Joel Salatin
22 quotes
Biography
Joel F. Salatin is an American farmer, lecturer, and author.
"When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol."
"The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A farm regulated to production of raw commodities is not a farm at all. It is a temporary blip until the land is used up, the water polluted, the neighbors nauseated, and the air unbreathable. The farmhouse, the concrete, the machinery, and outbuildings become relics of a bygone vibrancy when another family farm moves to the city financial centers for relief."
"We're scared to death to try new things because we think we have to get it right the first time."
"Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen."
"The shorter the chain between raw food and fork, the fresher it is and the more transparent the system is."
"You can't have a healthy civilization without healthy soil. You can't have junk food and have healthy people."
"Frankly, any city person who doesn't think I deserve a white-collar salary as a farmer doesn't deserve my special food."
"Our biggest fear is that 'Food, Inc.' will move heavy-handed food-safety regulations forward."
"We control health and pathogenicity by complex multi-speciated relationships through symbiosis and synergy. Portable shelters for livestock, along with electric fencing, insure hygienic and sanitary housing and lounging areas, not to mention clean air, sunshine, and exercise."
"Our land-healing ministry really is about cultivating relationships: between the people, the loving stewards, and the ecology of a place, what I call the environmental umbilical that we're nurturing here."
"It really disturbs me that the environmental movement has been co-opted by creation-worshippers instead of being encouraged by the Creator-worshippers."
"We've created a tenfold core value protocol to make sure that we don't fall into an 'empire' attitude."
"Our motto is we respect and honour the pigness of the pig and the chickenness of the chicken. That means not confining them in a house with hundreds of others."
"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."
"There's a short chain between field and fork, and the shorter that chain is - the fresher, the more transparent that system is - the less chance there is of anything from bio-terrorism to pathogenicity to spoilage."
"What we're looking at is God's design, nature's template, and using that as a pattern to cut around and lay it down on a domestic model to duplicate that pattern that we see in nature."
"We believe that the farm should be building 'forgiveness' into the ecosystem. What does that mean? That a more forgiving ecosystem is one that can better handle drought, flood, disease, pestilence."
"From my earliest memories, I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge, well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner."