Joel Salatin, celebrated hero of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and owner of Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia was featured in the Washington Post last week for his latest local food endeavor – a partnership with the Mexican-style fast-food chain Chipotle. The chain, a former subsidiary of McDonald’s, will begin featuring Polyface Farm’s pork in its “carnitas” burrito at its Charlottesville location, some 45 miles from Salatin’s farm. Now, this may strike some as strange, as the very same Salatin was heralded in The Omnivore’s Dilemma as exemplifying sustainable agriculture’s ability to beat the system – demonstrating the viability of alternative economies. But a closer look at both parties lends some sense to this seeming paradox.

Chipotle, officially separated from McDonald’s in 2006, has made genuine efforts to incorporate sustainable food into its restaurant offerings. Salatin is not their first supplier of free-range pork; there is also Niman Ranch, a cooperative of small producers that has grown from 75 participating members to over 500, directly due to Chipotle’s demand. The chain also serves up RBGH-free sour cream, and 15% of their black bean stock last year was organic. Given these facts, and their stated mission to serve “Food with Integrity”, it is easy to see the basis for Chipotle’s jumping on the eat-local bandwagon. But Salatin?

Yes, that same defiant locavore who, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, described the food system as “disconnected multi-national global corporate techno-glitzy”, is now selling his humanely-raised, grass-fed, organic pork to a chain restaurant formerly owned by McDonald’s. How does this self-proclaimed “non-Barcode” farmer defend himself? “My hat’s off to Chipotle,” Salatin says, “I’m honored to be a part of an aggressive attempt to rewrite the food model”.

And I agree. While some may criticize Salatin’s decision, arguing that corporate Chipotle could hardly be considered part of any local food economy, others may recognize this partnership as revolutionary. Salatin, by collaborating with the “techno-glitzy” corporation, is offering a model of dual viability: secure markets for small-scale, local, sustainable farmers, and real methods for cookie-cutter franchises to step out of their molds and support a conscious food ethic.

In many ways this atypical collaboration breaks down the hard-to-topple barriers between the alternative food movement and corporate food industry. To incorporate Salatin’s pork into their Charlottesville burritos, Chipotle has had to make locally-appropriate changes to their operations, their rules, and their ways of thinking. They have had to reform their practices to accommodate a product whose distribution and processing is particular, unique, and small-scale. For instance, they worked out a system to calibrate Salatin’s delivery vehicle (a converted bus packed with ice coolers) to match the health and safety codes of Chipotle’s standardized refrigerated shipping trucks. They also have adjusted their recipes to accommodate Polyface pork, which is just plain different from the typical, travel-weary supply.

Should a corporate restaurant chain be part of a local food economy? Can sustainable agriculture and fast food really work hand in hand? These are questions to be debated and deliberated. But for the moment, the Polyface-Chipotle partnership is one beaming example of the large corporation and the small farm hero changing the food system together.

As one of the fastest-growing chains in the nation, Chipotle is in a prime position to form a Salatin-like alliance with small-scale, alternative food producers all across the country, which could ultimately usher ‘eating local’ out from the margins and into the mainstream.

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