You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? Make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer’s bookshelf. Because what you’re feeding your emotions and thoughts is what this is really all about. The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview. You can learn more about that by seeing what’s sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the values and beliefs of a person shape their practices more than formal certifications.
Joel Salatin highlights the importance of understanding the underlying beliefs and philosophies that drive a farmer's practices. He suggests that the true essence of organic farming goes beyond certifications and regulatory forms; it's rooted in the farmer's worldview, which can be discerned by examining their bookshelf. This perspective emphasizes the connection between knowledge, personal values, and the methods employed in food production.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a sustainable farming conference to provoke thought on the deeper values of agriculture.
This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain't normal.
Too often, parents whose children express an interest in farming squelch it because they envision dirt, dust, poverty, and hermit living. But great stories come out of great farming.
Amazingly, we’ve become a culture that considers Twinkies, Cocoa Puffs, and Mountain Dew safe, but raw milk and compost-grown tomatoes unsafe.
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.
Don't you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?
Rediscovering the controversies that occupied early Christianity sharpens our awareness of the major issue in the whole debate, then and now: What is the source of religious authority? For the Christian the question takes more specific form: What is the relation between the authority of ones own experience and that claimed for the scriptures, the ritual and the clergy?
Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.
When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, the Buddha smiles, and the broken chain of history reconnects.
It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.
Is it astonishing that, like children trying to catch smoke by closing their hands, philosophers so often see the object they would grasp fly before them?
Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.
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