Abandon Farm to Table? Not Likely, Not Necessary, Not Gonna

There’s a lot of buzz going around, well, buzzy people about how the term and maybe the movement farm to table is dead. Composted. Sent to the recycle bin.

Not bloody likely. 

It’s taken something like 40 years to get folks to slow down enough to smell the peaches and pickle the ramps, so now it’s time for a new bundle of buzz words to be taken up by marketers and journalists, often more interested in the new than in the good. It's a blip. Like the flap over "artisan." Once Domino’s and Olive Garden co-opted that evocative word, a lot of the cognoscenti ran for the (well, Berkeley, Calif.) hills. But the word persists, less often and under cleaner, well scrutinized circumstances. It’s a fine old word and it refers to actual hard working and talented people. Not pizza chains.

So too with farm to table. Sure, it's been overused. That’s the good news. Aspirational thinking doesn’t just have to be directed at status and greed. It can be part of an ambitious attempt at quality, sustainability, balance and goodness. Even with pretenders and posers, it’s at least a good direction for phonies to lean.  Would you rather folks bragged about how all their ingredients were garnered at the lowest prices, while exploiting the unprotected and raping rain forests?  Probably not.  

That said, like organics, the magical glow that comes with early discovery and advocacy can dim as the field broadens and the thinking is not only more widely accepted but leveled by the tendency towards mediocrity that accompanies the democratization of most any field. Like journalism, for example. It’s great that more people and places are publishing, but boy is a lot of it lousy. (Cue the snippy comments.)

We know that organic is a mostly and most often a good thing. We know that buying at a farmer’s market increases our chances of getting good, delicious food.  But not every farmer is brilliant. Not every plot of dirt springs forth. But we keep organics on our list to look for and consider. 

Now it’s time to look not just for farm-to-table food on menus and shop cases but to look into it all a little further. The intention has been to clarify and shorten the distance. To eliminate some of the extra hands and trucks and walk-ins that separate us from our foods and from the earth and the people who make it possible. This brings up a host of necessary thoughts and actions (cue the Pope advocating for a cleaner Earth).

Is "farm to freezer" -- a concept drawing lots of buzz at this week's Aspen Ideas Festival -- a good idea? Of course it is. It has been since before Siberian trappers tossed frozen pelmeni into steaming broth inside their glacial caves. It always will be a good way to preserve good food, if it is good before it’s frozen. Just as tomatoes in a glass jar can be smart and delicious year round. If the tomatoes were great and ripe and well-handled to begin with.    

So let’s give a cheer for doing things we’ve learned to do for the long haul. Brush your teeth (and floss), buy organic, be nice to folks, and look for and support farm to table wherever it seems to be real and heartfelt.  Call folks out when it seems a scam but doing the right thing in smart ways needs to be lifelong culture, not the latest fad. 

Oh, and free the gluten! 

Photos: Getty Images