If you’ve gotten this far, you might be familiar with the ideals of the movement: the industrial commodity system is dangerously wreaking havoc on the quality of our food, health, water, air, and land. Salatin addressed the protective myths and proposed solutions: 

Salatin was smart, funny, and irreverently mixed personal experiences with research to present his case. Drawing on examples of his own sustainable system as well as those in Japan and Europe, he showed how using integrated methods employing rotational grazing and “multi-speciation” (lots of animals) symbiotically could allow a lot of food to be produced on small parcels of land. He addressed the issue of price by showing that once we figure out how to aggregate product and become more efficient, prices will become comparable. 

Blaming “the food police,” the extremely aggressive regulatory agencies whose policies hamper small farmers and producers, he argued that it is government policies (backed by corporate power and influence) that have cramped innovation and entrepreneurial enterprises. 

“If some regulator demanded that the founders of Facebook have desks a certain height and computers wired a particular way and fined them if they didn’t have enough employee bathrooms, the business never would have taken off. Its founders may not even have tried,” Salatin claimed. “Regulations control the marketplace, they aren’t making our food any safer. Who says real or raw milk from a farmer you know is NOT safer than Twinkies or Mountain Dew?” Claiming that the chicken he slaughtered in his kitchen has a lower bacteria count than the one in an industrial slaughterhouse he says, “You cannot legislate integrity.” 

Drawing on lessons from the Dust Bowl, Salatin identified the period when he thinks we took the “wrong fork in the road.” Just when Albert Howard, the father scientific composting, had identified natural methods for enriching soil, chemists were capturing ammonium nitrate (used to make bombs, fertilizers, and pesticides). In the face of an overwhelming land crisis, farmers (with government backing supported by corporate “know-how”) chose the “quicker fix.”  

Salatin believes it’s one we are paying for in the long run. “If we are serious about having real choices, we need to address the obstacles that prohibit clean, local food. We need to deal with the government regulations, licensing, and insurance programs that make it impossible for small farmers and producers to get their goods to the consumer. We’ve got to dispense with farm subsidies and expose the hidden costs in food. Right now, you can’t buy pickles from your neighbor or milk from the farmer down the street. It’s illegal, yet humankind has been eating this way for centuries. It’s really about choice.”

Monday, April 19: SPOONRIVER: Spring Preview Party for Mill City Farmers Market: 5-7 p.m.

Sunday, April 25: BIRCHWOOD CAFE: Earth Day Dinner with IATP president Jim Harkness lecture, "Global Perspective on Local Food." Call for tickets and reservations, 612 722-4474.