Slow Food Nation -- that grand, sprawling culinary event that seemed to permeate San Francisco over Labor Day weekend -- has passed. Now we can ask: What was it? A brazen display of foodie elitism, as some critics charge? A transformative moment in an ongoing effort to overthrow the industrial food system, as its organizers sometimes hinted?
First, the grandeur of the gathering -- organized by Slow Food USA -- has to be acknowledged. Slow Food Nation's Taste Pavilion, dramatically located at San Francisco's bay-side Fort Mason, deserves a place in the history of U.S. food and design. Ensconced in a vast airplane hangar-like space, the pavilion offered rigorously "curated" -- and stunning -- selections of cheese, pickles, charcuterie, coffee, olive oil, liquor, chocolate, beer, fish, and wine. The interior design matched the quality of the food, each station conjured up gorgeously out of reused and reusable materials like wooden pallets and burlap coffee-bean bags and representing the vision of some of the Bay Area's most creative architects. Meanwhile, the outdoor Slow on the Go market at the Civic Center presented a kind of perfect-world food court: huaraches as good as any I've had in Mexico City alongside fantastic coffee, terrific muffletas, killer ice cream, and much more.
The intellectual fodder on offer wasn't bad, either. The event's "Food for Thought" speaker series featured strictly A-list talent: Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, and more.
Further, more than any conference I've ever attended, the event exuded sheer ambition. In addition to the glories described above, Slow Food Nation included a lovingly designed and cultivated "Victory Garden," a farmers market that embodied the sheer abundance of San Francisco's celebrated foodshed, and, tucked into the teeming food court, a soapbox from which anyone who wanted could harangue the crowd. These features, I think, were meant to form a populist, accessible counterpoint to the pricy Taste Pavilion, food court, and star-studded panels.
Yet for all the activity and display of culinary, intellectual, and design skill, the question of what Slow Food Nation actually was hung over the event. At points, event leaders seemed to treat Slow Food itself, the international organization that formed in Italy in 1986 to protest a McDonald's in central Rome, as the embodiment of the movement to challenge industrial food. From there, it was a short jump to presenting Slow Food Nation as a kind of watershed moment in the U.S. food movement -- the point in time when public desire and political will for a new food system coalesced.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Bay Area residents grumbled about marginalization and elitism. When I first glanced at the prices for various functions, I thought they seemed reasonable, given that typical conferences run upwards of several hundred bucks for blanket admission. But then again, as a journalist, I rarely have to pay for conferences I attend. If I were a local resident without a professional tie to the event, would I have balked at $65 for the Taste Pavilion, or $25 to attend the flagship panel featuring Berry, Shiva, Pollan, Schlosser, Carlo Petrini, Alice Waters, and Corby Kummer? I guess it would depend on how tight my finances were. And that's the point. While the public spaces at the Civic Center drew a reasonably diverse crowd, the for-pay events seemed uniformly white and well-off.
In the end, I think the vast ambition behind Slow Food Nation formed its weak point. By striving to embody and represent an entire movement -- from "artisinal" food culture to urban agriculture -- the event came off like a dreamer with his head in the clouds, disconnected from the struggle in the streets.
No one quite embodied that attitude like Alice Waters, doyenne of Slow Food USA, iconic figure of the sustainable-agriculture movement since she started her Chez Panisse restaurant in the early 1970s, and Slow Food Nation's intellectual author. I adore Waters' cooking style and respect her work as a pioneering restaurateur and school-lunch reformer; as a political spokesperson, she leaves me scratching my head. Asked at a pre-event press conference about the accessibility issue, Waters gave a riff about the Victory Garden and how it "represents our belief that good, clean, and fair food should be accessible to everyone all the time."
