Slow Food Nation: Taking America Out To The Foodshed

A swarm of 40,000 to 50,000 locavores will descend on San Francisco this Labor Day weekend to attend Slow Food Nation, a four-day extravaganza of teach-ins and tastings that's being billed as a kind of "Woodstock for gastronomes."

I'd rather go to a Woodstock for garden gnomes, myself -- at least those Lilliputian lawn ornaments share my fondness for front yard farming. Gastro gnomes, on the other hand, sound like elitist elves who are overly fond of artisanal cheeses and grass-fed beef. Do we really need a celebration of such highfalutin culinary novelties at a time when high fuel and food costs are making it harder for people to keep their pantries stocked with even the most basic staples?

Well, yes, we do, because we need to remember that the fresh, unadulterated, minimally processed, locally produced foods that Slow Food Nation is showcasingwere our pantry staples, before the military-industrial complex annexed our food chain a half a century or so ago in the name of progress.

Our great-grandparents would be flabbergasted to learn that grass-fed milk in glass bottles bearing the local dairy farm's logo is now a rare luxury item available to only the affluent few who are willing to pay $4 for a half-gallon of milk.

Back in the day, our breads were fresh-baked and free of high fructose corn syrup, and our eggs and bacon came from chickens and hogs that rolled around in the dirt and saw the light of day. The word "farm" still evokes nostalgic pastoral images for most Americans, but there's nothing even remotely benign or bucolic about the fetid, brutal factory farms that supply us with most of our meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products today. And unmasking this unsavory reality is as much a part of Slow Food Nation's agrarian agenda as dishing out local delicacies.

So don't be distracted by the aroma of wood-fired focaccia wafting from the Fort Mason Center "Taste Pavilions"; Slow Food Nation has the potential to spark a crucial dialogue about where our food comes from, how it's grown, and why all that matters. With forums featuring the good food movement's marquee names, including Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and Eric Schlosser, this Alice Waters-sponsored shindig could be the watershed event that puts America's foodsheds on the map.

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Don't know what a "foodshed" is? Don't worry, nobody else does, either -- the word is still so obscure it hasn't earned an entry on Wikipedia. It means, essentially, the area through which food travels to get from the farm to your plate. That would have been a pretty short trip a few generations ago, but in this era of globalization, our foodshed now encompasses the whole world, more or less.

This far-flung food chain has enslaved us with a false sense of abundance, turning the produce aisles of our supermarkets into a seasonless place where you can find berries and bell peppers all year round. But this apparent bounty diverts us from the fact that industrial agriculture has actually drastically reduced the diversity of the foods that our farmers grow.

As small and mid-size farms got swallowed up by the massive monoculture operations we now call "conventional," the varieties of fruits and vegetables grown on those farms got whittled down to just those few that shipped the best and had the longest shelf life. Breeders chose to focus on species of livestock and poultry that fatten up the fastest, such as big-breasted but bland Butterball turkeys so top-heavy they can't reproduce naturally and have to be artificially inseminated. For this we give thanks each November?

This focus on economies of scale, and the illusory "efficiency" of a food system dependent on cheap fossil fuels and perpetual subsidies, gave us, the richest nation in the world, the cheapest food. And we are all the poorer for it.

Along the way, we lost hundreds of different kinds of plants and animals; currently, "at least 1,060 food varieties unique to North America are threatened, endangered or functionally extinct in the marketplaces of the United States, Canada, and northern Mexico," Gary Paul Nabhan writes in Renewing America's Food Traditions, a new book that celebrates the distinctive culinary regions of our country that Agribiz almost obliterated in recent decades.

But Renewing America's Food Traditions is not just a book; it's an alliance: Called RAFT for short, it's a collaborative effort from Slow Food USA and six other sustainably minded organizations. RAFT's mission is to inspire what the folks at Slow Foods USA call "eater-based conservation" by preserving and promoting the culinary heritage and extraordinary biodiversity that blessed this country for centuries before we shifted gears and became a fast food nation.

