Yeah, but his farm is a great success

Farm audiences are initially mesmerized when Joel Salatin starts to speak about farming with no vet, fertilizer or pesticide bills, and in a way that builds the soil while romancing the next generation.

Then the "yeah buts" come out.

Yeah but, Salatin is farming in the fertile Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, not the semi-arid Canadian Prairies with their fragile, erosion-prone soils and long, cold winters.

Yeah but, he's located within a few hours of densely populated urban centres, which makes direct marketing a breeze. Who couldn't make a go of direct marketing with New York in the vicinity? Let's see him do that when Winnipeg and Brandon are the closest thing to major we have for urban centres.

Yeah but, he's just a small farmer. And look how many people it takes to run that place.

Salatin has heard it so many times, he starts his presentations by pulling the words right out of the doubters' mouths. "It's all fine and dandy, but it won't work here," he said. "We love to be victims of our circumstances."

The farm his parents moved their family to in 1961 was so eroded, due to decades of inappropriate tillage and erosion, there was no topsoil left to hold up fence posts. They had to pour cement in old tire rims to support portable posts and electric fencing.

The farm has since been sown back to forage and trees, and now produces four species of livestock for meat, eggs and laying hen replacements for hobby farmers, as well as lumber.

The farm may not be large by way of land base, but it can't be called small, either. It overwinters 1,000 head of cattle and produces 1,000 hogs, 20,000 ready-to-lay pullets and $350,000 worth of eggs annually.

With some 20 workers, many of them family members, the farm, aptly called Polyface Inc.: The Farm of Many Faces, boasts over $1 million in annual sales through direct marketing of its products to 2,000 families, 25 restaurants and 10 retail outlets. It is also an educational centre, with many interns who go there to learn about setting up affiliated businesses on leased properties in the area.

As for the number of people it takes to run it, Salatin counters the average conventional farm creates the same level of employment. The difference is his operation keeps those jobs on the farm, often in management-intensive positions, rather than externalizing that economic activity through products designed to replace management.

Most farm families in North America rely on extra jobs in town to make ends meet. The Salatin operation has workers who drive from town to the country every day.

He even tackles the market-access question by pointing out that in Manitoba, much like everywhere else in North America, only about five per cent of the food consumed is produced locally. There is an opportunity for someone to fill that gap, especially since the advent of solar-based greenhouses that can supply fresh vegetables year-round.

"If we can just realize it's the principles that are important, and the principles apply everywhere," he says.

A major factor in his farm's success has been its avoidance of single-use capital-intensive infrastructure. It not only costs the current generation a lot to acquire, it becomes a liability, weighing down the next generation. "It enslaves the next generation to continue like the previous generation; it enslaves it emotionally and financially," Salatin said.

Pretty much everything at Polyface, from the livestock to the buildings, serves more than one purpose. The pigs are called "pigerators" because their rooting through manure packs and underbrush aerates the soil. Their sale as meat is value-added.

The poultry on pasture spreads the cattle manure while eating bugs. "They are not egg layers, they are avian symbiotic pasture sanitizers."

While conventional agriculture stresses strict biosecurity and germ warfare to prevent disease outbreaks, Salatin's philosophy is to pursue balance through diversity.

Plus, if youth can participate hands-on with the farming operation from an early age, something that is less possible given the scale of mainstream farming these days, they are much more likely to get the farming bug.

Salatin said when his kids turned 20, each had $20,000 in a bank account from their own farm-based enterprise. Guess what? They are still farming.

It's telling that the Manitoba Conservation Districts Association chose this self-confessed "lunatic fringe farmer" to anchor its conference theme Inspiring Change this week in Brandon.

And yes, there were a lot of "yeah buts" after his presentation. But Salatin's approach is making more sense to more people all the time.

Laura Rance is editor of the Manitoba Co-operator. She can be reached at 792-4382 or by email: laura@fbcpublishing.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 17, 2011 B10