RURAL REVITALIZATION
Respect. For animals, plants, the earth and yes, people. Our plan includes respecting the efforts of the people involved in our circle of work by creating jobs that have opportunities to learn with possible advancement.
In order to manage our animals and plants in the most humane way possible, we use low-tech, labor intensive management. The movement of animals in the field rotations will be done by teams of workers on each property. Rather than investing in large mechanical processing plants, we will have small plants where animals are handled individually in the most humane way possible. The plants will be located centrally throughout our farm holdings in order to minimize transport of the animals and keep our facilities local to their markets.
All of this bustling activity wil be performed by workers who are well paid with benefits that will support prosperous families. The communities in which we grow will see money spent by the farms and our employees in their support businesses, on property improvements and tax contributions which will allow for infrastructure improvements.
Joel Salatin, who we credit with starting this movement in the Shenandoah Valley of his home state of Virginia is creating income opportunities for many people, both at the Polyface Farm in Swoope Virginia and for many other farmers in the Appalachian region. His mobile chicken coup seen here is a cornerstone development in our system.
At Polyface Farms, Joel uses all of his resources to improve his efficiency and actually finishes his pigs in the hardwood forest above his cattle pastures. Jamon anyone?
Identifying the needs of a community and being involved in substantive improvements is the best way to support as well as to gain support for our efforts. Having the support of the community has an important side benefit for us in curbing the theft of our animals. Live video surveillance, drones and tracking chips on all cattle will add another layer of security for our assets. We have provided for these technologies in our plan.
In this we follow one of our "Guiding Principles":
Profit at any cost becomes a liability instead of an asset.
Our employees are considered as important assets and their happiness and willingness to work hard every day is critical to our success. Paying a good wage is built into our business from the first day. We could squeeze higher profits by reducing our wages, but we would be the ultimate loosers by promoting employee dissatifaction and high turnover.
Happy people raise happy animals on beautiful land.
Being an example of regenerative agriculture to other farmers will see their efforts increased for profit and carbon sequestered. Many farmers are interested in organic agriculture, but there are no organic processing facilities available. We will work with these farmers to improve their operations and make our processing plants available to such small producers. There is also the possibility of cooperatives and franchise arrangements.
Joel Salatin hanging with one of his pigs at Polyface Farm!
