Joel Salatin is an American farmer, lecturer, and author of Folks, This Ain’t Normal; You Can Farm; Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal; The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs; and Salad Bar Beef.
Polyface, Joel’s 550-acre farm located in Swoope, Virginia, is featured prominently in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the documentaries Food, Inc. and Fresh. Joel piqued Michael’s curiosity when he refused to ship Michael chicken. He told Michael that if he wanted to buy some of his chicken he’d have to visit the farm.
Salatin’s philosophy of farming emphasizes healthy grass on which animals can thrive in a symbiotic feeding cycle. Cows are moved from one pasture to another, then chickens in portable coops are moved in behind them, where they dig through the cow pies to eat protein-rich fly larvae while also fertilizing the field with their own manure.
Here are 39 Joel Salatin quotes that will change the way you look at the food on your plate.
“When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.”
― Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
“If every American for one week refused to eat at a fast-food joint, it would bring concentrated animal feeding operations to their knees.”
― Joel Salatin
“The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.”
― Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
“Amazingly, we’ve become a culture that considers Twinkies, Cocoa Puffs, and Mountain Dew safe, but raw milk and compost-grown tomatoes unsafe.”
― Joel Salatin
“We don’t need a law against McDonald’s or a law against slaughterhouse abuse–we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse.”
― Joel Salatin
“You, as a food buyer, have the distinct privilege of proactively participating in shaping the world your children will inherit.”
― Joel Salatin, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer’s Guide to Farm Friendly Food
“On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That’s one reason why it’s easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it’s easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead.”
― Joel Salatin
“This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain’t normal.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“The shorter the chain between raw food and fork, the fresher it is and the more transparent the system is.”
― Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
“The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else’s responsibility until I’m ready to eat it.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“Our animals don’t do drugs. Instead, we move them almost daily in a tightly choreographed ballet from pasture spot to pasture spot.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“That ought to be our stewardship mandate, to create Edens wherever we go. That’s why humans are here. Our responsibility is to extend forgiveness into the landscape.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“One of the greatest assets of a farm is the sheer ecstasy of life.”
― Joel Salatin
“A risk-free life is a life that’s not worth living.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“When we demand salvation by legislation, the law of unintended consequences kicks in.”
― Joel Salatin, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation
“How many of us lobby for green energy or protected lands, but don’t engage with the local bounty to lay by for tomorrow’s unseasonal reality? That we tend to not even think about this as a foundation for solutions in our food systems shows how quickly we want other people to solve these issues.”
― Joel Salatin
“We should be rolling in the dirt, gardening, wrestling with some brambles and skinning animals for supper. These are important immune system builders.”
― Joel Salatin
“Look in the mirror and decide once and for all: Am I biological or mechanical? Is my deepest essence a machine or not?”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“Deep down, very few of us want safety to suffocate freedom.”
― Joel Salatin
“Industrial eggs are washed in a chlorine bath. Since the shells are permeable, some of that chlorine enters the egg. This is standard food safety protocol. In fact, some health department inspectors believe an egg not washed in chlorine is not fit for human consumption.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“If you have to put on a haz-mat suit to visit a farm, you may not want to eat what comes from it.”
― Joel Salatin
“Get in your kitchens, buy unprocessed foods, turn off the TV, and prepare your own foods. This is liberating.”
― Joel Salatin
“Don’t you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?”
― Joel Salatin
“Farms and food production should be, I submit, at least as important as who pierced their navel in Hollywood this week. Please tell me I’m not the only one who believes this. Please. As a culture, we think we’re well educated, but I’m not sure that what we’ve learned necessarily helps us survive.”
― Joel Salatin
“The notion that processed food is cheap and integrity foods are prohibitively expensive is simply not true.”
― Joel Salatin
“Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.”
― Joel Salatin, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation
“That many if not most people…who want fresh leafy greens in January buy them at the supermarket after they’ve been bleached and plastic-bag shipped from California or beyond is not a tribute to modern technology; it’s an unprecedented abdication of personal responsibility and a ubiquitous benchmark of abnormality.”
― Joel Salatin
“When government gets between my lips and my stomach; I call that invasion of privacy!”
― Joel Salatin
“The industrial food system is so cruel and so horrific in its treatment of animals. It never asks the question: Should a pig be allowed to express its pig-ness?”
― Joel Salatin, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation
“Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen.”
― Joel Salatin
“’Organic’ doesn’t mean what people think it means.”
― Joel Salatin
“You know, in our culture today, our Western, reductionist, Roman, linear, fragmented… culture, we don’t ask how to make a pig happy. We ask how to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper, and that’s not a noble goal.”
― Joel Salatin, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation
“Just because we can ship organic lettuce from the Salinas Valley, or organic cut flowers from Peru, doesn’t mean we should do it, not if we’re really serious about energy and seasonality and bioregionalism.”
― Joel Salatin
“The cycle of life is death, decomposition and regeneration, and a person who wants to stop killing animals is actually anti-life because it’s only in death that life can be regenerated.”
― Joel Salatin
“We need to respect the fact that cows are herbivores, and that does not mean feeding them corn and chicken manure.”
― Joel Salatin
“I’m a Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic. It’s a humorous way for me to describe that I’m not stereotypical.”
― Joel Salatin
“My imperative is to seek every moment and to live so God is in control.”
― Joel Salatin
“Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food.”
― Joel Salatin
“If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly first.”
― Joel Salatin
These 39 Joel Salatin Quotes hardly capture all of the wisdom our favorite farmer has shared with us over the years. I urge you to spend time watching his lectures and reading his fantastic books, listed below!
Watch Joel Salatin on the Joe Rogan Experience in 2014.
Joel Salatin Books:
The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation
You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise
Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer
Fields of Farmers: Interning, Mentoring, Partnering, Germinating