE

Juxtaposing global/industrial characteristics with local/integrity characteristics, this presentation contrasts the two lists. For example, segregated (away) versus integrated (imbedded). Non-scalable versus scalable (down). Opaque versus transparent. Fragile versus resilient. Energy extensive versus energy intensive. Mechanical versus biological. Foreign-centric versus home-centric. Centralized versus decentralized. Exclusive versus inclusive. Fear versus faith. And more.

SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE

Many folks say the earth is wearing out and we’re all going to starve or burn up in the next few years. While a negative trajectory is a current fact, it can change, and here’s how. First, recognize that life is fundamentally biological, not mechanical. Next, turn farmscapes into multi-speciation rather than mono-speciation. Then fill farmland with carbon and animals. Stockpile water rather than draining it away. Adopt localism rather than globalism. Not least, incentivize good farmers with white collar salaries. Finally, encourage domestic culinary arts rather than packaged single service industrial highly processed food-like substances.

GOOD, FAST, AND CHEAP

One of the most axiomatic business triangles is is the idea that you can have only two of three things: good, fast, or cheap. You can’t have all three. In modern food and farming, we’ve picked fast and cheap, with no regard for good. That’s a mistake, and in this hard hitting presentation Joel explains what we’ve sacrificed by failing to ask for good.

SECURING OUR LOCAL FOOD SYSTEM

The local food movement has been progressing in fits and spurts for several decades. This presentation analyzes threats and opportunities, focusing on how each of us can keep it moving forward. Joel admonishes us to keep participating, never assuming someone else will do it. He explains how food safety laws inhibit neighbor-to-neighbor food transactions and how to mitigate the food police. In the end, collaboration between production, processing, marketing, accounting, distribution, and customers is the lubricant to move the local food movement forward.

GROWING A FARM AND FOOD ECONOMY: OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES

Everybody wants to build soil and enjoy a beautiful landscape, but that is not what the centralized industrialized farm and food economy delivers. Better farming can deliver soil and beauty, along with bountiful quantities. Rather than reducing farmers, we need system that beckon farmers, that create burgeoning local economies to supply blossoming domestic culinary arts. The final element is buy-in from leaders to enable this kind of economy to prosper.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR LOCAL FOOD?

This presentation is in two parts. The first explains the hurdles or obstacles facing local food. The market share of the local food movement is still miniscule, and the reasons are not a mystery: farmers are lone rangers; convenience is kind; inefficient distribution; seasonality; price; difficulty integrating. Fortunately, solutions for all these exist: collaboration, electronic aggregation, year-round availability; Uberized food safety; integrated systems; cultivate a climate of food sexiness; food freedom.

BENEFITS OF BUYING LOCAL

When you buy local, it creates a cascade of beneficial dominoes. Some of them are connection, transparency, economic multiplication, less energy, security, and stability. To move all these benefits forward, we need to quit being victims and participate by discovering our kitchens, growing something, and enjoy paying for integrity food.

FOOD: THOUGHTFULLY SOURCED. CAREFULLY SERVED

Developed for the hospitality and restaurant industry, this talk encourages thinking differently and honors those who do. Rather than getting provenance from mainline industrial sources, it takes brand new thinking to source intentionally and alternatively. It mean overcoming brand new hurdles in insurance, seasonality, and pricing. But it also offers brand new opportunities to bring sacredness and better stories into the dining room. Visioning includes edible roofscapes, water cisterns, chickens to eat food scraps, and more.

CREATING A GARDEN-MIMICRY FOOD SYSTEM

If we viewed our food system from a garden’s perspective, it would look fundamentally different than it does. This talk is a tribute to gardeners, honoring their work as a guiding light for creating a better food system. Gardens are beautiful but industrial agriculture is ugly. Gardeners know vibrant color indicates vitality but industrial food is pale and tasteless. A food system run by gardeners would a wonderful change.

A CROSSFIT FARM FOODSCAPE

The crossfit movement has been huge in the wellness/fitness space. Many people struggling with health issues have found help in the crossfit template. What if that template were applied to farms? What would a crossfit farm look like? Strategic movement, successional management, species multiplicity, systems massage. Sound familiar? These and more mimic the the 10 essential physical parameters of crossfit: endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.

BUILDING A LOCAL FOOD SYSTEM THAT WORKS

Many adherents to the local food movement struggle with the various pieces that need to function in order to make the whole thing work. It’s not easy. Putting together producers, processors, marketers, and distributors is like herding cats. But unless and until all these components fill their space in this localized vision, and then change practices, the local food movement will stay a peripheral fringe rather than becoming mainstream.

