Farmer-Author Joel Salatin Rhapsodizes on What's Wrong With the Modern World and How to Fix It

This Tuesday, Joel Salatin, a third-generation farmer, best selling author, lecturer, and all-around agrarian entrepreneur, spoke to a sellout crowd of more than 200 people at Petaluma’s Seed Bank. 

Though the event was billed a book-signing for Salatin’s newest release, “Folks, this Ain’t Normal: A farmer’s advice for happier hens, healthier people, and a better world,” the night offered much more than just an autograph.

While The New York Times has described him as “Virginia’s most multifaceted agrarian since Thomas Jefferson,” Salatin’s speaking style he could also be described as a beatnik agrarian, full of energy and verve that you almost couldn’t help but snap your fingers to.

In keeping with his multifaceted nature, Salatin, who described himself as a “Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist, lunatic,” touched on politics, the economy and spirituality, with only a few passing references to his new book.

Salatin took the audience on a nostalgic trip back to the golden years of farming, where by necessity the farmer lived in a symbiotic relationship to his crop, animals and soil. He talked of a time before mechanized husbandry, where the amount of land a farmer could till was kept in check by the amount of perennials his animals could graze and consume.

And since tilling is the quickest way to deplete topsoil, this delicate balance until now has sustained our natural resources for all of civilization. Food supply and soil depletion was limited by the amount of free pasture, as both feedstock and crops themselves both fed primarily on solar-powered fuel known as grass. 

But in the age of cheap, abundant energy (petroleum), commercial farmers till as much soil as possible, increasing the food supply. In the process, they deplete the topsoil, dry aquifers and crowd the planet with exponential population growth - all factors once kept in balance by the amount of available grass! 

In other words, as the title of Salatin’s book suggests, “This Ain’t Normal!”

An interesting solution to the problem, which seemed curiously reasonable only 15 minutes into the evening, was to replace all parakeets with chickens! (No offense to parakeets). Salatin mentioned a Belgian town that gave three free chickens to 2000 residents. 

Within one year the town reduced 100 tons of landfill by feeding their birds vegetable scraps and harvesting their eggs, and had pets who were as charming as parakeets.

Rewarded with a standing ovation, Salatin closed the presentation in an almost Kennedy-esqe fashion with a play on a traditional Irish blessing, the likes of which can only be described in verbatim: 

“May your beets be large and not puny, may your landlords be kind to let you have chickens, may your parakeets forgive you for replacing them with chickens, may your kitchens exude aromatic and aesthetic sensual romance ... may the rain beat gently on your fields, the wind be always at your back and may we all leave the world a better place than when we found it.” 

Beatnik agrarian, indeed!