FARM LAUNCH:  ACCESS TO LAND, MARKETS, CAPITAL AND LABOR

Because the average American farmer is now 60 years old, half of all agricultural equity will change hands in the next 15 years.  If young people can’t get in, old people can’t get out; both generations need an access ramp: one to get on and one to get off. Farm launch protocols require access to land (not

ownership), markets, capital and labor (team building). Drawing on a lifetime of experience in this space, Joel leads aspiring farmers through the launch process.

KEYNOTE

BUILDING A RESILIENT FOODSCAPE: LINKING LAND AND LIFE

The dinner plate links the soil to our micro-biome; it’s the conduit in which degeneration or regeneration flows. The choice is ours. In a convenience-dominated culture, connecting life and land requires conviction and participation, which in turn demands investment. The foodscape our grandchildren inherit is being determined today, every day, by our menu decisions. Let’s make both land and life a great place to be.

Joel Salatin, 62, 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.

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 Pitchfork Pulpit column for Mother Earth News, as well as numerous guest articles for ACRES USA and other publications.  A frequent guest on radio programs and podcasts targeting preppers, homesteaders, and foodies, Salatin’s practical, can-do solutions tied to passionate soliloquies for sustainability offer everyone food for thought and plans for action.

Mixing mischievous humor with hard-hitting information, Salatin both entertains and moves people. Seldom using a power-point and often speaking from an outline scribbled in a yellow legal pad, he depends on theatrics, style, and compelling content to hold attention and defend innovative positions.  The rare combination of prophet and practitioner makes him both a must-read and must-hear in a time desperate for integrity leadership and example.