Photo: Ellen Martin / Heinz Awards

Joel Salatin, farmer, author and lecturer, is honored for creating alternative, environmentally friendly farming techniques, spawning a movement towards local, sustainable agriculture that has been replicated by family farms around the country. Mr. Salatin has developed a new paradigm for sustainable agriculture by successfully challenging the commercial production of chickens and beef by food industry giants of the 1970s. His pioneering agricultural practices inextricably and beautifully interweave a food system with the land and have been embraced by farmers throughout the country.

 

Joel Salatin is more than the ‘high priest of the pasture;’ he’s a brilliant farmer.  He is brilliant because he keeps it simple.  It starts with the grass and a divine rotation of cows, chickens, sheep and other farm animals taking their turn to graze.  They work in unison the way, I believe, Mother Nature intended.  The big corporate farms can no longer tell us that pollution will always come with farming.  Mr. Salatin’s work shows us that is not true because on his lands, farming is no longer part of the problem; it is part of the solution to a better environment.  For this wonderful work, it is an honor to present him with this award.

In addition to being seen in Food, Inc., Salatin can also be seen in Fresh.