“Farm-to-table” (or, without the hyphens, “farm to table”) is a term that indicates that the restaurant (or other place of eating) uses fresh ingredients, locally grown and shipped. “Farm-to-table” food is usually in-season and usually has fewer chemicals than food purchased elsewhere.
 
The term “farm to table” appears in a book title from 1911, but “farm to table” became a popular term in the 1980s and 1990s. From 2003-2006, “farm to table” restaurants (such as Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in Westchester, NY) began to be advertised in the United States.
 
There are other similar terms. “Gate-to-plate” (“from farm gate to dinner plate”) has been cited in print since at least 1973. “Field-to-fork” has been cited in print since at least 1989. “Roof(top)-to-table” has been cited in print since at least 2009 and refers to food grown on the roof of a building.
 
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Absolutely pure milk direct from farm to table.
Author: Independent Milk Dealers Association (Philadelphia)
Publisher: [Philadelphia? : The Association, 1911]
Edition/Format: Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
United States parcel post produce list : the farm to table plan
Author: United States. Post Office (Saint Louis, Mo.)
Publisher: St. Louis, Mo. : The Post Office, 1917.
Edition/Format: Book : National government publication : English
   
OCLC WorldCat record
Our food from farm to table
Author: Lionel Edwards; A Voysey; E J Stowe
Publisher: London : Methuen & Co., [1943]
Edition/Format: Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Farm to table: The food-energy link.
Author: Americans for Energy Independence.
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : Americans for Energy Independence, 1978.
Edition/Format: Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Food—from farm to table.
Author: Jack Hayes; United States. Dept. of Agriculture.
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Agriculture : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1982.
Series: Yearbook of agriculture, 1982
Edition/Format: Book : National government publication : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Food safety from farm to table : a national food safety initiative : report to the President.
Author: United States. Food and Drug Administration.; United States. Dept. of Agriculture.; United States. Environmental Protection Agency.; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.)
Publisher: [Washington, D.C.] : Food and Drug Administration, 1997.
Edition/Format: Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Organic farming: social movement or capitalist appropriation? - From Farm to Table: The Organic Vegetable Commodity Chain of Northern California
Author: Daniel Buck; Christina Getz; Julie Guthman
Publisher: [Assen, Netherlands] Van Gorcum.
Edition/Format: Article : English
Publication: Sociologia ruralis. 37, no. 1, (1997): 3
 
OCLC WorldCat record
From farm to table : making the connection in the Mid-Atlantic food system
Author: Matthew Hora; Jody Tick
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : Capital Area Food Bank, ©2001.
Edition/Format: Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Agriculture for children : From farm to table.
Author: Schlessinger Media.
Publisher: Wynnewood, PA : Schlessinger Media, ©2001.
Edition/Format: VHS video : Juvenile audience : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary: Field trips to farms, factories and markets form the backdrop for the “Agriculture for children” video series. Children will enjoy following along as young hosts discover firsthand how agriculture provides us with the food we eat, clothing we wear and places we live. Learn about the exciting journey food takes as it makes its way from farms to our tables. See how crops are grown and harvested, prepared, packaged and transported to stores. Discover how technology has influenced all phases of food production form using machines to mile cows to harvesting wheat with combines. Visit orchards and rice fields to see the many different places food can be grown, and explore how climate and weather affect the types of crops people grow and the kinds of animals they raise.
 
New York (NY) Times
CALENDAR
By FLORENCE FABRICANT
Published: May 7, 2003
Mediterranean in Murray Hill
On Tuesday from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Carriage House, 149 East 38th Street, there will be a tasting of Mediterranean food prepared by the chef Sara Jenkins, with wines selected by her brother, Nico, who also works in restaurants, and a discussion of the Mediterranean approach to food led by their mother, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, the author of ‘‘The Essential Mediterranean’’ (HarperCollins). The event will benefit Farm to Table, which supports local farms.
     
Austin (TX) Chronicle
HOME: AUGUST 8, 2003: FOOD  
Food-o-file
BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD
New components now under consideration for the 2004 festival are all-day Central Texas barbecue bus tours, as well as a farm-to-table event matching area produce growers with local restaurants proposed for the Barr Mansion.
 
