Dispatch from Slow Food Nation: Looking Forward
Editor's note: Over the weekend, we sent Serious Eats San Francisco correspondent Jennifer Maiser to Slow Food Nation. This is her final dispatch from the event.
I left Slow Food Nation yesterday feeling extremely conflicted, and I am not the only one. Some friends who are exemplary students of the slow food way of life avoided the event entirely, choosing instead to preserve their local bounty, have delicious meals, and volunteer at a local farm. One coined the phrase, "slow food is for life, not just for Labor Day," which I just love because it is a reminder that a lot of us live the "slow" way of eating every day by eating food from artisan producers, making our own healthy food, buying locally, and being deliberate with our food choices.
This was the first year of the Slow Food Nation event, and given the way that the site declares this to be the "first annual event of Slow Food Nation," I assume that we will see Slow Food Nation return next year.
My prescription for a better event next year would include the following:
- Quit making it so darn difficult for us to get on the Slow Food bandwagon. Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, alienated many in the San Francisco sustainable food community last year when he chose to pick on our farmers market. And then, just as that wound was healing, Corby Kummer, a Slow Food board member told the New York Times that Slow Food Nation "Will be a failure if it is only well-dressed people over 35 from the Bay Area treating it as if it’s another Ferry Plaza Farmers Market." The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is the San Francisco's largest farmers market. While it is often slammed unduly in the press for high prices and precious food, it's a place where tens of thousands of sustainable food supporters shop on a regular basis. The Kummer comment left me and others confused and frustrated. Read literally, it means that he didn't want me at Slow Food Nation.
- Add a community service component to the Slow Food Nation program. Having 60,000 converge on San Francisco in the name of good, healthy, sustainable food is an amazing, unprecedented thing. Let's corral some of that energy to build or bolster urban gardens, educate children in one-day school presentations, cook healthy meals for the homeless, and teach low-income mothers how to make a quick, healthy meal for their families. If a fraction of the Slow Food Nation participants made a half-day commitment during the event, we could make an impact that is felt throughout the city.
- Publish the Changemakers Day sessions as a series of podcasts. Changemakers Day was a part of the program aimed at leaders who are focused on sustainable food systems, and many of us could benefit from hearing the deeper discussions going on among sustainable food leaders.
- Ditch the rock concerts, or explain to me how they relate to Slow Food Nation's mission.
Being the eternal optimist, I have high hopes that this event can only get better. I hope that Slow Food Nation participants will use the event as a springboard for new ideas, new projects, and new ways of eating. And I hope that the organizers of Slow Food Nation work to refine their goals, diversify their target audience, listen to our feedback, and figure out how to help us get healthy, sustainable, and delicious food to all Americans.
Related
Dispatch from Slow Food Nation: The Marketplace
Dispatch from Slow Food Nation: The Taste Pavilion
Dispatch from Slow Food Nation: Speaker Panels
About the author: Jennifer Maiser writes about locally and sustainably grown food. She is the founder and editor of the Eat Local Challenge website and writes at Life Begins at 30, her personal weblog.
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6 Comments:
these were the same problems i had with it... also some people in a workshop i attended who were very disrespecting of mexican markets[insert finger quotes] and other areas of california.
evilchefmom at 11:41AM on 09/02/08
Hi Jen - great post.
I was very glad that the SFN added the Alemany Farm event to their program, although it would have been even better if those people had actually stayed and volunteered and actually worked the farm for the afternoon. I wish there had been more events like that. Your idea for a half day community commitment is brilliant. That's *exactly* the kind of thing I was searching for with this event, which is why I ended up at the farm. I also agree with all your other points and would like to add another suggestion: Hands-on workshops about to can/preserve/ferment/cure/etc. This is the type of education we who are interested in this kind of thing currently have to teach ourselves. It would be great to get some community support in how best to do this and preserve, not waste, seasonal foods when tey are at their peak!
SamBreach at 1:44PM on 09/02/08
Agreed on the community service aspect. I called to volunteer a little late in the game (2 weeks ago) and was told the only available spots were during normal business hours. I would have been happy to give as much time as I could but the conflict with my day job made that hard. I know I should have signed up earlier, but perhaps making volunteering easier would be great to help the cause.
kitchenbea at 6:20PM on 09/02/08
As a person who volunteered Friday-Sunday, I, too, went and came away conflicted. I don't think I've ever been to an event attended by so many people that pleased everyone, or even most. SF is a hard crowd, most especially seen by the local media coverage this past week end.
I am a little confused by your first bullet point though. Having worked for various food producers and farmers at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market off and on for the last 10 + years, I have seen less and less people buying and more and more looking. And many farms have dropped out of that market because of it's downturn in sales since the move.
Also I don't take offense to Mr. Kummer's quoted comment and it appears, after reading all of your posts on SFN, that you don't really either. I read his point to mean that SFN will be a failure if most people walk through, buy a little, look a little and go home and cook their delicious foodstuffs, and stop there.
The truth is that none of us know who took what away, who learned something new, who became inspired to do more, and who went to Civic Center day after day just for the biscuits and the star chef watching.
I say it's all part and parcel of an event of this scale, and what each of us do with our conflicted feelings to better educate Slow Food or anything else is made all the better with our energies, no matter how they've been formed.
Thank you for exceptional coverage. Glad to know at least one of the people I was working so hard for appreciated it.
shunafish at 2:22AM on 09/03/08
Actually, my reaction to this summing up is "quit making Slow Food about San Francisco or any of the other cities in which it might turn up."
It needs to be national and educational, and although you may go to SF for the convention/show, you should be carrying the clean food, sustainable agriculture, real food message to every part of your world.
Children are growing up not knowing milk comes from cows. Many of them eat manufactured food from morning until bedtime. There are grownups who don't know anything of nutrition and have children whose nutrition is their responsibility.
There are many rumors about the US food supply and Slow Food aficionados need to learn the truth and spread it. Is the meat full of hormones? Is the milk tainted with them, too? Does the government still fulfill its role of keeping the citizens safe on the food front, or is no one minding the store?
There's still time to fight for decent food, and that's where the energy needs to go, IMO.
Judith in Umbria at 8:45AM on 09/03/08
Jen, lovely post. I think your prescription for a better SLN are all good ones. I especially love the community service event suggestion.
I truly hope The Powers that Be are listening.
grubreport at 2:54PM on 09/03/08