Joel Salatin

Rancher:
Polyface Farms, Swoope, VA
Raising: Cattle, Poultry, Pork, Rabbits and Forestry Products

Author of:
Salad Bar Beef, Holy Cows & Hog Heaven, You Can Farm, Family Friendly Farming, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer, Folks This Aint Normal, Pastured Poultry Profits, Everything I Want to do is Illegal.

Joel Salatin, 54, is a full-time farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. A third generation alternative farmer, he returned to the farm full-time in 1982 and continued refining and adding to his parents’ ideas.

The farm services more than 3,000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products using relationship marketing.

He holds a BA degree in English and writes extensively in magazines such as STOCKMAN GRASS FARMER, ACRES USA, and AMERICAN AGRICULTURALIST.

The family’s farm, Polyface Inc. (“The Farm of Many Faces”) has been featured in SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, GOURMET and countless other radio,television and print media. Profiled on the Lives of the 21st Century series with Peter Jennings on ABC World News, his after-broadcast chat room fielded more hits than any other segment to date. It 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, he 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.” A wordsmith, he describes his occupation as “mob-stocking hervbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization.” 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.

His mother Lucille, wife Teresa, daughter Rachel, son Daniel, daughter-in-law Sheri, grandsons Travis and Andrew, and granddaughter Lauryn, work full-time together on the family farm.

 

Michael Ableman

Farmer:
Foxglove Farm, Salt Spring Island, BC
Raising: A variety of row crops, berries & grains

Author of:
From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World
On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm
Fields of Plenty

Michael Ableman is the founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non-profit organization based on one of the oldest and most diverse organic farms in southern California, where he farmed from 1981 to 2001. At its peak the farm served as an important community and education center and a national model for small scale and urban agriculture, hosting as many as 5000 people per year for tours, classes, festivals, and apprenticeships. Under Ableman's leadership the farm was saved from development and preserved under one of the earliest and most unique active agricultural conservation easements of its type in the country.

Ableman has consulted on, designed and installed farms and food production gardens at the Santa Barbara AIDS Hospice, an 11-acre farm at the Midland School, a three-acre market garden at the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts, an agricultural training center in the parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, and a city-wide urban agriculture initiative in Vancouver, British Columbia. His work as an educator and consultant has helped to inspire dozens of projects and initiatives throughout North America and the Caribbean.

In 1984 Ableman traveled to mainland China where he observed the remnants of a traditional system of agriculture that had sustained people and the land for thousands of years. This experience inspired him to travel around the world documenting other cultures culminating in the internationally acclaimed publication of From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World (Abrams, 1993). Called "hopeful and inspiring" by the LA Times and "a compelling photographic essay" by the NY Times, From The Good Earth was one of the first books to visually document the dramatic changes taking place in food and agriculture worldwide. The book has become a timeless classic that challenges us to participate, in the marketplace, in our kitchens, and in our own backyards.

Ableman's second book, On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm (Chronicle Books, 1998), is the emblematic story of his fight to preserve a piece of what was once some of the richest farmland in the world, and a paean to the sweet obsession of growing food. The Philadelphia Inquirer stated, "that if Henry David Thoreau had been a farmer, he would have written a book very much like Michael Ableman's On Good Land". Booklist called it "inspiring and utterly absorbing" and the literary book review Kirkus Reviews said that "among a sprawl of books incessantly issued and hyped, this small, wise volume quietly calls us to read and be renewed". The book, graced with Ableman's lush photographs, argues articulately for farmland preservation and provides a blueprint for a farm that thrives in cooperation with its surrounding community.

Ableman's photographs have appeared in publications throughout the world and in solo exhibitions at the Oakland Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Field Museum in Chicago. He has lectured extensively throughout the U.S. and in Europe. His work has been covered in National Geographic, on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, in the Utne Reader, Gourmet Magazine, and the L.A. Times. An award-winning film about Ableman's work, Beyond Organic, narrated by Meryl Streep aired nationally on PBS in 2001.

Ableman has received numerous awards including the 2001 "Sustie" Award for his work in sustainable agriculture, Eating Well magazine's 1995 Food Hero Award, and the 1997 Environmental Leadership Award from the governor of the state of California.
His third book Fields of Plenty, A farmer's journey in search of real food and the people who grow it was released in the fall of 2005.

Ableman currently directs the SoleFood project in Vancouver, British Columbia, a city wide social enterprise providing urban agriculture employment and food to Vancouver's most underserved individuals. He is also directing the Center For Arts. Ecology, and Agriculture at Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island where he grows a diversity of fruits, vegetables, and grains.

 

Nicolette Hahn Niman

Attorney & Rancher:
BN Ranch, Bolinas, CA
Raising: Cattle, Turkey, Goats

Author of:
Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms

Nicolette Hahn Niman is an attorney and livestock rancher. She and her husband, Bill Niman, are regularly featured in media about sustainable food production, including an August 2009 TIME magazine cover story. Much of her time is spent speaking and writing about the problems resulting from industrialized agriculture, including the book Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms (HarperCollins, 2009, www.righteousporkchop.com ), four essays she has written on the subject for the New York Times, and one for the Sunday Los Angeles Times. She is regular blogger for The Atlantic, and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Cowboys & Indians, and CHOW, among others. Previously, she was the Senior Attorney for the environmental organization Waterkeeper Alliance where she was in charge of the organization's campaign to reform the concentrated livestock and poultry industry, and, before that, an attorney for National Wildlife Federation. Ms. Hahn Niman served two terms on the city council for the City of Kalamazoo, Michigan (pop. 80,000), during which time she served on sixteen community boards and commissions including the Environmental Concerns Committee. She received her Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from the University of Michigan in 1993 and her B.A. in Biology and French from Kalamazoo College in 1989. She lives in Bolinas, California with her son, Miles, and her husband, Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch, a natural meat company supplied by a network of over 700 traditional farmers and ranchers. They now market the products of their ranch under the name BN Ranch.

 

Patrick Holden

Dairyman & Farmer:
Bwlchwernen Fawr (Farm & Dairy), Wales, UK
Raising: Dairy Cattle

After a London upbringing Patrick Holden trained in Biodynamic farming at Emerson College in Sussex before moving to Wales in 1973 to establish his mixed organic dairy farm near Lampeter. The 250 acre farm with which he is still actively involved, it is now the longest established organic dairy holding in Wales, producing a raw milk cheddar style cheese from the milk of 70 Ayrshire dairy cows.
 
He was founder and first chairman of British Organic Farmers, a producer group which along with the Organic Grower's Association developed the production base for the organic food movement before merging with the Soil Association in 1995. After serving as Director of the Soil Association between 1995 and 2010, he stepped down to establish a new organization, The Sustainable Food Trust, which is working to promote increased international cooperation between all those involved in sustainable food production.
 
Patrick is an advisor to The Prince of Wales's International Sustainability Unit, Patron of the Bio-dynamic Agricultural Association, the Living Earth and the Soil Association's Land Trusts and International Ambassador of the Soil Association.

He received a CBE for services to organic farming in 2005.

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