I first encountered Dan Barber when I watched the TED Talks Chew on This collection through Netflix. He's the co-owner and executive chef of Blue Hill restaurant and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, but his talk was something of a precursor to this book.
Now, I've read a lot of food books. A ton of books on food systems highlighting the problems with our current one and people's visions for the future. So while I expected the book to be well written, since Dan Barber's TED Talk was, I didn't expect it to really say anything new.
Well, I was wrong.
I knew after reading the intro that this book was going to be different, and I was not disappointed. The Third Plate has the audacity to challenge the farm-to-table movement - one I personally hold dear - and question what it means to support farms and sustainable agriculture. By "third plate," Dan Barber is alluding to his vision of where cuisine is going for the future. (He came up with the idea as a response to a reporter who asked him where the future of cuisine was going.) The first plate is a traditional American meal of a large, corn-fed steak and baby carrots. The second plate is a farm-to-table plate of a grass-fed steak with heirloom, organic carrots. But the third plate is a carrot steak, with a side of beef seconds (the more obscure cuts).
What in the world is he talking about?
He realized that as a chef cooking in the farm-to-table philosophy of cuisine, he was still cherry picking what he wanted for ingredients - ones that were often expensive to produce and not the best for soil management and long-term sustainability. Our food culture dictates that farmers grow what will sell - not what is better for the land. And it extends to livestock - we throw away many usable and edible parts of animals that we raise for food, all in a quest for more boneless, skinless chicken breasts and beef tenderloins.
Through four sections organized around soil, land, sea and seed, Barber profiles various farmers, fishermen, bakers, seed managers and more in an attempt to explain what is missing from our current food culture and how we can get on a path toward a more sustainable future.
Barber argues that what we need is a food system organized around the whole system of agriculture - and most perhaps most difficult for us to wrap our heads around - is that we can't always get what we want. He calls on chefs to start cooking with other types of foods that are the most important for soil management - certain grains and vegetables that return nutrients to the soil. In essence, chefs need to create the market demand for the items that the farmers need to maintain their land to sustain its health. The idea is that once the chefs start a trend, it can morph into our home kitchens. Which, if you think about it, makes sense - think about what chefs have done for pork belly and brussels sprouts.
This book has fascinating new ideas and a comfortable writing style - definitely for the person who feels like they've already heard it all when it comes to food systems and sustainability. You'll also get a healthy dose of information about international cuisines and agriculture (including the story of some of the world's only foie gras that is not from force-fed animals). It's optimistic, but logical and realistic, which was a tone I really found refreshing. Gives me hope that there are visionaries who are really getting to the heart of what needs to happen to ensure sustainable agriculture.
And it really makes me want to try a carrot steak...
Early this year, Pittsburgh came together in an awesome way to support a Kickstarter project for Superior Motors, a restaurant/culinary school/urban garden in Braddock. It was not only fully funded, but became the largest funded restaurant project on Kickstarter. And only a few days before the deadline, it looked like it wasn't going to make it.
And now we have another local Kickstarter that needs your help. This one is only for $5,000, but it's five grand that will go a long way to help a local, first-generation farmer.
Kevin Jarosinski is a farmer in the Butler area, north of Pittsburgh. He is dedicated to sustainability and to humane animal husbandry, and produces pastured poultry, pork and grass-fed beef. We already have suppliers of meat that we use regularly, as well as the three ladies producing eggs in our backyard. But I've heard great things about Jarosinski Farms and what he's trying to do, from the ground up.
The Kickstarter project is to build a springhouse that will allow him to utilize the fresh water spring on his property and be in compliance with all regulations concerning that water usage. The extra money from the project would go toward building more mobile chicken pens, to help him rotate the flock.
I think it's important for communities to support their farmers in ways beyond just buying their products. Farming can be resource and infrastructure intense - having the proper equipment and set-up is expensive, and farms are always susceptible to elements outside their control, like weather, pests or disease. So when I can, I try to do things like supporting their projects or writing my legislators in support of legislation that protects and supports them.
