Everything He Wants to Do is Illegal
(Page 3 of 8)
Oct. 1, 2008
Megan Phelps Interview with Joel Salatin
Initially, I thought I would need to work off-farm to stay here, and I learned that wasn’t true. I encourage young people to follow their passion and go ahead and jump. If you wait until all the stars line up, you’ll never do it. In recent years, I’d say my biggest change has been regarding economies of scale and marketing realities. Twenty years ago my vision for the food system in Virginia was thousands of little mom and pop farms like ours serving their neighbors. I no longer think that is viable for two reasons. First, urban centers would be hard pressed to grow all their own food within their communities. Second, most farmers are marketing Neanderthals. Either they really don’t want to be around people, or they don’t know how to interact with them. A successful marketer needs to be a bit theatrical; a storyteller, schmoozer, gregarious type. And that’s not typical, especially among John Deere jockeys.
RELATED CONTENT
Joel Randall PREFORM-INFORM March/April 1971 July 11, 1969 was my last day of institutionalized emp...
Contrary to popular belief, children in sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are no safer than those in tr...
Few in US spell out how they want to die; House health bill includes end-of-life counseling...
Lifestyles Food Digest...
Where's the good stuff? Medical marijuana explosion creates booming review business...
What’s the answer? I don’t know, but what I’ve come up with is what I call food clusters. These require production, processing, marketing, accounting, distribution and customers — these six components make a whole. The cluster can be farmer-driven, customer-driven, even distribution-driven initially. But once these six components are in place, it can micro-duplicate the industrial on a bio-regional or foodshed scale, which includes urban centers. I think a local integrity food system could supplant the opaque industrial one in Virginia, but realistically it would comprise several hundred or a thousand $5-$10 million food clusters rather than several thousand mom and pop $100,000 fully-integrated enterprises. I certainly never thought our farm would top $1 million in annual sales, but it happened. We still have no business plan or marketing targets. But we’ve been blessed with a family of enough variety to put together these six foundations for a whole, and that has made all the difference. And I’m a schmoozer.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a farmer?
Anyone familiar with me would have to smile at this question, knowing that my answer would be and continues to be the food police. The on-farm hurdles we’ve faced, from drought to predators to flood to cash flow, are nothing compared to the emotional, economic and energy drain caused by government bureaucrats. Even in the early 1970s when, as a young teen, I operated a farm stand at the curb market, precursor of today’s farmers markets, the government said I couldn’t sell milk. The first business plan I came up with to become a full-time farmer centered around milking 10 cows and selling the milk to neighbors at regular retail supermarket prices. It would have been a nice living. But it’s illegal. In fact, in 2007 I finally wrote Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, documenting my run-ins with government officials.
I think it’s amazing that in a country which promotes the freedom to own firearms, freedom to worship and freedom of speech, we don’t have the freedom to choose our own food. If I can’t choose the proper fuel to feed my body, I won’t have energy to go shoot, preach and pray anyway. Half the alleged food in the supermarket is really dangerous to your health. In fact, if we removed all the food items in the supermarket that would not have been available before 1900, the shelves would be bare. Gone would be all the unpronounceable gobbledy-syllabic industrial additives, irradiated, GMO, cloned pseudo-food.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
Next >>
