Students for a Sustainable Earth Present:
“EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL!”
An evening with Joel Salatin, libertarian environmentalist farmer and author
The Western Michigan University student environmental organization, Students for a Sustainable Earth, has joined forces with the WMU College Republicans to host “Everything I want to do is illegal”, an evening with libertarian environmentalist farmer Joel Salatin. The event, which takes place Monday April 6th at 7 PM in Westerns Shaw Theatre, covers a little discussed topic that has created an unexpected alliance. According to Joe Orchanian, the Chair of Students for a Sustainable Earth, “We feel, and Joel will talk about this, that there are many regulations that harm small farms and stop real environmental progress. The College Republicans have been very interested in this message of deregulation, and have been amazingly supportive of the event.” This free event is all about the federal regulatory processes that, according to Salatin, hurt small local farms and encourage large farming corporations.
Joel Salatin, 50, is a full time farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. A third generation farmer, he returned to the farm full time in 1982 and continued refining and adding to his parents’ ideas.
The family’s farm achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured in the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA by food writer guru Michael Pollan.
A sought-after conference speaker, Joel addresses a wide range of issues, from “creating the farm your children will want” to “making a white collar salary from a pleasant life in the country.” His humorous and conviction-based speeches are akin to theatrical performances, often receiving standing ovations. His speaking and writing reflect dirt-under-the-fingernails experience punctuated with mischievous humor. He passionately defends small farms, local food systems, and the right to opt out of the conventional food paradigm.
- EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL!*
Despite all the hype about local or green food, the single biggest impediment to wider adoption is not research, programs, organizations, or networking. It is the demonizing and criminalizing of virtually all indigenous and heritage-based food practices. From zoning to labor to food safety to insurance, local food systems daily face a phalanx of regulatory hurdles designed and implemented to police industrial food models but which prejudiciously wipe out the antidote: appropriate scaled local food systems. A call for guerrilla marketing, food choice freedom legislation, and empirical pathogen thresholds offers solutions to these bureaucratic hurdles.
This event is SAF funded by the WSAAC
For more information about this event, or any event organized by
Students for a Sustainable Earth, Contact Joe Orchanian. 269-599-4059. SSECOCHAIR@yahoo.com
Students for a Sustainable Earth 