Farm-to-table Movement
Paige Brizak
Professor Regina Marchi
Media and Social Change
Final Paper
April 28, 2016
Farm-to-Table Movement
Social movements have been a thing of existence in the world around us dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. They are a type of group action that is sometimes informal and involves groupings of individuals bringing light to a specific political or social issue that is controversial. Those individuals and organizations involved in bringing social movements to the attention of others all use certain tactics and resources to do so. For instance their different types of resources allow them to write letters, start petitions, host rallies, and even use public art in hopes that their tactics will make their issues known and publicized. There are two different types of social movements that exist in the world today: reactionary and progressive movements. Reactionary social movements are ones that advocate the restoration of a previous state of social affairs while progressive social movements argue for a new social arrangement. The social movement that I decided to explore is a progressive social movement called the farm-to-table movement.
Farm-to-table, the commonly known social movement, also sometimes referred to as the farm-to-fork movement, is a social movement dating back to the 60’s and 70’s in the United States during the hippie era (Henderson, 2015). This movement, although started over 50 years ago, really began to gain steam within the past 10 years in progressive cities like Portland, Oregon, New York, New York, San Francisco, California, and Boulder, Colorado. The farm-to-table movement is one of the biggest trends in the nutritional world today (Curry, 2016). It encourages people to swap over-processed modified foods for locally sourced, seasonally-produced natural, unaltered produce, dairy, and meats. The idea is for consumers to buy and eat foods that are grown by farmers locally. These foods are then delivered to nearby farmers markets and restaurants for more fresher products that are environmentally sensitive and community minded due to the fact it takes less time for them to be delivered and fewer hands to get from the farm to the table.
The farm-to-table believers, known as locavores (Purves, 2016), value the quality of the products over the convenience and therefore only want the freshest, seasonal varieties available. Locavores have several goals with this movement. They want to maintain the foods natural health benefits and nutritional quality, improve the economy of the community, especially since most of these farmers are small farmers, ensure the safety of the food supply, avoid genetically modified foods and genetically modified organisms, and decrease the environmental impact and carbon footprint of factory farms and mass production (Rivas, 2016). Many of these locavores also feel that this movement is like a detox to your body. By eating locally grown food, you are ridding your body of the chemicals that are used on foods that go through a processing plant. Those chemicals are used so the food doesn’t spoil while it goes on more than a 1,500 mile journey (Watson, 2016) from the farm to the processing plant, to the truck it will be in for delivery, to then sitting on the shelves of your local grocery store.
When taking a closer look at the language used in articles and through the mouths of supporters of this movement, there are many words and phrases that seem to appear in each article that really emphasize what this movement is about. The words “health” and “nutrition” can be seen multiple times throughout each article. Supporters want to stress the fact that this movement is about being more health conscious and knowing you are getting healthy food. It is about cutting out products that do not have the same nutritional and health benefits that these products have. It is no secret that cancer and health issues are a big problem in America, and these supporters want people to know that by joining this movement, you are helping better yourself and America as a whole. You can cut down on not only the toxins you are putting into your body, but the soil of America as well. Not only do supporters highlight health and nutrition, but they give emphasis to the environment as well. It is important to the supporters to point out that this movement helps America bring down their carbon footprint and helps with other health aspects as well. The lower the carbon footprint the less sickness from air pollution there is. Another aspect of the emphasis on the environment is the idea that helping those small farms be able to sustain life will add to the economy. The environment aspect of this movement has many levels and each level affects us, the citizens.
“Lifestyle” is another important word to consider when taking this movement into account. This movement is more than just saying yes I support the movement, it is about actually going out there and doing everything you can to be a part of that movement. It is not something that you do occasionally, it is something you are conscious about and do every day; it is a lifestyle. It means maybe spending a little more money on fresh produce that does not have the added chemicals in it, or maybe driving a little further down the road for those fresh products. It is something that takes an effort to do and this is not a movement that you can sit back and just say you support, you actually have to prove you support it. The words and phrases that are repeated as well as important aspects of this movement are really just about pointing out that farm-to-table does more good than harm. These people are out there trying to better themselves health wise and nutritionally, as well as through helping our economy and the world we live in as a whole.
