Fast/Slow, Big/Small: Bedfellows

A few recent stories got us thinking about this question of bedfellows. Can fast food be slow if it's sourced locally and made with quality ingredients? Can a small producer sell itself to a corporate food giant and maintain its integrity?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the latest small food company to hop into bed with big business, and wonders if they are deluded in thinking that further distribution and a larger market share will be a good thing (and not a harbinger of doom). Honest Tea has given Coca Cola 40% of its shares, joining the ranks of Stonyfield Yogurt, Ben and Jerry's , etc.–small alternative companies, known for quality ingredients, who sold themselves to big business. We've shown graphics like this one before, but here's another one to throw into the mix: last month's NY Times offered this look at how small organic businesses get "gobbled up by big food."

And what about this question of fast food being slow? Possible? Last month came reports that the Chipotle burrito chain (which already uses Niman Ranch pork products) was going to source local Polyface farm products for its Virginia-area stores. Ode magazine's April issue has the following cover: "Eat a burger, SAVE THE WORLD. Why the "new" fast food is good for you (and the planet)." It covers chains such as Chipotle, Burgerville and Seller's Markets, and explores the notion of fast food that can be good for you. Is it still "fast?" Does it count as "slow " now…?

Food riots make the front page

Riots in Haiti, in response to the inflation of food prices, have brought this issue of rising food prices around the world to the front page. Riots such as these have taken place in Egypt, Cameroon, Senegal etc. and are at risk of occurring in 33 more countries, The Wall Street Journal reported today. The IMF Board of Governors is calling for an "integrated response" from the World Bank and the IMF to what has become an untenable situation for many poor countries. Although, as we mentioned in last Tuesday's post, there are several contributing factors to this rise in food prices, everyone seems to agree that the United States' obsession with biofuels is partly to blame.

* This article on WSJ.com is only able to be viewed by non-subscribers for a few more days.

Rising Food Prices: The Perfect Storm

We here at Slow Food USA have been saying for quite some time now that food in this country is too cheap, and have been urging people to think about the true cost of food. No one could have predicted, though, how quickly food prices would rise around the globe, changing the conversation quite significantly. In the NY Times last week, Kim Severson talked with Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and other sustainable food advocates about this rise and what it could/will mean for the average consumer. The title of the article? "Some Good News on Food Prices."

Good news? Not so fast, say some. Tom Philpott over at Grist took issue with their analysis/predictions and got some good conversation going in his comments section.

Meanwhile, over at Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviewed Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved: the Hidden Battle for the World Food System. The title, of course, refers to the paradox of the twin epidemics we face right here in our own country but also around the world: obesity and hunger.

He explains the rising food prices as a "perfect storm:" the combination of last year being a bad year for crops, the rise of interest in biofuels, developing nations eating more meat (which uses much more grain than it would to eat grain directly), and the rise of oil prices. He calls ethanol as an alternative to oil as "madness," and comes down hard on the U.S.' free trade agenda as being partly responsible for the present food riots in the developing world.

Standing fast against fast food labor practices

By Slow Food USA staff member Winnie Yang

In the Spring 2008 issue of the Snail (coming soon to a mailbox near you, if you're a member), Candelario Velazquez describes the struggle of farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, and the work the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is doing jointly with the Student/Farmworkers Alliance (SFA) to fight the fast food industry's unjust practices. For decades the industry "has used its power and leverage to demand cheap produce, translating directly into lower wages and poorer working conditions for the workers picking that produce."

The Snail article goes on to describe the remarkable successes CIW and SFA have realized, but their work is far from finished. And now, you can help.

SFA's Meghan Cohorst wrote to let us know that CIW has recently launched a petition campaign to urge Burger King to work with them to end sweatshops and slavery in the fields. The campaign is based on a similar one used by 19th-century British abolitionists, who began their movement to abolish slavery with a petition drive. The CIW petition will be delivered to Burger King on April 28.

Find out more and sign the petition.

(photo by Meghan Cohorst)

Zap it?

by Slow Food USA staff member Jerusha Klemperer

Today, in the Dining Section of the NY Times, Mark Bittman and Harold McGee both approach the subject of the microwave.

Actually, I hesitate even to mention microwaves since we have this problem here in our office of getting calls from people wondering about our stance on microwaves (we don't have one); this will mean that Google searches will start turning up "slow food" and "microwave" in the same textual vicinity and our office will get even more confused callers. Ah well.

