Joel Salatin Quotes & Sayings

The pig is not just pork chops and bacon and ham to us. The pig is a co-laborer in this great land-healing ministry. — Joel Salatin

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

Despite all the hype about local or green food, the single biggest impediment to wider adoption is not research, programs, organizations, or networking. It is the demonizing and criminalizing of virtually all indigenous and heritage-based food practices. — Joel Salatin

My imperative is to seek every moment and to live so God is in control. — Joel Salatin

The notion that processed food is cheap and integrity foods are prohibitively expensive is simply not true. — Joel Salatin

God doesn't just miraculously and physically intervene in the whole process, so if I just go and drop a bunch of chemicals and herbicides that leach into the groundwater, I can pray all day to keep my child healthy, but if the herbicides gone into the groundwater come up my well, my child's going to drink that water. — Joel Salatin

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

I'm incredibly optimistic about what individuals can do. We have technology that our grandparents would have given their eye teeth for. — 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 butcher, baker, and candlestick maker have been around a lot longer than supermarkets and Wal-Mart. — Joel Salatin

Ours is certainly not an old culture. Yet in recent decades we've used more energy, destroyed more soil, created more pathogenicity (temporarily stopped some too, for sure), mutated more bacteria, and dumped more toxicity on the planet than all the cultures before us-combined. I love the United States, but I am not blind to the wrongs. I have no desire to live anywhere else, but that doesn't mean I think everything we're doing should be done or can be maintained. — Joel Salatin

A culture that just views a pig as a pile of protoplasmic inanimate structure, and can be manipulated by whatever creative design humans can foist upon that critter, will probably view individuals within its community and other cultures in the community of nations, with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling-type mentality. — 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

Food security is not in the supermarket. It's not in the government. It's not at the emergency services division. True food security is the historical normalcy of packing it in during the abundant times, building that in-house larder, and resting easy knowing that our little ones are not dependent on next week's farmers' market or the electronic cashiers at the supermarket. — Joel Salatin

I don't have money. Monsanto has money. — Joel Salatin

We can produce more per acre on a fifth of the fuel as the industrial food system. — Joel Salatin

Think of all the mesquite in Texas, the pinyon pines, the acorns in Appalachia, every place has the possibility of mass production. It's an infrastructural system so nestled in ecology, it's a more beautiful ecology. — Joel Salatin

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

I didn't really see a way to make a living on the farm. I always loved writing. I was the guy who won the D.A.R. essay contest and things like that, and it was the era of Watergate, and I decided I would be the next Woodward and Bernstein, and then retire to the farm. — Joel Salatin

The wealth of any ecosystem is its perennials. The primal herbivore-predator-disturbance-rest dance is literally the breath and pulse of the earth. Grasses recycle oxygen far more efficiently than trees. The turnover is faster. Grass reaches out and turns solar energy into carbon. Tillage hyper-aerates the soil, burning out carbon. But because a plant creates bilateral symmetry at the soil horizon, it sloughs off root mass when the top gets chopped off. — Joel Salatin

One of the greatest assets of a farm is the sheer ecstasy of life. — Joel Salatin

We've got this cultural mentality that you've got to be an idiot to be a farmer. — Joel Salatin

I saw a news report recently that measured average video game use by American men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five: twenty hours per week. Do you mean the flower of America's masculinity can't think of anything more important to do with twenty hours a week than sit in front of a video screen? Folks, this ain't normal. Can't we unplug already? — Joel Salatin

Our community of rebels, of humble truth seekers, wants to turn our culture around. We don't despise our country. We don't desire failure. We desire light, a beacon to show the world that our wealth need not show the way to more rapid destruction, but can be leveraged to heal more acres, more backyards, more communities faster than any civilization on the right path has ever done it. — Joel Salatin

