A rift in slow food reveals big growing pains.

The foodiverse was all atwitter over this article from Chow last week. A rift has been forming between two factions within Slow Food USA, a non-profit organization that promotes the pleasures of the table, artisanal food production methods, sustainable agriculture, and direct connections between producers and consumers.

On one side is what we’ll call the Alice Waters faction that thinks food is too cheap to keep farmers who are doing the right thing in business and that people should prioritize food over consumer goods – and pay more for it. On the other side is some of the newer leadership of Slow Food that seeks to counter the charges of elitism that have continued to dog the organization, and to broaden its appeal to a younger, broker, and less well-connected demographic.

Think $20 pasture-raised chickens compared to Slow Food’s Recent $5 meal challenge. In some ways, switching its focus to value, rather than preciousness has helped Slow Food. Membership is up. But, according to the Chow article, donations are down from well-heeled donors who are unhappy with the organization’s new direction.

Critics insist that Slow Food must reach more people or risk being irrelevant to most of the population. Anna Smith Clark, The San Francisco Bay Area Governor of Slow Food agrees, but also thinks the laser-like focus in the media on higher profile elements around Slow Food do the organization a disservice. She points out that ordinary members within the organization are continually finding ways to disseminate the ideals behind Slow Food to different groups.  “There’s nothing written about the people who volunteer hours of their time planting the seeds of change in their communities among their friends and family members, or working with like-minded organizations,” says Smith Clark.

Discussions about Slow Food tend to focus on the need of reaching two specific groups: low income people and well-off foodies. For low income people the message is that it doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming to cook local, organic, real food, while the message for foodies is that when they fetishize taste, no matter the cost, they leave out a huge proportion of the population, for whom their message is useless.

As Slow Food grows up and the focus shifts away from its famous founders, there’s a third group that it will be crucial to reach: The enormous swath of the population with plenty of money to pay for good food, but who simply doesn’t care. This group doesn’t care about farmers, doesn’t care where food comes from, doesn’t care if it has additives, doesn’t care if it has too much packaging. Some probably doubt that organic is even healthier. Let’s call them the honey badgers of the consumer food market.  They really don’t give a sh*t.

If you’re a foodie living in a foodie bubble, you might forget these people exist. To remind yourself of the reality, go to a high-end conventional grocery store in any town in America, look at the cars in the parking lot, and watch what people put in their carts. It’s not a rarity to spot someone walking to a late model Mercedes or $70,000 Escalade with a grocery cart full of hundreds of dollars’ worth of processed, packaged food. Stacks of hot pockets, multiple giant boxes of Froot Loops, cases of Coca-Cola, jars of cheese dip, enormous bags of chips, and nary a fresh (or even frozen) vegetable in sight. Now go hang out around the parking lot of a fast food outlet in any well-off suburb, and notice how busy the drive-thru is.

So how does Slow Food reach those people? Smith Clark says people gravitate to the ideas of Slow Food around any number of issues, from concern for farm workers to childhood obesity. They get little tidbits of knowledge from community, news, friends, and family members, and at some point, the flashbulb lights up: “What are you going to do with the money in your pocket?” I ask if there isn’t some way to reach these people more quickly than these myriad individual conversations.

“I think that’s why it’s called Slow Food,” replies Smith Clark.

The honey badgers of the consumer food market vote. Changing the food system so that it is fair for both farmers and eaters is going to mean breaking the stranglehold the food industry has on food policy. Good food advocates need to reach the honey badgers and convince them that organic, sustainable food is not only better, but it’s also worth paying for, spending time cooking, and going to the polls for. Until then, you can pay all you want for chicken and heirloom vegetables at the farmers’ market, but the fast majority of food will still be processed, a lot of family farmers will still be impoverished, and those $20 chickens will continue to reach only a niche market. It’s going to take time. That’s why it’s a movement, not a revolution.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

Be Still my Beeping Crackberry: In Defense of Slow

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Slow, Meet Furniture. Furniture, Meet Your Maker.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate,  on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Lifesupercharger

The post Slow Going at Slow Food (And That’s the Point) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Cities across the nation suffer from some of the same ills regarding poor quality food and inequitable distribution of healthy, fresh produce and other unprocessed foods. But New York City has a bold plan that could very well serve as a model for the rest of us.

