People are familiar with having a farm-to-fork meal at a restaurant, and even preparing one at home. But serving farm-fresh food to thousands at a time is much more difficult, and something Chef Santana Diaz of UC Davis Health does every day. Having pioneered farm-fresh eating in sports venues at Levi's Stadium and Sacramento's Golden 1 Center, he's no stranger to the challenges presented by needing to feed so many people, and he approaches those challenges by building relationships with the farmers themselves with the eye not just of a chef, but also of an economist.
Listen to "Chef Santana Diaz on Making Farm-to-Fork Eating Possible in Hospitals, Arenas" on Spreaker.In this episode of the Visit Sacramento Podcast, Diaz discusses how his growing up in California agricultural land led to a lifelong interest in food that took him places he'd never envisioned to where he finds himself now -- reinventing hospital food and switching the model to more closely resemble hotel room service for the more than 6,000 beds in the facility. In doing so, he's able to have an effect on the local agricultural economy by being a secure buyer for farmers who otherwise face significant risk when planting and hoping for a buyer. And Sacramento, being America's Farm-to-Fork Capital, is the perfect place to hone that program.
