Slow Food Nation: Opinion Piece-"Good, Clean, Fair"

Posted by Kerry Trueman, Eating Liberally

As overwhelming undertakings go, Slow Food Nation's inaugural event
was an awesome achievement. Slow Food Nation's goal, ultimately, according to
executive director Anya Fernald, is "to create a food system for
all Americans that is healthy, socially just, affordable, and delicious."

That's an awfully ambitious agenda, and this extraordinary event definitely
encountered a few speed bumps in its drive to downshift our fast food nation.
The folks who organized Slow Food Nation envisaged it as a "truly inclusive"
series of forums, tastings, exhibits, screenings, and so on, but there was a
notable lack of diversity in the crowds who turned out to the various events,
and the price of entrée to some of the forums and food tastings no doubt put
them out of reach for many.

Thankfully there were some events and exhibits that were free to the public,
most notably the Victory Garden and the Marketplace at the Civic
Center. The Victory Garden, which will remain up through November, has
introduced thousands of folks to the beauty and bounty of an edible landscape.
It's a terrific demonstration of urban food production, ablaze with
bee-friendly blooms, sprawling squash vines, and gorgeous salad greens, from
red romaine lettuce to Osaka purple mustard greens to deep dark dinosaur kale,
and the produce harvested from it goes to local food banks.

The Marketplace offered the fantastic fruits (and veggies, and nuts, etc.)
of the labor of local farmers. There were plenty of moderately priced hot
dishes and cold beverages in addition to an amazing array of produce, cheeses,
breads, ice creams, honey, jam, pies, pickles, sauerkraut, and so on, from
California's finest small-scale farmers and food artisans.

On Monday, the final day of Slow Food Nation, two hundred and fifty or so
young movers and shakers in the good food movement held an "Eat-In,"
a picnic of epic proportions, at Dolores Park in the Mission district, with a
table that snaked along for what felt like a mile but was at least a hundred
feet long.

In keeping with Slow Food Nation's goal to be a low-impact event, the
table was set with real plates, cutlery, and cloth napkins. The incredible
variety of dishes that so many folks contributed to this free feast featured
the finest local, organic, sustainably produced ingredients.

Before we sat down to partake in this historic picnic, though, we gathered
to hear a series of speakers on a grassy hill in the blazing midday sun--with
the exception of Alice Waters, who, visionary that she is, had the
foresight to bring a parasol and basked in its shade! The rest of us, less
prepared, got a bit sunburned….

Activist/author Bryant Terry took the stage to call for a real food
revolution "from Newark, New Jersey to Napa Valley," neatly summing
up the geographical and cultural distances this movement will have to span in
order to truly transform the way we eat in America.

My discomfort with the fact that Terry seemed to be the sole person
of color participating in the Eat-In was alleviated, a little, by the words of
one of the other speakers, Slow Food USA's brand new president, Josh Viertel,
formerly the director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project. Viertel seems
poised to take Slow Food USA in a more populist direction, which many
feel is critical if this organization hopes to make good on its promise to
promote a food system that gives everyone access to food that's "good,
clean and fair."