Dear MOTHER: October/November 2009

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Joel Salatin with a few of his chickens at Polyface Farm in Virginia. RICHARD LORD

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Our interview with “beyond organic” farmer Joel Salatin, Everything He Wants to Do is Illegal, struck a chord with many of you. Salatin has been a prominent innovator and advocate for integrated small-scale farming and direct-to-consumer marketing for many years. And there are plenty more like him — “maverick” farmers growing better food using more sustainable methods. There’s definitely a local food movement underway; let’s hope there are enough “locavores” out there to make small-scale farming a not-too-risky, honorable way to earn a decent living once again.

We continue to receive lots of pro and con comments about our discussion of population issues; you can read them online and join the conversation at Planning for a Sustainable Human Future and Three Mountains We Must Climb.

Joel Salatin Is My New Hero!

I stumbled upon Everything He Wants to Do is Illegal while doing research for my orchard. This is exactly the kind of information people in this country need to hear. Processed agrifoods need to be wiped out and replaced by small farms! Believe me, the “food police” are very real.

I’m doing a lot of research as I make my plans to become a farmer. I have discovered that there is a huge groundswell of both producers and consumers who are latching onto the truths that Salatin speaks. We need to listen to people who are willing to say that the emperor has no clothes, rather than trying to maintain an agrisystem that is slowly poisoning our population!

Jerry Klingerman
Winesburg, Ohio

Considering Ethical Meat

I’m proud to say that I’ve been a vegetarian for two years now, and I don’t miss meat at all. I choose not to consume any meat because of the inhumane industry that Mr. Salatin is fighting against. If all farms operated as well as his does, then I might consider eating meat again. I don’t think there is anything wrong with eating cows, pigs and chickens. I just don’t like the way the industry treats them before, during and after slaughter.

Michelle Trammell
Winchester, Virginia

A Healthier, More Natural Diet

Salatin is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of people eating a more natural and healthier diet. His middle-finger salute to governmental interference in our national food supply will be what makes him infamous. His farming methods should be taught to everyone who raises animals for slaughter, from 4-H clubs to universities. Perhaps in 10 to 15 years, as we older humans raised on agrichemicals die from diseases tracked to the industrial pollution of our food supply, our children will see that there is no future if we stay with chemical farming.

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EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL'

Joel Salatin

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