A biography for Joel Salatinhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“We're scared to death to try new things because we think we have to get it right the first time.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.”
“I need people - theatrics and schmoozing and storytelling are part of my talent.”
“No civilization on the brink of collapse has ever changed fast enough to avert collapse.”
“From my earliest memories, I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge, well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner.”
“Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am libertarian, and Americans generally are, more than, say, Canadians and Australians.”
“Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen. Start building up your larder! We don't even use that term any more.”
“You, as a food buyer, have the distinct privilege of proactively participating in shaping the world your children will inherit.”
“Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food.”