There seems to be a lot of shifts in the restaurant industry these days. Like farming, it is a hard business. I was just remembering a piece I wrote in response to an Op-Ed by Chef Vivian Howard. I am not sure I have shared these here, but this conversation is far from over.
Here is the piece that Vivian wrote for the New York Times.
And here is my response in the Ag Daily–I felt like the farmer perspective is often left out.
“Farm-to-table is not a bad idea at its core. Making connections between agriculture and eaters is important, and at the risk of sounding trite, I will reiterate the most quoted of all Wendell Berry quotes. “Eating is an agricultural act.”
Chefs play an important role in educating eaters about farming. I will forever be a fangirl of Alice Waters, Renee Erickson, and Vivian Howard — female chefs who have had success in both restauranting, enlightening customers, and valuing employees. So how do we save restaurants and the farms that need them? How do we collectively take apart this broken system of serving food and start anew? Perhaps elevated take-out or more pared down, pop-up style dining, as Howard suggests, is the key? The conversation needs to extend from field to plate to be sustainable”