Men swagger around calling themselves "cattlemen" but abuse their grass like a rapist. And abuse their cattle with concrete fecal feedlots without any regards to rumen function. Vegetable growers plow thousands of acres, planting monocrops of annuals in a never-ending tillage routine that totally annihilates carbon wealth. Why? Why are we so enamored of things that destroy carbon and disrespect the animals under our care? Grass. Lowly grass. It just gets no respect. And yet it is the lifeblood of the planet. — Joel Salatin

Too often, parents whose children express an interest in farming squelch it because they envision dirt, dust, poverty, and hermit living. But great stories come out of great farming. — Joel Salatin

Land degradation did not start with chemical agriculture. But chemical agriculture offered new tools for annihilation. — Joel Salatin

The cows shorten the grass, and the chickens eat the fly larvae and sanitize the pastures. This is a symbiotic relation. — Joel Salatin

I see myself today as Sitting Bull trying to bring a voice of Easternism, holism, community-based thinking to a very Western culture. — Joel Salatin

In my opinion, if there is one extremely legitimate use for petroleum besides running wood chippers and front-end loaders to handle compost, it's making plastic for season extension. It parks many of the trucks [for cross-country produce transportation]. With the trucks parked, greenhouses, tall tunnels, and more seasonal, localized eating, can we feed ourselves? We still have to answer that burning question. — Joel Salatin

A risk-free life is a life that's not worth living. — Joel Salatin

A pig has a plow on the end of its nose because it does meaningful work with it. It is built to dig and create soil disturbance, something it can't do in a concentrated feeding environment. The omnivore has historically been a salvage operation for food scraps around the homestead. — Joel Salatin

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. — Joel Salatin

You wanna get diarrhoea? Eat industrial food. — Joel Salatin

When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol. — Joel Salatin

From zoning to labor to food safety to insurance, local food systems daily face a phalanx of regulatory hurdles designed and implemented to police industrial food models but which prejudicially wipe out the antidote: appropriate scaled local food systems. — Joel Salatin

How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings? — Joel Salatin

It's very common to implement mob grazing and double your production for a per-acre capitalisation investment ... because it doesn't take any more corraling, no more electricity, rent, machinery or labour to double your production on an existing place. — 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

We would be a much healthier culture if the government had never told us how to eat. — Joel Salatin

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. — Joel Salatin

Always listen to your customers. — Joel Salatin

It's as if the whole notion of growing soil is something only lunatics would think about. But why not grow soil? Does anything make more sense than growing soil? Isn't that more important than tractors, trucks, silos, barns, county fairs and country music? Of course it is. And yet to the lion's share of American farmers, the very notion of growing soil is just plain silly. — Joel Salatin

There's a big difference between industrializing production of tractors and industrializing production of food. We like technology, but we really like technology that allows us to do better what nature does itself. — Joel Salatin

Our culture doesn't ask about preserving the essence of pig; it just asks how can we grow them faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper. We know that's not a noble goal. — 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

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. — Joel Salatin

You can't chemical your way out of soil infertility — Joel Salatin

'Organic' doesn't mean what people think it means. — Joel Salatin

New Zealand has incredible global recognition for grass-fed livestock. — Joel Salatin

Everything I want to do is Illegal. — Joel Salatin

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. — Joel Salatin

Since chemical fertilizer burns out the soil organic matter, other farmers struggle with tilth, water retention, and basic soil nutrients. The soil gets harder and harder every year as the chemicals burn out the organic matter, which gives the soil its sponginess. One pound of organic matter holds four pounds of water. The best drought protection any farmer can acquire is more soil organic matter. — Joel Salatin

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

Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health. — Joel Salatin

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

It's a foolish culture that entrusts its food supply to simpletons. — 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

I always said if I could figure out a way to grow Kleenex and toilet paper on trees, we could pull the plug on society. — Joel Salatin

We only want autonomous collaborators that are incentivized to make or break their own income. — Joel Salatin

I don't want to sound too mystical or weird but it's important to know what garlic smells like when it's cooking, or what eggs look like when they're cracked out of a shell. — Joel Salatin

