Joel Salatin, 53, is a fulltime third generation alternative farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His farm services more than 3,000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products using relationship marketing.
In addition to open pasture, Polyface has 450 woodland acres, that Salatin refers to as a “forest farm.” Besides selling firewood and lumber, the farm’s pigs are finished on acorns for a month before slaughter, which saves money on grains and feed. Salatin claims that running pigs in the woods (George Washington did so with his own swine herds), and being able to manage and control this technique, will eventually make confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) obsolete.
Salatin also talks about the farm crisis: demographically, the average farmer is approximately 60 years old, and in the next 15 years 50% of America’s farmland will change hands. Unfortunately most of this land will be passed onto children who don’t want to farm the land. But the good news is that a generation of young farmers (who don’t come from a farming background or family) are slowly becoming the new rock stars of the food world, and there is going to be land available for them everywhere.
Salatin holds a BA degree in English and writes regularly for Stockman Grassfarmer, Acres USA, and American Agriculturist. The Salatin family farm, Polyface Inc. (“The Farm of Many Faces”) has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Gourmet. Profiled on the Lives of the 21st Century series with Peter Jennings on ABC World News, his after-broadcast chat room fielded more hits than any other segment to date. It achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
Aran Goyoaga shows us that all food blogs are not created equal. A Basque ex-pat living in the US since 1998, Aran is the real sweet behind the blog Cannelle Et Vanille, which she says are the smells and tastes of her childhood. Aran grew up in a house full of bakers and pastry chefs, and it’s clearly in her blood. She is a mother, a freelance food writer, stylist and photographer. Her blog is a journal of her recipes, travels and life stories, full of gorgeous photos and wonderful recipes. http://cannelle-vanille.blogspot.com/
Elissa Altman is an award-winning columnist, humorist, and commentator on all things culinary. Once described as the illegitimate love child of David Sedaris and M.F.K. Fisher, Altman has contributed to Saveur Magazine, the Hartford Courant, Beard House Magazine, the New York Times, and blogs regularly for the Huffington Post. Formerly a restaurant critic for The Hartford Courant, Ms. Altman has also worked in New York City as a personal chef and caterer, attended the Institute for Culinary Education, and was a longtime senior editor at both HarperCollins and Clarkson Potter. She is the founder of the very funny and delicous blog, PoorMansFeast.com, and you can follow her on Twitter @PoorMansFeast.
Lisa Hamilton is a journalist, photographer, and the author of two books: "Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness" and "Farming to Create Heaven on Earth." Her work has also been published in The Nation, Harpers, National Geographic Traveler, Orion, and Gastronomica. You can read more about Lisa on her website: www.lisamhamilton.com
Will Harris is a fifth generation cattler rancher and the owner of White Oak Pastures, the largest certified organic farm in Georgia. In 1995 Will decided to change his family's traditional practices of raising corn fed cattle and transitioned to grass fed beef. Will is the subject of a recent documentary by the Southern Foodways Alliance, "CUD." You can view the film online here: www.sfa.com.
Show notes: Tom Philpott, food editor at Grist.org is among the brightest stars and is a prolific and informed voice of the contemporary food revolution taking root in this country today. A speaker and honored guest at the first annual Edible Institute in Santa Fe, NM, Tom was gracious enough to sit down and have a conversation with us.
When he isn't obsessing about food and agriculture and hunting and pecking at his laptop's keyboard, you might find him in the kitchen or in the field at home at Maverick Farms in Valle Crucis, N.C. Before becoming a full time farmer, he held a day job as a finance writer and editor in New York City, and generally split his off time between his community-garden plot in Brooklyn and his apartment kitchen. In past lives, he has worked as a grill cook in an old-school Texas steakhouse, a finance reporter in Mexico City, and a community-college instructor/restaurant critic in Austin, Texas. Follow Tom’s posts at www.Grist.org , and on Facebook, or Twitter.
Bio: Tom Philpott is food editor at Grist.org, where he writes on the politics and ecology of food. He's also a co-founder and core-group member at Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable-food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina.
Before moving to the farm in 2004, Philpott worked as a financial journalist in Mexico City and New York City, most recently holding the title of equity research editor for Reuters, where he wrote daily dispatches on the stock market. His work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek,The Guardian, Seed, Gastronomica, Mother Earth News, New Farm, and Sojourners. Maverick Farms has been featured in Gourmet and The NewYork Times Magazine, and in Sept. 2008, Food & Wine named Philpott one of "ten innovators" who will "continue to shape the culinary consciousness of our country for the next 30 years." Philpott serves of the board of directors of the Boston-based Chef's Collaborative, a nationwide group that seeks to push the restaurant business in more sustainable directions; and on the board of advisers at the Ausin, Texas-based Sustainable Food Center.
