More about the future of food.

Lately, and for obvious reasons, I've been fond of saying that the first ironclad rule of sustainability is survival. Without respiration, the remainder is nothing but rhetoric. And then there's crop rotation, among other facets that we haven't been discussing.

What Farm-to-Table Got Wrong, by Dan Barber (New York Times)

... Today, almost 80 percent of Americans say sustainability is a priority when purchasing food. The promise of this kind of majority is that eating local can reshape landscapes and drive lasting change.

Except it hasn’t.

Also in NYT is a review of Barber's book.

A Chef in Search of a New Food Chain; In ‘The Third Plate,’ Dan Barber Meets Food Pioneers

 ... What he was searching for, he came to realize, was an organizing principle “reflecting a whole system of agriculture — a cuisine, in other words.” Mr. Barber makes his arguments directly but intermittently. Most of the time, in sections devoted to soil, land, sea and seed, he weaves his ideas and the changes in his thinking through a series of lively encounters with food pioneers scattered hither and yon.