Really? Beautiful as it is, the Victory Garden represents tremendous political, cultural, and financial resources. Slow Food Nation convinced the City of San Francisco to allow the garden to be installed on city land, got a prestigious landscape architecture firm involved in its design, and tapped a professional gardening company to help put it together. There's nothing at all wrong with any of this, but Waters seems blind to her own considerable power -- and unaware that other actors in the sustainable-food movement wield much less. And here's the kicker: The Victory Garden is due to be demolished in November; the arrangement with the city is only temporary. The Victory Garden serves as a mighty symbol for the potential of urban public space to be both beautiful and highly productive; as a symbol of accessibility to "good, clean, and fair food," it's a bit of a farce.
But none of this negates the achievements of Slow Food USA or its flagship event. To become the relevant organization that Slow Food USA leaders seem genuinely intent on creating, the group may merely need to (of all things) slow down. Across the county, people of all kinds are challenging industrial food and working to create a more sustainable, just, and, yes, delicious food system. Rather than striving to be the movement around food, Slow Food USA might do better to consider itself part of a much broader and diverse movement.
Brahm Ahmadi.
Whose Big Tent Is It?
Brahm Ahmadi, executive director of People's Grocery in West Oakland, crystallized this idea in a recent (pre-event) post on his blog. Slow Food is "currently distracted by its own self-important belief that it should be a big tent for lots of people, rather than simply being an equal member of a much bigger movement or coalition in which the movement itself is the big tent," he wrote.
Instead, Ahmadi argued, the group should "form coalitions in which Slow Food acts as an ally" to groups seeking to create socially just and sustainable food systems in low-income areas. For Ahmadi, that means not trying to speak for such efforts, but rather "leveraging its political and social influence to open doors and generate resources that other groups do not have access to."
Slow Food Nation chose not to highlight the debate around the question of elitism and the food movement at its flagship Food for Thought series. But it did give Ahmadi a forum at its Changemaker Day forum -- weirdly, an invitation-only event. Uninvited, I essentially snuck into Ahmadi's panel on "Reframing the Slow Food Conversation to Support Food Justice."
There, Ahmadi gave a salient example of his problem with Slow Food. Grassroots groups working in the Bay Area's low-income sections like his own People's Grocery had watched in awe and astonishment as Slow Food Nation and its impressive physical footprint took shape, Ahmadi said. The Victory Garden and the Taste Pavilion would be erected and dismantled in the span of a few months, representing tremendous efforts of top designers and artisans, to speak nothing of political muscle and financial resources. Meanwhile, groups like People's Grocery struggle and wrangle for years to get a truck to deliver fresh food in West Oakland.
Josh Viertel.
Photo: Russ Walker
Joining Ahmadi on the panel was Josh Viertel, recently named president of Slow Food USA. I found Viertel's answer to Ahmadi extremely encouraging. Rather than react defensively, Viertel encouraged the audience to read Ahmadi's blog post. Then he admitted that Slow Food USA has a communication problem with low-income communities. He noted the group's well-publicized effort to save heritage turkeys from extinction -- a victory for biodiversity in our rapidly homogenizing food chain -- but acknowledged the absurdity of touting such a victory in low-income communities where people will soon be choosing between buying enough food and paying the heating bill. Viertel seemed determined that Slow Food USA not "suck all the air out of the room" as the sustainable-food movement goes forward.
Viertel may seem an odd choice to rescue Slow Food from its elitist reputation. The group plucked him out of the leafy confines of New Haven, Conn., where he lead the Yale Sustainable Food Project. But broadening Slow Food's focus is precisely his task. By any standard, "good, clean, and fair" food represents no more than 3 percent of food sold in the United States. To really challenge the status quo, the sustainable-food movement needs to expand its base dramatically -- and Slow Food USA, with its considerable cultural and political stature, can be a constructive force in that effort.
Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, a longtime Slow Food USA insider who was prominently featured at the Labor Day weekend event, is already providing an example. At forum after forum at Slow Food Nation, Schlosser drove home a key point: The millions of people who work at vegetable farms, meatpacking plants, and restaurants -- the largest group of employees in the United States -- are ruthlessly exploited and need to be included in any meaningful sustainable-food movement. And he stacked his own Food for Thought session not with celebrated authors, but rather with labor-movement leaders.