WHAT KIND OF FOOD DO YOU WANT TO SERVE?

Originally presented at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York, this is an encouragement to everyone in food service. We can choose to continue patronizing the system or we can be part of the solution. The patron names on the buildings at the CIA campus illustrate the uphill battle food service outfits have in changing the system. Embracing a vision for a different type of food is the first step in making the changes.

NOT THAT WE TEACH ‘EM, WHAT WILL WE FEED ‘EM?

While education choice has steadily gained credibility and status in our culture, food choice is suffering from a tyrannical food inquisition. Why is local integrity food so expensive? Why can’t you get raw milk for your children? This presentation exposes the orthodoxy of the USDA and FDA for exactly what it is—an assault on liberty and personhood. Who owns the child was the cry in the early home school movement. Today, it’s who owns my body? What good is the freedom to educate if we can’t choose the fuel for our brains and bodies to function normally?

HEALING THE PLANET ONE PLATE AT A TIME

Linking food to landscapes is an ongoing message that needs to penetrate the brains of people before they ever make changes. What you eat either creates or erodes soil. It either affirms or cheapens people. It either saves or destroys energy. It either builds local economies or dismantles them. It either feeds the soul or starves the soul. These and other links between the plate and planet make our meals the most critical vote for the future of the planet.

SAVING THE NATURE OF NATURE

If we create a bio-mimicry food system, it looks decidedly different than what’s in the supermarket. Food can never be any better than the soil that supports it. Animal habit, unique to every species, must be honored and respected. If we want nature to show up on our dinner tables, we need to do things to make it happen. We need to find our local food treasures. We need to invest in our value tribe. We need to enjoy domestic culinary arts.

WHAT CAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT DO TO HELP LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS?

Too often local officials excusive their disinvolvement by saying they can’t usurp the federal government. But localities have far more latitude than many realize. For example, they can adjust taxes to incentivize or reduce certain transactions. They have almost complete control over zoning laws, which can often be the biggest impediment to cottage industries. School lunch programs can be manipulated to collaborate with local food. Passing food sovereignty laws increases awareness in the public policy space; that in and of itself creates movement.

DANCING WITH DINNER

If you’re going to pick a dance partner, you want to know something about him. The way most Americans pick their dinner dance partners, it’s more like a one night stand, a prostitution deal rather than a relationship. People used to think a lot about food, but today it’s nearly an afterthought. We don’t eat at a family table. More than half of Americans don’t know what they’re eating for dinner at 4 in the afternoon. Food is simply a pitstop between the more important things in life. That’s not the way to cultivate a dinner dance partner.

EATING WELL WITH LESS

Eating is taking in fuel for the body. Well means it’s food that will actually run our body and not leave us stranded. With less time and money means we make it more convenient and affordable. Most Americans don’t eat well; they eat poorly. And too many don’t see how to eat better given their budget and schedule. But slow cookers, left-overs and other techniques make scratch cooking not as time consuming as it once was. Buying in bulk, unprocessed, in season, with strategic appreciation to farmer inventories make eating like a king affordable and simple.

STAYING ALIVE, LEGAL, AND SUSTAINABLE

All three of these elements are a tall order. In this presentation, Joel goes systematically and carefully through each element, describing threats to it and then antidotes. The talk title suggests a foreboding climate, and that is true. But as with all his talks, he ends on a positive note of empowerment and enthusiasm.

SUCCESSION

CAN YOU MAKE ROOM FOR ME?

Making a place for the next generation is the ultimate sustainability plan. No farm is ultimately sustainable unless and until it creates two salaries from two different generations. Cultivating a mindset for the second generation is harder than the actual nuts and bolts of doing it. The senior generation needs to adopt an attitude that assumes the farm can make room for one more salary. A habitat to encourage independent fiefdoms and making work enjoyable complement a big vision mentality. A place of pride, family planning, and good brainstorming create new incomes.

WORKING WITH YOUR KIDS SO THEY’LL WANTTO WORK WITH YOU

Parents often ask how to get their children to enjoy farm work and chores, from weeding the green beans to gathering the eggs. With his “Ten Commandments” Joel goes over principles for turning your children into little worker bees. One of the most critical elements is to give task oriented activities, not time oriented. “Fill this pan with green beans” is far different than “pick green beans for 30 minutes.” This one rule is a game changer, but taken together, this list can move the dynamics from whining to winning.

