On farm-vertising: How fast-food chains have gone small to sell big

Modern markets have found that we like to know we can trace our grocery-store buys back to a human being and a specific, even though we know little more about them than their names. Call it farm-vertising. These ads promise to demonstrate that fast food isn’t the product of a global industrial complex shipping food in to a central processing kitchen and then trucking products out to the McDonald’s on the corner. The ads typically feature a close-in shot of a farmer standing out in his fields, pulling up a freshly picked whatever and showing it off to the camera, seemingly revealing the familiar origins of our fast food. US potato farmer Frank Martinez even became a viral hero for his self-made success. More