Free The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber

field of cabbage, he noticed a lone rutabaga plant that had somehow been mixed in by mistake. The cabbage plants were “healthy and vigorous,” but the rutabaga was swarming with flea beetles. A few days later, it was dead. Upon closer inspection, the farmer realized that the rutabaga had become so overgrown it had detached from its roots:
    Whatever the cause of its demise, the flea beetles knew the plant was under stress three days before there were any visible signs. When the rutabaga died the flea beetles did not move to the cabbages. Because the cabbages were not stressed. Obviously insects cannot maintain a population on unstressed plants because such plants do not provideconditions conducive to insect nutrition and multiplication. The cabbages remained pest free.The organic farmer would look for the cause. The chemical farmer would treat the symptom and just spray.
    Treating causes instead of symptoms is as elegant, but not as simple, as it sounds. To address the cause, you need to look for underlying problems—which means you need to have a certain kind of worldview.
    It helps if your worldview includes the belief that nature knows best. A plant suffering from an infestation of pests is not a shortcoming of nature; it’s a plant you’re not mothering well. Either the nutrient balance in the soil is wrong or your crops aren’t being rotated properly or the variety cultivated is wrong for the area—or any one of dozens of other possibilities. Your job is to figure it out. Since the chemical farmer has the option of spraying the problem away, he tends not to bother.
BUILDING FENCES
    My grandmother Ann never spoke about weeds or plant health. I’m sure she knew nothing about the subject. But every spring, she had coffee with Mr. Mitchell, the farmer who owned the cattle that grazed Blue Hill Farm, and Mr. Mitchell always said the same thing. “Ms. Strauss, my cows don’t eat much of anything until they get to your farm. I don’t know what it is about your grass, but they fatten right up.” When Ann heard “they fatten right up,” she looked like a child in front of a mountain of ice cream. She was proud of her grass, even if she had nothing to do with its health or virtue.
    Mr. Mitchell’s praise worked just as well for an impressionable kid like me. I knew Blue Hill Farm was the most special place in the world, but now there was proof—bragging rights that meant a lot (who could argue with a fattened cow?), even if I never bragged (because who would care?).
    Then a change happened on the farm that, at the time, I hardly noticed.The cows began to congregate at the fence line, necks down, to eat the perimeter grass. They stretched their necks under the fence to reach grasses that apparently were worth the strain. Then they reached over the barbed wire for a few bites. Pretty soon the cows ignored the fence altogether, pushing their way through and roaming the property. They tended to find their way to the gardens and then fan out all over the lawn. By August this was happening two or three times a week. I would wake to Ann snapping up her window shade and hear, “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” (If they were already in her beloved flower garden, it was “Oh, God damn it.”) The cows appeared gratified by their extra effort. Ann was furious.
    By late morning, Mr. Mitchell’s sons, Robert and Dale, would arrive to usher the cows back into the pasture. We’d spend the next hour “fixing fence,” as the brothers called it—walking the line to find the weak places the cows might exploit. It felt like meaningful work, and it placated my grandmother, but by the end of the summer its futility had become clear. Unless we built the Berlin Wall, there was no way to ensure the cows would remain in the pasture.
    Many years later, long after my grandmother died, I read the work of André Voisin, a French biochemist who studied the link between soil, animal, and human health. Voisin tells the story of French farmwomen