Slow Food Nation : You Are What You Eat

The Slow Food Nation gathering promises to be a Woodstock for food lovers and enviros concerned with our food system.
By Kerry Trueman / August 25

SAN FRANCISCO -- A swarm of 40,000 to 50,000 locavores will descend on San Francisco this Labor Day weekend to attend Slow Food Nation, a four-day extravaganza of teach-ins and tastings that's being billed as a kind of "Woodstock for gastronomes."

I'd rather go to a Woodstock for garden gnomes, myself -- at least those Lilliputian lawn ornaments share my fondness for front yard farming. Gastro gnomes, on the other hand, sound like elitist elves who are overly fond of artisanal cheeses and grass-fed beef. Do we really need a celebration of such highfalutin culinary novelties at a time when high fuel and food costs are making it harder for people to keep their pantries stocked with even the most basic staples?

Well, yes, we do, because we need to remember that the fresh, unadulterated, minimally processed, locally produced foods that Slow Food Nation is showcasing were our pantry staples, before the military-industrial complex annexed our food chain a half a century or so ago in the name of progress.

Our great-grandparents would be flabbergasted to learn that grass-fed milk in glass bottles bearing the local dairy farm's logo is now a rare luxury item available to only the affluent few who are willing to pay $4 for a half-gallon of milk.

Back in the day, our breads were fresh-baked and free of high fructose corn syrup, and our eggs and bacon came from chickens and hogs that rolled around in the dirt and saw the light of day. The word "farm" still evokes nostalgic pastoral images for most Americans, but there's nothing even remotely benign or bucolic about the fetid, brutal factory farms that supply us with most of our meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products today. And unmasking this unsavory reality is as much a part of Slow Food Nation's agrarian agenda as dishing out local delicacies.

So don't be distracted by the aroma of wood-fired focaccia wafting from the Fort Mason Center "Taste Pavilions"; Slow Food Nation has the potential to spark a crucial dialogue about where our food comes from, how it's grown, and why all that matters. With forums featuring the good food movement's marquee names, including Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and Eric Schlosser, this Alice Waters-sponsored shindig could be the watershed event that puts America's foodsheds on the map.

Don't know what a "foodshed" is? Don't worry, nobody else does, either -- the word is still so obscure it hasn't earned an entry on Wikipedia. It means, essentially, the area through which food travels to get from the farm to your plate. That would have been a pretty short trip a few generations ago, but in this era of globalization, our foodshed now encompasses the whole world, more or less.

This far-flung food chain has enslaved us with a false sense of abundance, turning the produce aisles of our supermarkets into a seasonless place where you can find berries and bell peppers all year round. But this apparent bounty diverts us from the fact that industrial agriculture has actually drastically reduced the diversity of the foods that our farmers grow.

As small and mid-size farms got swallowed up by the massive monoculture operations we now call "conventional," the varieties of fruits and vegetables grown on those farms got whittled down to just those few that shipped the best and had the longest shelf life. Breeders chose to focus on species of livestock and poultry that fatten up the fastest, such as big-breasted but bland Butterball turkeys so top-heavy they can't reproduce naturally and have to be artificially inseminated. For this we give thanks each November?

This focus on economies of scale, and the illusory "efficiency" of a food system dependent on cheap fossil fuels and perpetual subsidies, gave us, the richest nation in the world, the cheapest food. And we are all the poorer for it.

Along the way, we lost hundreds of different kinds of plants and animals; currently, "at least 1,060 food varieties unique to North America are threatened, endangered or functionally extinct in the marketplaces of the United States, Canada, and northern Mexico," Gary Paul Nabhan writes in Renewing America's Food Traditions, a new book that celebrates the distinctive culinary regions of our country that Agribiz almost obliterated in recent decades.

But Renewing America's Food Traditions is not just a book; it's an alliance: Called RAFT for short, it's a collaborative effort from Slow Food USA and six other sustainably minded organizations. RAFT's mission is to inspire what the folks at Slow Foods USA call "eater-based conservation" by preserving and promoting the culinary heritage and extraordinary biodiversity that blessed this country for centuries before we shifted gears and became a fast food nation.

Nabhan is participating in a Slow Food Nation forum, "Re-Localizing Food," along with Pollan, Dan Barber and Winona LaDuke, but this powerhouse panel is, alas, already sold out, along with most of the other forums featuring the rock stars of the real food movement.

Thankfully, the Slow Food Nation folks are offering some free events and exhibits, too, including the Marketplace, which promises "to transform San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza into an urban garden, farmers market, outdoor food bazaar and soapbox," and the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden in front of City Hall, whose impressive array of organic heirloom vegetables is being donated to local food banks.

In keeping with its goal to promote all things sustainable, Slow Food Nation aspires to be a "zero waste event:" In addition to recycling and composting food waste, plates, flatware and packaging, Slow Food Nation is joining forces with Food and Water Watch to banish bottled water from the four-day festival. Echoing Food and Water Watch's Take Back the Tap campaign, the event will instead offer five tap water stations where folks can refill their water bottles -- or, if you didn't bring your own, you can buy a reusable, eco-friendly stainless steel canteen.

