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³But can you feed the world?´ This is by far the most common question I am asked

everywhere I speak around the world. As much as the groundswell of locavores and

biological farming advocates desire a localized and non-industrial food system, most still

wonder if such systems can actually feed the world. After all, if this fundamental question

cannot be answered positively, then we should all jump on the Monsanto bandwagon for

the health and prosperity of our fellow man.

Most people in our culture still believe the industrial Green Revolution and the

advent of factory farming saved us from certain starvation. This is why most people think

chemical-petroleum farming, transgenic modification, and concentrated mono-species

production are wonderful and righteous food production methods²together with

increased globalization and food miles, and ever-growing, ever-more-centralized,

industrial-sized production and processing facilities to achieve assumed economies of

scale. The endorsement stems directly from the assumption that such farming techniques

are necessary to feed us all.

Wading into this malaise of misperception is equivalent to venturing into enemy

territory. Many people, and especially today¶s experts, think that an alternative to these

assumed food trajectories does not exist. Any suggestion that localized, compost-driven,

carbon-sequestering, biological food production systems are a credible alternative is met

with derision, laughed to scorn by credentialed experts who assume they know better.

Those of us who espouse such thoughts are treated condescendingly with a puppy-dog

pat to the head and told to trot back to our play-farms that don¶t really count. Or we are

accused of spreading a cult, a false hope, and jeopardizing real progress, like modern
4uddites. Or even criminalized with accusations that our pastured livestock and non-

vaccinated, non-medicated animals threaten science-based feedlots and factory farms,

thereby threatening the planet¶s food supply.

Well now, wait just a minute. 4et¶s zero in on just one monument to industrial

food production: the factory chicken house. While your mind¶s eye zooms in on that

football-field-sized monolith containing twenty thousand chickens or more, realize what

is ÷
in the picture. First, the hundreds of acres of grain that are plowed, chemicalized,

harvested, dried, and trucked to the house. It does not stand alone; it has a support land

base spreading out from it that is enormous. And then consider the manure disposal. Not

being near the grain-producing land that could benefit from the manure, this historically

normal blessing becomes a modern-day curse. Indeed, the manure is fed to cattle, spread

excessively on hundreds of acres of land nearby, dehydrated and pelletized for lawn

fertilizers, and even converted to biodiesel, all processes that use an excess of energy and

fossil fuels, and create more waste and pollution down the line. The point is that these

amazing factory houses stand on the shoulders of countless acres, tax-subsidized disposal

networks, corporate welfarism, and cheap fuel. If all these chickens were grown on

pasture, however, fed locally produced grain, supplemented with bugs, worms, and

kitchen scraps, dropping their manure out on the same fields that are their salad bar, they

would nest into the local ecology on a lot less energy and be a blessing on all points

without requiring one acre of additional land.

And lest you think we are running out of land, consider that America has 35

million acres of lawn. And 36 million acres housing and growing feed for recreational

horses. 4ast time I checked, 71 million acres is actually enough to almost feed every
American without any farms²and we haven¶t even talked about golf courses. We send

our young men and women to war around the world to ensure cheap energy to make

fertilizer to grow more grass to mow with more petroleum to send carbonaceous grass

clippings into landfills. This is insane. Why not fill our yards with food production, from

vegetables to pasture to poultry? 4ooked at in this light, the local and biological food

tsunami moving across America represents a credible alternative to industrial fare.

I was ten years old, in 1967, when my first fifty as-hatched, heavy-breed-special

chicks arrived in the mail. A cardboard-box brooder in the basement provided ample

protection and housing for the chicks until they moved into our backyard. Although this

first foray into poultry yielded thirty-two roosters and only eighteen hens, it was enough

to start a fledgling egg enterprise. The cockerels provided an early immersion into the art

of poultry processing, and the concomitant ecstasy of delectable dining on transparently

grown fowl.

This early love affair with poultry morphed into a serious pastured egg business

during my teen years, providing me with spending money and entrepreneurial savvy. The

poultry became a natural centerpiece of our pasture-based livestock farm in the early

1980s and remain so to this day. Both broilers and egg layers grace our pastures in

portable structures, providing exceptional taste and nutritional integrity to thousands.

But in my perfect world, I don¶t think we should be growing all this poultry for

sale. Except for perhaps the rabbit, I cannot think of another more compatible, more

nutrient-dense food opportunity this close to a home. And rabbits don¶t lay eggs²despite

what you may have heard about the Easter bunny. In reality, if every single kitchen, both

commercial and domestic, had enough laying hens attached to it to eat and recycle the
scraps and inedibles generated therein, the entire commercial egg industry would be

obsolete. Who says we can¶t feed the world?

In a time when people fear for their food security, what is more secure²

centralized egg factories inventorying and trucking millions of eggs a year to retailers

1,000 miles away, or millions of backyard and condominium-housed flocks generating

eggs and meat a few feet away from the kitchen? 4est anyone recoil in horror that this

would usher in a new age of poultry-induced disease and pathogens, I urge them to

realize that we have many pieces of knowledge and infrastructure that did not exist from

1900 to 1950, when the early crowding and the industrialization of farming were

instituted, without the necessary protocols or infrastructure.

In those times we didn¶t even have electricity, much less lightweight and portable

predator-proof electrified poultry netting to permit easy movement and control. We didn¶t

have refrigeration, stainless steel, or on-demand hot water. And we didn¶t understand a lot

of principles surrounding hygiene and sanitation. We didn¶t have shredders for generating

cheap carbonaceous ³diaper bedding,´ or simple extruded steel arches and fifteen-year-

stabilized laminated plastic for building warm winter hoophouses.

Utilizing all of this technological infrastructure and knowledge, Harvey Ussery

has spent a lifetime developing and showcasing a truly viable home-scale poultry model

that is ultimately carbon-sequestering, hygienic, neighbor-friendly, and food-secure. The

answer to the abuses, both animal and environmental, in the factory poultry industry will

not come from railing against governmental regulations. Instead, it is for thousands and

even millions of people around the globe to catch Harvey¶s vision and bring to their own

lives, in their own living space, the joys of poultry.

 Unlike larger livestock like cows or sheep or llamas, chickens require only

lightweight infrastructure. They can get your children off the TV and video games

because their real-life antics will entertain far better than Hollywood. Bringing food

responsibility and relationship to your doorstep can have profound character-building and

spiritual consequences. Viscerally participating in the dance of death and regeneration,

the sacrifice required to give life sustenance, can bring awe and reverence to the family

that will yield a new generation of sensible leaders.

Perhaps the thing I appreciate most about this book is Harvey¶s gift, both to the

home-scale poultry enthusiast and the small-scale producer like myself, of an incredibly

practical, can-do attitude. These are not pets, although every flock has its individuals who

endear themselves to the flockster in one way or another. But rather, this book is about a

call to heritage, to the wisest of wise traditions in food security and relationships. Today¶s

modern tools and knowledge revolutionize negative associations with poultry²the dirty,

dusty drudgery of yesteryear²and Harvey brings the latest tools and practices within the

grasp of any aspiring flockster. It is this functional spirit that will make this book a classic

in the small-scale poultry rearing genre. I know you¶ll find it as insightful and helpful as I

did.

Joel Salatin

Polyface Farm, Swoope, Virginia

December 2010