I heard Schlosser say off-stage that his single-minded focus on labor made him feel like a "turd in a punchbowl" at Slow Food Nation. In reality, such use of cultural capital is a torch lighting a path toward a truly just and sustainable food system.
Video interviews with Eric Schlosser, Brahm Ahmadi, and Josh Viertel will be coming to Gristmill soon.
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Comments
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timhammond Posted 5:00 am
05 Sep 2008
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MichaelDimock Posted 5:10 am
05 Sep 2008
http://www.rocfund.org/campaign/campaign/campaign-strateg ...).
Changemakers could only involve 670 people due to venue and budget constraints. We needed people connected to the Campaign to be involved in the day. We knew more people would want to come than could be accommodated. Thus, ROC -- not Slow Food Nation -- made the decision that it would be by invitation in order to ensure that a critical mass of CA-based actors would be able to participate. We did include nearly 200 non-Californians to support healthy cross-pollination. We did provide travel stipends to limited income people and small nonprofits that wanted to travel from afar to attend. Thus, in my view, it was not weird, it was a rationale decision given constraints. But, however you may view it, please forgive the imperfections this first time out, we did the best we could.
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Ilikegreen Posted 8:23 am
05 Sep 2008
Organizations like City Slicker Farms, which raise money and use volunteer human-power to plant farms in the backyards of impoverished family's in the Oakland Area thus giving them--for free by the way--"good, clean, fair food." San Francisco Victory Gardens was also involved which is an education program that aims to demonstrate and teach people about how to grow their own food in urban areas.
This garden wasn't about the money that it cost the city. It was about the idea that you can plant in the city, yes they used huge funds, but the people that planted it usually do it on a smaller scale. School children and families came to plant the garden and harvest it and it has given hundreds of pounds of food to local food banks.
It wasn't just about the big money, sure it was a stunt, but behind the stunt is the real life and completely attainable heart of the Slow Food movement.
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Barry Foy Posted 11:50 am
05 Sep 2008
Instead, the focus is drawn back again and again to how much some people paid for their restaurant dinners and Taste Pavilion tickets, and whether too many white folks attended. In dispiriting contrast with Tom Philpott's more balanced outlook, I'm seeing a lot of self-congratulation among people who rate themselves as mighty shrewd for being able to discern certain ironies regarding race and class in SFN.
But in fact those contradictions are the most obvious things in the world, and to obsess on them risks blurring the big picture. I mean, are we really implying that a panel featuring Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, and Mr. Schlosser, with Wes Jackson sitting in the audience, is there in service to elitism and privilege? It is both an absurdity and an insult.
Slow Food Nation aimed to bring issues to the fore in a way, and with a degree of concentration, that is radical in our time and place. The fact that the event is being discussed so much afterwards provides proof that that goal was reached, at least in part. We have little to gain from conjuring up an imaginary checklist of standards the event was supposed to have met, standards that can vary considerably from one evaluator to the next. On the contrary, by not crediting Slow Food Nation for what it did manage to accomplish, and not taking advantage of all of that, we stand to lose much.
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caterpillar Posted 12:07 pm
05 Sep 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKLbGS7yZ-0
Is this the guy who can make Slow Food less elite?
Garden Aesthete from Yale University??
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JuliaDay Posted 2:39 pm
05 Sep 2008
A point not focused on though was how Slow Food Nation and the Taste Pavilions highlighted and celebrated the work of small and sustainable food producers in the US. In the Taste Pavilions honey makers from Missouri, cattle ranchers from the Southeast, and cheese makers from northern CA - among many others - were honored for their work and dedication to creating an agricultural system that strives to feed people healthy food while not harming the land. Many of these producers are not getting rich from their efforts that help lead the way to a healthier food system, and honoring their livelihoods is one of many important aspects to strengthening the movement.
Philpotts writes that "the event came off like a dreamer with his head in the clouds, disconnected from the struggle in the streets." Slow Food does need to broaden its base. This is true. I agree that Slow Food should "'act as an ally' to groups seeking to create socially just and sustainable food systems in low-income areas." Let's not let this point distract from the work Slow Food Nation did and Slow Food USA is doing to honor the work of rural food producers and farmers - those who also face a constant "struggle" in the fields and on the farms.
