The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

Abstract

It is hard to avoid the question of the future of food these days. Filmmakers, scholars, activists and book authors are fretting over what is to be done. Joining the fray is Dan Barber, ‘chef activist’ at Blue Hill Restaurant at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York, and at Blue Hill New York City. His book, The Third Plate offers a culinary vision of the future where “the entirety of the landscape, and how it fits together” is served on a dinner plate. Barber has famously been a practitioner of the farm to table cooking, a cooking that is reliant on a host of farmers and chefs who work together to produce good food while also trying to make a living in two enterprises—farming and restaurants—that are famously money-losers.