FAMILY FIEFDOMS

A fiefdom is a self-designed autonomous enterprise. The best way to bring the next generation along in a family business is to encourage them to create their own fiefdoms, ideally between the ages of 8 and 11. Creating a climate of entrepreneurship means we don’t give allowances; we offer germination options to launch fiefdoms. Parents can be benevolent bankers, but this child-driven enterprise concept requires ownership outside the adults. Learning about profit, loss, sales, risk, and inventory management are absolutely possible at an extremely early age if we create the right familial climate.

SUCCESSION

Perhaps the biggest hurdle in today’s food and farming sector is what happens when America’s farmer, average age 60, ages out? Setting up a platform to not only entice the next generation, but make the transition seamless, is one farming’s hardest challenges. Growing corn and cows is simple compared to creating multi-generational legacy. And if no children want it, what about bringing on non-relatives to continue the farm business? This is all part of succession, the official taboo subject on most farms, but arguably the most important issue.

BECOMING NATIVE TO THIS FARM

Joel’s farm story, from Venezuela to Swoope, from rocks and gullies to verdant fields, from sickness to health. Along the way, the love and passion to a place where every square foot holds a memory with Dad, Joel is quick to admit he’s hopelessly in love with this little niche of God’s creation. The ultimate dream? To be God’s Secretary of Agriculture during the millennium. This is a story of pilgrimage, discovery, and blessing.

BIG PICTURE

WE’RE THE ANTIDOTE FOR CUTLURAL MALADIES

Good farms and good farmers need to model the principles currently lost in our culture’s dysfunction. Healing, humility, family, agrarian nobility, relationships, transparency, nutrient density, beauty, forgiveness—our society desperately needs all these things. Our farms can and should be fountains of redemption and function flowing into our nation.

THE SHEER ECSTASY OF BEING A LUNATIC FARMER

With a handle like “lunatic farmer,” Joel bring humor and satire to an otherwise frustrating interface. In this whimsical talk, he explains what gives him joy versus what gives mainline conventional agriculture joy. He likes building soil, accumulating water, honoring the pigness of pigs,, owning as little equipment as possible and so on. Whenever someone says “come on, farmers are farmers, they’re all alike,” this list of differences sets the record straight.

PARALLEL ECONOMIES: AGRICULTURE

Originally presented as a lecture at Hillsdale College, this talk was part of a lecture series about parallel economies and Joel was asked to apply it to agriculture. In classic contrast fashion, he offers a list of the current paradigm versus one that actually works. Cheap food versus precious food, quantity versus quality, segregated versus integrated, centralized versus decentralized and on and on. In order to have it added to proceedings, this is one speech he actually wrote out word for word.


ECOLOGICAL ECONOMY

What does an economy that looks like ecology look like? Or stated another way, what would an economy be like if it functioned like ecology? It would exhibit bio-mimicry. It would conserve resources. It would be fundamentally localized. It would be aesthetically and aromatically sensually romantic. It would diversified and would have a functional succession plan, meaning it has a strategy that can keep going in perpetuity.

PRINCIPLES OF FUNCTION

Distilling complexity into simple terms is the theme of this presentation. A list of 10 critical functions for ecology to work, for commerce to work, for farm business to work offer an understandable and practical roadmap to overall function. In today’s world, every one of these functions is dysfunctional; restoring functionality is a Holy Grail of achievement.

SONNY YOUR LIFE

Sonny is a pet dog. How would our food system make us feel if it treated us like a favorite iconic pet dog? We’d feel loved and cared for. Is this the way industrial food makes us feel? We’d embrace daily discovery, like new culinary delights in our kitchen. We’d live in the moment, not in the past or fearing the future. We’d immerse in life’s fullness and embrace being real—real sticks to chase and water to jump in, not fake experiences like fake meat. We’d feel like carnivores, not vegans, and we’d enjoy trust toward our provenance and providers.]

PRESERVING FARMERS, NOT FARMLAND

What makes a farm a farm? Not zoning, not animals, not crops, not barns or tractors. The only reason we call a piece of property a farm is because it has a farmER. Too often nonprofits hype up people to donate to preserve farmLAND but don’t seem to understand that farmLAND without a farmER is just a wilderness. The four things that must be preserved, therefore, are production, processing, marketing, and distribution. The ability for the farmer to participate in all four of those elements is the key to keep a farmer on the land.