As a city dweller who has lived with mostly teeny, tiny kitchens, I got rid of my microwave years ago when I moved into a studio apartment. Counter space was precious and a big plastic box meant no room to chop veggies, so I gave it to a friend, wondering as I did so if I'd miss it terribly. I never did.

Once, about three weeks after I moved, I wanted to melt some chocolate for brownies. I unwrapped the chocolate, put it in a pyrex bowl, and cast my eyes about the small kitchen, confused and forlorn. So I pulled out a pot, put the chocolate in the pot, and once I realized that "hey! You can, like, heat stuff on the stove!" I never looked back. In four years I haven't felt cramped at all (well, maybe physically but my style, no my style has not been cramped).

It seems like Bittman and McGee, though gamely trying to find the virtues of a microwave for the sake of their articles, agree with me. I think, deep down, they do. No, Slow Food isn't about being anti-microwave, but I do think it's about knowing your food; McGee talks about pine nuts cooking on the inside but not browning on the outside, and the strangeness of needing to keep opening and closing the microwave door to assess the state of affairs, and it makes me think that a microwave gets in the way of that knowing.

The final whimpers of the Food and Farm Bill

Although Congress passed an extension on 2002's Farm Bill until April 18, requiems are already being said for the hopes and dreams everyone had for radical change.

"A little more than a year ago," The Wall Street Journal said yesterday in this excellent article, "the stars appeared to be aligned for significant changes to the complex piece of legislation known as the farm bill… But now serious reform is likely to be left behind like corn husks flung from a combine."

As explained by Lauren Etter and Greg Hitt, the farm lobby continues to be an extremely powerful force on Capitol Hill (n.b. this link is only free to non-subscribers for another 5 days).

Meanwhile, over at Gourmet magazine, they've got an article by Sam Hurst called "Betting the Farm," that examines the Farm Bill, subsidies, and one South Dakota family living in the heart of subsidy country, but following a different path. "I've got a philosophical problem with growing corn," says young farmer Michael Stiegelmeier, "Most corn goes to livestock. I prefer to feed grain to people, and I prefer for cattle to eat grass."

Bruce Sterling & Metropolis Miss the Point: By, well, about as far as you can miss it

The March, 2008 issue of Metropolis focuses on the overarching idea of localism and its relationship to sustainability. It is, as always, a beautiful and well-written issue, but in it one particular columnist, Bruce Sterling, has taken Slow Food to task accusing us once again of that old canard, elitism.

Now while it is true that the movement is often accused of such things, it is not true, nor is it always such a bad thing anyway. Bear in mind that most of the great social movements throughout history were begun by the so-called "elite," (witness abolition and suffrage - not to mention that Ghandi was a well-to-do attorney). But the places Mr. Sterling gets it wrong are so manifold it's hard to know where to start.

Let's try here:

The Cornish Pilchard. The Chilean Blue Egg Hen. The Cypriot Tsamarella and Bosnian Sack Cheese. You haven't seen these foods at McDon­ald's because they are strictly local rarities championed by Slow Food, the social movement founded to combat the proliferation of fast food. McDonald's is a multinational corporation: it retails identical food products on the scale of billions, repeatedly, predictably, worldwide. Slow Food, the self-appointed anti-McDonald's, is a "revolution" whose aim is a "new culture of food and life."

Actually you haven't seen these foods at McDonald's because McDonald's sells hamburgers. Here Mr. Sterling has blundered by believing that who/what Slow Food is is somehow stagnant and monolithic. If such things were true then the US would still be a few puritan slave owners dotted up and down the east coast. Or the Chicago Cubs would have been the National League power for the last century. He goes on…

Slow Food began as a jolly clique of leftist academics, entertainers, wine snobs, and pop stars, all friends of Ital­ian journalist and radio personality Carlo Petrini.

I've often wondered what it is about food and wine that makes those who appreciate it automatically labeled "snobs." Wine is just fermented grape juice actually one of the simplest foods known to man. Appreciating quality is not snobbery. Pretending to know something one doesn't actually understand - that's snobbery. For some reason someone who appreciates the inner workings of a fine internal combustion engine is not a snob, but someone who likes a well made buerre blanc is.

The group is the suave host for massive international food events in Torino. Other Slow Food emanations include a hotel, various nonprofit foundations, and—in a particularly significant development—a private college. The University of Gastronomic Sciences, founded in 2004, is the training ground for 200-plus international Slow Food myrmidons per year, who are taught to infiltrate farms, groceries, heritage tourism, restaurants, commercial consortia, hotel chains, catering companies, product promotion, journalism, and government. These areas are, of course, where Slow Food already lives.

