As one of America’s most outspoken pioneers of regenerative agriculture, Joel Salatin is popularly known as The Lunatic Farmer. Others have accused him of being a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, a charlatan, and starvation advocate. Less of a lunatic and more of an agricultural visionary, however, Salatin has transformed his family’s Polyface Farms in idyllic western Virginia into one of America’s leading laboratories for non-industrial food production. So when I visited Joel at Polyface recently, we talked about the principles of regenerative agriculture and why the Lunatic Farmer believes that America can be healed, “one bite at a time”, if we can radically change what we eat.
Joel Salatin, 64, 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, 15 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. His wide-ranging topics include nitty-gritty how-to for profitable regenerative farming as well as cultural philosophy like orthodoxy vs. heresy. A wordsmith and master communicator, he moves audiences from laughs one minute to tears the next, from frustration to hopefulness. Often receiving standing ovations, he prefers the word performance rather than presentation to describe his lectures. His favorite activity?–Q&A. “I love the interaction,” he says. He co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems. Salatin is the editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, granddaddy catalyst for the grass farming movement. He writes the "Confessions of a Steward" monthly column for Plain Values magazine, the "Homestead Abundance" column for Homestead Living magazine, and three columns a month for the e-magazine Manward. He also co-hosts a podcast titled BEYOND LABELS with co-author of that book Dr. Sina McCullough.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
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