Remember how when you used to drop a tomato on the kitchen floor it went splat instead of bounced?  Or consider that indefinable difference in taste of the chicken factory bird as opposed to the cluckers who strutted freely and dined on fat worms and beetles on Grandpa’s lower 40.  If you, like Oliver Douglas, yearn for the fresh air of Green Acres and the grow-your-own experience, then there is a movement for you.

Farm-to-Table, or Slow Food, they call it, and no it doesn’t mean you subsist on a diet of turtle soup and escargot.  They are terms used to describe the effort to transition from industrial agriculture to local, seasonal and sustainably grown food.  You won’t be having red-ripe strawberries in November, but what you do eat won’t have traveled halfway ‘round the world before it arrives limp and exhausted at your table.

Proponents of the Farm-to-Table movement believe that favoring local food consumption directly affects our well-being and is more ecologically sound, although critics claim such issues as transport are not as important if compared to the hidden cost of producing locally.  For example, a tomato grown in a warm country then transported many miles leaves a smaller carbon footprint than one grown locally in a greenhouse, requiring artificial heat.  But then the true locavore would sooner starve than eat any out-of-season food.

Whatever the true cost, the movement is gaining favor among American consumers.  Surveys consistently show that shoppers will pay that little bit extra for food they think helps those closer to home, and there is now a powerful advocate for the Farm-to-Table movement, the new White House chef, Sam Kass.  He is quoted in a recent New York Times article as saying that he preferred to shop for and cook food “mainly from local farms and buying wine from small, sustainable wineries.”  So don’t be surprised if very soon the White House tour includes a Presidential Victory Garden and rooftop chicken coop.  And although that fast-food burger isn’t likely to disappear from the American diet, there may come a time when the beef it is made from was chewing and mooing across town a few days before you chomped into it.

For footage of fresh food and fervent foodies, check out our crisp, mouth-watering High Definition offerings here.