Slow Food: Is Elitism the Problem?
Is Slow Food elitist? Is this the major problem it has to overcome before it can become a major social movement?
That seems to be the question following Slow Food Nation, a two-day event at the end of September in San Francisco. Since lots of readers of this blog have probably never heard of Slow Food, here’s a link to its web site.
Drawing 60,000 people, the event was clearly a public relations success (though let’s keep this in perspective since another vaguely food/agricultural event, the Kentucky State Fair, for eighteen years up to and including 2006 drew roughly 60,000 a day over eleven days). I imagine other state fairs have the same attendance and that just a little of the state’s agriculture rubs off in the process.
However even those who were invited speakers, Eric Schlosser, for instance, realized that the field workers and restaurant workers could not possibly afford the food that was served. No place at the table. Not Fair, was Schlosser’s comment.
Fair picks up on one of the three planks of the latest Slow Food platform: Good, Clean, Fair. Good means food tastes good. Clean means food is produced in a local, organic, sustainable way that avoids mechanized, industrialized food. And Fair means that it’s produced in a way that is socially just.
So, suggests, Schlosser, since Good is clearly a good thing, and Clean is clearly a good thing, all we need to do now is mop up around the edges and get justice in there too.
Well, lovely. But just how? is my question. Looking back over history, at least since humans began farming (and I think even Slow Food advocates, notwithstanding Michael Pollan’s occasional theatrical flourishes as he hunts down his dinner, want to go back to hunting and gathering) we have had massively unjust societies. There were the few who dined on wonderful food, the majority who labored to produce it.
What changed this was precisely the mechanized, industrial food system. It freed up those of us in the laboring majority from the drudgery of farming and grinding and allowed us to go to Slow Food meetings. Every morning I offer up a few words of thanks every day to the folks who invented tractors, combines, fertilizers, insecticides, roller mills, and cake mixes so that I can sit at my computer and write.
If this is not clear, I’ll spell it out in other posts, though you can read the gist of my argument here (ignore the black, thanks to an enthusiastic designer, and scroll down). But my answer to my own question, is that elitism is not the problem with Slow Food.
The problem is Slow Food’s commitment to an antiquated, inefficient food system, it’s reckless decision that because there are problems with the industrialized, mechanized food system we should retreat to the past rather than fixing them, it’s feckless airiness about working out the economics of its own proposed system which is (music plays) somewhere over the rainbow. As long as it subscribes to Clean (it’s definition) I don’t see how it can be fair.
Hard words. But Slow Food mesmerizes opinion makers. Those who go to San Francisco get national headlines. Please someone from Slow Food, please sit down and do some hard work. Explain to me, without hand waving, how Clean can be reconciled with Fair. How do we escape history?
- Grinding Pineapple on a Metate (Simple Grindstone, Saddle Quern)
- Who Makes Artisanal Queso Oaxaca? Who Produces the Milk?
One issue I have with Slow Food et al., is that I’m not quite sure what it is about. For me personally I love all the access to rare and endangered ingredients and recipes. I’m the right niche. But I’m perfectly well aware that this isn’t going to feed the world.
Are SF seriously suggesting this? It would seem odd if this was the case. Especially in Italy. It wasn’t very long ago at all that agricultural workers and rural tenants were some of the most desperately poor in Europe. Even with a very basic knowledge of Italian 20th century history, it is pretty obvious that there were no golden age for these people.
On the other hand I’m all for grabbing the good stuff from this same period and peoples. Rare breed of pig, special beans, endangered sausage, access to that would make me very happy. But at no point do I tell myself that this is going to feed that planet.
Is the issue with the hand waving rhetoric, rather then what these organisations do practically, or do you see a real danger of promoting backlash against those technologies and industries that actually give people like myself the income, health and leisure time to indulge in hobbies like gastronomy?
Adam, you’re not alone in wondering what Slow Food is about. I’m not sure what they’re about either. And I’m a former board member of a division of their’s that never took off for reasons that are shrouded in mystery.
A lot of my social friends fit the Slow Food demographic and many have heard of them. None of them are sure what Slow Food is about either or what it is they do besides marketing and promoting their organization. My friends read certain magazines, articles, buy products, etc.. that expose them to SF. Most other folks I know who are outside of the demographic have never heard of them.
For now I see it as a lot of hand waving rhetoric. If Slow Food Nation ever does seriously engage in the political and educational spheres in California I am pretty sure that I will hear about it before it hits the news. I’m in that loop from the ground up.
In practical terms I can see potential “danger” (soft use of the word) if they become a political force engaged in public policy issues. At that point, however, I’m certain that they will open a very large can of worms and an onslaught of vigorous criticism will begin.
The idea of SF as a political force seems to be a bit nebulous at this point, since it’s actually counter to their marketing scheme of promoting “activism through pleasure” with a strong tilt toward pleasure. They would have to deal with internal dissent first.
Furthermore, they are stratospherically out of their realm when it comes to technology and industry in developing countries.
Adam, I see nothing wrong in preserving good stuff. And Adam and Ji-Young, I’ve tired to make my point clearer in the next post.