The Third Plate: Field Notes on the future of food, by Dan Barber

Barber, a chef and owner of a farm to table restaurant, explores the questions of what it means to be a chef and how to move from the current state of high-yield, low taste production farming to a truly 'sustainable' agriculture that nourishes the body and is in harmony with the earth.  Those are some pretty big questions, and I enjoyed Barber's view that we needed to do more than just have small organic farming experiments to make true systemic change in the way food is produced.  While Barber describes some interesting developments and experiments in both farming and fish production, these efforts are so very small scale it's hard to conceive that these trends will make changes in the current  production farm practices in any big way anytime soon.  Barber does make some convincing points about production agriculture's emphasis on uniformity and yield both requiring more fertilizer and herbicides as well as having a detrimental effect on flavor. Barber also gives several examples of how well-known chefs have influenced what people want to each, and hence what farms produce. Toward the end of the book he briefly describes his 'third plate', which makes use of all of the products of the farm from underused grains like oats and millet to making use of the whole animal in cooking, not just the most select cuts. He makes me feel downright noble for making stews in the crock pot using cheap cuts of meat.  I'll need to figure out how to use more barley and other grains in my cooking.  496 pages.