My, we are sinister, aren't we? We are "suave," and we are "infiltrating" a host of consortia and other institutions (notably journalism, after all, here I am) with our "myrmidons." (Curious? Yeah, I had to look it up too - despite my apparent position in my ivory tower as an intellectual elite - it means "a follower who carries out orders without question." Evidently now we're a cult)

I'm not sure why Mr. Sterling considers these ideas to be so threatening, but the fact is Slow Food couldn't care less what the McDonalds and Monsantos of the world do, until they start to crap where we live. In the meantime, we promote these ideas because we believe them to be good ideas worthy of proliferation and preservation. Food defines who we are as individuals and as cultures. We are truly what we eat, and too many people are fast, cheap and easy. The right of ADM or Monsanto, Applebees or Burger King to swing its arms ends at the tip of the eater's nose. Who owns your food owns you, and it is unwise to let that power rest in the hands of a very few wealthy corportations.

As the spiritual, political, and ideological wellspring of all things "eco-gastronomic," Slow Food has woven a set of quiet understandings with the city of Torino, the region of Piedmont, the Italian Foreign Ministry, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Sir, due respect and setting aside your constant condescension for a moment, but there's been nothing "quiet" about it. Logos for those government bodies and organizations are emblazoned on, for example, ALL the literature regarding the Salone del Gusto, (need proof? click that link) the largest food show of its kind, atracting 200,000 people each year. Oh, and yes, it's in Italy. The organization was founded there, that's why. Our last International Leaders' Congress was held in Puebla, Mexico because preserving the foods and traditions of the so-called "developing" world is at the top of Slow Food's mission list. We are not as exclusionary as you seem to think.

In regard to Slow Food's Presidia project, he had this to say:

The cleverest innovation to date is the network's presidium system. The Slow Food "presidia" make up a grassroots bottom-up version of the European "Domain of Control" system, which requires, for instance, that true "champagnes" must come from the province of Champagne, while lesser fizzy brews are labeled mere "sparkling wines." These presidia have made Slow Food the planetary paladin of local production. Slow Food deploys its convivia to serve as talent scouts for food rarities (such as Polish Mead, the Istrian Giant Ox, and the Tehuacan Amaranth). Candidate discoveries are passed to Slow Food's International Ark Commission, which decides whether the foodstuff is worthy of inclusion. Its criteria are strict: (a) Is the product nonglobalized or, better yet, inherently nonglobalizable? (b) Is it artisanally made (so there's no possibility of any industrial economies of scale)? (c) Is it high-quality (the consumer "wow" factor)? (d) Is it sustainably produced? (Not only is this politically pleasing, but it swiftly eliminates competition from most multinationals.) (e) Is this product likely to disappear from the planet otherwise? (Biodiversity must be served!)

Sterling seems to think this is being done for our organization's own aggrandizement, or perhaps even profit. Simply not so. it s being done because, as the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity do clearly states:

5% of European food product diversity has been lost since 1900

93% of American food product diversity has been lost in the same time period

33% of livestock varieties have disappeared or are near disappearing

30,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct in the last century, and one more is lost every six hours

The mission of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity is to organize and fund projects that defend our world's heritage of agricultural biodiversity and gastronomic traditions.

We envision a new agricultural system that respects local cultural identities, the earth's resources, sustainable animal husbandry, and the health of individual consumers.

And yes, Mr. Sterling, biodiversity MUST be served. Nature does not function without it and the industrialization and standardization of food and flavors is a direct threat to that diversity. For those who would like to know the true mission (and criteria) of the Foundation for Biodiversity and the Presidia Projects, please click here.

It is, among its many other roles, a potent promotion machine. Transforming local rarities into fodder for global gourmets is, of course, profitable. And although he's no capitalist—the much honored Petrini is more justly described as a major cultural figure—he was among the first to realize that as an economic system globalization destroys certain valuable goods and services that rich people very much want to buy.

There he goes again, thinking that there is some profit motive behind what we do, like our 501(c)3 status and clear and concise billing as an educational organization is just some sort of front for gluttonous Nobles Oblige rather that an honest attempt to help preserve flavors, traditions, and ways of life. Does he really believe that mankind's only choices are get on board with the agribusiness oligarchs or get run over by them? We think not. We think it's a good idea to try to preserve great food. We think there should be more than one kind of hamburger in the world. More than one flavor of beer. We believe foundations and traditions are important because they make us who we are.

