Joel Salatin: A Different System of Food Production
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Joel Salatin co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. In this conversation we talk about Joel's nuanced view of ecosystem for Food Production from soil microbes to envisioning the Uber of food distribution.
Show Notes:
[00:04:11] - Introduction
[00:05:10] - Exposure to Joel's Farm through the Omnivores Dilemma
[00:05:50] - Joel's Big Picture
[00:07:50] - Land Management by the Native Americans
[00:08:40] - Building the soil
[00:09:40] - Herbivores in Nature: Moving, Mobbing, Mowing
[00:10:40] - Organic Matter in soil and the key ingredient
[00:12:50] - Soil Microbes
[00:13:50] - Azotobacter
[00:14:25] - Analogous to the human microbiome
[00:16:20] - You are what you eat
[00:16:50] - Beyond Meat (Soy Based Burgers) an example of a mono-culture from a bacteria stand point.
[00:18:00] - Culturally we accept a highly simplified diet.
[00:19:20] - Joel's Recent Trip to Australia
[00:21:07] - Dolly Madison's Cookbook or Martha Washington's Cookbook
[00:22:31] - Why animal products have a bland taste
[00:25:00] - Quality over Quantity in food choices
[00:25:53] - Is mass producing organic food a contradiction?
[00:27:54] - When Organic was formed it wasn't a checklist of dos and don'ts it was a ideology.
[00:29:21] - Joel doesn't eat sea food unless he's within 50 miles from the ocean
[00:30:02] - Seasonality of Foods in different regions
[00:32:25] - Jamestown Native American Houses
[00:33:15] - Reestablishing a domestic Larder
[00:35:26] - Reconnecting to the food
[00:37:00] - Personal Stewardship of Your Intellect
[00:38:56] - Grassroots innovation in creating a new food distribution system
[00:39:50] - The Lunatic Fringe
[00:41:00] - Innovation isn't always creating something brand new, it can be rediscovering what was lost
[00:44:00] - Solarium
[00:45:00] - The disconnect from Farmer to Consumer
[00:46:15] - Envisioning a world where the summer market is obsolete
[00:48:30] - Creating an event around food!
[00:50:10] - When you are trying to connect in an authentic way it has a magnetic quality to it
[00:51:30] - School Gardens
[00:52:25] - Worm Bed Experiment (Not the specific experiment but and interesting video)
[00:55:14] - Mouse Experiment: Processed Food Caution
[00:56:45] - The Dorito Effect
[00:57:14] - How did Joel get into this quality driven idea for food?
[00:59:11] - The Struggle for Agriculture Post WWII
[01:01:29] - Sir Albert Howard: Composting in 1943
[01:04:00] - A new way of buying your food
[01:05:39] - The Uber of Food Distribution
[01:11:55] - Any advice for college
