Joel Salatin is America's most celebrated pioneer of chemical-free farming – but if you want to taste his beef or chicken you'll have to move to Virginia. He talks to Gaby Wood about why local is best and his role in the documentary Food, Inc which attacks the giants of industrialised food production.
Joel Salatin is pulling on his braces. He's just had his picture taken wearing a suit – our photographer wants to show that he's not just a hands-on local farmer but also a new-era businessman – and now he's getting back into his work gear: muddy jeans, straw hat, and a farmhand's shirt that reads, in embroidered script, "Roy".
"Roy?" I ask.
Salatin follows my gaze to his chest and laughs. "The cleaner sells unclaimed ones for 50 cents each," he explains. "I might be Pedro one day, and Roy the next."
Such is the unpredictable world of Joel Salatin, hero of the new local food movement, feted for his ingenious chemical-free farming methods and admired for his outspoken articulacy on the …More