Focus Session

How Farmers Can Cultivate Flavor on their Fields

Exploring the impact of farming on how products taste

What`s it about?

Plants can only tickle our palates with the taste that they derive from their soil. Agricultural practices can play an essential role in the aromatic and gustatory pleasures involved in our food. Yet the question remains: which parameters of cultivation actually impact the taste profiles of the plants? How can these be targeted in a systematic way?

In this workshop we’ll explore the variables available to farmers to nurture the taste of the plants they grow, based on the experience of Jack Algiere of the Stone Bars Center. When farmers begin to understand their work as shaped by how they cultivate aromas and tastes in the field, it impacts not only their approach, but also the work of the chef. This workshop will serve as a chance to discuss this dynamic and ask how the relationship between farmer and chef might be redefined.

Moderator

Jack Algiere has spent more than twenty years as a chef and serves as agricultural director for the farming, teaching and research program at the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. Working in close collaboration with Blue Hill, the center’s in-house restaurant under the leadership of Executive Chef Dan Barber, Jack and his team explore which innovative practices of regenerative agriculture impact the taste of the cultivated plants and cultivate new varieties in a targeted manner for use in the restaurant. Jack has spent many years passing along his knowledge of organic and biodynamic agriculture to young farmers and students and is a member of the supervisory board on multiple agricultural organizations.