Regenerative farming pioneer Joel Salatin joins Dr. Jordan B. Peterson to challenge the myth that cows are bad for the planet. They explore how pasture-based farming restores ecosystems, the dangers of industrial agriculture, and why storytelling matters in the fight for the future of food. Joel Salatin, dubbed the "Lunatic Farmer," is a Christian libertarian environmentalist and one of the most outspoken voices in regenerative agriculture. Co-owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia, he supplies thousands with pasture-raised meats and teaches sustainable farming worldwide. With 16 books, such as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma," countless columns, and a wildly engaging speaking style, Salatin blends mischief, grit, and deep cultural insight to challenge how we think about food, freedom, and stewardship of the land. This episode was filmed on March, 10th, 2025. | Links | For Joel Salatin: On X https://x.com/joelsalatin?lang=en Polyface Farms website https://polyfacefarms.com/ Read “Homestead Tsunami: Good for Country, Critters, and Kids” https://a.co/d/5gg3vAV Read “You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise” https://a.co/d/fX8wSWF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
We hear a lot of noise about how cows are contributing to global warming, which is an idea that's really struck me as rather specious right from the beginning.
If you want to talk atmospheric carbon, all it would take is all of our farmland to change 1% in organic matter. We call this mob-stalking, herbivorous, solar conversion, lignified carbon, sequestration, fertilization. We spend as much time marketing as we do the entire farm production.
Really what you are is a communicator and a network builder. Well, why do I need to be fluent in my communication? Why do I need to write? Why do I need to learn to speak?
Thank you.
So I've been very skeptical about these ideas stemming from the WEF globalist types that there's something pathological about the agricultural sector and the dawning concern as well or the building concern about the notion that pasture animals like cattle, for example, are bad for the planet. That just seems to me to be absurd on the face of it. I'd have to see a lot of
data, so to speak, before I would regard that as credible. I'm also interested in meat-based diets, for example, because they seem to be very health-promoting and highly nutritious. One of the things that I've wanted to do for a long time is to spend some time investigating the landscape of so-called regenerative farming.
And I found someone to talk to, and there's other people who I could talk to as well, named Joel Salatin. And Joel has written a number of interesting books, and this will give you a sense of him right off the bat. The latest one was Homestead Tsunami, which is a description of, well, the dawning interest in homesteading as a potential choice of life, let's say.
He's also written, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, which I love as a title, You Can Farm, which is partly what we discussed, and Pastured Poultry Prophets, which is a book that documents a particular form of agrarian lifestyle. as a solution to the economic problems that young people might be facing. So it's a pathway to a profitable, sustainable, and socially useful economic future.
And so we spent a fair bit of time talking about all of these things to do today. And so if you're interested in that, then this is the podcast for you. Well, Mr. Selliton, why don't you start just by telling everybody what you do? Let's start from the beginning.
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