The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food
by Dan Barber
Rating: 4.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2020-06-20
Thesis: We should rethink our food system to be closer to nature, more sustainable, more holistic.
It’s written as a series of first person narratives. The author travels the world and meets chefs and farmers whose practice is opposed to the mainstream food system.
It’s repetitive. It’s sometimes pretentious. Sometimes the narrative style is boring and I just want him to get to the point or give me information. On the other hand, the prose about interconnectedness and nature inspire near-religious feelings about the earth.
The book is against:
- monoculture
- industrial farming
- commodification
- intensive fertilizers and pesticides
- short-term thinking
- waste
- maximizing yield
- changing supply to match demand.
The book is for:
- holistic thinking
- sustainable farming
- using all parts of the animal
- maximizing flavor
- soil health
- changing demand to match supply.
Random ideas that stuck with me:
- A cuisine is attached to a specific region/culture because it is the result of the entire system of climate, plants, animals, tradition, culture. It’s what the land can sustainably support in a region.
- The dust bowl happened because of monoculture and maximizing yields, destroying natural systems for keeping soil in place. Things like that could happen again.
- Perennial wheat is a thing and would require less irrigation, less fertilizer, no plowing, while producing almost as much food.
- Industrial agriculture was certainly necessary to support our massive population, but at the cost of flavor, micronutrients, and ecosystems.
- Shelf stable wheat you find in the store is chalky and dead. We maximised energy density and storage by sacrificing flavor, nutrition, ecosystems.
- Ecosystems are complicated with many interacting parts. It’s super easy to destroy important effects we didn’t even realize were there.