“Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having had any ideas at all.” – Pericles
The goal of Pastoral Plate is to bring people together so that we can act collectively to influence the quality of our food, and work to improve the functioning of our local food economy.
Consumers are the most potent force in the food supply chain – but only if we want to be. During the last 60 years, we relinquished our power to large special interest groups under the assumption that someone else is looking out for our welfare. Unfortunately, the modern food distribution chain serves large, special interests first and consumers last.
In the Bay Area we have access to small, wonderful farms that produce foods of the highest quality. Why not build our own distribution chain, take an active part in the creation of our food, support the local farmer, and eat some of the best food on earth? Not only is this possible, but for us it’s also been a fulfilling alternative to the way we think about and contribute to how our food is produced.
Pastoral Plate is about taking an assertive stance when it comes to food.
It’s about…
- Discovering that traditionally raised meats taste better and are healthier than industrially raised meats.
- Realizing that this type of food is very accessible in the Bay Area.
- Understanding that we can contribute directly to sustaining a holistic and balanced way of agriculture and life.
- Realizing that these farms exist in the Bay Area and that farmers are willing to enter into a direct relationship with the consumer.
- Learning to cook traditional cuts.
- Forming a community that wants to have fun cooking and eating.
Pastoral Plate offers an opportunity to experience what actually happens on small family-owned farms. Now, as I sit down to eat and see the locally grown food on my plate, I can clearly recall the chickens pecking in the sun, or the fog rolling off the Pacific Ocean onto the green hills in Marin, enshrouding and soaking the very grass these animals ate.
This in turn will shed light on the industry’s shell-game labels of “organic,” “natural,” and “field-to-family.” In the case of Pastoral Plate, we will actually know what the animal has been fed, what antibiotics it has or hasn’t received, and for what reasons.
I have visited ranches in the counties of Marin and Sonoma, and have spoken with the ranchers and farmers who raise cattle, chickens, pigs, goats, geese, and turkeys.
They all support the idea of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csadef.shtml and buying clubs that source directly from them. Why? Because our presence and involvement helps the farmer maintain prices in the face of downward pressure exerted by many of the large food-buying corporations. All the farms I visited were family owned and operated. Theirs is a tough and exacting business; and they need our support.
Pastoral Plate has created a simple and transparent distribution method that allows locally raised food to find its way onto your plate without getting polluted, poisoned, diluted, mislabeled, or obscured while traveling through the industrialized distribution chain of the present day. And for some reason we can’t quite explain, it just tastes better. (We are seeking scientific evidence to prove the cry of our taste buds.) We plan to directly purchase steers, cows, chickens and lambs and deliver them to you accompanied by their provenance.
Throughout this process, our food will be accompanied by as much information as possible. We do this in an effort to address the question posed by Michael Pollan in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma: “How can we take a decidedly Eastern, connected, holistic product, and sell it through a decidedly Western, disconnected, reductionist Wall Streetified marketing system?” In other words, we keep you connected, involved and informed.