I've never understood what "farm-to-table" means. Doesn't all food come from a farm? Is it supposed to mean "farm owned by a stereotypical farmer, not by a corporation?" If so, that's pretty vague and subjective.
I would like to know why you think farm-to-table is inherently unsustainable? Many farmers in the Highlands of Scotland make a good living selling superior beef to restaurants and butchers in the UK. They do this without regular factory farming methods. Is it less efficient compared to clearing thousands of acres in order to grow a single product which is fed government subsidised corn? Pound for pound, absolutely. Which is why some people decide to eat meat less regularly, but eat the best when they do.
Also, modern cultivation techniques can strip the produce and soil of essential vitamins and nutrients. So yes, in some cases, the "inefficient" and "unsustainable" farms yield more nutritious and eco-friendly foods.
The notion that these facts are purely a fabrication of marketing companies is total bullshit. There's tons of research out there supporting this (nb4 WHO SPONSORED THE RESEARCH??), you just have to look for it.
What about scaling issues?
<"We've been farming the old-fashioned way for thousands of years with exponential increases in population"
Almost, but not exactly true. Farm tech like all tech is more and more efficient as it improves. The more efficient it is the more it can scale, boosting populations by staving off famine.
<"There's tons of research out there supporting this"
No.. there really isn't.
Just because a technique is sustainable at prior population levels doesn't mean it will be sustainable in the future. Slash-and-burn was used for thousands of years and is now one of the main causes of deforestation. Bottom trawling has been used for almost a thousand years and is now considered directly responsible for fishery collapse. Humans have been responsible for the extinction of thousands of animals through unsustainable hunting practices that occurred thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago.
> Also, modern cultivation techniques can strip the produce and soil of essential vitamins and nutrients. So yes, in some cases, the "inefficient" and "unsustainable" farms yield more nutritious and eco-friendly foods.
Actually modern farmers are very, very careful about keeping high quality soil because it results in higher yields and spending less on fertilizers and pesticides. 60 years ago, farming "the old-fashioned way" we had things like the dust bowl.
Rather than "Sysco" or one of its smaller competitors in the food distribution business.
Big cases in the US were the Peanut Corp of America [2], Jack in the Box E Coli [3] and the most recent Chipolte [4] and more [4].
Supply chains are protecting themselves through tractability and this is being turned into an opportunity.
It doesn't mean that the food is wholesome, just that if you get poisoned, the origin of that poison can be determined.
[1] http://www.foodnavigator.com/Policy/EU-traceability-requirem...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_Corporation_of_America
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Jack_in_the_Box_E._coli_o...
[4] http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/the-10-biggest-u-s-foo...
In these cases, though, restaurants weren't just saying "farm-to-table"--they were making specific claims about what farms were supplying the food that just weren't true. In some cases, they weren't even correctly identifying the species involved, like saying cheap fish was something more expensive or even that pork was veal.
I believe buying from wholesale distributors would be the opposite of farm to table.
Its the stalls with the ugly produce that I look at, as my own gardening experience, and that of an actual farmer attests. The best produce is the stuff the bugs want to eat. Cut the ugly part off, and what remains is the good stuff.
I also don't buy stuff that doesn't smell like actual food. Its pretty amazing how we have grown accustomed to produce that doesn't smell.
Sadly, some restaurateurs have been taking advantage of the "farm-to-table" terminology.
In France and Italy some foods and wines have AOC/DOC designations meaning that the food item's name means was produced in a geographically defined place, usually with traditional methods and NOT from some random factory in another country. There are penalties in place for people that attempt to label a product with a controlled name.
"Farm-to-table" has a different definition than AOC/DOC, but there's a lot in common in spirit.
AOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%...
DOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazione_di_origine_contr...
Yeah, once the government gets involved, it'll still be all lies, but it'll be legal because somebody paid off the right regulator, or because the regulator owns shares in the restaurant, etc. And then this kind of thing will be used as a weapon to inhibit the entry of new competitors into the market, to the benefit of the entrenched players.
Lots of other countries don't have those things, which is how things like this happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
"The food supply chain is so vast and so complicated. It has yielded extra-virgin olive oil that is actually colored sunflower oil"
That's not "complicated", it's outright fraud. More objectively so than the subjective "local".
Farm --> Table
and
Farm --> A Bunch of Other Places --> Table
He said "there should at the very least be a sink between farm and table."
We know which Farm --> we know about this bit --> Table