Chefs and Farmers: A Journey to Sustainability

Two books that inspire knowledge—and action

Food is much more than what we eat; it is a complex system that intertwines the environment, economy, society, and culture. Understanding and interpreting this intricate yet fascinating system can be challenging, but books serve as valuable guides. Today, we recommend two insightful reads that highlight the stories of innovative chefs and sustainable livestock farming practices.

Marianne Landzettel’s The Sustainable Meat Challenge explores how quality meat production can go hand in hand with environmental and animal welfare. Meanwhile, Carole Counihan and Susanne Højlund’s Chefs, Restaurants, and Culinary Sustainability provides an overview of sustainable practices embraced by key figures in the restaurant industry. Notably, this book includes a chapter on the Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance in Kenya—a compelling story of collective commitment and activism, as narrated by Michele Fontefrancesco and Dauro Mattia Zocchi, researchers at the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

Happy reading!

Building Food Sustainability in the Kitchen

What defines a sustainable restaurant model? Carole Counihan and Susanne Højlund have created the first collection of its kind to explore restaurant sustainability from an anthropological perspective. Their book brings together fifteen chapters by different authors, highlighting four key and interconnected themes that emerge in chefs’ efforts to promote culinary sustainability: taste, kitchen practices, social relations, and activism.

Chapter 13, under the theme Diversity, Equity, and Activism, focuses on the Kenyan branch of the Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance. Anthropologists Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco and Dauro Mattia Zocchi studied this network by interviewing eleven chefs working in a variety of settings, including schools, office cafeterias, and both upscale and casual restaurants. These chefs advocate for environmental, economic, and cultural sustainability by reviving local ingredients that were forgotten during the colonial period. Through their efforts, they foster greater awareness and pride in Kenyan food culture, teach traditional cooking methods, and strengthen the local farming economy.

Despite Kenya’s leadership in Eastern African tourism, its culinary traditions and restaurant industry have historically received little attention. Fontefrancesco and Zocchi note that, even in the 2020s, most Kenyan restaurants still primarily feature Western and Franco-British cuisine. However, in the past decade, the sector has increasingly recognized the value of local food heritage as a driver of economic development.

This research demonstrates how cooks can influence food practices in a way that supports sustainability, helping to reshape the local food scene by reviving ingredients and cooking methods that were overlooked after the colonial period.

All members of the Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance in Kenya actively champion traditional cuisine, serving dishes such as millet ugali (polenta made from millet flour), matoke (plantain stew), and mursik (fermented milk from cows, sheep, or goats). They also use indigenous ingredients, especially leafy greens like black nightshade, amaranth, spider plant, and slender leaf. This approach strengthens the connection between consumers and producers while allowing diners to experience the diverse culinary traditions of Kenya’s many tribes and regions.

The Kenyan Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance members differ from celebrity chefs in that they do not rely on mass or social media to promote food. Instead, they engage directly with communities, striving to integrate traditional foods into everyday life. By reviving Indigenous foods and recipes, they are transforming Kenya’s food culture. This serves as a valuable example of how to support sustainable food systems in both developed and developing countries.

A Perspective on The Sustainable Meat Challenge

We reproduce here the review that appeared on the Slow Food in the UK website, written by David Matchett.

The Sustainable Meat Challenge presents an informed and compelling vision of an ethical and ecologically sound approach to meat production, which strongly resonates with Slow Food’s focus on local, seasonal, and artisanal food systems. One of the book’s many strengths is its ability to bring essential, though sometimes overlooked, stages of the food system to the forefront.

The book’s advocacy for regenerative farming aligns with Slow Food principles, demonstrating how grazing animals contribute to biodiversity and play a vital role in soil health by fostering ecosystems that support a wide range of life. This is contrasted with the intensive feedlot systems prevalent in industrial agriculture, which degrade the environment and deplete natural resources.

The book highlights the importance of treating animals with respect, ensuring a less stressful and more dignified end to their lives. The case for local abattoirs is clearly linked to the practice of humane slaughter, which stands in sharp contrast to the industrial methods often associated with intensive meat production. The book’s photography brings us as visually close to the realities of animal life and death as many of us will ever get, encouraging us to witness and reflect on the life and death of the animals we consume as food.

The Sustainable Meat Challenge is an indispensable volume for farmers, policymakers, chefs, food buyers, home cooks, and food students—anyone interested in learning about practical solutions for producers and consumers alike, while also challenging the dominant paradigm of industrial agriculture.

Sustainable Food Trust, a registered British charity founded in response to the worsening human and environmental crises associated with the vast majority of today’s food and farming systems, also published an extract from Marianne’s book. In it, she shares the experiences of several farmers in Germany, who discuss the most humane methods for handling and slaughter—on pasture and among the herd.

Paola Nano

About the Authors

Carole Counihan is a professor emerita of anthropology at Millersville University and the editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Food and Foodways.

Susanne Højlund is an anthropologist specializing in taste and food culture, chef education, and children’s perceptions of taste. She is the head of FOCUS, the Center for Food Culture Studies at Aarhus University, and the initiator of the two interdisciplinary symposia Creative Tastebuds.

Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy, and an honorary fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University, United Kingdom.

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist covering food, farming, and agricultural policies in the UK, the EU, and the US.

Dauro Mattia Zocchi is a research fellow in geography at the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Bergamo.