Closed Loop Quotes

“Industrial processes follow a clear, linear, hierarchical logic that is fairly easy to put into words, probably because words follow a similar logic: First this, then that; put this in here, and then out comes that. But the relationship between cows and chickens on this [Polyface] farm...takes the form of a loop rather than a line, and that makes it hard to know where to start, or how to distinguish between causes and effects, subjects and objects. . .
Joel would say this is precisely the point, and precisely the distinction between a biological and an industrial system. "In an ecological system like this everything's connected to everything else, so you can't change one thing without changing ten other things. . .This farm is more like an organism than a machine, and like any organism it has proper scale.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

“Polyface Farm is built on the efficiencies that come from mimicking relationships found in nature and layering one farm enterprise over another on the same base of land. In effect, Joel is farming in time as well as space - in four dimensions rather than three. . .The ides is not to slavishly imitate nature, but to model a natural ecosystem in all its diversity and interdependence, one where all the species 'fully express their physiological distinctiveness'. He takes advantage of each species' natural proclivities in a way that benefits not only the animal but other species as well.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals