Many quick-serve and fast-casual restaurants these days pride themselves on the freshness of their ingredients. Which is a good thing because, as you probably know, when you reduce the amount of time in the ingredient supply chain, you ultimately increase the quality (and therefore taste) of those ingredients.

On top of this, customers are becoming more educated, more health-conscious and more demanding of quality when it comes to the foods they are choosing. But what they often miss is the symbiotic relationship between those who produce the food, and those who buy it for their menus.

But, even with this push for fresher ingredients, we're seeing a global trend of family farms disappearing- and fast. And there is no real big secret as to why. In the U.S., the average age of a farmer is 57 years old. That's up from 55 years old just a mere five years previous.

The point is - younger people aren't farming. These days, farming is a complete economic risk. There is a lot of financial risk to it and many are fearful of taking out loans without much evidence to support they will become successful.

Thankfully, restaurants are seeing this and really stepping in to ensure they have a stable supply chain of fresh ingredients moving forward. Some operators are re-framing the way they see their relationship with farmers and considering it more of a partnership than a buyer-seller relationship.

To this end, they are going above and beyond to ensure their farmers are successful - because they mutual success is so intricately linked. Some restaurants are going so far as to offer loans to their farmers to ensure they have the right machinery and labor to produce the quality and quantity of ingredients needed to support the brand's menu.

The good new is that, as small- and medium-sized farms begin to take-hold off this new partnership opportunity, so are larger farm operators as well. Perdue in the U.S.A. for example has bought out a smaller farm operator with the hope of learning what it does to meet the specific needs of restaurant chains that require ingredients of a higher quality - but not in mass quantities.

As with most industries, farming has challenges ahead - but by choosing to re-frame the relationships they have with quick-serve and fast-casual restaurants, they are on the right tract to sustainability and long-term profit.