Cinnamon Janzer |June 22, 2018 for
There’s no cut and dry definition of farm to table. If you find yourself wondering “What is the farm to table movement really?”, it boils down to this: the farm to table movement broadlyrefers to food made from locally-sourced ingredients, often natural or organic. Even though there isn’t an exact definition that restaurants have to adhere to in order to call themselves a farm-to-table joint, those that self-proclaim that label can be found almost everywhere, from small midwestern locales to urban centers.
Farm to fork is another way to refer to the same thing as farm to table. As Rutgers puts it, farm to fork is “a food system in which food production, processing, distribution, and consumption are integrated to enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of a particular place.” While most of us see the term used in restaurants, it can be applied much more broadly than that. But it wasn’t always this way. It’s only been in recent years that farm-to-table has become the full-blown movement that it is today. |
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The Movement’s Beginnings: A Farm to Table History
It’s impossible to talk about the rise of farm-to-table without discussing the fall of the processed food empire. Packaged goods thrived after innovations in food processing and storage, and peaked with the ubiquity of canned food during the 1950s. Processed food continued to reign supreme until the 1960s and 1970s. At that point, the hippie movement—comprised of constituents who were fans of local and organic food—swept the States.
“The counterculture is always ahead of what’s happening in mainstream culture,” explains Lucky Peach’s Peter Meehan.
After a few years, hippie preferences began showing up in formal food structures. In 1979, the non-profit “Organically Grown” opened in Oregon. In 1986, Carlo Perini founded the Slow Food Organization in Italy. Back in the States, pioneers like Alice Waters arose. Alice, a champion of local, sustainable agriculture, opened the legendary Chez Panisse in 1971. In 2003, Kimbal Musk started The Kitchen in Boulder, CO.
The Principles Behind Farm to Table
The main driving forces behind the farm to table or farm to fork movement, whichever you prefer to call it, have to do with the ethics of food production. A Rutgers outlines, there are four pillars to the movement:
- Food security. The farm to table movement increases the scope of food security to move beyond the food needs of individuals or families and look at the needs of both the larger community, with a focus on low-income households. “It has a strategic goal of developing local food systems,” the article notes.
- Proximity. The farm to table movement hinges on the notion that the various components of a food system (or a restaurant) should exist in the closest proximity to each other as possible. The goal is to develop relationships between the various stakeholders in a food system such as “farmers, processors, retailers, restaurateurs, consumers” and more. Additionally, proximity reduces the environmental impact of transporting ingredients across states or countries.
- Self-reliance. One of the goals of farm to table is to generate communities that can meet their own food needs, again eliminating the need for outside resources or long distance transportation of food.
- Sustainability. The core idea here is that farm to table food systems exist in a way that doesn’t stifle “the ability of future generations to meet their food needs,” meaning that it doesn’t destroy resources in the process.
Farm to Table Movement Booms
The farm to table movement, with its lofty goals and ideals for how our food systems and the restaurants that operate within them, wouldn’t have become what it is today without similar progressions in separate sectors began to taking foot. “Five years ago, the farmer’s market wasn’t as vibrant and it attracted just nine local farmers that sold a few different kinds of veggies. Today, there’s a fourfold jump, with 36 farmers who regularly show up with a dizzying array of eggplants, blueberries, pecans, home-churned butter, and meat from animals raised on the farms encircling the town,” notes Pallavi Gogoi.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the accompanying environmental awakening that ushered in such exponential growth.
It occurred in a similar way to the farm-to-table movement. The two quickly grew hand in hand, propping each other up, because of their overlaps and similarities.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the accompanying environmental awakening that ushered in such exponential growth.
It occurred in a similar way to the farm-to-table movement. The two quickly grew hand in hand, propping each other up, because of their overlaps and similarities.
“Consumers who have been educated by movies like An Inconvenient Truth now pore over ‘food miles’ and ‘carbon footprints.’ The message seems to be: if you buy organic, you care about your own body; if you buy local you care about your body and the environment,” explains Gogoi.
What’s clear is that the farm to table movement is not a passing trend. It’s designed to change the culture around how we eat.