Show #109: Joel Salatin on food, soil and regenerative effects of working with nature's systems

Oooh how excited I am to share this conversation this week. Joel Salatin, 61, calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson.  Those who don’t like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlatan, and starvation advocate. 

With a room full of debate trophies from high school and college days, 12 published books, and a thriving multi-generational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world.  He’s as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as addressing CEOs in a Wall Street business conference. 

Sounds like someone worth hearing what they have to say, right? You will leave this conversation more hopeful and happy than you found it when it comes to the food and farming front, that I can guarantee you.  

Here are the questions I asked Joel with the usual twists, tangents and deviations you’ve come to expect.  

For the people who've been under a rock... Were you born and bred a farmer? Did you always farm in the way you do now?  

a) the magic of regenerative principles

b) the magic of soil and grass

c) how animals are an essential part of the prosperity of both of those! 

d) a couple of favourite rehab / regenerative projects - how they came about / what kind of resistance you were perhaps met with initially and what kinds of transformations the land experienced by changing farming style... can it be fast?  

e) how small hold farming can be a wonderful, profitable business

f) if you had a farmer in front of you today, who was a feedlot farmer or a small farmer using lots of sprays and they kind of knew it wasn't an ideal set up, but born perhaps into the system they were born into, they can't see from A to B... a) do you think they can change over time / adopt new principles / business modelling et b) where on earth would they be able to start? 

g) Regenerative farming for climate change challenges

Hope you love the show and as usual you can access the show notes and sponsor offer over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast Alexx x