Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Slow Food At Full Speed: They Ate It Up
Jane Black, Washington Post
Thousands Get a Taste Of Group’s Political Agenda
… Slow Food Nation, as the conference was dubbed, aimed to create a very different impression. At formal lectures, impromptu outdoor speeches and even in the tasting pavilions, where those very wines and cheeses were being served, the talk was mainly about how to transform the food system — and Slow Food’s reputation. Chefs, authors, activists and CEOs focused not on gastronomic indulgence but on new political relevance at a time when food is poised to take center stage.
“I don’t care if the tomato was heirloom or organic if it was harvested by slave labor. A commitment to social justice needs to be at the core of this movement,” Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation,” said at one panel.
“We need to get small farmers into the distribution system,” Rick Schnieders, chief executive of food distributor Sysco, told an audience of activists at another.
… For two days, speakers debated such topics as how to address the world food crisis and how to bring fair wages to farm workers. Part of the answer, panelists agreed, was to clearly link food to the pressing issues already on the political agenda: rising oil prices, global warming and the skyrocketing cost of health care. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, for example, reports that livestock production generates nearly one-fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases. And without cheap oil to produce fertilizers and transport food long distances, food prices will continue to rise.
“Politicians don’t get it yet. But if they try to look at energy, health or security, they will stumble on food. It’s all connected,” Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” told a packed house at the Herbst Theatre.
No matter the topic, the subtext of every session was a defense of Slow Food itself. The organization’s emphasis on the pleasure of food, something that raises no alarm bells in Italy, where the organization was founded, but has long made Slow Food vulnerable here in the United States, where the idea of savoring that perfect summer tomato smacks of elitism. To that end, panelists tried to redefine good food as something that is not only tasty but also sustains the environment and the farmers who produce it.
(3 September 2008)
Slow Food for Thought
Eric Schlosser, The Nation
… Legendary chef Alice Waters has for years been the driving force behind Slow Food USA. In addition to having remarkably good taste, Waters has a passion for social justice deeply embedded in her bones. While other famous chefs have used their names to promote frozen dinners, open restaurant outlets in airports and build gourmet empires, she has focused her energy on bringing nutritional education and healthy food to children in America’s public schools.
The first Slow Food Nation partly fulfilled Waters’s broad agenda. It earned high marks for the good and the clean but next time could do a hell of a lot better with the fair. At the moment, the majority of Americans–ordinary working people, the poor, people of color–do not have a seat at this table. The movement for sustainable agriculture has to reckon with the simple fact that it will never be sustainable without these people. Indeed, without them it runs the risk of degenerating into a hedonistic narcissism for the few. Wendell Berry–the great poet and novelist whose book The Unsettling of America, more than any other, inspired the current assault on the fast food mentality–says that “eating is an agricultural act.” That means we are all co-producers, choosing a certain set of values with every bite. Does it matter whether an heirloom tomato is local and organic if it was harvested with slave labor? That was the question I asked the audience at Slow Food Nation. The answer is obvious, and it’s one that this movement needs to address.
(3 September 2008)
More from Tom Philpott at Gristmill: Slow Food Nation: Farmworkers at the table.
Univ. of Calif.: Causes and Consequences of the Food Price Crisis
Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, University of California
Causes and effects of high food prices to be discussed on Oct. 10
Record-high farm commodity prices, like oil prices, have begun to fall in recent weeks, but prices of several commodities remain at double or more than double their levels of two years ago. To show the bigger picture surrounding food prices, a symposium will be hosted by the University of California Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics and the UC Agricultural Issues Center on Oct. 10.
The symposium, “Causes and Consequences of the Food Price Crisis,” will be held Friday, Oct. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Bancroft Hotel at 268 Bancroft Way in Berkeley.
Agricultural economists will summarize results of research on the current food price crisis currently under way at the Agricultural and Resource Economics departments at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
“The likely causes of the increase in food prices include the jump in oil prices, the increase in biofuels demand supported by government policies, government attempts to manipulate imports and exports, increased demand caused by rising income in developing countries, slower growth in agricultural productivity, and the weak U.S. dollar,” said Larry Karp, chair of the UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
“Statistical analysis of historical data, simulations showing how policies affect market equilibrium, and models of food demand behavior when stocks are low, all help us understand the current situation and outlook for the future.”
The researchers also examined the relationship between the slowing pace of agricultural research and development and the recent imbalance between productivity and demand growth.
In addition to causes of high commodity prices, symposium presenters will discuss the consequences. Higher prices benefit farmers and land owners and harm consumers. California and U.S. farm incomes and land prices reached new records in 2007, and are even higher in 2008. In poor countries, the sudden and extreme jump in prices has caused severe hardship and hunger for the most vulnerable populations, who devote much of their income to food. Because many small-scale farmers buy food to supplement what they raise, many farm households have suffered from high prices. The long-lasting adverse consequences include physical and mental stunting from malnutrition and reduced schooling for children.
For more information about the symposium and to register, go to http://are.berkeley.edu/foodcrisis/. Registration is free.
(2 September 2008)
Press release is online. Some research summaries are already online as PDFs at the conference site, for example:
Introduction
1. Assessment of the causes of the food price crisis
2. Implications of biofuels on food and fuel consumers and producers
3. Speculators, storage and commodity price spikes
Meet the urban sharecroppers
Tanis Taylor, The Guardian
It was a small notice, in between the ads for childminding and English lessons. “Free gardening. I will cultivate an abundant vegetable plot for you in your garden and we will share the produce 50/50.” Then a number.
When I got home I looked at my garden – unused, unloved, under wood chip. I looked at Google Earth. Almost half of the 3.1m households in London have a garden. Put together, they would occupy an area roughly the size of the Isle of Wight, and could insulate us against food price hikes and keep us all in fresh vegetables. Most are lawns or crazy paving.
The idea of garden-sharing began in cities, among people who wanted to grow fruit and vegetables to eat but didn’t have the time, space or confidence. The most obvious solution
was to pool resources; for knowledgeable people with time on their hands, but little space, to help the time-poor; and for those – often elderly – with large, unmanageable gardens to get labour in exchange for yield…
(4 September 2008)
