Regenerative Farming Has the Potential to Reverse Climate Change. This Chef Discusses How to Scale It
In My Regenerative Kitchen, chef Camilla Marcus writes “that the core beauty of life lies in the friction, those moments when discomfort and uncertainty spark an indescribable energy.” As a climate activist, Marcus founded New York City’s first zero-waste restaurant, west~bourne, which she now leads as a regenerative, carbon-neutral brand (the restaurant closed due to rent challenges during the pandemic). Given her ingenuity, I was curious when that friction manifested as opportunities on her journey to advocate for regenerative farming.
“When it relates to the food system and farming, it’s the exact allegory to where we’ve gotten in food; Every piece of fruit coming out of a mono-crop farm that’s using pesticides and stripping our land to make sure that two apples look identical,” she says. “The land is going dry, arid, and fallow. Yet, we’re still heralding that two apples should be identical on the shelf.”
“Perfect is not the goal, and it’s antithetical to the human experience,” she adds. “It’s going back to the way food used to be grown and letting go of this need for things to be perfect, smooth, and predictable. One, it’s not tenable. Two, it’s not human. Three, it’s not natural.”