Keen On

As one of America’s most outspoken pioneers of regenerative agriculture, Joel Salatin is popularly known as The Lunatic Farmer. Others have accused him of being a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, a charlatan, and starvation advocate. Less of a lunatic and more of an agricultural visionary, however, Salatin has transformed his family’s Polyface Farms in idyllic western Virginia into one of America’s leading laboratories for non-industrial food production. So when I visited Joel at Polyface recently, we talked about the principles of regenerative agriculture and why the Lunatic Farmer believes that America can be healed, “one bite at a time”, if we can radically change what we eat.Joel Salatin, 64, calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson.  Those who don’t like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlata