019 - Joel Salatin on Ecologically Profitable Farming - How New Farmers Can Get In and How Existing Farmers Can Convert.

Joel talks a lot about how young people can get into farming by establishing synergistic relationships with older farmers as he tries to dispel the big belief that you need land to farm.

He touches on the farming business and how conventional farmers can start to transition to a perennial based agricultural system.

Key Takeaways from this Episode:

Convert a little bit of acres at a time, when converting a large amount of land from an annual based system to a perennial based system.

Converting a corn, soybean operation over to grassfed beef. It would take a year to plant the grass, an d it would take another year to come into production. You could start grazing it the second year and 3 years out you would be making more money per acre than you would on corn and beans.

Possibly sell some land to get yourself enough wiggle room to convert your farm over to a more regenerative agriculture system.

Prune off enterprises that don't work. Maybe you can't figure them out. It doesn't fit your marketbase or your unfair advantage. Each enterprise has to carry its own weight.

Beware of the enslavement of highly capitalized infrastructure. Too often that infrastructure controls the decision making process for right or wrong due to the amount of money invested into it.

Use in place infrastructure to help transition to a perennial polyculture. That equipment is already in place. Make use of it.

Take the Stephen Covey approach. Control your own sphere of influence.

This episode of the podcast is the audio from an interview that I did with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm back on May 22, 2013 in Big Bear Lake, CA.

Show Notes: www.permaculturevoices.com/19