ORTHODOXY VS. HERESY

The earth is flat. The sun revolves around the earth. Disease is from spirits. Feed dead cows to cows. Hydrogenated vegetable oils are far better than butter. These and many other orthodoxies were believed at one time. Today, we laugh at such silliness. What will people a century from now laugh at our culture for believing? Often the orthodoxies of today become the heresies of yesterday. And today’s heresies become tomorrow’s accepted knowledge.

PALEOING OUR FOODSCAPE: BEAVERS, FIRE, AND PREDATORS

The paleo diet encourages eating primitive food for ultimate health. Beyond that, ultimate ecological health comes from mimicking a paleo landscape. What does a farm and food system stemming from a paleo landscape look like? That’s the fundamental question Joel answers in this imaginative look at ancient landscapes and how they built soil and abundance. From fire to beavers to glaciers, this tour though old models offers vibrant hope for today’s food systems.

BENCHMARKS OF TRUTH

Perhaps one of Joel’s most profound presentations, this one examines the principles that determine if a decision moves us toward away from truth. Businesses struggle mightily with policies and protocols. Often we end up in a bad place and wonder how we got there. These benchmarks are straight from the heart: carbon building; child friendly; being-honoring; immaterial equity; empowered innovation; commons increasing; easy entrance and exit. And several more.

MAJOR TRENDS SHAPING THE FOOD AND FARMING WORLD

Fake meat, empirical nutrition measurement, outlawing animal slaughter and a host of other trends make peering into the future both concerning and exhilarating. We’re heading into interesting times. Some trends are terrifying but others are wonderful, like urban-to-rural flight, microbiome research, and shipping efficiencies. Water wars appear imminent but grain production costs make forages look better by the day. We live in interesting times.

POLYFACE GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The guiding principles that steer Polyface are not complicated. The 12 principles in this presentation build from soil to opportunities for self-empowered young people. These principles include frugality, diversification, owning the product chain from beginning to final customer, and others. These goals guide decisions about policy, protocol, and potential opportunities. A business is known more for what it says “no” to than what it says “yes” to, so while these ideas are what the farm considers valuable, they also create boundaries around what the farm will not do.

CHARTING A NEW COURSE: MARKETING, RISK MANAGEMENT, AND PLANNING

A combination history lesson and futuristic trends, this presentation starts with where we’ve been, moves to where we are, and then explains where we’re headed. The optimal size of everything is shrinking. Trends are reversing, like country to city is turning into city to country. Every paradigm creates its own anti-paradigm. Niche everything. Just when a model seems perfect, it begins to collapse. Fascinating times.

PRINCIPLES OF ECOLOGY

In one of his most imaginative presentation, Joel assumes he’s a frog living in 1500, sitting on the edge of a pond, and wondering what that frog would know about the world. Imagining what that frog knows is both basic and profound, Joel explains the most fundamental elements of ecology. Things like there is no animal-less ecosystem; energy comes from proximate sources; carbon doesn’t move very far; hydration occurs on site; seasonality dominates biology; processes are driven by local information; perennials dominate; polycultures proliferate; integration; participation. The frog understands all these, and now so do you.

YOU HAVE A ROLE IN CREATING HEALTHY LAND, HEALTHY FOOD, AND HEALTHY LIVES

Farmers who practice holism and ecology are the first responders in a civilization’s resource stewardship. Although the stories of civilization generally entail exploitation and a Conquistador mentality, good farmers provide plenty of proof that thriving civilizations do not need to wear out their nest. What a joy to know that as a result of participatory environmentalism, rather than abandonment environmentalism, I as a farmer can make my nest healthier. That’s the farmer’s end. Non-farmers, often just known as consumers, can partake equally in this redemptive journey with intentional eating and paying honest prices for integrity food.

HOLY COWS AND HOG HEAVEN

Cultural thinkers and leaders have been wrong about a lot of things. Paradigms define what we see, and in our Greco-Roman linear reductionist compartmentalized segregated systematized individualistic, disconnected parts-oriented western thinking, that means we’re brain damaged. We’ve taken the sacred out of food and farming and replaced it with mechanistic inanimate protoplasmic thinking. We must restore the noble and rediscover the morality and ethics of nature.

CAN WE FEED THE WORLD

The number one question Joel get asked is can local, ecological, carbon-driven, pasture-based systems feed the world? The answer: not only can we, but it’s the only system that will. This is probably one of the most fun and empowering talks in the repertoire because it explains, precisely, what a hopeful future we have if we adopt different practices. Modern scientific composting was not practiced until the mid 1940s. That was after chemical fertilizers were developed. The biological solutions, at scale, are extremely recent. This isn’t about going back; it's about going
forward.

