If you meet Sean Brock, the chef at McCrady’s in Charleston, South Carolina, he’ll probably offer to feed you some old pork—but don’t be alarmed. What you’re getting is a taste of a heritage-breed pig, dating back to the days of the homestead, when pigs were still, well, pigs—foraging on their own, rooting around in the earth, and, ultimately, tasting the way they were meant to taste.

With the rise of industrial farming in the last fifty years, that’s become a rarity in today’s food culture, dominated by specialized breeds developed for their high production value rather than taste. Raised mostly in factories, our livestock no longer reflects the air and land and water that once sustained it. Over time, we entered the era of a new national blandness.

But not so fast. Real taste is coming back. Across the South and beyond, crusading chefs such as Brock are partnering with a new breed of farmer (or rather, an old breed of farmer) on a mission to reconnect the country to its agrarian roots. “I tasted my first heritage chicken—nothing like any chicken I ever tasted before—and it made me angry,” Brock says. “It isn’t fair that breeding livestock has become a monopoly—that corporations can actually trademark an animal or own its genetics—and we are forced to live with homogenized taste.” Take a look at Brock’s menu, and you’ll see the names of these farms and farmers right alongside the dishes, proof that the people raising our food are once again becoming as important as the people preparing it. ¶ With a new respect for traditional agriculture, chefs and farmers are working together to try to ensure there will be a place at the table for heritage breeds. For the farmers, the partnerships offer an economically viable way to survive outside the factory-farm system, a system some of them are all too familiar with. As the weekend boss for his mother’s farm about thirty years ago, Joe Henderson was there in the early days of industrial farming. “We produced four thousand pigs a year on ten acres of facilities, and their feet never touched the ground,” he says. “You might say I have farmed on the dark side, and I learned that while it is terribly seductive in the short term, it is ultimately dangerous to our health and our land.” Today, in Virginia, Henderson raises Randall Lineback cattle, an extremely rare heritage breed that dates back to colonial times.

What follows is a look at three farmers who have found a niche—you could even say a calling—raising heritage-breed livestock. Yes, the meat costs more. But when you see these animals up close, they look not just beautiful; most important, they look healthy. “We have to fix this,” Brock says. “We’ve got to preach it more.”  Because after all, what would you rather eat?