The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food Paperback – April 7, 2015

I've started reading this book after having read multiple others on the same topic - books about crop rotation, impact of mono-cultures on soil, impact of soil in the relationship between fertilizers and the lack of in organic farming. I've also read books about aquaculture, that explain why tuna catching is bad, why some fish are better for farming than other and why the ocean really is the perfect example of the tragedy of the commons - something everyone can use but you can never regulate it as it belongs to everyone.Reading one negative review of this book (a 3 star review on Amazon) that depicted the book as a neo-hippie wishful thinking for rich people also put me in a different state of mind than I would have wanted. Truth be told, I think it was the perfect way to start the book - a bit skeptical, thinking I will fast forward through chapters.I was taken aback multiple times on the amount of research that went into this book. The personal relationships that this book forged span over decades. I've learned a great new deal of things that the previous books I've read haven't captured:• Dehesa - the acorn forests where the jamon iberico is farmed, rotational grazing and fattening of the animals on acorns, the people that use it, the love for the animals and the lifestyle that leads to one of the most expensive cuts of pork.• Alhambra fishing in Cadiz - a fishing method that the locals think it's centuries old, that actually started in the 80s once the Sushi frenzy started. Before that, anchovies were the main catch in the region. The region also has a strong seasonal wind, called levante. The locals say it's strong enough to bring ghosts from the grave, if it blows over a cemetery. I thought this phrase captures the deep cultural link that the author is trying to portray about the local villages and their relation with nature, overarching with the main theme of the book.• I've learned of farmers that are able to make foie gras without force feeding. The paragraph with Eduardo (the geese farmer) calling his geese "Hola bella!" and talking daily to them is something that I will probably always have in mind remembering about this book.Although I feel books like this one increased in popularity after the great success of Pollan's Omnivores Dilemma, I have found this book to be on par with that.The author also goes into detail to explain the different processes and systems that need to exist for a farm-to-table movement to be mainstream - all of this through the different characters and people he has visited over the years - wheat farmers that went organic and expanded their model to their entire community, grain farmers that created grain mills for organic grains, seed farmers that helped the community through buy-back schemes for seeds and other by-products; rice farmers that are experimenting with 40 thousand(!) varieties of rice.Sometimes the, what I suspect, faked ignorance of the author to push the story line further seems out of place. When juggling with multiple story lines, timelines and characters you would expect to have plenty of natural reasons to explain the topic. However, the author is a famous chef, not an experienced writer and this is just a personal observation that doesn't take away from the main topic.Overall the book delivers, it provides plenty of stories and arguments for other ways of farming our food. When eating meat, cooking nose-to-tail means using everything from the animal, not just the good parts - something that probably I am guilty of as well. When cooking with vegetables, the equivalent is cooking with all the grains and vegetables that are not as popular as the main ones. The book makes a great case for why, as I believe there are multiple flavors and variances by doing just that.Now I understand the 3 star review that influenced my initial mood - I will probably have a hard time using anything from this book to have a better ecological or environmental impact. While the book isn't an advocacy book, it does encourage change - what type of change can I have an impact on? Hard to say. I won't be buying organic fish from Spain as much as I won't be able to convince my local farmers to start experimenting with different breeds of grains that I will mill myself into a perfect bread that tastes like nuts or chocolate (as it does in the book).I do, however, believe that this sort of push will have an impact that will trickle down at some point. For how long or when? Even the author thinks it might be 2050 or it might be for other generations. He quotes the Mennonites in the book: "A person starts raising his children even before they are born." The quote is used to advocate for building long lasting and self-sustaining change in the way our food is grown, in the way our food is cooked and in the way we allow this alternate system to gain roots. If the focus is exclusively on shelf life and yield as it is now with the mainstream farming industry, the flavor will decline as this is the main trade-off.The book tells us it's a trade-off that exists by chance. However it's not coincidental, it ended like that by design with the purpose of reducing starvation. However it came with a cost, a big environmental cost and a big flavor-deficient one as well. The elusive aromas and flavors that the author describes leave one in a state of never ending day-dreaming. Is this enough for a rallying cry, for us to push the industry in a place where we get flavor and affordability? Most experts think it's not possible, at least the ones cited in the book. It's definitely not easy and the flavor comes with a big trade-off of itself - seasonal variance and lack of uniformity. If that sounds like a paradox, you are correct.But having your daily bread have a different taste every morning, based on the type of grain and the location of where it was farmed, might put away a lot of risk-averse food enthusiasts. This is where the author got the title of the book, The Third table, as he realizes there is a need for a change, but it can and should mostly come in the form of an alternate parallel system that will exist with the mainstream agricultural one.What will be the entry price to get into that system as a consumer? Right now it's high, as access to these goods is mostly at 2 and 3 star restaurants. After reading the book, I feel that is well deserved - as it will take a lot of creativity and work to put all these new tastes to work.I think the area left to explore, from an economical and cultural point of view, is something that the book mentions very briefly at the end - the current wave of microbreweries. Their risk-embracing culture, their relentless experiments with a simple recipe, the appeal it has and the culture it has created. Most importantly, the economics and the market it has around it. It is exactly The Third plate, but for beer.As with every movement, it will need to reach critical mass for it to be walking on its own feet, people like Barber and this book explains beautifully the most important questions in this: why should we change it?

