What’s Beneath Our Food Matters: Honest Plate and the Regenerative Farming Movement

A few years ago, I watched The Biggest Little Farm, and it stayed with me. The film follows John and Molly Chester as they try to bring depleted land back to life. It is beautiful, occasionally chaotic, and refreshingly honest about how much patience farming takes. I came away thinking differently about something I had spent a lifetime taking for granted: the ground beneath our food.

At Honest Plate, we talk a lot about what goes into a meal: fresh vegetables, simple ingredients and food made from scratch by local chefs. But there is another question worth asking. What happened to the land before those ingredients reached our kitchen?

That question is at the heart of regenerative farming.

What does “regenerative” mean?

Regenerative farming is an approach to agriculture that aims to improve the health of the land while producing food. Depending on the farm, that might mean rotating crops, planting cover crops between harvests, reducing disturbance of the soil, adding compost, or making room for pollinators and other wildlife.

Think of soil as a living part of the farm, rather than just somewhere to plant seeds. When farmers protect it and keep it biologically active, soil can absorb and hold more water, resist erosion and support the next season’s crops. These practices can also help store carbon in the soil, though the results vary by place and by method. There is no single recipe that works for every farm.

For those of us eating the food, the connection is practical. Healthy farms are better placed to keep growing through difficult seasons. Nearby farms keep more of our food system rooted in our own communities. And knowing the people who grow our ingredients gives us a chance to ask better questions about how they were produced.

What we’re doing at Honest Plate

On the East End of Long Island, our sourcing relationships include Halsey Farm, Nurel’s Farm Stand in Hampton Bays, and North Sea Farms. Working with local growers and suppliers lets our chefs build menus around what is available, instead of expecting every ingredient to arrive from somewhere far away in every season.

It also makes the farming conversation more personal. What is growing well this year? How does a farmer care for the soil between crops? What does it take to keep working farmland working, especially where land is under pressure to be developed?

Organizations such as the Peconic Land Trust play a vital role in protecting the East End’s agricultural land for future generations. Land preservation and soil care are different jobs, but they belong in the same conversation: farmers need land they can continue to farm if they are to invest in its long-term health.

Executive Chef Nick Reisini - “As a chef, I can taste the difference that fresh, seasonal ingredients make. But I also want to know the story behind them: who grew them, what is thriving locally, and how we can make the most of what the farm gives us. That relationship makes us better cooks.”

As we prepare for Honest Plate’s Park City opening later in October, we want to bring that same curiosity to Utah. We’re looking forward to building relationships with local farmers and producers, learning how they care for their land, and finding ways for our menus to reflect the place and season in which we cook.

Four films to start the conversation

If this subject is new to you, I recommend starting with The Biggest Little Farm. It makes the work feel real through one family’s experience.

Then there is the documentary trilogy from filmmakers Josh and Rebecca Tickell:

• Kiss the Ground (2020) introduces soil health and its potential role in addressing climate change.

• Common Ground (2023) looks more closely at the systems that shape how food is grown.

• Groundswell (2026) takes the story across five continents to meet people putting regenerative ideas into practice.

  
  

These films make a persuasive case. They are also a starting point for questions, not the last word on every farming or climate claim. That is part of why I would love more of us to watch them and talk about what we learned.

Pick one film and watch it with a friend or your family. Start with The Biggest Little Farm if you want a personal story, or explore the trilogy and watch Groundswell if you want the wider picture. Then ask where your own food comes from, visit a local farm stand, and tell us which ideas or questions stayed with you.

We hope to continue the conversation with local experts in Park City around our opening later in October. We’ll share details once the event is confirmed. For now, the invitation is simple: watch, get curious, and look a little more closely at the ground beneath your next meal.

Eat honestly. Care for what grows and how it fuels your body.