Communities in every urban area include pockets or neighborhoods that have higher rates of diet related diseases than neighboring communities, little or no physical access to healthy, fresh foods, or lack of money to buy the fresh food that is available. Our broken food system contributes to our national health problems, but it’s also a huge contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. Additionally, employment in the food sector – whether you are a farmer, farmworker, or service industry worker – often means scraping by on less than a living wage and living without health care.

How do we fix our food system and reform it into something that actually serves us?

If we want to build a decentralized food distribution system that serves the people equally, the best way is to start at home with a clear vision and concrete policy recommendations. NYC’s model for a better food system, if adopted, could be replicated in other cities across the nation, creating jobs and providing better food for more people.

In February, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer released “FoodNYC: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System,” calling it “the most comprehensive effort to date to unify and reform New York City’s policies regarding the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food.” (The report was produced as a result of the New York City Food and Climate Summit held in December (09) in partnership with the non-profit Just Food.)

Of all the ideas presented, the blueprint chose to outline 10 bold ideas for the future. Cities everywhere take notice!

1. Urban Agriculture: Urban agriculture can reduce rainwater runoff and pollution, reduce the heat-island effect in cities, and absorb and sequester carbon. New York’s blueprint calls on the city to create a citywide urban Ag program that will identify land that is available for urban agriculture, such as vacant lots owned by the city, foster community gardens by giving them park status, and ease regulations and provide incentives to pave the way for green rooftops and other innovative urban farming programs.

2. Regional Food Production: Small regional farmers struggle to survive and compete with cheap overseas produce and heavily subsidized produce from industrial farms. When this happens, farmland dwindles and the farming population shrinks while urban consumers remain hungry for local foods. One task of the plan is to assess the capacity of a regional foodshed, facilitate connections among upstate farms and downstate consumers, and develop a long-term strategy towards preserving current farmland.

3. Food Processing and Distribution: When local food has to be shipped off somewhere else to be processed, it’s not really local food anymore. Relocalizing processing can create jobs along with a greener, more equitable food system. The plan recommends increasing distribution capacity of fresh, regional foods by expanding the existing Hunts Point Wholesale Produce Market and building other smaller wholesale produce markets in different areas of the city. Another recommendation is to invest public funds in local food processing plants.

4. New Markets: It’s all about access. Neighborhoods that have access to healthy, fresh foods suffer lower incidences of diet related diseases. The plan recommends fostering the development of non-traditional food outlets such as farmers’ markets by investing in increasing their capacity, offering long-term leases for public markets, and taking other actions that lower the barriers to increasing the number and type of alternative (non-grocery store) food venues in every neighborhood.

5. Procurement of Regionally grown Foods: Municipalities have huge buying power and can really move the needle toward change. By investing public money in community-based food, governments are creating jobs and bettering the health of local citizens. The recommendations focus on requiring publicly-funded schools, hospitals, senior centers, homeless shelters, and jails to mandate the purchase of regionally produced food.

6. Education: Kids don’t necessarily learn how to eat well at home, any more than they might learn algebra there. The blueprint recommends fostering lifelong good eating habits through requiring food curriculum in schools, exposing children to farms and gardens, and instituting meatless Mondays in New York City schools.

7. Food Waste: Rotting food creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The plan recommends that the city lower food waste by decreasing the amount of food that goes uneaten through better procurement practices and by investing in municipal and individual composting programs.

8. Plastic Water Bottles: We live in a country with safe tap water, yet plastic bottles remain ubiquitous and have terrible environmental consequences. In New York, only 10% of plastic water bottles are recycled. The blueprint recommends banning sales of bottled water on city property and encouraging the use of water canteens.

9. Food Economy: Food fares well even during a recession. Focus the city’s economic development strategy on food businesses, creating good jobs and better food at the same time, through zoning, kitchen incubators and other programs. The plan also calls on New York State to protect the rights of farmworkers.

10. Government Oversight: Everybody eats and we already know that food has huge environmental and personal health impacts. Why not give food its due and treat it like transportation, education, and sanitation by creating a Department of Food and Markets to oversee and lead the reform of the city’s food system? That’s what the panel recommends.

When faced with gigantic problems like creating a food system that works for everyone, it’s helpful to break down the issues into smaller parts and offer concrete recommendations that build a new vision, like this blueprint does. You can read the entire report here and then get involved in a food policy council near you. They have been springing up everywhere. This handy map provides a list of all food policy councils in your state.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: wwarby

The post NYC’s Bold Blueprint for Building a Better, Greener Food System appeared first on EcoSalon.