04/27/2026
JOEL SALATIN speaks for all of us who ...
CARE ABOUT WHAT WE EAT AND FEED OUR FAMILIES!
It is time to change course --- learn to respect and understand how GROWING OUR FOOD in sync with nature can contribute to healing American stomachs - one bite at a time!
Please take a moment to read Joel's - concise and articulate presentation delivered on the steps of the Supreme Court of the USA.
SCOTUS PRESENTATION
Joel is one of 30 speakers at the PEOPLE VS. POISON rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is hearing the final appeal of Bayer/Monsanto's case to get protection for (from) glyphosate harms.
Comments follow:
So here's my take: we're distracted, as is often the case, by asking the wrong question(s). We're asking specifically whether federal agencies should be able to shield their corporate cronies from the consequences of their dangerous products, --- generally, is glyphosate, or perhaps any chemical fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, or insecticide necessary in agriculture?
The short answer to both of these questions is "no."
But these are the wrong questions.
The real question is what protocols would return the North American landscape to its pre-European productivity and abundance? You see, 500 years ago this landscape produced more food than it does today, even with tractors, fertilizers, chemicals and new plant varieties. Of course, it wasn't all eaten by people.
Some 100-200 million bison roamed grasslands and savannahs. 200-400 million beavers ate more vegetable material than all the humans in North America today. Flocks of birds blocked the sun for an entire day. The Lewis and Clark expedition encountered a bear every single mile from St. Louis to the Pacific. Bears eat a lot. A million wolves each ate 20 pounds of meat a day. Between 1492 and 1600, the Native American population dropped by 90 percent as European diseases ravaged indigenous tribes.
How did this pre-European landscape produce this abundance? First, symbiotic, diversified, mobile animals. Bison choreography included moving, mobbing, and strategic mowing. Second, hydrology. The beavers created 8-10 percent water across the landscape; today we're less than 4 percent. The three primary principles of proper landscape hydration are to slow runoff water, spread it, and sink it. Bison augmented the beavers with millions of wallows, like backyard swimming pool-sized dust baths, which collected runoff into pools to then soak into aquifers. Third, both human and naturally-lit fire killed weak, sick, and small trees to favor big trees spaced apart, known as the cathedral forest.
Modern American industrialized agriculture opposes every one of these principles. We segregate animals and plants into monocultures and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. We drain the water, speed up surface runoff, and deplete aquifers. In forests, we take the best trees, leave the worst, and don't prune to encourage healthy growth.
Because we've disrespected and assaulted the most basic protocols of ecology, beginning with European arrival but accelerating with modern machines, chemicals, and cheap transportation, nature is fighting back on many fronts: soil, human, and cultural dysfunction. Pathogenicity and toxicity scream a lexicon of abuse: E. coli, campylobacter, salmonella, super bugs, food allergies, chronic morbidity. As the glyphosate debate rages, let's stay focused on the most important objective: restoring the abundance and ecological integrity that greeted those European immigrants.
Glyphosate is not necessary for national security; it's merely one among many modern inventions pushing us toward insecurity. Let's use our God-given mechanical and mental ingenuity to restore, regenerate, and redeem. Thank you.
