What Farm-to-Table Really Means
NEW YORK – Farm-to-table—It’s a marketing term some restaurants use to Say their Ingredients are locally sourced, organic, and eco-friendly but is it always true?
Best case: It’s wishy-washy. Worst case: It’s a form of greenwashing, a lie or exaggeration about the benefits for the planet.
In reality, there’s no government agency or third-party organization regulating “farm to table.” That means restaurants can use it however they want.
So in New York City, how local is local?
There are very few farms in the city, but they tend to be small, like Randall’s Island Urban Farm, or even indoors, like Gotham Gowanus. Then there are farms nearby but outside city limits: Take Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown. They have a Greenwich Village restaurant location.
But we can’t know for sure where a farm-to-table restaurant gets its raw Ingredients. We just have to take its word for it.
Sometimes those words are printed on the menu or mentioned on the website, with no specific explanation. And things can change every week, depending on the season and suppliers.
Now, restaurants have an incentive to use a greenwashing label like “farm to table.” A study from Cornell University found that 52.5% of customers would pay a premium if they think something benefits farmers and the environment.
For the well-heeled who care about the environment, choosing farm-to-table may seem like a no-brainer. But for the average consumer, the price can be hard to justify. Either way, be skeptical: We should always consider where the food is coming from.
Christine Stoddard is a City Newsroom reporter covering climate change. Born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, she got her start in journalism as a photo editor at The Washington Post.