Not content to just spare us the spectacle of 50,000 good food fanatics washing down all those sustainable snacks with bottled water, Food and Water Watch has posted a much-needed guide on its Web site for the rest of us on how to "Free Your Event From Bottled Water." Pair this with Slow Food Nation's Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, to be unveiled on Aug. 28 at San Francisco's City Hall, and you've got a virtual road map to a real revolution, even if you're not going to San Francisco.

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Burning Man: Puts Other Festivals in the Shade

Each year is based around a different theme, last year was The Green Man. Photo by Piers Moore Ede.
America's premier counter-culture event is far more than just a naked camping fest
By Piers Moore Ede / August 20, 2008

In late 1986, a beach party celebrating the summer solstice marked the first official Burning Man. Within a few years, its participants had become so many, and its activities so outlandish, that founder Larry Harvey and his friends decided to move the festival to somewhere more appropriate. They chose the Black Rock desert, a 100-mile prehistoric lakebed in north-western Nevada, where temperatures regularly reach 110°F.

By 1997, Burning Man was already well on the way to becoming a cultural phenomenon. That year 10,000 people turned up to experience a week of desert living, far outside the mainstream culture of the United States. Within "Black Rock City", participants abide by a gift economy, in which commerce of any type is expressly forbidden. "Burners" must bring all their own food, camping equipment and water; and are expected to "participate" in one form or another. Many choose to construct extraordinary temporal pieces of art: full size buildings made of driftwood and junk, flashing sculptures belching flames into the night. Walking around the desert after dark, this formerly empty expanse shimmers with a thousand projections and creations, impromptu performances, DJ booths, fantastical art cars resembling pirate ships and dragonflies. "It's like stepping through the looking glass," one Burner told me. "The default world – which is what we call the world outside – just can't compare with this."

In 2007, numbers at Burning Man reached 35,000. There were people of every age group, from every stratum of society. I was among them, knowing no one, expecting little more than a fun week in a somewhat surreal environment. And yet, like thousands before me, the week was transformative, life changing, instantly addictive. This third largest city in Nevada (vanishing "without a trace" after the festival') was spotlessly clean, full of highly creative and considerate individuals. People travelled everywhere by bicycle, some of them naked. Everywhere I went, people offered me food, free rides on their "mutant vehicles", invitations to all-night parties, yoga lessons, fire juggling demonstrations. Dressed in bizarre costumes, wearing sand goggles and dust masks, it seemed easy to take people at face value, little caring what they did outside Black Rock. The annual theme, which last year was entitled Green Man, seemed to perfectly mesh with the zeitgeist. Invention and great creativity was needed to rethink the carbon-based structure of our world. At Burning Man that world seemed to rise up in the present moment, ecologically sound and full of laughter.

It would be all to easy to write off Burning Man as a desert rave, an escape valve for overstressed executives, a 21st-century update on Woodstock. But more than any of those things, Burning Man is a philosophy, an attempt to reinvent the parameters and constraints of society. Within the most advanced capitalist economy in the world, participants choose to free themselves from commerce. Art works are anonymous, often destroyed at the end of the week, even in the case of colossal structures taking months to build. People make an effort to help each other – a necessary step, actually, given the potentially hostile natural environment. Unlike any other festival I've visited, it's one without celebrity, corporate logos, or personal egos of any kind.

"Given the current cultural and political climate in the United States," Geoffrey told me, a veteran Burner of seven years, "this is really the only sane place left. I've been incredibly broke this year and wasn't sure I was going to make it, but then I realised that I had to be here, it's the only truly sacred experience open to me right now."

Perhaps more even than the enlightening effects of doing without money, running water or cell phone connection, Burning Man seems to effect a spiritual magnetism on those who attend. From above, the circular design of the city, carefully zoned each year, seems akin to some ancient pagan site. With its fire worship, close connection to nature, and emphasis on participation, Burning Man offers a transcendent experience to all comers. Each year, a Temple of Forgiveness invites people to inscribe the names of loved ones who have passed away on its walls and ceilings, before the whole structure goes up in flames, in a grand gesture of emancipation. A central tent hosts Wiccan dances, group zazen, chanting and tribal drum circles, invoking a spiritual dimension without dogma or belief.

For myself, as I rode my bicycle far out on to the prehistoric lakebed at midnight, looking backwards on the glittering utopia that is Black Rock City, Burning Man seemed like the freest place on earth. Behind me, people from all over the world were gathered in what felt like some kind of non denominational worship. I wasn't exactly sure what we were worshipping, but it felt significant. Significant enough that back in the 'default' world, my first act was to book my ticket for 2008.

* The Burning Man Project: August 25-September 1 2008-08 (tickets must be bought beforehand, they're not sold on the gate), burningman.com

* Getting there: British Airways flies to Reno via Dallas or Chicago (with onward flights on American Airlines) from £549.20. Black Rock is more than 100 miles north of Reno, and gives a new meaning to the term "middle of nowhere". It takes roughly three hours by car, and you should be prepared to share the road with livestock and wildlife.

Source / Guardian, U.K.

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...