New York (NY) Times
IN BUSINESS; Living Off the Land, From Farm to Table
By CARIN RUBENSTEIN
Published: April 25, 2004
POCANTICO HILLS— THE revolutionary new culinary center opening here next week may be creating an uproar in the greater foodie universe, but managers of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture say they are actually hoping to start off by attracting residents of Westchester County, not just the great gourmands of the world.
 
New York (NY) Daily News
APPLEWOOD IS WELCOMING TO THE CORE
By PASCALE LE DRAOULEC DAILY NEWS RESTAURANT CRITIC
Friday, January 14th 2005, 1:11AM
APPLEWOOD. 501 11th St. (between Seventh and Eighth Aves.), Park Slope; (718) 768-2044. Open for lunch/brunch/dinner Tues.-Sun. Closed Mon. Dinner starters: $6-$12; Entrees: $18-$24. All credit cards. Reservations suggested. 2.5 Stars.
(...)
Then there’s Applewood, a sophisticated farm-to-table restaurant in a cozy Park Slope townhouse, where young children get a warm reception (and cool frog plates) but parents can enjoy a bottle of Sancerre and oysters on the half shell.
 
Time magazine
What America Eats
The Farm-to-Table Fetish
By JOHN CLOUD Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006
(...)
Restoring the link between the farm and the table is an ambition shared by a growing number of restaurants. That’s also not new: it was the driving idea behind the fresh-above-all restaurants that launched the U.S. food revolution in the 1970s and �80s. But most of those pioneering restaurants — led by chef Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse — were in California, where anything can grow and where it would be silly not to supply a restaurant from a nearby farm.
 
Today the farm-to-table ideal has spread across the nation. In its July issue, Gourmet magazine ran a feature on what it cleverly called �plow-to-plate� restaurants from Milwaukee to Maine. These aren’t just places that source their ingredients from local farmers, as Waters and many others have urged for years. Rather, these restaurateurs actually operate farms themselves.
   
Google Books
The Food Snob’s Dictionary:
An essential lexicon of gastronomical knowledge
food snob n: reference term for the sort of food obsessive for whom the actual joy of eating and cooking is but a side dish to the accumulation of arcane knowledge about these subjects
By David Kamp and Marion Rosenfeld
New York, NY: Broadway Books
2007
Pg. 38:
Farm to table. Virtuous cathcphrase for the movement to make eaters aware of precisely whom and where their food comes from—albeit only if this food is coming from local growers and ranchers who practice SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE. The appthesis of the farm-to-table movement is Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant in New York’s Hudson Valley situated on a working farm, obviating the need for fossil-fuel-consuming abominations like the horseless carriage. We must find the shortest distance from farm to table—or perish!
     
New York (NY) Times
Restaurant Week | Hudson Valley
Farm-to-Table Feasting
By ALICE GABRIEL
Published: March 2, 2008
The organizers of Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, begun in the fall of 2006, have moved this year’s feasting to late winter, a traditionally quiet time for restaurants. From March 9 through March 21, excluding March 15, chefs from some 80 restaurants in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange, Ulster and Columbia counties hope to coax diners out of hibernation with prix fixe menus at gentle prices (three-course lunches for $16.09; three-course dinners $26.09).
 
Presented by The Valley Table, a quarterly magazine covering farms and food in the Hudson Valley, the event takes as its themes “buying local” and “farm to table.” With fields and orchards buried under snow, and stocks of root vegetables dwindling, the challenge for most chefs will be to honor these tenets while offering broadly appealing menus.
 
TODAYshow.com
After years of importing, chefs are staying local
Epicurious profiles the 10 best farm-to-table restaurants
By Joanne Camas
updated 5/22/2008 2:50:04 PM ET
 
Northwest Coast
Eating Local: The Farm to Table Movement
July 29, 2008
by Suzanne Martinson
Here a locavore, there a locavore, everywhere a locavore.
 
A locavore - the word of the year in the New Oxford American Dictionary – is someone who seeks locally produced food.
 
Their numbers here are sprouting.