{"id":373,"date":"2019-02-22T14:15:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T14:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/global\/?p=373"},"modified":"2019-02-22T14:45:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T14:45:51","slug":"can-farm-to-table-restaurants-take-on-the-industrialized-food-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/global\/2019\/02\/22\/can-farm-to-table-restaurants-take-on-the-industrialized-food-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Farm-to-Table Restaurants Take on The Industrialized Food System?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This entry launches our new “Topics Affecting Our Community” series of thematic blog posts around issues impacting us at Sussex Global. This is the first post for February’s theme: Food and Culture. It is written by Anna Montanari,<\/strong> 3rd year student in International Development and Anthropology. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is common to walk around, especially for those of us who live in Brighton, and see restaurants that display their choice of quality, tasty and unprocessed food. Their menus feature the local source of ingredients highlighting that vegetables are sustainable and organic, the chicken is grass-fed and the eggs are free-range. Farm-to-table restaurants have become powerful symbols for protests against a globalised and industrialised food system, and chefs play a key role in promoting sustainable production and consumption, and in bridging the gap between producers and consumers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mission statement of Silo, a restaurant in Brighton. Photo credit: Mike Gibson (https:\/\/foodism.co.uk\/features\/dan-barber-farm-to-table-whole-farm-dining\/<\/a> )<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This worldwide trend of paying particular\nattention to quality, provenance of food and advocating for a closer\nrelationship between food producers and consumers is particularly well-received\namong the majority of chefs across US. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appears quite controversial since few\nlarge agribusinesses and transnational corporations have controlled the US\nmarket and concentrated a great economic power, while small non-competitive\nproducers have been forced out of business. Other alienated producers have\nprovided bulk commodities, which have been exchanged in national and global\nmarkets and sold below the cost of production in supermarkets. American consumers,\nwho do not know the basic details of their food production, have been dependent\non imported products and highly processed standardised fast food. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far more than controversial, since the\ncounter-cuisine of the 1960s and 1970s, some chefs have opposed and found solutions<\/em> to the environmental and\nsocio-economic problems<\/em> of the\nagro-industrial food system by creating alternative markets, choosing to buy\nfrom local farmers and give their customers access to non-toxic nutritious\nmeals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my Anthropology of Food\u2019s dissertation,\nI analysed American chefs\u2019 limitations on promoting alternative food in terms\nof an opposition and the contradictions in advocating for a reconnection between\nproducers and consumers. I approached this in terms of two questions: do chefs\u2019\nstrategies have a revolutionary potential to challenge the American\nindustrialised food system? Are American chefs driven by self-interest or are\nthey activists dedicated to a broader agenda? I argued that, even though food\nsystem \u2018localisation\u2019 could be a strategic pathway and have a transformative\npotential, chefs are neoliberal subjectivities who are driven by self-interest\nand use strategies of the neoliberal economy without challenging the\nconventional value chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farm-to-table\nchefs\u2019 strategies:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n