What is the Slow Food Movement?

By Patty Cullen

Founded in Italy in 1989, Slow Food is a non-profit member supported organization that was created to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Today, there are over 80,000 members all over the world, in 850 convivia—the local organizing groups. Local chapters are called convivia because it is how the joy and conviviality of small groups, sharing something they are passionate about, is best expressed.

Slow Food believes that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. The movement is founded upon this concept of eco-gastronomy—a recognition of the strong connections between plate and planet.

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. Members believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health, and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.

Slow Food members are encouraged to consider themselves as co-producers, not consumers, because by being informed about how food is produced and actively supporting those who produce it, we become a part of and a partner in the production process.

The Slow Food Mission
Slow Food works in three main ways: to defend biodiversity in the food supply, spread taste education and connect producers of excellent foods with co-producers through events and initiatives.

Taste Education
Good, clean and fair food is only possible with knowledge: the knowledge of those who bring food to the table and the knowledge of those who eat it. Understanding more about our food, how it tastes and where it comes from, makes the act of eating all the more pleasurable.

Education has always been central to the movement. By reawakening and training their senses, Slow Food helps people rediscover the joys of eating and understand the importance of caring where their food comes from, who makes it and how it’s made. Slow Food has educational programs for everyone: children and adults, members and non-members.

The Slow Food educational style is based on the Taste Workshops—a permanent feature at all large Slow Food events—in which experts teach participants to taste and compare foods and match them with wine and other drinks.

Slow Food extends their idea of education to school programs ranging from training teachers and collaborating on curricula to improving school lunches and organizing after school programs.

There is also no better way to understand food than to grow it yourself. For this reason, Slow Food encourages each convivium to create a school garden in their town or city. This way students learn to grow plants, understand the cycle of the seasons and also taste what they’ve grown before going on to study delicious ways of using the ingredients in the kitchen.

Defense of Biodiversity
The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity was created by the Slow Food movement in partnership with the Region of Tuscany, recognizing that the appreciation of gastronomy must include the additional step of safeguarding gastronomic resources.

As an independent non-profit entity, the Foundation supports three main projects—the Ark of Taste, the Presidia and Terra Madre—to accomplish this goal. The Foundation exists thanks to the Slow Food movement but also through generous support from public and private donors.

While the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity promotes projects around the world, its direct financial contributions are especially dedicated to the world’s less developed countries, where conserving biodiversity means not only improving quality of life, but actually saving lives, communities and cultures.

Ark
Slow Food makes its support of biodiversity real by promoting artisanal producers of quality products. Created in 1996, the Ark of Taste is a growing catalogue of foods that have been forgotten or marginalized and are at risk of disappearing completely. The Ark identifies over 500 animal breeds, fruit and vegetable varieties, prepared foods and specific dishes and offers a resource for those interested in sourcing and promoting quality foods.

Presidia
The presidia were created in 2000 to help artisan food producers directly. These small-scale projects protect traditional production methods by supporting producers in situ and helping them find markets for traditional foods. The presidia, which began with just two projects in Italy, now encompasses more than 270 projects all over the world.

For some presidia, a little assistance goes a long way: all it takes is to bring together producers, help them coordinate marketing and promotion and establish quality and authenticity standards for their product. Other products take more effort to save: sometimes it’s necessary to build a dairy or an oven or develop new ways to use or prepare a particular food.

Slow Food presidia work in different ways, but the goals remain constant: to promote artisan products, stabilize production techniques, establish stringent production standards and, above all, to guarantee a viable future for traditional foods.

Presidium products have not only conquered cooks and gourmets, but have also won over everyday consumers. The success of the presidia has proven that consumers are willing to pay fair prices for quality products, which are hence economically feasible to make.

Terra Madre
This initiative brings together food communities that work for the sustainability of their food products and for quality which accounts for exceptional taste and respects the environment and people.

In October of 2004, Slow Food held the first Terra Madre, a world meeting of food communities. Nearly 5,000 delegates, including farmers, breeders, fishermen, processors, distributors, cooks and agricultural experts, representing 1,200 food communities from 130 countries attended this first meeting, which was held in Turin, Italy.

At each edition of Terra Madre, held biennially, participants attend workshops and panel discussions devoted to problems they encounter every day as well as on broader themes, such as biodynamics and genetic engineering. Most importantly, they meet each other. Beekeepers from Turkey share their experiences with beekeepers from Zambia and Mexico. Bulgarian berry foragers get to know Canadian wild blueberry gatherers. Coffee growers from Ethiopia, Honduras and Laos discuss their work and possible solutions to common problems.

Terra Madre creates new networks among food producers all over the world that Slow Food continues to cultivate. Farmers, producers and distributors have since organized smaller meetings, set up Web sites to exchange ideas and worked to market and promote their products internationally. Slow Food is also working with communities to create dedicated small-scale projects.

Linking Producers and Co-producers
Slow Food promotes the concept of being a co-producer, that is, going beyond the passive role of a consumer and taking interest in those that produce our food, how they produce it and the problems they face in doing so. In actively supporting food producers, we become part of he production process.

Slow Food organizes numerous fairs, events and markets to foster a greater connection between producers and co-producers and to showcase products of excellent gastronomic quality.

Catskills Convivium
The Catskills Convivium was founded in late 2006. Convivium co-leaders are Patty Cullen, a tourism marketing consultant, and Rosalie Glauser, owner of Slow Down Food Company in Andes. Additional committee members include Denise and Tom Warren of Stone & Thistle Farm, Sally and Ed O’Neill of the Andes Hotel and Newell Turner, who splits his time between New York City and Bovina. The Catskills Convivium has almost two dozen members and is growing. The initial geographic focus of the convivium will be along the Route 28 corridor from Woodstock to Oneonta.

The Catskills Convivium wants to explore the link between the knowledge of how food was produced and foraged from the generations who lived here before us, with the newer sustainable farmers whose understanding of the Catskill climate and its impact on food production is creating new Catskill cuisine.

An individual membership is $60 per year and a couple’s membership is $75 per year. Farmers can register at the student rate of $30. Membership dues are tax deductible, except for the $15 allocated for a journal.

If you are interested in joining the Slow Food Catskills convivium you have several options. You can log on to the national Web site and register online at www.slowfoodusa.org. A membership application can also be mailed to you—call 607 832 4720 and leave a message with your mailing address, or e-mail them at slowfoodcats@delhitel.net. The Catskills Convivium has their own Web site at www.slowfoodcats.com. If you are currently a member and would like to switch to the Catskills Convivium or add it as one of your two designated convivium, please contact the USA national office at 718 260 8000 or e-mail info@slowfoodusa.org.