In general, we run the farm like a business instead of a welfare recipient, and we adhere to historically-validated patterns. — Joel Salatin

I would suggest that if you get in your kitchen and cook for yourself, you can eat like kings for a very low cost. — Joel Salatin

Get in your kitchens, buy unprocessed foods, turn off the TV, and prepare your own foods. This is liberating. — Joel Salatin

We move the cows every day to a new spot which allows the grass time to recuperate and go through its what I call 'the teenage growth spurt.' — Joel Salatin

An orchard can grow pastured poultry underneath. A beef cattle or sheep farm can run pastured poultry behind the herbivores, like the egret on the rhino's nose. — Joel Salatin

The linear, single species idea of farming is an assault on ecological function. Something's going to break down in that system - anything from soil structure, in economics ... but where to start is with true ecological function. — Joel Salatin

Instead of buying into the global agenda, which is using food as just industrial stuff, we would say we view food as biological, a living thing, that belongs in smaller communities. — Joel Salatin

Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen. — Joel Salatin

When government gets between my lips and my stomach; I call that invasion of privacy! — 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

My advice to anyone who wants to join in on farming is diversify. Nature is diversified, and I know you'll always have a core thing that you'll really like, but hang stuff around the edges of it. It will make your place more interesting for people to come to, and it's a lot easier to sell something else to an existing customer. — Joel Salatin

Remember, machines don't forgive. — Joel Salatin

Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round — Joel Salatin

Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food. — Joel Salatin

Don't complain about being unable to afford high-quality local food when your grocery cart is full of beer, cigarettes, and People magazine. — Joel Salatin

You don't have roosters with your laying hens. How do they lay eggs?" Dear folks, chickens don't need roosters to lay eggs. They need roosters to hatch eggs, but not to lay them. Just like women don't need men to lay eggs; they just need a man to hatch one. A mere century ago, not one in a hundred would have been ignorant of this common agrarian knowledge. — Joel Salatin

Even if you don't eat at a fast food restaurant, you're now eating food that's produced by this system. — Joel Salatin

While vegans and meat-eaters disagree, we can all be united in our fear and hatred for the horror that is factory farming. — Joel Salatin

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. — Joel Salatin

Oh, my goodness, when we came to the farm in 1961, I mean, it wouldn't even support one salary. — Joel Salatin

The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard. — Joel Salatin

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

Throughout high school, I peddled my eggs, had a vendor stand at the local curb market - precursor to today's farmers' markets - and competed in 4-H contests and interscholastic debate. — 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

I think it's one of the most important battles for consumers to fight: the right to know what's in their food, and how it was grown. — Joel Salatin

Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity. — Joel Salatin

The farmers are older; they are under financial stress to produce more margins, yet they keep getting less. — Joel Salatin

If we fail to appreciate the soul that Easternism gives us, then what we have is a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process that counts on cleverness. — Joel Salatin

A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm
it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism. The tragedy of our time is that cultural philosophies and market realities are squeezing life's vitality out of most farms. And that is why the average farmer is now 60 years old. Serfdom just doesn't attract the best and brightest. — Joel Salatin

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. — Joel Salatin

If everybody walks into the room wearing crutches you don't know who can stand on their own two feet. — Joel Salatin

We must stop this incessant victimhood mentality.
Somebody else will not fix things.
Somebody else will not make me healthy.
Somebody else will not make me happy.
These things are my responsibility.
Not the neighbor's,
not the government's,
not the church or the civic club. — Joel Salatin

Our main deal is pastured livestock. So we have beef cattle, pigs, turkeys, laying chickens, meat chickens, rabbit, lamb and ducks - egg-layer ducks. — Joel Salatin

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

If it doesn't rot, it's not real food. — Joel Salatin

The mechanical food system externalizes a lot of costs like obesity or Type 2 diabetes. — Joel Salatin

Frankly, any city person who doesn't think I deserve a white-collar salary as a farmer doesn't deserve my special food. — 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