One thing I have learned about writing is that sometimes, your stories and projects don’t always end up being about what you wanted them to be about. Farm to Table, the blog, seems to have undergone that transformation. Zach began the blog in order to promote a potential TV show, but it became something more: a forum to discuss developments in the sustainable food world, a way to bring together those people with a passion for local agriculture and traditional culinary craftsmanship. A community of like-minded individuals has grown up around the blog, myself included. I followed Farm to Table because I believed that here was a voice that had the strength to rally people and effect real change in the way Americans think about their food. And I still believe that it will.

Zach has graciously turned over management of Farm to Table to me. Many of you may recognize me from a post on Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. I am a dedicated sustainable foodie, an elite fitness enthusiast whose entire success as an athlete rests on eating locally grown, sustainably farmed, wholesome foods. For me, sustainable food became the common thread tying together personal, social, and environmental health. So I took up the fight and joined the community.

Zach has built a great community here, and we don’t want to see it go to waste. There is still much to do with Farm to Table, so I am assembling a team of people to take over and expand the site. By getting more people involved, we hope to extend our reach and create the ability to tackle more and bigger issues. We want to make Farm to Table the authority on sustainable food news and developments in the community, and create a forum for ongoing dialogue. Ultimately, we would like to use the Farm to Table community to motivate lasting and far-reaching change in the way America thinks about its food. We hope to bring sustainable food to the mainstream by connecting all the various elements involved, enabling people to connect with one another locally, nationally and globally, to better support each other’s efforts to build a sustainable food system.

Our Goals

• News: To make Farm to Table the authority on sustainable food movement news, the place to get information on political developments, farms that are paving the way, intellectual movements, the economic climate for SOLE food, and new trends. We would comment on existing content as well as generate our own stories
• Community Forum: Farm to Table will be host for the discussion on SOLE food, bringing together major bloggers, thinkers and intellectuals, aspiring foodies, farmers, restaurateurs, and average readers to share, collaborate, and inspire one another. We want to help the discussion develop rather than simply report on it. To this end, we will set up a dedicated forum separate from, but associated with the blog posts themselves.
• Monetize: In order to sustain it, we would like to derive some revenue from Farm to Table, in order to pay hosting and domain registration fees, as well as fund journalistic missions at some point. If a sustainable food blog is going to claim that SOLE food can survive economically as well as environmentally, it must be able to do the same. Sustainability applies to both the environment and the economy.
• Host on a dedicated domain: We want to move Farm to Table to its own domain. This is so that we can promote cooperation without people fearing that their brand/identity is being subsumed.
• Reconnect with our community: We want to draft a mission statement and send it out to our readers as well as those farmers and restaurant owners we have previously worked with, inviting them to join in the mission. We will be renewing old connections with farmers and business owners, incorporating them more fully into an ongoing dialogue.

If you would like to get involved, let me know. We are looking for regular bloggers as well as occasional contributors. We will be expanding the scope of the site to include a number of different departments, so there’s a good chance you could be in charge of one of them. If you know the restaurant industry, for example, you could head up our search for sustainable, locally sourced eateries, coordinating with contributors across the country and connecting with restaurants wherever you find them. If you just have an interesting story about local and sustainable food in your life, feel free to share that too. We can help you polish your writing if necessary, and will do our best to give you a voice in a growing community. If enough of us get involved, we can accomplish a lot without having to dedicate huge chunks of our time. Once our forum goes up, there will be more room for people to start their own discussions, and we will be reaching out to local farming organizations across the country.

If there is anything you’d like to see on Farm to Table, now is a good time to make those suggestions as well, as there will be some structural changes going on in the near future. I can’t promise we’ll incorporate all the suggestions, but we want to take into consideration the needs and expectations of the people that make up the sustainable food movement to which we are trying to give voice.

So if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to step up your involvement and take an active role, now is the time. All it takes is a willingness to reach out to farmers, grocers, restaurants, friends and family, to share their stories and establish connections. Real, local food thrives on community ties, so let’s make Farm to Table a reflection of that truth and make the website the product of collaboration and community dialogue.

Image Source: playingwithbrushes on Flickr

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