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archigeek Posted 12:12 am
06 Sep 2008
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Tom Philpott Posted 3:49 am
06 Sep 2008
To Michael Dimock, I'm very sympathetic with the logistics around organizing such a massive event. Holding it in a city -- much of it (like the Changemakers stuff) on public property -- made for a very rich experience, way more appealing than some vast faceless corporate hotel. But the location(s) also generated serious logistical knots. I still think a conversation such as the one moderated by Hank Herrera and including Ahmadi and Viertel at Changemakers should have been held front and center under the Slow Food banner.
Julia Day, agreed about the producers. I thought the food quality at the Taste Pavilion was breathtaking overall, and particularly the charcuterie and pickle installations highlighted truly small-scale artisans. Shining a light on that stuff is Slow Food at its best.
To Barry, I can only say that as long-time "foodie" and convert to "slow food" principles, I agree with your assessment: In many ways, SFN was a stunning success. But the question must be asked: How is this playing outside of these rarefied circles? And the feedback that results must be taken seriously and honored if "good, clean, and fair" food is going to break out of its gourmet ghetto. Slow Food itself is quite wonderful and important in many ways, but in itself it's not a movement. It can, however, play a constructive role in a broad-based movement to challenge a destructive food system.
Finally, to Thomas H., re: Viertel. I watched the video you link to. From the context, it looks like Viertel is talking to college food activists from across the country about how to broaden interest in school gardens. I think he's right that pretty, well-kept gardens attract people. I saw that play out in community gardens in some of Brooklyn's roughest neighborhoods.
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MichaelDimock Posted 9:58 am
06 Sep 2008
As former chairman of Slow Food USA, and a co-leader of the Russian River chapter, I can only say that at last the organization worked very hard to move out of its comfort zone. It is imperfect. It is very white, middle class, and its competencies are limited. But given the constant criticism that it is elitist, Slow Food risked much and acted boldly. It did not let fear of judgement from foes and allies stop it from pursing its mission.
So now Slow Food will learn, or not, be better or not, make progress or not. I am an optimist. I think Slow Food will become better at what it does. It may or may not become less white in the short to medium term and maybe as Brahm Ahmadi points out that is less important than the new alliances it builds. I am hopeful that it will follow his advise and become a better ally to groups working in the inner city and with farmworkers.
I hope it does not lose its contact with the middle class. In fact, I hope it grows to include millions of middle class Americans. Because if it does, the food system will change. The middle class represents the bulk of the nation's buying power. If people really began to use good, clean and fair as their criteria for purchasing food, the supply side would change in response very quickly.
Slow Food is made up of people and we all know that all people are imperfect. So, let's not expect too much too soon, but let's keep the faith and hope for the best. I, for one, will keep up the pressure on my fellow Slow Food members and the current leadership. I know others will do the same inside and outside the organization. But in the end, we should appreciate, or at least recognize, that a new and potentially powerful ally has emerged to help the good food movement grow its influence on the nation. Has any other group garnered so much media for good food in such a short span of time? I don't think so.
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Roxsen Posted 12:54 am
07 Sep 2008
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:59 am
07 Sep 2008
Since we're talking about cost let me throw another one out there that blew my mind- I asked Michael Pollan to speak at the small school where I teach- he wanted $20,000 to do so- that's more than most Nobel Laurates get- many of whom come for free- I was simply shocked- Pollan is a smart guy (even if most of what he says isn't original)) but I thought 20K to drive 2 hours and speak for 1 in his home state said a lot about the elitism that is a part of this movement. And more than elitism.
But again, I don't want to bash this movement since I think overall it is doing good stuff.
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PermieWriter Posted 12:58 pm
08 Sep 2008
I think the big problem facing the Slow Food movement is that the food problem is (at least) two-fold: making good food available to poor people and getting the rest of us to pay enough to make sustainable farming practical. The two get confused, and until the Slowies get some good PR help (and here I'm thinking of George Lakoff) on board, they're going to continue to come across as arugula-sniffing elites.
