An Evening with Joel Salatin

Yesterday, we enjoyed "An Evening with Joel Salatin" of Polyface Farm, courtesy of InJoy Foods.  It was a very interesting event and the first time Dh, Dd15 and I had seen Joel Salatin in person.  We first saw him when we watched the movie, Food, Inc., earlier this year.  Since then, his name keeps popping up and we feel very lucky to have someone pushing on this front right here in our own state. 

The flyer for the event says that Mr. Salatin is a "biodynamic farmer" who won the Heinz Award in 2009 for  “creating alternative, environmentally-friendly farming techniques, spawning a movement towards local, sustainable agriculture.” He has “developed a new paradigm for agriculture by successfully challenging the commercial production of chicken and beef by food industry giants." 

The evening started with a viewing of the movie, Fresh, which is sort of a continuation of Food, Inc.  It kept Dd15 on the edge of her seat with footage of tiny chicks being manhandled in a dark, cavernous industrial chicken house and the day to day existence of other sad, diseased animals.  In contrast, it showed scenes of happy animals busily munching away in the sunshine in a large field filled with a variety of grasses, herbs and flowers. 

After the movie, Mr. Salatin gave a short, but very entertaining talk about his philosophy and warned us that companies that experiment with animals to squeeze every last drop out of them and treat them as inhumanly as the large corporate operations in our industrialized food system do, might not hesitate to treat people that way as well.  Food for thought.

Mr. Salatin has published several books, which I have not read yet, but plan to add to my reading list.  He is expected to have a new book available this fall.