PolyFACE

A few days ago, Josh and I watched Food, Inc. - a documentary about the food system in America. I could get into the details about how everything is messed up and unhealthy and how certain companies are monopolizing the food system by lobbying for policies that protect their own interests and hurt small farmers, but instead I want to talk about a guy that produces:

• Salad Bar Beef
• Pigaerator Pork
• Pastured Poultry
  
• Forage-Based Rabbits
• Forestry Products

in a sustainable, family focused, and environmentally friendly way. His name is Joel Salatin and he runs PolyFace, Inc. - the farm of many faces.

One of the key aspects of his farm and his sucess is using a "rotating crop" system not just for plants, but for the animals, as well. For example, pigs are sent in after the cows to "pigaerator" the "material" left behind by the cows. The pigs get to fullfill their "pigness" by doing what they love - searching through manure for fermenting corn that's been added to the manure - while oxidizing the manure to make it more nutritious for the soil. Chickens can also follow the cows in order to eat the bugs that would otherwise multiply in the "material" left by the cows. And all together, by having multiple animals rotating, fewer harmful patogens mulitply making the food safer and baceria free because these pathogens are generally animal specific and only spread within a single species. So, in this case, diversification with in a farm may actually trump specificiation/specialization and economies of scale, which they don't really teach you in Economics 101. Quite interesting, indeed.

The thing that I really love about Joel's philosophy is that he believes that you can learn more about the food produced on a given farm by looking at the books on the farmer's bookshelf than from inspection reports and certifications, because what the farmer is feeding his mind and soul will have a greater impact on how the food is raised than any certification could every tell you. Joel also an evangelical, conservative, libertarian Christian and believes that how our country treats its animals in food production process is a HUGE indicator of how we will treat other humans.

To hear from Joel directly, check out this lecture he gave back in 2005, when Michael Pollen invited Joel to speak at UC-Berkley's Journalism school. The lecture is an in depth look at how his farm opperates and is very much worth the time investment.