Nonetheless, Salatin’s work has not made him popular with the government or the agricultural mainstream, and even he refers to himself as a “lunatic farmer” because virtually all the changes he advocates for are either illegal or fly in the face of the farming community’s established – and lucrative – systems of production and distribution.
All such resistance has done nothing to stop him, though. He believes that more and more people will join his “rogue food” rebellion, eventually forcing system changes from the inside, out. (Related: Food freedom – Learn how to "grow half of your own food" with sustainable, organic methods that can be practiced anywhere.)
Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork …
Salatin believes that the amount of paperwork that small farmers now have to submit to remain compliant with Obama’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is both stifling and overwhelming. In his words, “it’s through the roof.”
Salatin’s solution? He believes that a small town in Maine has the right idea:
A township [Sedgewick, Maine] … passed a half page food sovereignty law that said, in our township if a neighbor wants to do food commerce with another neighbor it's none of the governments business and no bureaucrat has to be involved. So if you want to come to my house, look around, smell around, and operate as freedom of choice, as voluntary adults, as consenting adults – and I'm using very strong language here – to practice your freedom of choice, then two consenting adults should be able to engage in food commerce without a bureaucrat being involved. Well, very quickly six other townships in Maine took up the mantra and passed the regulation, the law, as well.
From there, Salatin went on to explain, this “food sovereignty movement” continued to grow in Maine, and many others around the country are watching to see what will happen, with various legal matters that are being settled regarding individual rights versus the rights of the state. (Related: Maine officials violate local food freedom ordinance by suing man for selling raw milk from farm.)
Salatin believes that individual Americans should be entitled to engage in food commerce at their own risk and of their own free will. And attorneys in 40 states are getting behind the movement via a non-profit called the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. This fund gets involved when small farmers and food producers are invaded by SWAT teams who confiscate their produce and in other ways bully those who might otherwise not have any legal recourse.
Salatin explained in a podcast with Adam Taggart of Peak Prosperity how modern technology is giving this movement impetus:
And now the beauty of the internet is that these things can be documented on iPhones. People can see the bureaucrat, the SWAT teams coming in and throwing out the perfectly good food from a freezer. They can see the raid; they can see people's rights being violated. And so there is definitely a backlash. It's a food freedom backlash in the country, and I've been an advocate of this all my life.
No doubt, this movement will continue to spread across the country. Viva la révolution!
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