However, with any social movement there are many people who are skeptics and non-believers, and this farm-to-table movement is no different. These people feel that farm-to-table really doesn’t help build the economy up as much as the supporters think it does. This is so because many feel it costs too much money to eat this way and that many people cannot afford to buy the organic products farmers have to offer. They also feel that it is not a true figure about whether or not farm-to-table will impact us economically or if will keep the economy the same (Herman, 2015). Another reason non-believers claim this movement doesn’t help the economy is because people are only buying the popular products the farmers have, not all of the products. Consumers are not out there buying the barley or other nuts and grains the farmer produces, they are only out there buying popular items like fruits and vegetables, food that can be used in everyday meals which could be environmentally damaging (Herman, 2015). Besides not helping out as economically as locavores think this movement does, there are many who believe the carbon footprint and the environmental impact between farm-to-table and non-farm-to-table is the same. They feel so because farm-to-table restaurants and buyers claim all their products come from locally or regionally owned farms however, there is a lack of definition of what truly is a local or regionally owned farm. The USDA itself cannot even draw conclusions about the economic impact of this movement due to that factor as well (Barber, 2016). The last reason there are many non-believers of this movement is due to restaurant owner’s lack of honesty. Many owners claim that they are a farm-to-table restaurant, when in fact they really are not. They actually get their products from large distribution centers yet claim to get it from nearby local or regional farmers.
The skeptics of this movement really emphasize the lack of honesty there is between the producers of the products and their consumers as well as the idea of what “local” really is. These consumers think if the producers lied about their food being farm-to-table, what else did they lie about. For instance, they think about whether or not the food is really fresh and if they are going to get sick from eating the food, which ultimately drives away business and gives this movement a bad reputation. Consumers wonder if this movement is as health and nutritionally friendly as it claims to be or is that just something that was made up to get people to jump on the bandwagon. Also, not having a clear definition of what “local” is really puts the cherry on top of the skeptics reasoning. They wonder how people are going to claim their food is local, when it comes from 100 miles away (Barber, 2016). To them local is something that comes from a town or two over not a different state. Skeptics feel that before people start going out there and claiming their food is “local,” the USDA needs to come to a clear understanding and definition of what local is. The skeptics of this movement, do not necessarily hate the movement, they just think that it is too good to be true. Many of these people will continue to stay skeptics of the farm-to-table movement for the rest of their lives, while others will become supporters and believers over time.
This dilemma of unethical practices by restaurant owners is similar to an article, The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair, which was assigned as a course reading. Sinclair talks about how companies use unethical ways to maximize profits, and that is exactly what those restaurant owners are trying to do. Those owners know that if they can claim to be a farm-to-table restaurant they are able to price their menus higher and make more money off of their customers. The owners will be able to bring in a certain demographic that is willing to pay for higher prices, due to the fact that the food it farm-to-table, and maximize their profits by lying to their customers.
To combat the bad publicity of the farm-to-table movement and restaurants claiming to be farm-to-table even though they are not, locavores have made websites that people can use. These websites, like farmtotable.net, allow people to search a city and get a list of all the restaurants in that city that partake in this movement. They not only can get the name of the particular restaurants, but they can even get a list of the different farms those restaurants use and what they buy from each farm.
The majority of the sources used for finding research on this particular movement were from food and wellness websites. Other articles that were used were written by those who own farm-to-table restaurants and consumers who partake in farm-to-table cooking, i.e. locavores. The sources found seem pretty credible due to the nature that many were food and wellness websites that specialize in food topics, and a couple of the sources were from people who own farm-to-table restaurants. Before starting research on this movement, it was thought that the majority of people who were involved were women. It was soon discovered that thought was mistaken and that there is actually a pretty even amount of men and women who are involved in the farm-to-table movement. It seems that most of the men who are involved with farm-to-table are either farmers or chefs while the women are chefs as well, but mostly just locavores. It can be said that a mix of perspectives and demographics appeared in the research found. It was explained that many working class and poor Spanish immigrants use farm-to-table markets (farmers markets) to buy their fruits and vegetables because that is what they did back in their home country (Curry, 2016) while those who are also middle class and upper class citizens use farmers markets as well. It seems that this movement is one that can be beneficial to anyone, as long as they have a slight caring and dedication to take on this lifestyle.