Nabhan is participating in a Slow Food Nation forum, "Re-Localizing Food," along with Pollan, Dan Barber and Winona LaDuke, but this powerhouse panel is, alas, already sold out, along with most of the other forums featuring the rock stars of the real food movement.

Thankfully, the Slow Food Nation folks are offering some free events and exhibits, too, including the Marketplace, which promises "to transform San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza into an urban garden, farmers market, outdoor food bazaar andsoapbox," and the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden in front of City Hall, whose impressive array of organic heirloom vegetables is being donated to local food banks.

In keeping with its goal to promote all things sustainable, Slow Food Nation aspires to be a "zero waste event:" In addition to recycling and composting food waste, plates, flatware and packaging, Slow Food Nation is joining forces with Food and Water Watch to banish bottled water from the four-day festival. Echoing Food and Water Watch's Take Back the Tap campaign, the event will instead offer five tap water stations where folks can refill their water bottles -- or, if you didn't bring your own, you can buy a reusable, eco-friendly stainless steel canteen.

Not content to just spare us the spectacle of 50,000 good food fanatics washing down all those sustainable snacks with bottled water, Food and Water Watch has posted a much-needed guide on its Web site for the rest of us on how to "Free Your Event From Bottled Water." Pair this with Slow Food Nation's Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, to be unveiled on Aug. 28 at San Francisco's City Hall, and you've got a virtual road map to a real revolution, even if you're not going to San Francisco.

Originally published on Alternet.org

Comments

[DianaMontoya]

Here in Iowa, we have some of the best farmland in the world, yet most of it is devoted to industrial agriculture. Ironically, our grocery stores are stocked with foods trucked or flown in from far-flung locations from California to South America, and beyond.

I joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group about five years ago. I learned that locally grown foods are not only better-tasting than those cardboardized imports, but they are also becoming comparatively cheaper as transportation costs go up.

As a direct care-giver in the state with the most rapidly aging population in the nation, I can also attest to the long-term toll that cheap, processed, and fast foods have taken on the elderly. It is shocking to see so many people in the great state of Iowa suffering from nutritional deficiencies and food-related illnesses.

If you want to remain independent and healthy in old age, start eating fresh, local, and organic now!

[RightWingMarine]

This is a movement to raise my food costs and reduce the choice I have at the grocery store and you seriously want me to get behind it? Which part of this is the selling point? I like pinapple but they don't grow in TX.

Our great-grandparents would be flabbergasted at the price of grass fed milk? I bet they would be thrilled with the prospect of buying milk at the low price available to us today. Chagrined at some breads having corn syrup? How about pleased that bread is so abundant and cheap that everyone can afford to buy packaged bread?

This article doesn't make sense and even contridicts itself in one paragraph. At first extolling the virtues of the modern supermarket and that fresh fruits and vegetables are available year round it then laments that we have fewer choices available to us for food than we did previously. How many fresh pinapples and banannas did people eat in Sept 1908?

[Emmagoldmanbabe]

The issues raised by the Slow Food movement spill out to all other issues.
I know that it seems like an elitist thing to choose food so carefully, and I know that the way I choose to feed my family is a privilege. There are millions of starving folks on the planet and part of why they are starving is due to our factory farm military industrial approach to food.

My mother was at the Slow Food event and says that it was really open, and really community focused. I wish I could have been there!

[mlaiuppa]

Man. I wish they'd come to my city.

My local farmer's market sucks and I want to know where I can get local milk from grass fed cows. I don't drink that much so the extra expense would be acceptable.

[sailortitan]

Don't forget:

http://www.takebackthefilter.org/

and

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-refill-a-disposable-Brita-brand-water-pit/

[JScott]

'This focus on economies of scale, and the illusory "efficiency" of a food system dependent on cheap fossil fuels and perpetual subsidies, gave us, the richest nation in the world, the cheapest food. And we are all the poorer for it.'
Not to mention unhealthier for it-increasing obesity, heart disease and stroke, and and foods that are heavy on the meat, dairy, sodium and HFCS. (oh and not sustainable)