A slow food preamble

02008-08-31 | Food | 2 comments

SFN: A slow food preamble | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist
Poet, essayist, novelist and “local-ist” Wendell Berry kicked off the final panel of the Slow Food Nation “Food for Thought” series on Saturday by reading a short statement describing the current food crisis.

For too long, humans have been spared, mainly by the cheapness of the fossil fuels, from the universal necessity of local adaptation.

It is ultimately an inescapable biological imperative that human land use economies should correspond as closely as possible to the ecological mosaic. To this, we no longer have even the illusion of a second choice.

The increasing cost of energy and the vulnerability of long distance transportation in an age of violence show the importance of local food and forest communities and the reasonable extent of local economic self-sufficiency everywhere.

Local… is the first layer, everything has to start there. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

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2 Comments

  1. ARS

    100% w/ you there.

    Reply
  2. Rob

    Eating locally grown foods reduces the carbon footprint of the food and supports the local economy. Moving towards a “locavore” diet also reduces the need for pesticides, herbicides, and genetic modification, as foods would not go for such lengths of time between harvest and table.

    It’s hard to find fruits and vegetables that actually truly taste good, though it’s easy to find fruits and vegetables that appear to be in good condition in the store. Everything is designed and bred and grown solely for market appearance – no longer for flavor. You experience flavor after the sale is made so it is irrelevant. That’s a damn shame.

    Reply

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