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Europe to Slow Down on Food

Claudia Ciobanu

TORINO, Italy, Oct 25 2010 (IPS) - The Slow Food movement has won significant support from the European Union. Dacian Ciolos, the European Union Commissioner for Agriculture, spoke to IPS in support of the movement at Terra Madre, a biennial reunion of promoters of the Slow Food movement.

“Personally, I have a great interest and sympathy for Slow Food agriculture,” Ciolos told IPS. “But also as a Commissioner, I have to say that if the new agricultural policy of the EU wants to be fair to European taxpayers, it must take into account sustainable food production.

“This model of agriculture has been marginalised because so much emphasis has been given to industrial food production. But now we must change the way in which we produce food, we must pay more attention to the use of natural resources,” said Ciolos, who is working on a new Common Agricultural Policy for the EU, to become effective after 2013.

“The new policy will include simple financial instruments to support small farms — which have not existed before, tools to help farmers promote their local products, and support for the creation of markets and fares where small producers can sell directly to consumers.”

Slow Food is becoming increasingly popular among global North progressives looking for answers to the economic and environmental crises.

Slow Food International which leads the campaign to promote it, was founded in 1989 by Italian Carlo Petrini as a non-profit eco-gastronomic organisation to counteract fast food and the disappearance of local food traditions. The group seeks to sensitise people to the impact of their consumer choices.

Slow Food is now considered a “movement”, and is associated with Via Campesina, a network of more than 150 million members worldwide working for food sovereignty.

Since 2004, Slow Food farmers and supporters of sustainable food production around the world have been organising biennial Terra Madre reunions in Torino, in northern Italy. About 5,000 participants attended this year’s Terra Madre Oct. 21-25.

Small farmers exhibiting their products in the Salone del Gusto, a market set up by the side of the reunion, are looking to carve out an increasingly larger space for themselves in a market dominated by industrially produced foodstuffs.

“We need to achieve a change in the food production system, currently dominated by industrial production, and this change needs to be driven from below, by the farmers,” said Elias Alvarado from the chocolate-producing cooperative Kallari in the Ecuadorian Amazon. “Our focus is sustainability, not only economical, but also environmental and cultural.

“A long chain of intermediaries between us and the consumers makes prices very high for them and rewards very small for us. We aim to reach directly to the primary consumer.”

“There is a great need for regional markets, to take place weekly, for example,” said Eric Fernandez Cortez, a mescal producer from Oaxaca, Mexico. “A lot of waste is produced and a lot of money is spent just by moving around products. Customers would have to pay less if they could buy food produced locally.”

Slow Food farmers use traditional production techniques, with low environmental impact, to produce healthy foods. The quality of their products is better than mass produced foods, but they have a marginal position in world markets. Industrial foods have artificially low prices on account of mass production and subsidies offered by governments to large producers.

Long distances to markets and complicated certification procedures required by authorities also raise the prices of Slow Food products.

“If we do not give back value to the food, we will not exit this global crisis,” argued Carlo Petrini at the opening ceremony of Terra Madre. “It’s crazy to pay so little for food and then throw it away, while peasants are on their knees. Low prices that do not reward the farmers are not a sign of civilisation.

“We must destroy the logic that a peasant is the last wheel,” Petrini said. “The peasants are the greatest intellectuals on earth. The future belongs to farmers.”

Writer and activist Raj Patel said at the Terra Madre reunion that food sovereignty — as promoted by Slow Food and Via Campesina — is the main means available at the moment for society to fight back against the excesses of capitalism in a constructive manner.

“For our movement to be successful, we need to organise, form alliances with other movements, and we need a vision,” Patel said.

That may mean stronger moves in the North towards ‘degrowth’, which envisions a society of “voluntary simplicity”. Its champion Serge Latouche argues that the global North should renounce economic growth in order to allow for global social justice. Latouche says Slow Food and degrowth are inextricably linked, as illustrated by their common logo, the snail.