The Slow Food movement exists to promote food production that is clean and fairAL: We should probably start off by defining Slow Food…
JD: It can be difficult define Slow Food in a way that truly gets across the significance and diversity of what they do, but a short concise way of expressing it is an international movement set up to promote good, clean and fair food. It aims to promote locally grown produce and there’s real emphasis on preserving local food traditions and knowledge.
SM: And it’s about promoting this attitude towards food in the local community, and in politics.
AL: Do you think the difficulty of defining the movement is a problem?
JD: I think it is a problem, because it prevents the communication of the movement’s ideas. Having said that, anything that is an international movement is going to be interpreted differently and the slogan of “good, clean and fair food” can encompass everything. The movement has been criticised for the way it was initially taken up, possibly due to the difficulty of defining it; it was a kind of rich people’s dinner club and didn’t address the issues of finding affordable good food. That was in the 80s and 90s, however, and things have now moved on with the real value of the movement beginning to show in its projects and the lifestyle it advocates.
SM: But I think that the fluidity of definition is in some way a good thing, because it means that the international movement can accommodate a range of attitudes.
AL: Does the movement work in collaboration with local government, or government departments?
JD: Slow Food UK doesn’t work with the government at the moment, although they are trying to develop this area. In terms of Slow Food Baby, for example, some countries’ campaigns are focusing more on government lobbying, but the UK one is aiming itself at mums’ groups, and has a workshop project that has recently been taken up by the National Childcare Trust. There’s a lot of back story to all of this though: the original group was in Ludlow, but a new CEO and headquarters was set up in London under orders from the international movement because they thought the Ludlow group hadn’t been doing enough to champion the cause. This is why the UK office is so young, and why their projects are only just starting to get off the ground; for example, developing their educational programmes alongside the already established local groups. In order to achieve everything they want, they’re looking to increase the number of staff and the amount of sponsorship they get.
SM: At home in Dorset, the group I belong to is mainly made up of interested parties that organise things like farm tours. It’s mainly about promoting local production on a local scale. I think Slow Food groups can seem a bit like self-indulgent dinner party-goers, but I do get a sense that the movement is trying change itself, it just hasn’t happened yet.
AL: So what does a subscription to Slow Food give you?
JD: On a personal level, I admit that most of what Slow Food does could be achieved without the need for subscriptions but the money goes into a central pot and this gives the organisation its international scope – for example, the ability to run projects on food procurement in the developing world and give delegates free access to Terra Madre. There were lots of developing-world delegates there who wouldn’t have been able to come if it wasn’t for subscriptions. You can criticise the movement for various reasons, but the projects that they run internationally are really incredible. In the opening ceremony, we heard people from across the world talk about the risk to their native languages and how Slow Food was going to try to help them preserve them.