I truly hate to use the term "life changing" with books because it almost feels like a cop out. But there are no other simple phrases to describe this book other than just that. It changes your life.Never have I read so stupendously researched material, been kept completely and fully engrossed in the subject and had so many conflicting and provoking thoughts in such a short period of time. The book is long, there's no getting around that, but Barber weaves his our personal autobiography into the book which personally kept me engaged. In reference to an earlier reviewer who said Barber's approach was "elitist" and too "top down", I must respectfully disagree. While it's true Barber is implying chefs hold many of the controls in this game, he has valid reason to feel that way. In our culture of fast food that we want quicker and quicker, we are not only looking to others to prepare our food, but we want more nutritious food that requires less work. Therefore, it is in fact chefs who will be calling the shots if this trend continues. And like with any environmental change, unfortunately (or fortunately, however you choose to see it) it begins at the top... with the top of the income brackets. Wealthy folks were the ones who could afford hybrids, and now EVs, as soon as they hit the market. If the 1% (or even 10%) start taking a real interest in how their food is prepared, where it comes from, and what else they could be doing/eating, then we will see real change. But Barber is not amiss in not mentioning middle America. That would be skipping one very necessary step.Regardless of your end opinion on Barber's book, you will no doubt learn a whole lot along the way. You will never look at organic food, or mass produced chicken breasts, or really anything, in the same way again. Try to finish this book and tell me it doesn't change your life in some big way.

This book is about food, farming and ecology. I'm a plantsman training to be a farmer and I loved The Third Plate. I found Dan Barbers writing to be compelling, and this book to be highly informative. This book came highly recommended by a friend who is a fellow plantsman. I picked it up and took his advice to read it with a pen. I underlined this book to death. I was thrilled to see that the first section was titled Soil, because I'm a nerd. I was so relieved to find that Dan Barber isn't afraid to treat the subject of soil as a science. I've grown tired of writers changing it from a subject that is a science to one that is just kinda...sciencey. I don't think he gets so heavy with it that it will bore or escape less nerdy folk.If you're waiting for Dan Barber to offer some wisdom as to how we bring healthful and sustainable food to poor people, or even still, the bulk of the middle class, don't. I see a lot of merit in what he has to say about the responsibility of chef's to make ecologically informed choices when developing their menus, but I don't buy into the notion of trickle down food culture. As a not-wealthy-but-well-intentioned-eater, I focused more on the notion of reshaping our meals. This can be implemented by all, not just the wealthy. No matter what the source of your meat is, there is no version of eating a breast of chicken or a 7 oz steak nightly that is sustainable.Oh, and just because everyone else is comparing it to Omnivore's Dilemma, I'll just say that I enjoyed Third Plate much more, and I found it to be much more useful in its discussion of food choices as well as farming. Dear Michael Pollan, please stop anthropomorphizing plants and soil organisms. We have science now. We don't need fairytales to explain what is actually just a combination of evolution, genetics, and plant cultivation.