FOLKS, THIS AIN’T NORMAL

Do you realize how much of today’s seeming normality is actually historically abnormal? From unpronounceable food to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, cheap grain to children without chores, modern society has deviated so far from historical normalcy most folks have no clue what normal is. In fact, the lion’s share of modern food, farming, and lifestyle are recent experiments in ecology and society, meaning we’re guinea pigs in a massive untried experiment. If you’re going to bet on a race horse, you normally pick the one that’s won a few races, not the one that’s never been in a race before. In this whimsical, humorous, but hard-hitting presentation, Joel reminds us what was normal and how to re-apply those rules in a techno-sophisticated culture.

CREATING THE FARM YOU LOVE

Too many farmers either burn out or become frustrated enough to wish they’d picked another vocation. Many farmers encourage their children to seek other employment. This nitty-gritty practical presentation offers a platform of protocols, policies, and perspectives that encourage and enduring and endearing farm experience.

OUR ECOLOGICAL UMBILICAL

Using the umbilical as a poignant picture of dependency, Joel dives into the historically consistent view that we can destroy soil and water without repercussions. All ancient civilizations finally collapsed with their ecological demise. Big themes include replacing hubris with humility, hermitting replaced by holism, and hedonism replaced with holiness. In the end, we can’t levitate into a Star Trek independence any more than we can raise a baby without milk. Recognizing our dependency is the first step to responsibly stewardship.

THE FARM ON YOUR PLATE

If you could squint your eyes and look through the plate of food on your table, and see the landscape that created that meal, what would you see? Would you see systems that build soil, that honor animal distinctiveness, that incentivize good stewardship, that gives us all more and cleaner water? In this eater-oriented presentation, Joel walks systematically through what you should see on a farm you’d be proud to have on your plate. Vetting authentic farms is a skill like any other; knowing the benchmarks is critical for good choices. Let’s put good farms on our plate, not bad ones.

WHAT SCIENCE GOT WRONG

The religion of techno-sophistication is science. But just like many religions get things wrong, science does too. Be careful where you worship, or what you worship. In this historical remembrance, Joel examines things like germ theory, evolution, chemical fertilizer, the moldboard plow, plant breeding, subtherapeutic antibiotics, food safety sterilization and others. The point is that philosophy trumps science. If we think right, we’ll know what science is wrong and what is right. Ultimately, our thinking screen is what filters the science.

URBAN OPTIONS

CITY SUSTAINABILITY

Can you join the sustainability movement while living in the city? Absolutely, and Joel walks you through numerous options, from making your kitchen the center of your home to installing a hive of honey bees on your house roof. Every house in North America that gets cool enough to require heat in the winter should have solarium on the south side. You can use a bicycle and IBC tote to eliminate an energy-guzzling water pressure tank. Turn your free time into sleuthing good farmers and above all, eat left-overs, the ultimate sign that “you get it.”

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR STARTING AN URBAN FARM

Most cities have massive amounts of unused land. As people flee cities, no doubt more buildings will collapse and more land will become available. Urban farms have unique challenges like neighbors, fragmentation, regulations, and a high cost of living. But they also offer special opportunities, like neighbors, labor, waste streams, collaboration, and customer connection. Convenient proximity to customers offers better cash flow, product mix, and a quick response for inventory salvage or emergencies.

BUILDING A HEALTHY SOCIETY

No society can be healthier than its soil. No society can be more sacred than its ecology or more innovative than its freedom. No society can be more secure than its responsibility, more honest than its transparency, or more sustainable than its resource use. This is a deeply thought-provoking look at where we are and where we need to go in our cultural recovery program.

URBAN MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT FARMING

Farms stink. Farms destroy the environment. Farmland doesn’t make economic sense. Farming requires large acreages. Farming spreads disease. Earthworms are unimportant. Nobody needs to worry about food. Farmers are dolts. One by one, Joel explores each of these and shows how it is either not true or need not be true.

THE SELF-CONTAINED HOME

“Opt out” was the mantra of the early home schooling movement. The next permutation of that theme is to opt out in other areas, and what better way than to retrofit out homes into water-energy-food generation station, to pull the plug, so to speak? A bountiful harvest awaits us when we harness sunshine, water, carbon cycles, and technology integration right where we live. Why patronize the system any more than necessary? If we’re going to defund something, how about defunding Monsanto and McDonald’s?

