Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

Product Description

Drawing upon 40 years' experience as an ecological farmer and marketer, Joel Salatin explains with humor and passion why Americans do not have the freedom to choose the food they purchase and eat. From child labor regulations to food inspection, bureaucrats provide themselves sole discretion over what food is available in the local marketplace. Their system favors industrial, global corporate food systems and discourages community-based food commerce, resulting in homogenized selection, mediocre quality, and exposure to non-organic farming practices. Salatin's expert insight explains why local food is expensive and difficult to find and will illuminate for the reader a deeper understanding of the industrial food complex.

Top Reviews

A frustratingly entertaining book that illustrates the ridiculous rules and ...
by Steve A B (5 out of 5 stars)
October 31, 2015

A frustratingly entertaining book that illustrates the ridiculous rules and regulations that forbid you and me to eat what we feel we should be eating to support the health and long term well being of ourselves and our families.
Case in point: The FDA states that it perfectly safe and healthy to feed your child Twinkies, French fries and Mountain Dew, but it is illegal to buy raw milk and homemade apple pie from the farmer and his wife across the street.

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Other cities in the country are getting just as bad. I sold most of my property there because ...
by T. Fry (5 out of 5 stars)
October 5, 2016

Reminds me of my property management business in he Peoples Republic of University City, MO. Other cities in the country are getting just as bad. I sold most of my property there because I felt like a criminal all the time owning property and trying to take proper care of it there. For example, I needed a license to put a washer in a leaky faucett, which while leaking was a civil offense, subject to warrants and arrest. Joe and I are at one with the folks from the govt. who want to help us.

If you think govt. creep in the farming business is Kafkaesque, try looking at property maintenance and building code regulations which are on a never ending growth and expansion trajectory. They are mostly written by a private trade association known as the Building Owners and Code Officials Association. (BOCA). Building inspectors and beauracrats are the members. Every two or three years they meet, massively expand their reach of their rules, and then go home to their towns and cities, and recommend to the local politicians that they adopt the new rules as a new ordinance to replace the previous years version. The local officials nod in agreement and pass it into law as a local ordinance. The average homeowner has no clue what is going on until he tries to sell or fix up his property. For landlords of all sizes they deal with these jerks every time they lease an apartment. Their reach, like Joel Salatin's regulators, is out of control and makes little sense. The inspectors, like Salatins, have no skin in the game but have a religious zeal to save the world by preventing leaky faucets and other insane things, but of course at the ever increasing expense of the property owners or tenants. . They have now expanded the code to save the world from global warming and to be more in line with codes around the world. All of this of course is enormously expensive and requires ever more expensive "qualified and licensed" people do all the work. Then they complain of the lack of affordable housing.

I grew up in a small town 40 years ago in a world where people lived for generations and safely and successfully built, lived in and took care of affordable homes and raised families in them with nary an inspector or inspector department in sight or even in anyone's awareness. How was this possible?
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More important now than when it was written
by Historicus (5 out of 5 stars)
October 21, 2013

Don't let those who give bad reviews based on some of the politics in the book deter you from buying and reading it. I found it hysterical even though the topic is incredibly serious.

The title provides everyone an ample opportunity to understand that this isn't a "How to farm" book. Besides, the author pretty much mocks politicians of all stripes, regardless of the silly letter by their elected name. No ideology is left without criticism.

In my opinion, this is a modern day "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, using Agriculture to make very similar points.

Wake up America. You stopped being "Land of the Free" many, many sad years ago. And only you can turn it around via the ballot box, and civil disobedience.
~h
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Illegal can be very good
by Image512 (5 out of 5 stars)
May 17, 2015

This book is rapidly circulating around our family. It is very funny and very very maddening. I love Mr. Salatin's clear, logical thinking about ways to produce healthy, tasty farm products without messing up our environment with chemicals, manipulatig DNA, no importing off exotic plants and animals, and so on and on. Nobody agrees with everything someone else says, but this is a fascinating, highly ntelligent man whose words are well worth reading and implementing if you are so inclined.
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Great read on food and other craziness!
by itsnickers (5 out of 5 stars)
September 17, 2016

This book is awesome and an easy read too! Many topics that provide information, various viewpoints, 'food' for thought, and laughter too. Wish Joel would run for president.
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Tremendous
by Invid (5 out of 5 stars)
August 31, 2019

I grew up and live in the suburbs of a major city. As it turns out I knew very little about farming before reading this book and have learned that what I knew was incorrect or very naive.

This book isn't about the details of how to farm but provides great detail about the obstacles set in the way of a farmer by the bureaucracy which is allegedly helping them.

This same bureaucracy is tasked with ensuring we have a clean food supply but doesn't seem to know much beyond what the powerful industrial food concerns tells them. "Surprisingly" the regulations favor those concerns over actual healthy practices.

This is a must read book - it's very likely the meat you've eaten recently was fed chicken droppings - with the blessing of the USDA.

