”AUSTRALIAN farmers are looking for the same thing that American farmers need, and that is to farm profitably, and build soil and heal the land while farming.”

Joel Salatin, hailed by Time magazine for his prize-winning, pioneering work as a sustainable farmer, is in Sydney to convince farmers that small-scale food producers can be financially successful and rejuvenate the environment.

”That’s not happening for many farmers,” Salatin says. ”Many farmers are going out of business and there’s a lot of land degradation. The fact is that industrial agriculture has destroyed a lot of land and destroyed a lot of the food and a lot of the health of people around the world.”

Salatin, 53, the patriarch of Polyface farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, and well-known for his Oscar-nominated film Food Inc, knows his message about small farming is up against conventional wisdom and the deep pockets of international agribusinesses.