Farm-to-table
Farm-to-table (or farm-to-fork, and in some cases farm-to-school) is a social movement which promotes serving local food at restaurants and school cafeterias, preferably through direct acquisition from the producer (which might be a winery, brewery, ranch, fishery, or other type of food producer which is not strictly a "farm"). This might be accomplished by a direct sales relationship, a community-supported agriculture arrangement, a farmer's market, a local distributor or by the restaurant or school raising its own food. Farm-to-table often incorporates a form of food traceability (celebrated as "knowing where your food comes from") where the origin of the food is identified to consumers. Often restaurants cannot source all the food they need for dishes locally, so only some dishes or only some ingredients are labelled as local.
Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne
James later applied the theories of Rudolf Steiner to the family estate at Kent. In 1939 he travelled to Switzerland to visit the leading exponent of biodynamic agriculture, Dr Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. The outcome of that visit was that he hosted, at his farm in Kent, the Betteshanger Summer School and Conference, the first biodynamic farming conference to be held in Britain. James subsequently coined the term "organic farming" from the concept of "the farm as organism" and has the best claim to being the "father" of organic agriculture . He published the book "Look to the Land" in 1940, which raises many of the issues current to discussions of organic agriculture. After reading "Look to the Land", the philosopher and author Marco Pallis contacted Lord Northbourne and later introduced him to the writings of the Traditionalist (also known as Perennialist) philosophy. Lord Northbourne eventually integrated this thinking into his own writings and life, and became a correspondent with many of the most prominent writers of this school, as well as with Thomas Merton. He was also a frequent contributor to the quarterly journal, Studies in Comparative Religion, which dealt with religious symbolism and the Traditionalist perspective.