Let's begin with a simple question: what is the best meal you ever had? asks Elaine Lafferty. Not the best restaurant experience with superb service and crisp linens, but the best food you ever tasted?
I've been asked that question a good bit in the last year after a group of friends and I bought a restaurant in a rural area of Long Island, New York. I always describe that meal as follows: it was in Ireland. Just as we were contemplating the "what's for dinner?" dilemma, my neighbour Dick O'Driscoll, a fisherman, stopped by with the gift of a freshly caught salmon. We ran outside to dig up some of the potatoes and carrots planted in our field. Then we snuck over to another farmer's field to "borrow" some peas.
That was it. Rich soil scrubbed off, some butter, a little salt and pepper. Everything on the table had been in the ground or in the sea not more than 30 minutes earlier. I have eaten in some of the finest restaurants in the world, but that meal was a revelation to an American brought up on what Michael Pollan rightfully calls "food products", not food.
Happily, there is now a food revolution in the West driven by consumers' demand for local and organic produce and meats, as well as a desire for environmental stewardship. The farm-to-table ethos is not the domain of the elite, what is derided as the Chardonnay and Brie crowd. This campaign, called "the delicious revolution" by famed chef Alice Waters, is crossing socio-economic lines and that's good news for everyone. Farmers' markets are a vital part of this revolution and must be supported by local authorities and the government.
Ultimately, real food is also good business. One of the fastest growing supermarket chains in the world is Whole Foods Market, the largest natural and organic foods retailer in the world, founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas. A visit to a Whole Foods store 10 years ago was as close to a 1960s, tie-dyed hippie experience as you could find outside Berkeley, California. Today Whole Foods is a Fortune 500 company with 194 stores in the US, Canada and the UK. It had $5.6 billion in sales last year and expects growth of more than 10 per cent this year.
Whole Foods Market's success is attributable to many things, but one of the key factors is their corporate philosophy about food and social responsibility. They have strict standards as to how food can be labelled. Only produce that has travelled less than a day, or seven hours, can be called "locally grown". That is a reasonable standard that could be applied to farmers' markets here. The company has also contributed mightily to educating consumers in the last 25 years, making sure people understand that buying local produce reduces the environmental impact of transportation and is a boon to biodiversity, as well as one's palate.
Of the 2,400 farms the company deals with, about 75 per cent are family-owned. The company has a foundation with a budget of $10 million for low-interest loans to farmers. And on Sundays, in many stores, the parking lot is turned over to local farmers to sell their produce directly to shoppers. Hello, Tesco! Are you listening?
So how do you know the food you are buying at a farmers' market is local and/or organic? Obviously enforcement is currently lax, but the fact is that one of the benefits of shopping locally is getting to know the farmers personally. In New York, an organisation called Farm To Table (www.farmtotable.org) maintains a website with a list of farmers, farmers' markets, stores and restaurants that have committed to a set of principles. They include pesticide elimination or reduction, no use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics or growth hormones in livestock, soil conservation and nutrient management, water conservation and wetlands protection.
The restaurant industry is also a key player. In May celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced a new culinary philosophy. Spago, his flagship Beverly Hills restaurant, turns 25 this year, but Puck is the head of a company that owns food businesses serving 10 million people each year. Puck promised to use organic ingredients whenever possible and to only use cage-free raised meats and fish. He has even hired someone to police suppliers for compliance. Further, Puck has agreed to switch to recycled containers in his take-away outlets.
That will make the Green Restaurant Association happy, but he'll have to do more to become a certified Green Restaurant. That group has worked with more than 300 restaurants in the US to help them become certified for their adherence to sustainable agriculture and good environmental practices.
So, does all this food activism add up to a lot of tree-hugging and rampant do-gooderism on the part of people with too much disposable income? I don't think so. Because when it comes to food, what's good for the planet is also good economics . . . and it may just lead you to the very best meal of your life.
• Elaine Laffertyis a journalist who also co-owns The Old Mill Inn, the first certified Green Restaurant on Long Island, New York.
• John Watersis on leave