FOOD FREEDOM

FARM FOOD SALES EMANCIPATION

Establishing the premise that America’s food system is currently enslaved and shackled by a plethora of misguided food safety regulations, Joel explains how we got to where we are. The pushback is real: “vigilante consumers,” the local food movement and “know your farmer know your food.” Food safety is a smoke screen because safety is subjective and hypocritical. This presentation crescendos to an ending articulating the many benefits of food choice.

EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL

A laundry list of things Polyface would like to do but can’t because they’re illegal establishes the hurdle. Why has our society allowed this level of tyranny? The answer is inaccurate paradigms, like government is more trustworthy than individuals; food safety is objective; bugs are bad; people are ignorant; government oversight is normal. Freedom is important because regulations are not salable and innovation requires embryonic prototypes. Circumventive alternatives exist and need to be widely employed.

THE POLITICS OF FOOD

In a debate, you must know how the other side thinks in order to speak coherently. When our integrity food and farming side takes on conventional orthodoxy, we need to understand what they believe. For example, they believe you can’t feed the world without chemicals and our side wants people to starve. They think folks who compost want society to return to loin cloths, hog cholera and tuberculosis. They think without a Food Safety Inspection Service, we’d all be poisoned by adulterated food. They think consumers are too ignorant to be trusted to make food choices. Joel dissects these arguments one by one and eviscerates the opposition.

THE FOOD INQUISTION

The Spanish Inquisition is one of the darkest moments in history, when people were summarily burned at the stake for failing to believe certain things. While ecological farmers aren’t being burned at the stake, they are summarily denied a seat at the table, denied markets, denied at policy negotiations. Why? Lots of reasons, from the fact that farmers don’t organize well to the fact that the overriding paradigms of the industrial food system view us as enemies. Food raids on local co-ops and arrests of good farmers are part of an inquisition against alternative beliefs and practices.

FREEDOM TO GROW; FREEDOM TO PROSPER

Good farming’s biggest hurdle is not money, resources, or experience. The biggest impediment to wider adoption of integrity food is a cultural mindset that stifles freedom. Food police, licensing, zoning, and subsidized programs all inhibit the ability of good farmers to prosper. The Romans had an axiom that you could tell whether a civilization was strong or weak by the number of laws it has. America’s labyrinth of laws indicate its decline and impotence. Good farmers will grow and prosper better when they enjoy freedom rather than social and governmental tyranny.

NEW MESSAGING FOR FOOD FREEDOM

How do you get the opposition to at least pause long enough to consider your views? You do it by starting with a broad enough base that you have consensus. For example, most people will agree innovation is good. Once you agree there, you can pursue how to facilitate innovation. Is it by government agency or by individual creativity? Another example is power. Most folks agree in democratized empowerment. From that platform, you can explore how to democratize empowerment, through government regulations or personal responsibility. Perhaps half of all Americans are scared to death of food freedom; this talk engages them with common ground.

A LIBERTARIAN CHALLENGE

Libertarians are weak on ecological stewardship. Too often we confuse the freedom to do what we WANT with the freedom to do what we OUGHT. That speaks clearly to the mandates of the commons rather than simply individual exploitation. While libertarians are okay with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and eschew regulating them, they overlook the catastrophic trespassing of promiscuous alien beings committing orgies on my open-pollinated legacy corn. Where libertarians shine is in promoting an Uberized food system that offers freedom of choice to the marketplace; that would eliminate industrial oligarchies faster than any anti-trust enforcement.

SCIENCE IS SUBJECTIVE

Science is limited two things: observation and duplication. If either of those can’t be done, then it’s not science. Further, experiments and research can be set up to purposely skew results. Using numerous examples, Joel shows how scientists get results that match their preconceived agendas, either for financial or paradigm confirmation. Scientists hate to be told they’re subjective, of course, but the truth is that if you can’t imagine it, you can’t test for it.

REALITY VERSUS ILLUSION

Conventional chemical industrial agriculture is living in illusion. From Justis von Liebieg’s NPK vacuum tubes to cow farts are destroying the planet, the western mindset’s fantasy is quite profound. These illusions are many. For example, the only way to be environmentally friendly is to get people off the land. Or we can have integrity without relationship. The most efficacious problem solver is the federal government. This is la-la land; time to come to reality.