He concludes:

But while McDonald's mechanically peddles burgers to the poor, Slow Food acculturates the planet's wealthy to the gourmand quality of life long cherished by the European bon vivant. They have about as much in common as an aging shark and a networked swarm of piranhas.

Yes, McDonald's does do that, as the overwhelming rates of obesity and diabetes among "the poor" (especially children) so clearly demonstrates. But far from reserving these "cherished" foods of the world for some elite class, Slow Food is working to proliferate them, and to return them to the artisans and yes, often peasants, from which they originated. we seek to make people aware of the connections between food and pleasure on the one hand, and awareness and responsibility on the other.

Mr. Sterling's dismissal of Slow Food's successful efforts as snobbery or elitism rings quite hollow on closer examination of what Slow Food is truly trying to do. I suggest, Mr. Sterling, that you read more, learn more, and perhaps visit Slow Food Nation this coming summer. There you may open your eyes to a food system we call "Good, clean, and fair."

"He who distinguishes the true savor of his food," Thoreau once wrote, "cannot be a glutton. He who does not, cannot be otherwise."

Read Mr. Sterling's entire article here

SF Atlanta Gets Good Press

In case you missed this, Atlanta's "Sunday Paper" had this to say about its convivium, and founding leader (and Southern Regional Governor) Julie Schaffer:

Preserving traditions

Photo Credit: Spark St. Jude
Julie Shaffer, founder of the Atlanta chapter of Slow Food

By Hope S. Philbrick

If you ate milk and cookies every day after school and now serve the same snack to your kids, you could say that's a gastronomic tradition. If milk and cookies is the common after-school snack within your community, you could call it a local food tradition. If all the folks who once made cookies from scratch stopped baking, these traditions would be lost.

Slow Food is an international group with more than 80,000 members working to preserve food traditions, food heritage and food cultures throughout the world while focusing on what they call "eco-gastronomy" or the connection between plate and planet. Slow Food hopes to establish and protect food systems that result in food that is good, clean and fair: That is, food that tastes good, is produced without harming the environment, animals or health, and provides fair compensation to producers. It's a cookie that's easy to swallow.

You can rest the rest of the story at SundayPaper.com

New corn on the blog

by Membership Assistant, Julia De Martini Day

"Sin maíz, no hay país!" "Without corn, there is no country!" were the words chanted by the Independent Women's Movement on International Women's Day March 8th in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico as they protested against free trade agreements devastating local agricultural communities and affordable access to staple food items, such as corn.

More and more are attention is brought back to how our increasingly globalized food distribution system is leaving us – whether we are in the USA or in Mexico - with rising food prices, as well as other costs, such as the health and environmental effects of eating and producing food made with chemicals or GMOs. In a New York Times article in February about the rising costs of wheat, even the large multi-national company General Mills said they would have to raise prices, and the article notes that the consequences are stretched wallets at home and abroad.

Both the protests in Chiapas and the article in the NYTimes leave us asking, how can we nourish ourselves and our families with food that is healthy and affordable – or good, clean and fair? How can we build off an increasing awareness of a globalized food system to ensure that the agricultural products inherent to our communities are also made to be staples of the local economies we are working to build?

We are inside a mountain in the Arctic because

Back in August, in the New Yorker, John Seabrook wrote about the world's first global seed bank that was being built inside a mountain in the Arctic, in Norway. Lo these many months later, The New York Times reports that the seed bank has just received its first shipment of one million seeds, describing the bank as a "Fort Knox of Food."

It's interesting to note that the majority of the article discusses the dangerous effects of extreme weather on our food supply's biodiversity; it's only at the very end that they mention the fact that "economics encourages farmers to drop crops." A further explanation is probably necessary here for the average reader–it's a pretty big/deep sentence to unpack.

They do mention that a hard core vault isn't the only way to save seeds. Regular people all over the world have seed banks of sorts, using boxes and bags and minimal refrigeration to do their best. In addition, there are organizations that focus on preservation of a particular region's biodiversity; a notable project is Navdanya's Seed Bank in Champaran, India.

Here in this country we have Seed Savers Exchange, and Native Seeds/SEARCH. These two are meant to be resources–not just as giant refrigerators to remain untouched but as a way to reinvigorate our food supply by helping to distribute these seeds and grow them out.