Almost 500 people spent four hours in a conference room at the Langley Events Centre on Saturday, Nov. 8 to listen to international speaker, author, farmer, and agricultural freedom of choice advocate Joel Salatin share advice and his unique outlook on the the future of food and farming.
The event was hosted by the Langley Sustainable Agriculture Foundation. Salatin, based in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia, is the owner of Polyface Farms, “a family-owned, multi-generational, pasture based, beyond organic, local farm.”
Salatin sees many of the problems facing today’s farmer as a result of government interference and the growing influence of urban culture.
Salatin said modern culture believes, farming has become “obnoxious, noisy, smelly, a blight on the land,” and this has resulted in farming and its related services being separated from the people.
He believes this “segregation” of farming away from its related support systems and associated agricultural industries has resulted in increased costs, reduced profits and decreased efficiencies.
Salatin also told the crowd that the future for successful farming relies on “an integration between production and markets.”
He also argued that the place of the farmer must no longer be minimized in society.
“Rather than a farmer being just a colonial peasant serf who produces raw commodities to be value added, promoted, marketed, exported, distributed and graphic artist-advertised by other people in the urban centre who essentially take all the money, I am a big believer in the agrarian intellectual and the honoured farmers,” he said.
“Farmers get what they think they deserve, and if you think farmers are the low socio-economic plain of a culture, then you will be.
“I tell farmers, ‘Go get a suit. You need to be the best and brightest, not the dumbest and socio-economic disadvantaged.’”
For farming to prosper, Salatin said, there needs to be a reduction in government legislation in how farmer can do business.
He advocates less zoning restrictions on how farmland can be used. He called for an end to marketing boards and quotas and the elimination of what he describes as the “food police”.
Salatin spoke to the great importance of farmers looking to their own farming practices to find ways to modernize their farms in environmentally safe, but efficient ways, and to find and eliminate inefficiencies that may be reducing the profitability of their business.
In addition to the keynote speaker, local farm operators Juila Smith from Urban Digs and Chris Bodnar of Close to Home Organics gave presentations.