STARTING CONVERSATIONS WITH QUESTIONS

How do you get people to know what they’re missing when they don’t know they’re missing it? This is the conundrum facing proponents of food freedom. Food safety, government oversight, consumer ignorance, personal responsibility and other issues need catalyst, diplomatic, and respectful questions to get a conversation started. Using his many years of debate experience, Joel explores the Socratic method to achieve a libertarian food freedom conversation.

TRANSPARENCY IN THE MEAT INDUSTRY: CONGRESIONAL TESTIMONY

In 2008 a congressional hearing probing animal abuse and opaqueness in the meat industry included testimony from Joel. When the hearing was over, Congressman Dennis Kucinich came down to Joel and said “this is the most precise, articulate explanation of everything that’s wrong in our food system I’ve ever heard.” Like most committees, it did nothing with Joel’s testimony, but it is no less relevant today. In fact, the dysfunction is worse now than in 2008.

BUSINESS/FINANCIAL

INSPIRING A NEW GENERATION OF FARMERS

If young people can’t get in, old people can’t get out. Think plenty rather than scarcity. Be a nook and cranny farmer with portable infrastructure. Fiefdoms with memorandums of understanding are far better than hourly employees. Find people who do what you don’t like. Load your equity in management and knowledge. Aggregate electronically, not physically. Solutions are from the inside out, not the outside in. These are just some of the techniques aspiring new farmers can use to launch a successful farm business.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

Starting at the beginning of Polyface, this presentation drills down in the practice and philosophy of marketing by building relationships. Viewing customers as friends creates a completely different climate and persona. Characteristics of meaningful relationships are trust, intimacy, openness, respect, discovery, sensual pleasure, loyalty, togetherness, reciprocity and charity. In today’s commercialism, these are sorely lacking, but customers warm up when you offer these traits.

WORTHY WORK

In this word picture tour around Polyface, Joel applies principles to any work situation. Do you want to do worthy work rather than just do things for a paycheck? This beautifully alliterated presentation speaks to every vocation: discover your parameters; determine your protocol; develop your partners; define your product; diversify your portfolio; demand your performance; demonstrate your priorities. Each of these speaks to vision values, team, marketing, leveraging, faithfulness and legacy. Any and all business can learn from this message.

LET’S START DIRECT MARKETING

While many if not most farmers shudder at the notion of creating a brand and direct marketing, it offers a roadmap to success, especially for smaller farmers. This presentation opens with reasons for direct marketing and then offers principles for starting. The key points continue into contacting your tribe, eliminating buying hurdles, and diversifying your portfolio

GERMINATING FARMERS: COMMON THREADS OF SUCCESS

With his decades of farming experience and personal visits to hundreds of farms around the world, Joel goes through 10 things that all successful farmers seem to think and do. The first one is working landscapes, which means being able to cut trees, build roads, make ponds and massage the property to make it efficient and productive. He progresses through points like assembling a team, direct marketing, having multi-enterprise, doing gross margin analysis and time and motion studies.

FARMING PROFITABLY

You know the old ditty about the farmer who won $2 million in the lottery. A friend asked him what he was going to do with all that money, and he replied “just keep farmin’ ‘til it’s all gone.” Unfortunately, the words farming and profit are seen as mutually exclusive, but in this imminently practical presentation, Joel offers his dozen must dos for financial success. Starting off with a mission statement, it moves through points including “don’t be peer dependent” and “complex relational symbiosis.”

FARM HURDLES THAT KEEP YOU FROM SUCCESS

The biggest hurdles in a farm are not money, land, or labor. They’re things like failing to find recreation on the farm, spousal disagreements often based on personality types, and entertaining unrealistic fantasies. Some folks just start too late in life. Asking for help from the government, lack of experience, and entitlement mentalities are big obstacles, along with several others.

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S DYNAMIC DOZEN

Define your vision; think smallest viable option; cash flow is king; leverage your customer base; meet a need; identify strengths and weaknesses. These are a few of the beginning issues in this ultimately empowering and encouraging checklist for aspiring entrepreneurs. This presentation is not geared to farmers; it’s appropriate for any age group in any location to get a quick overview of the ins and outs of entrepreneurship.

MONETIZING THE FARM

Farms are known for producing food and fiber. But they can also create additional income. Joel walks through the various non-production income streams he employs at Polyface, from speaking engagements to writing books to hosting informational gatherings. You might not do all of them, but you can probably give a farm tour or speak to a local club about your farm. He gives tips and techniques on how to leverage all these complementary income streams.

