Rebel with a Cause- Food Nazis

by Joel Salatin “You’re food Nazis,” wrote the irate customer in her e-mail to our farm.  The accusation stung, but more than that, it exposed a gross ignorance about local foods. The e-mail outburst followed a dialogue about product availability. She wanted bacon and had been denied three deliveries in a row. In her mind, [...]

Rebel with a Cause: I Can’t Answer for all the Fringes

by: Joel Salatin photography by: Molly McDonald Peterson I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago doing regenerative food systems seminars and a fellow raised his hand with a question: “I’m a farm consultant working for the government.  What do I tell my clients that have 30,000 acres of wheat?” It’s the same mentality [...]

Rebel With A Cause- Joel Salatin’s Got One Word for You: Plastics

By Joel Salatin One of the biggest arguments against a local food system is seasonality. Here in the Mid-Atlantic region, it’s hard to grow strawberries and tomatoes in January. That people would disparage local food because something can’t be grown all year shows just how disconnected we’ve become from our ecological umbilical. Ours is the [...]

Rebel with a Cause: Local Food Can Feed the World

by Joel Salatin Is local food just a fuzzy fad, or can it actually feed the world? At a recent Augusta County Chamber of Commerce-sponsored agri-tourism panel discussion, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Secretary Matt Lohr reiterated the current agri-business axiom that farms like my family’s Polyface Farm cannot feed the world. [...]

Rebel With a Cause: Anthropomorphism Against Farms

By Joel Salatin, Photo by Molly McDonald Peterson After spending several days with Bath County animal control officers dealing with allegations of animal abuse, I think it’s time to address the result of increasing societal ignorance about livestock. More and more, we farmers find ourselves explaining unbelievably elementary principles to people who cast anthropomorphism onto [...]

Small is Okay: An Excerpt from the Sheer Ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer

by Joel Salatin, Photos by Molly McDonald Peterson Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms proposes an alternative to the Shenandoah Valley’s poultry industry in this exclusive excerpt from his new book. Before industrialism, farms were localized and seasonal. The ebb and flow of production and activity followed a pattern dictated by local economies, weather, and availability [...]

Rebel with a Cause:“Local” and “Gourmet” Does Not a Viable Restaurant Make

Start-up businesses are capitalizing on the local food trend. But when those businesses fail, farmers don’t get paid. By Joel Salatin   Big food companies employ lawyers and other means to make sure wholesalers and retailers pay for what they buy. Because they can spread the cost of that legal leverage over millions of unit [...]

Rebel with a Cause: The Chicken & the Egg

• BONUS ONLINE-ONLY CONTENT FOR OCTOBER 2010 • If you weren’t already convinced that the industrial food system is unsafe, the recent egg recall should have scared you straight. By Joel Salatin   “I don’t think we should buy any eggs,” a customer whispered to her husband in our farm sales building a day after [...]

Rebel with a Cause: A Fresh Approach to Culinary Arts

Our neighbors to the south have launched a culinary arts program designed to train chefs to collaborate with farmers. By Joel Salatin     I recently traveled to Chatham County, North Carolina, the epicenter of a local food revolution. Central Carolina Community College, which has offered a sustainable agriculture associate degree for nearly a decade, [...]

Rebel with a Cause: Foodie Elitism

How should we respond when we’re called elitists because we buy more expensive, local food? By Joel Salatin • Photographs by Molly McDonald Peterson Because high-quality local food often carries a higher price tag than food generated by the industrial system, the charge of elitism coming from industrial foodists is often vitriolic, and embarrassed foodies [...]

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