"I'm just an animal choreographer," said Joel Salatin, referring to how he moves his farm animals around to his advantage on his model farm. His philosophy: to "integrate, not segregate."

In a Jan. 25 talk in the Plant Science Building, sponsored in part by the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group at Cornell, Salatin described why his Virginia farm, Polyface Inc., with its 100 acres of open land and 450 forested acres, has created such a stir in the agricultural community.

With assiduous attention to the needs of both animals and the land, he said, he is able to create a balance to produce such items as beef, pork, eggs, tomatoes and rabbit. "We look at nature as a template, place it on our commercial system and see how we can best reproduce it," said Salatin, who is featured in Michael Pollan's recent best seller, "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

One key to reproducing nature is to use such "technoglitzy" innovations as electric fencing, according to Salatin. To imitate the nomadic grazing patterns of animals and maximize productivity, Salatin uses moveable electric fencing so that cows are rotated daily through fresh pasture.

To foster balance not just between the animals and the land, but among different animal species, Salatin uses a large portable henhouse called the Egg Mobile, which allows him to release flocks of chickens on the recently vacated cow pasture. The chickens serve as a sanitation crew for the fresh manure, which provides the birds with plenty of fresh insect life living in and under the cow patties. This process has economic benefits as well. "We produce $15,000 worth of eggs as a byproduct of sanitation," said Salatin.

Although this impeccably maintained homeostasis is responsible for Polyface's success, Salatin noted the difficulties in maintaining this balance while increasing the scale and making prices affordable. "There's a burgeoning demand for this kind of food," said Salatin. "How can we move this mainstream?"

Much of nature's equilibrium, he said, is lost in current large-scale farming methods: "The problem is that we treat earth like dirt and manure like waste."

Salatin described how he piles wood chips on the manure during the winter; the chips absorb the excrement and, when corn is added, eventually ferment to create piles of natural antibiotics. Later, pigs are allowed to root through the bedding, transforming it into an aerobic system from an anaerobic one. "Letting animals do the work completely changes the scene of large-scale composting. It becomes size-neutral," said Salatin. "And the animals love it."

Polyface is not just another sustainable farm -- it is a paradigm for our society, said Salatin. "The foundation of a culture that respects our own individual worth is predicated on the most defenseless parts of our society."

Salatin's visit to campus was also sponsored by the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell Dining and the Small Farms Program, and funded in part by the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Finance Commission.

For more information about Polyface Inc., go to http://www.polyfacefarms.com.

Graduate student Anne Poduska is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.