What is Farm-to-Table?
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What is farm-to-table? Is this just one of the newest buzzwords to coerce you into parting with your hard-earned cash and spending more at your local restaurants? Why do we have a sudden influx of many new farm-to-table restaurants in Texas? We’ll cover what exactly it means and why you should make an effort to support and/or incorporate the concept in your life.
What Farm-to-Table Means
Farm to table can be thought of as a food movement that places emphasis on local food. The core principle of the farm-to-table movement is two-fold: 1st, to support local food producers such as farmers, and 2nd, to provide local consumers with the healthiest and freshest foods possible.
The farm-to-table movement is great for local farmers and other local food producers who sometimes struggle to compete with the goliath that is the commercial farming industry and the massive processed food facilities. By placing an emphasis on local foods, farm-to-table as a movement helps to get locally produced foods into places like restaurants, stores, and even schools. Luckily the farm-to-table movement has proven popular in Texas and continues to grow and spread around the world.
The Farm-to-Table Experience
Rural areas where farms are already present have been the fastest to adapt the farm-to-table concept due to its ease of use and accessibility. As time goes on and food literacy progresses, more and more urban environments have made an effort to include the farm-to-table concept as well. These include mobile farmers’ markets and city garden centers among other practices. Some restaurants grow their own produce or have small-scale on-site farms. There are even some enterprising farmers/restaurateurs in Texas that have set up their own restaurants right at their farms for a truly farm-to-table experience.
But not everything is glittery and good with the farm-to-table movement. There are also restaurants that also make use of the farm-to-table label, but do somewhat less to support the local food industry.
There is some misuse of the farm-to-table label. If you see foods being marketed as farm-to-table in a grocery store, this is a definitive misuse of the term. Farm to table means a direct transference from the growth of the food to the consumption by the consumer. Stopping at a grocery store strips the label of its meaning. A real farm-to-table experience would be able to identify the farm that provided the food easily and would not involve stops or middlemen on its way to your or the restaurant’s table.
It’s a slippery slope, but knowing how to identify true farm-to-table relationships is the first step to a truly robust local food system.
Sources:
https://www.maximumyield.com/definition/3437/farm-to-table
https://www.thespruceeats.com/farm-to-table-2216574
https://upserve.com/restaurant-insider/history-farm-table-movement/
Looking for the best farm-to-table restaurants in Dallas? Click here.