WEALTH WITHOUT MONEY

The number one deathbed confession is “I wish I’d had the courage to do what I really wanted to do.” What keeps us from doing what’s in our hearts, our dreams? In a deeply personal testimony, Joel thanks the coach that cut him from the 8th grade basketball team because that enabled him to discover debate, theater, and public speaking. Life’s sweet spot is where what we love, what we know, and what we’re good at intersect. Replacing physical equity with knowledge, skill, and relationships brings true wealth immune to foreclosures and economic crisis. Creating sacredness in your vocation gives you satisfaction and purpose.

MY PERFECT PATRON

How can you be an ecological farmer’s perfect customer? Most folks who embrace the authentic food movement have a heart to help, but aren’t sure how to be the most helpful. The checklist is straightforward: storage, seasonality, synchronicity, supportive, scheduling, solidarity, stability, sacredness, satisfaction, security. These are the things that make your farmer give you hugs.

SCALING UP AND MARKETING

Too many ecological farmers feel like they can’t scale up. Sometimes they have an anti-growth mentality, an aversion to expansion. But more often they’re stuck; they can’t imagine a roadmap to growing their farm business. In this step-by-step presentation, Joel walks through the mental and physical techniques to taking a small farm to the next level. Too often we’re our own worst enemies and once we see how we’re limiting ourselves, we can make that jump.

BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH FARM CLUSTERS AND THE APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM

Perhaps the most detrimental ideas embraced by farmers is “I want to do it myself” and “I don’t want my life complicated with people.” Joel confesses that his biggest prophetic mistake back in the late 1980s was saying that by now, we’d have thousands of Polyface farms selling to their communities. That prediction couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, we have consolidation and many struggling farms. The better approach is collaborative food clusters, selling regionally available food but sharing customers, distribution, and infrastructure. That requires people and scaling up beyond what one farmer can do. Apprenticeships are perhaps the most time-honored pathway to succession. We need to implement clusters and apprenticeships.

DEVELOPING A WHITE COLLAR SALARY ON A FARM

Farmers are notoriously underpaid and blame everyone else. Structuring the farm differently can change this reality. Widen the margins. Value added marketing. Staying within your unfair advantage. Adding complementary enterprises. Many salary-increasing options exist, but often farmers need to get out of their “we’ve always done it this way” and their comfort zones to access these opportunities.

DON’T BE SCARED; BE FEARLESS

Many small scale farmers and part-timers are afraid of upgrading or becoming more commercial. In their hearts, they’d love to be full-time farmers, but find themselves stymied by gremlins. These can be fear of not knowing enough, of not having enough labor, of not being able to market adequately, of not being able to keep up with financial records. Joel walks through each of these fears, offering practical solutions to make scaling up a doable prospect.

MAXIMIZING YOUR RESOURCES

Most farmers live in a mindset of scarcity. Not enough land, not enough income to employ the next generation, not enough profit, not enough rain. You get the picture. Joel adamantly says “I haven’t been on a single farm in the world, including my own, that fully leverages its resources.” From that proposition, he builds out a strategy to increase resource value on your existing land base. Rather than reducing resources through exploitation, this is about ending the year with more rather than less, from soil to water to money.

SCALING UP WITHOUT SELLING YOUR SOUL

Enjoying initial success as a small farm, Polyface was encouraged by well meaning corporate-minded folks to adopt a more Wall Street mentality. Watching other outfits sell out to global entities forced Joel and his team to create an anti-corporate set of values that would set boundaries over their decisions. These principles have not and do not eliminate growth; they simply identify bedrock convictions to protect important values. Here are two: No IPO (we’re not for sale); open source (no patents). These are extremely anti-corporate, but they allow growth within the confines of soul integrity.

Daniel is multi-generational farmer. He’s grown up in the farming landscape in Swoope, VA. Farming right out of the gate has giving him a lifetime of experience, mastery and confidence that comes from a life’s work and passion. Today he leads an ever-growing team at Polyface Farm. Daniel finds the most joy in his family, teaching, team building, healing soil, farm design, a growing relationship with Jesus, working with livestock and hunting.

Managing the day-to-day flow of the farm, he works with cattle, hogs, meat birds, layers, turkeys, rabbits, sheep, and forestry, but most importantly- People. This keeps him learning something every day in a high energy, outdoor workplace. With over 30 years on hands on experience in the land healing, healthy food growing world, Daniel is practical in his approach and teaching.