#Farm-to-Table

Farm-to-table is the magical incantation that claims to bridge fields and dinner tables while actually staging a lavish performance of luxury and self-gratification. By showing consumers a producer’s face, it soothes guilt and sprinkles a spice called premium onto the price. The ideal of local sourcing functions as an expensive surrogate for the consumer’s craving for self-validation. It offers a ritual of eating yourself up a notch by embedding stories into every single tomato.

Local production for local consumption is a social ritual in which people loudly proclaim they will eat vegetables and fruits grown in their own region. It omits transportation costs and carbon footprints, yet magically attaches a premium price tag fueled by self-satisfaction. While claiming to support producers and revitalize communities, in urban areas it encourages expanding the definition of 'local' to map-obsessive levels. Ultimately, it binds what can appear on the table to administrative boundaries, giving people a simultaneously inflated sense of superiority and futile despair in a strange eco-performance.