In 1999, Jared Diamond, a UCLA professor of geography, and the Pulitzer Prize winning

author of Guns, Germs and Steel, published an influential essay titled The Worst Mistake

in the History of the Human Race.

Based on the inflammatory headline, one might assume he was writing of, say, a ruinous religious

crusade.

But Diamond instead gives the dubious distinction to agriculture.

Diamond persuasively argues that humans transitioning from hunter-gatherer societies to ones based

on farming and ranching led to sharp declines in life expectancy, huge increases in infectious

disease and birth defects, and the creation of class systems, as a surplus of resources

allowed high status leaders to idle as they profited from the manual labor of others.

The thesis that oppression and plagues and wars are all consequences of agriculture

contrast with the human common conflations of farmers and decency and hunter-gatherers

and savagery.

But whether or not Diamond is correct, our lot is cast here in the 21st century, as the

mechanization of agriculture has led to a factory farm society awash in both cheap,

plentiful food and rampant inequality.

In this geopolitical environment, three words have become shorthand for a brand of

environmentally responsible, health-conscious eating, popular and gentrified urban neighborhoods.

Farm to Table.

In 2006, with that buzz phrase in mind, three former employees of Shudders on the Beach,

a luxury hotel in Santa Monica, open a quick service eatery in Culver City, California.

The concept was based on locally sourced proteins and vegetables that could be customized

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