It also bugs me that so many subsidies and tax breaks are available for large agribusiness, when the same benefits aren't necessarily available to small farmers and local producers. And it can often be difficult to get traditional funding. So when they need community-sourced funds, the community that benefits from their environmental stewardship and quality products should step up.
So, Pittsburgh. Work your magic. Support Kevin Jarosinski's Farm Project with me. 6 more days and he's only just over halfway there. We can push that number up!
Chipotle has been on the forefront of national restaurant chains in the movement toward more sustainable and humane agriculture practices. Their first foray into viral marketing was "Back to the Start," a video with Willie Nelson singing that emphasizes the importance of not continuing on the path of industrial animal production.
Next was "The Scarecrow," which I talked about here. This one pushes its indictment of Big Ag even further (and also suggests that burritos are a good choice). And now they've gone even further, with a four-part TV series available on Hulu Plus called Farmed & Dangerous. I waited until all four episodes were available to do my week free trial of Hulu Plus and watch.
The series is centered around a PR firm called the Industrial Food Image Bureau (IFIB, hee hee) which has as its primary client a Big Ag company called Animoil (a stand-in for Monsanto, obviously) which wants to market a new product called Petro Pellet, which is pure petroleum. In the first episode, they realize that Petro Pellet makes cows explode. A group called the Sustainable Family Farming Association gets a copy of the video of this happening and it goes viral.
The episodes that follow are about the relationship between the daughter of the head of IFIB, who also works there, Sophia, and the head of SFFA, Chip. Over time, Sophia comes to be sympathetic to Chip's cause, but not before a lot of chaos ensues. It hits on all the big issues - sustainability, pesticide and herbicide resistance, GMOs, government subsidies, lobbying and government corruption, Ag-Gag laws, CAFOs (which they call MegaFarm, the Death Star for Cows).
First, the good. I will always applaud Chipotle for trying as a large national chain to bring these issues into the forefront of the public's awareness and concern. They have at the very least opened up a lot of conversation. And Farmed & Dangerous in some spots is genuinely funny (particularly due to Buck, the head of IFIB).
While critics have suggested that the series really takes aim at farmers with a broad brush and paints them in a bad light, I actually didn't think the series was much about farmers at all. I think who it really skewered was PR firms and industry front-groups that blindly promote Big Ag to the point of absurdity.
In one particularly interesting segment, Chip is on a morning show and points out how alternate realities exist for Big Ag depending on what they want at a given moment. Sometimes Big Ag wants GMOs to be seen as unique, which is why they voraciously protect their patents. But they argue that when it comes to public health, GMOs aren't unique - they aren't any different than the regular corn. Which is why they oppose labeling on consumer products. In the case of the viral video (a stand-in for the types of CAFO whistleblower videos that Ag-Gag laws aim to curtail), they claim that the videos are fabricated or exaggerated, but then claim that they own the video because it was shot on their property. If it's false, why are you claiming it as your own?
So I think that exposing the crap that comes out of the PR firms and departments protecting industrial agriculture is something that's sorely needed. Front groups often have deceptively friendly names, which make consumers think they are advocating on behalf of us, when they are really advocating and lobbying for their big clients.
But. Here's my issue with Farmed & Dangerous. With this series, I feel like Chipotle is really starting to mislead by obscuring facts and using hyperbole and satire in a subject that already has a lot of misinformation and passion floating around. When Jon Stewart uses satire to bring communicate news, he typically brings it with a lot of video clips and facts that support his points. He may go over the top, but the message is there as well as the proof. This series doesn't do that.
For example, Chipotle wants to position itself as a sustainability advocate, and this film makes it seem like all farms that it sources its meat and other ingredients from are like Chip's farm - idyllic and full of pasture and sunlight. In reality, that's not the case. Chipotle sources a lot of meat and often substitutes conventional products when they run out of the "better" choices. If you were really committed to better practices, you'd just not sell the option that you couldn't properly source. But that would eat into their profits and would be unpredictable, and the customers want their chicken when they want it. I would be more compelled to believe they care about humane animal treatment if they stopped selling conventional products at all. There are animals who are not given hormones or antibiotics that are still raised in confinement operations and are not out frolicking in fields for most of their lives like Chip's cow friend.
