Good food comes from somewhere and someone. Behind food with superlative taste, there is always a place and a face.

Slow Food Chicago strives to forge stronger ties between our region’s farmers and the consumers of their products. When speaking about the food consumer, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini has coined the term “co-producer”, to stress the importance of an eater’s partnership and bond with the farmer.

Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and poet, famously said, “Eating is an agricultural act,” to which Slow Food responds, “Agriculture is a gastronomic act.” We all benefit when we strive to shorten the links in the chain from pasture to plate, and by realizing that satisfaction at the table is inextricably linked to conscientious custody of the field.

On these pages, we would like to introduce some farmers you should know. Read and learn, and then go meet these terrific producers at farmers markets in our area. Reestablish the connection we should all have to the sources of fresh, local, seasonal, healthy, delicious food.

Another excellent source of farmer information is the web site  Local Harvest. There you’ll find a nationwide database of small, sustainable farmers, organized by region, with detailed information about their products, markets and CSAs. Local Harvest has also partnered with Slow Food USA to catalog producers of US Ark Products, in an effort “to bring the Ark of Taste off the page and into farms and kitchens!”