I know I don't have the temperament to be a farmer but this book makes me wish I did.
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Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal
by Rose City Reader (5 out of 5 stars)
August 22, 2011

Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farms, "the farm of many faces," in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. He was featured in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and stole the show as the big-hatted farmer in Farmageddon.

He is quite a character. He describes himself as a "Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist" and pulls no punches when explaining his views on how farming should be done and people fed. Chapter by chapter, he explains how one-size-fits-all government regulations designed for large-scale, industrial, monoculture agriculture unfairly limit small farmers trying to serve local communities by providing a variety of healthy food, humanely produced.

This is a Must Read for small, entrepreneurial farmers and a Great Read for all freedom lovers. Salatin's good-natured ranting is part of the fun.
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Eye Opening - People Should Know This !!
by Rachel (4 out of 5 stars)
July 14, 2011

I learned a lot from this book- and I thought I knew a fair piece before reading it. This is

an entertaining, informative, "must read" for all- everyone should know more about where their

food comes from and whether they have choices and freedoms. Everyone should also be reading

between the lines and realize that limitations to "freedom" do not start and stop with food-

it extends to health, health care, and other areas of human enterprise... some of which he certainly

alludes to in the book.

The author has written a number of other similar books- I wish he would write one that is a compilation of lots of other small farmers AROUND THE COUNTRY: their stories- and also include stories of triumph, because there are small

battles being won. Where I live we can get anything we want (even bacon!) from small farm cooperatives

by buying into the herd, and that doesn't mean we are limited to one animal. We are glad to pay for it,

and people are lining up for it. The author describes some pretty limiting scenarios in his state of Virginia, but things are opening up elsewhere, it seems, and it would be good to get these stories shared, and include the stories of local food advocates helping to make it happen. This is a great cause, and I kind of think it is time for this truly genuine spokesman to move it off his farm and into the rest of the country.
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Infuriating Case Studies of How Big Gov Is Legislating Small Farms Out of Existence - MUST READ
by Robert Zverina (5 out of 5 stars)
February 26, 2015

The "illegal" things referenced in the title were common family farm practices for centuries until the FDA started making rules to favor Big Ag at the expense of arguably much more wholesome small businesses. A multitude of examples of government overreach and injustice in the land of the free will find sympathetic ears along all points of the political spectrum. Kudos to Joel Salatin for fighting the good fight and shedding light on the plight of small farmers who just want to do things in a local and sustainable way despite bureaucratic obstructionism.
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A great read for any libertarian, homestead or localvore farmer
by Dan Moore (5 out of 5 stars)
April 15, 2011

I was recommended this book by our babysitter. It was rather interesting to be turned on to something that speaks to exactly what I do and how I'd like to do it by someone completely outside of our way of life. I have a small farm and I'm a second generation farmer. I have a day job as well but certainly don't mind it as it's only 8 minutes from home and it lets me do more than live the lifestyle proffered in this book.

There are some reviews here that say this book is just one big rant by Joel Salatin. Um, yeah, I think that's the point. Over a lifetime Mr. Salatin has been exposed to, waded through and fought tooth and nail against bureaucracy, ignorance, stupidity, and the general loss of individual liberty that continues to invade our culture on our government. "If it will save just one life, it's worth it." is the justification I've heard for many laws that our founding fathers would take arms against. 99% of it goes on without the general public even knowing. I've seen laws being made. Generally the single most clueless person involved is the one who has the vote. As it's been well said and is said again in this book, sausage and laws are two things you don't want to see made. So politically, economically, and morally I agree with Mr. Salatin. His rants are based on dealing with the inequities in the system as it stands today and are good reading for anyone who goes to the polls to vote our leaders into office.

However, the problem with being an expert on some areas is you tend to think you may be an expert in other areas. While I agree with Mr. Salatin that his rants are justified, the solutions that he espouses can be a bit simplistic. I'm a libertarian and frankly some of the views are simplistic. Drug problem? Legalize drugs. Can't feed yourself? Church and charity. The reality is that some problems are more complex, or even if the solution is that simple, getting from where we are today to the simple solution is exceedingly complex. Just saying milk is perfectly safe because we drank it for thousands of years isn't going to be good enough in today's environment. Should it be illegal to buy raw milk? Absolutely not. Should we just let it onto the open market, on the shelf beside what has become "normal" milk like Joel would seem to favor? No. It probably needs a label that is a skull and crossbone and you have to sign a waiver. I don't think Joel spent a lot of time on trying to show the efficacy of his solutions, just that there were better solutions out there. I'm sure he could expand on his ideas but one negative to the book in my opinion was that some of his solutions seemed to be just a bit out there and not really practical.

For people who believe in individual liberty, his book will read well. For those who can't imagine the government not regulating safety so we are all protected, it will read like a horror story. As for his rants, I run a farm and run a fairly large business, I can tell you that he is spot on concerning the basis for his rants and unless you step out of the consumer role and into a producer role, you never really see it.

If you plan on voting in the next election, this should be required reading.

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