I can see farmers' points of criticism that the series seems to pit big farms against small farms, making it seem like all big farms are evil and all small farms are virtuous. In reality, it's not really the size that determines the quality of practices. You can't lump in broad categories like that when it's really the underlying system of agriculture in this country that is flawed. It's not as easy as good guys and bad guys when you dig below the surface. What we need is less control over the food system by a select few corporations, not to be lecturing farmers on what they need to do.
And Chipotle needs to stop equating sustainability with small, family farms and throwing that word around. Not all small farms are "sustainable" - a word which is really hard to define. Not giving your cows hormones doesn't mean that your operation is sustainable. And not all family farms are small. Some mid-size and large farms have been in families for generations. Chipotle isn't knocking on the doors of tiny family farms in my area asking them to provide their tomatoes and peppers. Sustainability is a buzzword that you use to mislead unless you have facts to back up your practices. Using compostable plates isn't enough. And I don't even know that they do that.
In all, I didn't really think Farmed & Dangerous was effective satire. (They need to take a lesson from Jon Stewart on that one.) If they extended the series and added to it, I would be unlikely to watch. Chipotle needs to focus its efforts on making its business live up to its marketing, instead of marketing a business that doesn't actually exist in reality.
This book was a breath of fresh air after getting riled up watching Vegucated this week and reading some informative yet disturbing research on the threat of antibiotic resistance. As the subtitle would suggest, Gaining Ground is indeed the story of one man working to save his family farm. It's hopeful and inspiring and beautifully written.
Frequently we hear from Big Agriculture about how supportive they are of farmers and making their lives easier. We see commercials idolizing the American farmer from these companies (*ahem*, Monsanto) and claiming that their whole company history has a legacy of upholding the American agricultural dream.
The most poignant part of this book illustrates how that is simply an illusion created in a marketing department. After years of Forrest Pritchard's family farm taking on more and more debt and trying different things to make it profitable again, the family turned to commodity crops - corn, in particular. Managed by someone they hired to grow the fields upon fields of corn, they hope to get at least $10,000 from the harvest - enough to cover their debt payments at a minimum. The manager shows up on their doorstop and tells them they got "eighteen sixteen." They are devastated, thinking they only made $1,816 on a harvest that they were expecting five figures from. The manager is embarrassed to relate to them that in fact all of the season's work - all of the fields and harvesting, the months of time and the use of the land - has yielded them $18.16. Eighteen dollars, sixteen cents. Not enough to fill a car's tank with gas.
I'd encourage you to read the book, since Pritchard relates that story in a way that rips your heart out, like you're standing on the front porch of their house looking at the manager and seeing the truth hit them all squarely in the face. It's at this point that Pritchard decides to turn the farm around - to abandon commodity farming for a different path. The rest of the book is the story of that turnaround - how they went from growing commodity corn to farming pasture - first for cattle and chickens and then for pigs and sheep.
I don't want to give away all of the wonderful stories in this book - though I will say the one involving Pedro riding shotgun made me both laugh out loud and shed a few tears. (Pedro is a goat.)
To say the book is hopeful and positive isn't to say the process of saving the family farm was all beautiful pastures and dollar signs. He even makes a point to say that saving the farm is a journey, not a destination. There is hardship and sadness along the way. But this book was a testament to the fact that good, slow food production can be done. Farmers deserve better than $18.16 for their essential contribution to our basic needs.
Reading about what it actually takes to start an operation such as Mr. Pritchard's also gives you an appreciation for why pasture raised meats don't cost $1.99/pound - and why they shouldn't. We equate higher prices with quality in so many other areas - why can't we get to that mentality with our food? When we have to buy an appliance, we don't go for the cheapest one we can find because an appliance is an investment. Food is an investment too - particularly in our long-term health and well-being, to say nothing of the environmental and community investment.
Treat yourself to reading this book. Don't be surprised if it makes you want a farm - or a Pedro - of your own.