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chefkmemphis Posted 4:33 pm
08 Sep 2008
The problem facing Slow Food (and not the movement which is much larger, more diverse and ultimately more meaningful than Slow Food) is certainly at least two-fold. Slow Food is entirely disconnected from the work and Slow Food is entirely disconnected from the people.
The work is on the ground and in the halls of power. It is complicated, nasty, smelly work that, regardless of where the work takes place, leaves a stain or something stuck to the sole of your shoe. The leadership of Slow Food has proven to be unwilling to engage in the work. Rather, it sits aside, issuing 'declarations' - should be's, could be's, and oh do this too's - but don't ask them to actually get out there and do something.
The people do struggle with paying for food. The people will continue to struggle with paying for food. Not enough farmers (people too) exist to bring enough food into our cities. People are a part of the work, a part of the solution and yet, are not a part of Slow Food.
Perhaps the PR help is needed. Perhaps however, the work and the people should take precedence over PR and posing and grand events to 'raise awareness'. Maybe the work and the people should be more important than another slogan that will fit on a T-Shirt. And maybe Slow Food USA will realize that it is not the leader of this movement, that it is not the voice of the movement and that out HERE, where the work and the people are, we are very very aware of the problems with our food system and we are very very active in changing it.
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chefkmemphis Posted 4:45 pm
08 Sep 2008
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MHWallace Posted 5:44 am
15 Sep 2008
I acknowledge Eric Schlosser's comments elsewhere on the importance of engaging the "workers who harvest, process and serve the food we eat" which is also echoed in Tom Philpott's post here. This sentiment was part of several discussions during Slow Food Nation. Indeed, this is a critical element that must be part of the movement in order to effect true social change with regard to our food system. It is clear that Josh Viertel, President, Slow Food USA, clearly understands that this is an important issue, one that those of us in the Slow Food movemenet must attend to. How this will be done remains to be seen, yes this will be a challenge, one that we must rise to. However, as long as this is part of the Slow Food vision, and it remains "on the radar," then it will become part of the work of those of us involved with Slow Food. Yes, we will have to work in order to deal effectively with this issue.
I don't pretent to have all the answers as to how we in Slow Food will effectively address this issue. I do know that through constructive dialogue we will come to terms with the issue, and will include those who produce our food. Again, this will be a challenge, it will require work, but we can if we try. Alliance formation will be critical to success here.
So, please keep the pressure on, but do also offer your constructive input as to how "workers who harvest, process and serve the food we eat" can also have a place at the Slow Food table. This is an important issue, one that must be addressed if Slow Food is to have a meaningful and lasting impact on the industrial food system, so that it too may become "good, clean and fair." Remember that "fair" is in direct reference to this very issue. Our challenge is to put meaning to the word "fair."
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watermirrors Posted 8:21 pm
16 Sep 2008
I've been thinking quite a lot since then and while I did feel a little alienated, I do agree that aesthetics are important. They have discovered that in urban planning, when they noticed that housing people in isolated concrete barracks does nothing to improve morale and giving people nice places to live gives them something to live up to. Now I go to school in another country and the student housing here manages to enable students to have good food without running cafeterias serving expensive ingredients. It's simple: give students nice kitchens, garden plots, and orchards. Let the students do the work...it's mostly about access.
I think it might be even better than Yale's solution because Yale's farm was only run by a few select students, whereas here I can rent my own plot for $20 a year and I also get the benefit that I learn how to cook and grow food. Yale students may get served organic local kale, but do they know how to cook it themselves....much less grow it? And it gives me access to some of the most expensive and delicate foods like wild sea buckthorn for free...I would never be able to afford them otherwise.
But I learned how to harvest the sea buckthorn from the local Slow Food here. That's slow food at its best- when it focuses on improving access rather than selling expensive food.
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MichaelDimock Posted 5:03 pm
30 Sep 2008
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