When taking a look at the framing of this social movement there are many things that come to mind. With the help of author Charlotte Ryan and her article, Getting Framed: The Media Shapes Reality, we are able to fully understand what is used in the framing of social movements by taking a look at metaphors, catch phrases, and visual imagery used to describe a particular movement. Looking at the farm-to-table movement as an outsider, one can look at it and think that it is a movement solely for wealthy hippie people. It seems that this movement is about overly priced food products that are unaffordable to the average American, while that is truly not the case. These food products are actually only a couple cents more, depending on the product, and may even sometimes cost less than things at your local grocery store. This price change is due to the fact they do not have to be shipped in and that some products are harder to grow than others and they need more care when growing. These products are also brightly colored fruits and vegetables that have a nice fresh smell and look to them. Outsiders also make it seem that all the supporters of the movement are major tree hugger environmentalists, when in reality they are people who care for their health and helping their local economies. They want to see their towns flourish and help out those who are from the same towns they are from.
These skeptics and non-believers try to trivialize this movement and its followers as much as they can. As explained by Todd Gitlin in his article, The whole World Is Watching, trivialization is when people make light of a movements language, dress, age, style, and goals. The idea of trivialization is to make something seem less important or significant than it really is. Therefore people try to diminish what the social movement is really about by bringing light to things that do not really matter. Gitlin used examples of people dressing one way versus another and how they appear to others. If people are well dressed they will be more respected and listened to while those who are in regular street clothes will not be taken with as much credibility. Gitlin also says that age is a major factor in whether or not people are going to be taken serious or not. If it is young people who are out protesting a cause, they are just going to be thought of as rebellious children whose parents don’t care about what they do. On the other side, if older people are protesting, their cause might have an actual chance of being taken serious. In the case of the farm-to-table movement, it is trivialized by saying all the people who care for and are involved in this movement are tree huggers. It makes it seem that one, being a tree hugger is bad and two that solely the “tree huggers” are allowed to be interested in the movement. This movement is also trivialized due to demographics because people say only white wealthy women care for this movement, when that is actually not the case. Trivialization really brings light off of what really matters, i.e. the social movement being recognized, and brought to things that should not matter, like the age or race of those involved in the movement.
Not only do ordinary people care for this movement, but there are celebrities that try to bring light to the farm-to-table movement as well. One celebrity couple, Brie “Bella” Danielson and her husband Brian Danielson, are huge supporters of the farm-to-table movement. Brie and Brian are known for being WWE superstars (wrestlers) as well as cast members of the tv show Total Divas on E!. Throughout their seasons on the show they have been very vocal about their farm-to-table use. Brie and Brian grow their own fruits and vegetables as well as buy as much as they can from local farmers markets. This celebrity couple also tries their best to only eat at farm-to-table restaurants when travelling, however that is not always possible. Being celebrities these two have large social media followings so by them posting about being locavores, it inspires other people to get involved with the movement as well. Celebrities are a good way to help grow social movements and get more people involved in the cause. Brie and Brian Danielson are not the only celebrities involved with this movement, Yolanda Foster, Eva Longoria, and Alicia Silverstone to name a few are involved with this movement as well. These celebrities all post on their social media sites of farm-to-table restaurants and farmers markets that they have been to and shop at to let all of their followers be able to become involved and more informed about this movement. These celebrities have made a lifestyle out of this movement and have even taken it beyond just buying locally grown food products, but by also going as far as only buying and using organic products. These celebrities allow this movement to gain more steam and touch all different demographics and try and influence them to become involved. It would be interesting to take a poll of all the farm-to-table supporters and see how many of them became locavores due to the influence from celebrities they follow. That poll could give a number to prove and show how celebrities really help generate interest in social movements.
In conclusion this social movement is more than the issue of nutrition and environmentalism. It is about being informed about the food you are eating and making educated decisions about whether to eat it or not. The media and skeptics try to take light off of what this movement is really about and put emphasis on things that do not matter. The farm-to-table movement is part of a social movement community due to its more progressive causes and reactionary conservative agendas. The followers of the farm-to-table movement use more innovative tactics like the internet as a tool to stay connected to those who care for this cause. Locavores use things like hash tags to spread the name and ideas of what this farm-to-table is truly about. Everywhere you look on social media, something relating to either local love or food-to-table can be seen which is how they try to get their name out there and bring new members on board. New members of this movement are gained everyday just by the simple task of shopping at more farmers markets and local markets for your everyday produce, dairy, and meat needs. Many celebrities have even helped bring this movement to the public sphere through the use of their social media sites as well. They try and encourage their follows to shop local and eat at restaurants that use local products in their meals. The farm-to-table movement can even be seen and heard on popular television shows as well as and is a social movement that is on the up and up. Farm-to-table has become a revolutionary social movement that gains more and more followers every day.
References
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