Foodshed
The “farm-to-table” movement is focused on producing food locally within a foodshed, and delivering it to local consumers. Direct farm-to-table in the United States tends to comprise only a very minor segment of the food distribution system in terms of size and importance, but is growing in popularity.Nearly 5 percent of all farmers engage in some form of direct food marketing. Estimates of all farm-to-table sales within a foodshed range from roughly $550 million to $2 billion. Many local farms are family-run farms that are successful and do survive through poor economic conditions. Ecologists consider to be more adaptive and more likely to “reproduce” in highly variable and uncertain environments.
Farm-to-table
Investigations by journalists at the "Tampa Bay Times" and "San Diego Magazine" found widespread fraud in the claims made by area farm-to-table restaurants about where the food they were serving came from. Cases included: restaurant previously bought from that provider but has since switched without updating the menu; restaurant claims to buy from a farmer, but the farmer denies ever having sold to that restaurant; restaurant serving a type of food the cited farmer or fisher has never grown or caught or which is currently out of season or not being provided; restaurant claiming to serve food from a provider which has gone out of business years ago; food from the claimed source makes up only a small portion of the type of food on the plate. In cases where fraudulent claims are being made, the food actually being served is usually non-local or even "commodity" food which is cheaper or more available out-of-season. In some cases food claimed to be "wild caught", "preservative-free", "made in-house", "Fresh from Florida", or "Long Island duck" was not. Such practices open restaurants to lawsuits from the farmer whose name is being used fraudulently, lawsuits from consumers who have purchased mislabelled food products, and enforcement actions by government agencies. "Tampa Bay Times" food critic and investigative reporter Laura Reiley attributes fraud in part to the rise of the farm-to-table trend since 2012, the lack of time of restaurants to deal directly with farms whereas they normally would deal with one or two large distributors, and in some cases sheer profit motive.