Dan Barber
When it comes to changing the way we think about the food we eat, chef Dan Barber believes that we need to combine old-world wisdom with a forward-looking approach. He realizes that how food is grown, where it’s grown, and who’s growing it has changed much more dramatically in the past couple of decades than it has in the past couple of millennia. For this reason, Barber is committed to getting people to stop accepting food without question, and to start assessing the real health and environmental costs that come with our current farming practices and eating habits.
Barber sets a model for change with his farm and ranch in Westchester County, New York where he grows food for two restaurants – Blue Hill at Stone Barns located on the farm and Blue Hill in Manhattan. What the farm doesn’t supply, Barber supplements with produce from various greenmarkets. But his efforts don’t end there. He is also the creative director of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, which aims to educate people about and encourage communities to make farm-to-table connections. Through the center and his restaurants, Barber shows the positive effects of making responsible food choices like eating locally and sustainably, and ensuring the ethical treatment of the animals that supply our food.
To those who don’t have ready access to Barber’s restaurants, to farmer’s markets, or to humanely raised animal products, it may seem like they are looking in on a closed, idealistic world. But Barber doesn’t see it that way at all. He is a "chef-thinker," a chef and a scholar, and he’s working tirelessly to change U.S. agricultural policy. He envisions a day when the country’s farms aren’t run from Washington, D.C., when farmers and eaters alike can decide what and how food is grown.
In a 2007 New York Times opinion piece titled "Amber Fields of Bland," Barber argues that the farm bill needs to promote diversification over yield. Four crops—corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat—account for the majority of our harvested cropland and therefore receive the majority of the $20 billion in farm subsidies. Barber believes we need to reward farmers who grow food we eat, and significantly reduce what we spend on these four crops that are either processed into something else or fed to animals on feedlots.
A large part of Barber’s goal of responsible eating, and of his argument for diversifying farms, also centers on animals. Raising large numbers of animals in confinement and injecting them with hormones is not only cruel, but it affects the quality of our dairy and meat products. He writes:
Then there’s the question of meat and poultry. A breed of pig that tasted like pork (something other than the other white meat)? A chicken that actually saw pasture (and tasted like ... chicken)? A steer with fat marbled on a grass diet, or a lamb that’s been rotationally grazed? We’re not asking for a lot, but no matter, it’s not for sale, at least not by the big-food chain.
Unless you’re a farmers’ market devotee or savvy Internet user, or happen to live near a market that supports good animal husbandry, you depend on a system that raises animals in confinement. That’s very large confinement — several thousand pigs to a barn, tens of thousands of chickens. The industrial model is efficiency through uniformity. A tastier model would be flavor through diversity — but the current farm bill won’t allow it."
Related links:
- Read about Dan's talk at Farm Forward's launch party
- Check out the slide show from Farm Forward's launch party
- Dan's TED talk about his pursuit of a sustainable fish.
- Here's a list of Dan's Op-Ed articles from the New York Times
Our current model allows large factory farms to continue to prosper because government subsidies pay for their grain and they are able to sell their meat at unnaturally low prices. In the process, the money is also paying these farms to pollute and to keep their animals confined and full of hormones and antibiotics. Their singular goal is to produce as much meat as possible for as cheaply as possible, without consideration for the well-being of the animals or the consumers who eat the unnatural meat. The government – and many consumers – see this as a positive endeavor and continue to reward the factory farms with more money, rendering it very difficult for small-scale livestock farms to compete.
Dan Barber is advancing the idea of sustainable eating through his farm and restaurants, but also on a much broader platform. Barber understands that in order to affect real change, we need to follow the money. We will never be able to truly alter our country’s eating habits, or the way we think about food, if change doesn’t first come from the people controlling what and how we eat, where and how it’s grown or raised. Once Washington rewards smaller farms for their sustainable practices, the playing field will become more level and farming will begin to move forward. Until then, we should all follow the lead of such food- and farm-passionate people as Dan Barber and reclaim responsibility for and ownership of our farms and food.
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