Agriculture is complicated

and the complication goes beyond "buying organic," shopping local, know your farmer, or any other quaint slogan.  The economy is complex and the economics of farming is wrapped up not only in the economics of eating but the biology of the soil and the whole biosphere.  Even the most intense and well-informed foodie oversimplifies what goes into sustainable agriculture because no one person can know and understand it all.  What we need is an appreciation of how whole systems, including those who are responding to very different incentives, must be engaged in that change.  Perhaps that is starting to happen.

Standing in Klaas’s fields, I saw how single-minded I had been. Yes, I was creating a market for local emmer wheat, but I wasn’t doing anything to support the recipe behind it. Championing Klaas’s wheat and only his wheat was tantamount to treating his farm like a grocery store. I was cherry-picking what I most wanted for my menu without supporting the whole farm. I am not the only one.

In celebrating the All-Stars of the farmers’ market — asparagus, heirloom tomatoes, emmer wheat — farm-to-table advocates are often guilty of ignoring a whole class of humbler crops that are required to produce the most delicious food.

and later...

It’s one thing for chefs to advocate cooking with the whole farm; it’s another thing to make these uncelebrated crops staples in ordinary kitchens. Bridging that divide will require a new network of regional processors and distributors.

Take beer, for example. The explosion in local microbreweries has meant a demand for local barley malt. A new malting facility near Klaas’s farm recently opened in response. He now earns 30 percent more selling barley for malt than he did selling it for animal feed. For other farmers, it’s a convincing incentive to diversify their grain crops. 

Investing in the right infrastructure means the difference between a farmer’s growing crops for cows or for cafeterias. It will take the shape of more local mills (for grains), canneries (for beans) and processors (for greens). As heretical as this may sound, farm-to-table needs to embrace a few more middlemen.

I'd drink to that.