Joel Salatin

Joel F. Salatin is an American farmer, lecturer, and author. Salatin raises livestock on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Meat from the farm is sold by direct marketing to consumers and restaurants.

Subsidies Warp Technology Markets and Rob Society of Better Solutions

Commentary AI data centers. The very phrase makes some folks shudder and others leap for joy. As these ...

Viewpoints June 5, 2026
Farmers Lose the Tax Fight

The lopsided reality behind overtaxing farmers is that residential people vote. Chickens don't.

Viewpoints May 19, 2026
America Deserves Bigger Debates, Not Better Slogans

Commentary In issuing the executive order to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, President Donald Trump said that ...

Viewpoints May 1, 2026
Ditch the Sanitizer and Exercise Your Immune System

Commentary Bugs, viruses, and sickness—these maladies creep into countless conversations as people wrestle with the question "How do ...

Viewpoints April 17, 2026
Modern Agriculture Dehydrates America

American agriculture is at war with water. If ever America needed more cows and fewer soybeans, it’s right ...

Viewpoints April 1, 2026
Food Culture and Red Tape: A Tale of 2 Agricultural Systems

Commentary Returning from a week of conducting farm workshops in Poland, I'm struck by the broad cultural heritage ...

Viewpoints March 17, 2026
Who Needs Glyphosate?

Commentary President Donald Trump’s Feb. 18 executive order invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 to ensure that ...

Viewpoints March 2, 2026
As Food Fears Rise, Big Firms Ask States for Cover

Commentary Big business is hatching a new plan to protect itself from the backlash of angry buyers. The ...

Viewpoints February 18, 2026
Why America’s Beef Supply Is Shrinking—and What Could Fix It

The American domestic beef herd is at its lowest level since 1950.

Viewpoints February 4, 2026
The Human Touch in Food Is What We’re Losing

We need more people growing our food, not fewer.

Viewpoints January 16, 2026
GMOs, Property Rights, and the Forgotten Rule: Do No Harm

When a society abandons the 'Your freedom ends when your fist hits my nose' concept, all sorts of ...

Opinion January 1, 2026
Want to Beat High Costs? Start at Home

Commentary The new cultural buzzword is "affordability." Young people especially seek some sort of relief from perceived overpricing ...

Viewpoints December 11, 2025
Ditch the Subsidies, Grow What Actually Works

Sooner or later, the weaknesses of relying on a safety net will be revealed, because safety nets eventually ...

Viewpoints December 5, 2025
Scale Up Through Duplication, Not Size

The benchmark for success seems to be the bigger, the better. But nature has a way of checking ...

Viewpoints November 12, 2025
Let the Worms Decide

Commentary Thanks to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we now know that the U.S. federal government allows ...

Viewpoints November 4, 2025
Joel Salatin: Stop the Soybean Bailouts

Commentary Question: What does a business do when nobody wants its products or services? Answer: It asks for ...

Viewpoints October 20, 2025
Joel Salatin: Participatory Environmentalism

Civilizations rise and fall based on soil health. The Contrary Caretaker proposes restorative protocols to redeem our ecology.

Viewpoints October 15, 2025
The Return on Investment of Isolation

Commentary In his book “Brave New World,” one of Aldous Huxley’s recurring themes is the desire and mandate ...

Viewpoints July 23, 2025
Why Are the Chickens So Sick?

Commentary As the nation suffers through yet another high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak, questioning the orthodox narrative ...

Viewpoints March 16, 2023