I just came back from Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. It was a delicious, inspiring, invigorating weekend. Anyone who has read the likes of Marion Nestle, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Alice Waters (to name a few) know that food politics is complicated. From organics and Monsanto to climate change and oil, and from GMOs and the Farm Bill to animal rights and human rights. Vandana Shiva, my hero and a true force of nature, eloquently said “Everything is food, everything is someone else’s food.”

Here are some of my highlights from the Food for Thought Panels.

Soil not Oil

Food comes from the ground. Not our local Trader Joe’s. For thousands upon thousands of years, we’ve grown the food we are supposed to eat. But today, our food system relies on oil. Factory farming, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), high fructose corn syrup and pesticides.

A Sun-Food Agenda

..is what is missing, says Michael Pollan. In the US. only 2% of the population are farmers while farmers are 95% and 65% of the population in Africa and India respectively. It’s time to bring animals back to farms, farmers back to the US and focus on the origianl solar technology: the sun!

Hunger Crisis

Let’s stay local for a moment, the definition of poverty is not at all based in reality. One in 8 Americans families live in poverty. And for a family of 4, the poverty line is drawn at an annual income of $21,000. What?! $21,000 a year?! How can that be?

66,000 free meals are distributed each day in San Francisco alone. People can’t afford to eat; and we don’t have a system in place to give people the food they need.   And people all over the world are starving not because there isn’t enough soil to grow food, but because of person-made hunger. If it was a priority to feed the planet, we can feed the planet.

Climate Change

Food is the most imminent relationship we have with the environment. And the food industry accounts for as much as 31 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. The livestock industry alone is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the total more than the entire transportation sector. Think about going going meat-free at least 1 day a week! And eat LOCALLY! (Check out TakeABite.cc for more).

Human Rights

“I don’t care if your tomato is organic and local, if it was harvested by slave labor, i don’t want it” Farm workers, meat packers and restaurant workers are some of the lowest paid, overworked and poorest in the country. The number of farm workers  dying of heat stroke in the field is growing and companies are barely getting fined.

Monsanto’s Reign of Terror

Monsanto owns 90% of soybean and corn seed in the US. No one company has as much power and control over our food system. And no one company should. Legislation has to be put in place so that farmers can start growing food and stop growing profits for multi-national organizations.

And finally, a lovely parable from Carlo Petrini

Carlo is the founding father of Slow Food and the mantra that food must be good, clean and fair. He offered this lovely tale:

A man dies, arrives at the gates of heaven for divine judgment. He asks if he can see a little preview of both heaven and hell so he can see both before he is sentenced.

First, he sees a big room with an enormous table filled with the most divine and magnificent food in the world (organic, of course). Emaciated, pale people are sitting around the table but their forks are too short and they can never reach the food.

He then opens the doors to heaven and sees the same room with the exact same table of glorious food. Only this time, everyone’s forks are a yard long. They can reach the food but they can’t feed themselves, they have to feed others.

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Pictures and Flip videos are on my zannel channel.
We will have more footage from the SFN in the coming weeks!

Related:

TakePart at Slow Food Nation
Hungry for Change