Joel Salatin is a Renaissance man of the 21st Century. Salatin is the chief operator of Polyface Farms, a beef-, pork-, and poultry-producing farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that has belonged to the Salatin family since 1961. Salatin is a gifted farmer whose talents extend far beyond the field. He is a shrewd businessman who remains committed to a set of core values, an ecologist who understands the intimate connection between plants and their soil, the author of seven books, a speaker invited to give lectures nation-wide, and a committed family man. Salatin is a self-described “Christian libertarian environmental capitalist,” and, according to the New York Times is “Virginia’s most multi-faceted agrarian since Thomas Jefferson.” He also is undoubtedly more than a little crazy.
Michael Pollan featured Salatin and Polyface prominently in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a paragon of sustainable and locally oriented food production. The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times, and its publication marked both an explosion in support for sustainable and local food systems, and the skyrocketing of Salatin’s status, who became the rock star of the alternative food movement. When I heard that he would be speaking at an event in Charlottesville, I couldn’t stay away.
Virginia’s first bilingual business journal, Forward/Adelante, sponsored the event held at C’ville Coffee as a benefit for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and a networking opportunity for local businesses. A smorgasbord of Charlottesville favorites including Baja Bean Co., Mas Tapas, and Hot Cakes provided food for attendees. I am neither bilingual nor a local business employee, but fifteen dollars seemed reasonable for dinner and a show, so I enlisted a friend with an appetite for adventure and went anyway.
After we had nibbled and giggled and politely applauded the jazzy musical opener, Joel finally took the stage, sporting a cheesy opening line and the type of glasses my grandparents wore in the 90s. He took a moment to recognize the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and then launched into perhaps the most disorderly and bizarrely entertaining tirade I have ever witnessed.
There’s no question that Salatin knows what he’s talking about and is indeed quite accustomed to talking about it. He rattled alarming statistics off the top of his head and hardly took a breath as he confidently slid between topics including the origin of germ theory, Obama’s food czar, and farms bordering Italian highways. He employed pithy, crowd-pleasing catchphrases such as, “a nation can only be as healthy as its soil,” and generally captivated the audience with palpable passion and energy.
But after listening to Salatin speak nonstop for over an hour, I’m not sure that I really knew what he was talking about. His metaphors seemed profound (“we are disconnected from our ecological umbilical”), and his accusations righteous (“the inspectors are all in bed together”), but if I were my English professor, I would say that his speech lacked a clear thesis and was rife with tangents. Certainly, an informal speech is not an essay and does not need to be constructed as such, but if a speaker cannot concisely express want it is he wants his audience to take away from his address, then the room starts to fill with hot air.
Lack of organization was not the only bemusing aspect of Salatin’s speech. He tended to drop vague “facts” such as, “according to MIT, people are only 15% human,” and then move on without explaining their meaning. Several times, he used the exaggerated voices of a children’s puppeteer, imitating hoity-toity food snobs, evoking 19th century French scientists, and, most bizarrely of all, enacting a subterranean drama involving a worm, a millipede, and a tusked narwhal. He gestured grandly and widened his eyes behind those coke-bottle lenses. Amusing? Yes. Enlightening? No.
Don’t mistake my criticism for Salatin’s presentational manner as doubt for the worth of his cause or disdain for his work. Salatin has an unparalleled wealth of knowledge about and uncanny intuition for food production that is also responsible land stewardship. Moreover, he works tirelessly for a cause that most only discuss in a grandiose and abstract way. In all of this, I have enormous respect for Joel Salatin. His fiery passion and inexhaustible energy are essential to driving forward the movement for a more sustainable and locally oriented food system in America. But these are the qualities to look for in a courageous and somewhat crazy army captain, not an unruffled general who steers the master plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment