When I was in Virginia in June, in advance of speaking at the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (VICFA) meeting, I met a couple of local farmers who were eager to tell me about Joel Salatin’s practice of charging for farm tours and holding expensive weekend seminars. They related the situation with a hint of disdain, but with a whole lot of admiration.

I figured they were probably exaggerating, that maybe there were some special programs or speaking engagements he was charging for, but farm tours? Since he sells his products directly to consumers, wouldn’t he want to give such tours for free, as a way to promote his products?

Then I met Joel, and heard him explain his approach to selling information and knowledge, and I felt as if I understood it better. It still seemed a little strange that a farmer could get up to $1,000 for a tour of his farm but, hey, this is America, where former FDA bureaucrats grab $1,000 an hour as lobbyists to the corporations they used to regulate and former presidents and generals like Bill Clinton and Colin Powell get $100,000-plus to speak for half an hour about whatever is on their minds.

I bring all this up because there has been some discussion following my Sunday post about Joel’s practice of charging for tours, including a response from Joel. He seems to be saying that he balances his tour charges by maintaining an open-door policy for self-tour visitors and also that farmers have as much right to charge for their knowledge as do doctors and lawyers.

But I think this issue runs deeper than whether or what Joel Salatin charges for. Underlying the matter, as argued by Dave Milano, is a sense that food and nutrition should somehow be exempt from America’s profit maximization orientation, based on all the harm done by the existing agribusiness and health care models.

That’s a tough one, and leads into heavy-duty philosophical arguments. The profit motive is a powerful force, for both positive and negative outcomes. It can be argued that the absence of enough profit has led to the shuttering of many family farms. Yet there is no question it leads people and organizations way astray, including those engaged in providing products and services directly affecting our health.

I think where I’m inclined to give Joel the benefit of the doubt is in his willingness to stand up for certain basic principles, most notably transparency and a local orientation. As he says, anyone is allowed to explore his farm, at no charge, any time of the day or night. But beyond that, he has been willing to disclose financial information about his operation—the simple fact that he does charge $1,000 for a personal tour—rather than hide it, as exploiters might do. He also refuses to ship his products beyond a 100-mile radius, even though he could almost certainly, based on the wide publicity he’s received, sell beef and chicken nationally, or even internationally, over the Internet at very high prices.

Maybe that is the dividing line in all this—the willingness to stand by certain overriding principles, no matter the temptations. And to make your money within those guidelines.

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The Chicago-area zoning dispute over raw milk distribution has now brought out the pasteurized-milk apologists there. An article in the local paper that first publicized the zoning issue, by a medical professor and his assistant, is full of the same exaggerations and half truths as most of those by journalists and government officials. Consider this: “Neighbors of Sheri Giachetto have good reason to be distraught over her engagement in the distribution of raw milk. Last month, a farm in New York suspended all raw milk sold directly to consumers after a routine inspection that found Listeria monocytogenes.” We all know how dangerous that New York raw milk is. Most disgusting is the authors’ effort to link their argument to protecting "the children."