Food Movements and Alternatives & The Slow Food Movement Flashcards
What does local mean?
- Personal connections
- Enables traceability
- Decreases food miles (fossil fuel consumption)
- Available knowledge of the production process (including the role of producers) as much as the food itself that elicits consumer energy and enthusiasm.
- Promoted as a direct challenge to the power and control of Western industrial food systems. It is the sense of active participation in this alternative market space that encourages producers and consumers alike to identify as complicit in the construction of a social world where each provides care for the other though a redefined, moralized market exchange.
- Sometimes imply higher costs for the consumer
- Polemical and political tool that legitimizes new markets as dynamic social spaces connecting the production and consumption of culture, in addition to food
Comparison between US and France–US
o US local associated with small-scale and independent farmers.
o Actively resist monoculture, industrial farming practices and long-distance food chains.
o With the consolidation of many brands in agribusiness, way to reclaim alternative food production.
o Way to boost local economies.
Comparison between US and France–France
o Local connects place & history
o Local is linked to regional specialties with historic roots and shared knowledge in the production and consumption of food items. Link between historical roots and physical origins and taste is known as terroir.
o Includes good taste, variety, the importance of personal relationships between producers and consumers, lack of artificial additives and preservatives.
o Protected by quality labels and certification systems.
o Local builds trust, safety & community
o Involves promotion of traditional tastes and production methods. Ex mustard from Dijon.
o Gastronomic tourism fosters regional and national identities.
o Products sold in supermarkets and outside local venues.
Local Networks
- Local networks of familiarity
- Local builds trust, safety and community
- Involves promotion
- Farmers’ markets–number of farmers markets registered with the USDA is 7,864. In 1994, there were 1,744.
Origin of Slow Food Movement
- Founded in Italy in 1986 (going international in 1989). Slow Food is an international movement and non-profit organization with 80,000 + members in 122 nations around the world – more than 850 local chapters or convivia (singular – convivium).
- Established in reaction to the establishment of a MacDonald’s franchise in Rome and food scares. Formed from a loose constellation or networks of left activist groups focusing on the environment and other issues.
- Movement gained momentum to counter the rapid pace of Europeanization and the introduction of EU standards, which threatened small-scale agriculture.
- Resists the drift toward farming monocultures and disintegration of traditional rural foodways.
- Preservationist–preservation of European cultural heritage and a craft identity.
- Carlo Petrini is the movement’s founder and most visible and vocal proponent. Epicurean philosopher.
Aims of slow food movement
- Aims to put an end to modern society’s “enslavement to speed.” Therefore, the movement’s icon or mascot of the snail.
- Aims to “protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life.
- Based on GOOD, CLEAN and FAIR FOOD. Food should taste good, produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment and food producers should receive fair compensation for their work
- Based on the idea that every person on earth is a CO-PRODUCER, not merely a consumer.
Goals of slow food movement
- To return to place-based food. Emphasis on local rootedness and decentralization (conservation of typicality – terroir).
- Protection of biodiversity, agricultural diversity & culinary diversity.
- To save and propagate artisanal cheese, wine and food items in Italy (and other places) through public awareness
- To go against standardization of food products and hyper-hygienist legislation.
- To go against the rules of large scale retail trade.
- To promote respect for nature and environment
Eco-gastronomy
• Founded on concept of eco-gastronomy or respect for nature and environment and preserving taste and local culinary traditions or the strong connections between plate and the planet.
Terroir and endangered food
- Terroir: Link between historical roots and physical origins and taste
- Endangered foods: Seek to preserve “endangered” traditions, artisan, small-scale farming & way of life.
Principles & programs (Ark of Taste)
- Arc of Taste: compilation that documents, identifies and catalogues produce, dishes and animals that in danger of disappearing. Links gourmets & environmentalists.
- University of Gastronomic Sciences to offer a multidisciplinary academic program in the science and culture of food. UNISG is another way in which Slow Food brings together the innovations and research of the academic and scientific world and the traditional knowledge of farmers and food producers
Critique of the Slow Food Movement
• Virtuous Globalization – “Slow Food promotes itself as providing a model for imagining alternate modes of global connectedness in which members of minority cultures – including niche food producers – are encouraged to network and thrive.”
• The Slow Food Movement eventually adopted causes and projects around social justice including promoting the sharing of knowledge among the world’s food producers.
• Critiques:
o Is the Slow Food movement more than a well-oiled publicity machine? In reality, many charge that the movement is more rhetoric than substance.
o The movement is seen as primarily a primarily an elitist organization of upper middle class professionals.
o The anti-speed stance has been embraced by multiple groups – policy makers, government (e.g. Slow Cities) and its popularity has made it more of a marketing ploy and a brand.
o The movement is based on a corporate vision of food as simply a commodity.
o The movement is seen to be promoting a form of “culinary luddism,” (luddite).
o It denies the democratizing benefits of industrial food production over much of the 20th century.
o Despite championing small artisanal food producers, the movement favors elites.
o The movement’s membership are mostly in rich countries and its efforts is often seen as akin to a kind of “imperialist nostalgia” – a Eurocentric romanticizing of the past and of the peasant/rural.
o The movement strategically combines business and activism and constitutes a more conservative form of food activism compared to more radical groups such as those by Jose Bove and the Peasant Confederation.
Promise of the slow food movement
- A. The movement has been instrumental in creating effective lobby groups for environmental biodiversity and the protection of both cultural landscapes and niche-food producers internationally.
- B. The movement has enabled new ways of thinking about issues of modernity, social change, and culture through the valuation of the important connections between taste and place (terroir), the preservation of local cultural heritage, and the reframing of scientific knowledge in terms of artisanal and peasant expertise.
- C. Finally, the movement amplified the deep connection between an ethical stance towards daily life and the pursuit of a viable and sustainable global and local future.
What is Sustainable agriculture?
- Refers to the ability of a farm to produce food indefinitely, without causing irreversible damage to ecosystem health.
- Environmental health
What are the goals and practices of sustainable agriculture?
• Protection of Resources:
o Water: is the principal resource that has helped agriculture and society to prosper, and it has been a major limiting factor when mismanaged.
o Wildlife: The conversion of wild habitat to agricultural land reduces fish and wildlife through erosion and sedimentation, the effects of pesticides, and the diversion of water.
o Energy: Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on non-renewable energy sources, especially petroleum. This cannot be sustained indefinitely.
o Air: Many agricultural activities affect air quality. These include smoke from agricultural burning; dust from tillage, traffic and harvest; pesticide drift from spraying; and nitrous oxide emissions from the use of nitrogen fertilizer.
o Soil: Soil erosion continues to be a serious threat to our continued ability to produce adequate food.
Aspects of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
Saving Seeds
• The practice of saving seeds from open pollinated vegetables and flowers for use from year to year. This is the traditional way farms and gardens are maintained.
Farmers Markets: The exchanges that take place are more than buying food.
• A traditional way of selling agriculture and come manufactured products. Farmers markets advocates believe the markets help farmers stay in business as well as preserve natural resources.
**Urban Gardens
• Sustainable Student Farm
**Food Cooperatives:
• Strawberry Fields, Common ground
