Joel F. Salatin (born February 24, 1957) is an American farmer, lecturer, and author.

Salatin raises livestock on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Meat from the farm is sold by direct marketing to consumers and restaurants.

Salatin's father worked for a major petroleum company, Texas Oil, using his earnings to purchase a 1,000-acre farm in Venezuela. Salatin describes in his book You Can Farm how his family were involved in “wildcat oil drilling,” and after “clearing some of the jungle” to establish a chicken and dairy farm, "in a totally free market…without government regulations” they quickly “cornered the poultry market.” The family left Venezuela in 1959 following the 1958 election of President Rómulo Betancourt who instituted a program to redistribute land.

Influenced by their Biblical understanding of earth stewardship and J. I. Rodale, Salatin's parents, William and Lucille, relocated and purchased a farm in the Shenandoah Valley in 1961 and began restoring its land. In high school, Salatin began his own business selling rabbits, eggs, butter and chicken from the farm at the Staunton Curb Market. He then attended Bob Jones University where he majored in English and was a student leader, graduating in 1979.

Salatin married his childhood sweetheart Teresa in 1980 and became a feature writer at the Staunton, Virginia, newspaper, The News Leader, where he had worked earlier typing obituaries and police reports.

Polyface Farm is a 550-acre (220-hectare) farm in Swoope, Virginia. The farmhouse was built in 1750 and added on throughout the years. It was purchased by the Salatins in 1961. Tiring of writing for the newspaper, Salatin decided to try farming full-time. Each year, he revised his organic farming techniques, which have low overhead and equipment costs, and the farm began to turn a profit. The farm grosses $350,000 and is deemed a commercial farm by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Salatin's philosophy of farming emphasizes healthy grass on which animals can thrive in a symbiotic cycle of feeding. Cows are moved from one pasture to another rather than being centrally corn fed. Chickens in portable coops are moved in behind them, where they dig through the cow dung to eat protein-rich fly larvae while further fertilizing the field with their droppings.

Salatin condemns the negative impact of the United States government on his livelihood because of what he considers an increasingly regulatory approach taken toward farming. He is a self-described "Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer", producing meat he describes as "beyond organic", using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture. Jo Robinson said of Salatin, "He's not going back to the old model. There's nothing in county extension or old-fashioned ag science that really informs him. He is just looking totally afresh at how to maximize production in an integrated system on a holistic farm. He's just totally innovative."