Nobody Wants Fast Food for Thanksgiving
— Robert Waldrop, President, Oklahoma Food Cooperative
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Bob Waldrop |
What is food? The basic answer of the modern world is that food
is fuel. It should be fast, convenient, and cheap Taste is increasingly
homogenized and dumbed down. Many popular foods these days derive
their flavors and appearance from industrial chemicals. They are
essentially manufactured products; we refer to them as “food”
courtesy of state and federal laws and regulations that permit them
to be labeled as food and omnipresent multi-million dollar advertising
campaigns. People buy the food because that’s what’s
for sale, and they have forgotten — or have never known —
what real food tastes like.
As a result of this supply chain mentality in food production,
and the “get big or get out” advice and structures promoted
by governments, the number of farmers continues to decline, the
average age of farmers is increasing, farms are getting larger,
and most food processing and wholesale distribution is the property
of five giant cartels. Retail food alternatives are declining as
grocery chains consolidate and independents close up shop.
The consequences are evident all over rural Oklahoma. Fewer farmers
means fewer farm families and that means a smaller economic base
for rural communities. Sure, most of the land is still being farmed,
but instead of 10,000 acres supporting 30 or 40 farmers (and their
families), all of whom spend their money in town, 10,000 acres may
only support 3 or 4 farm families. So that’s maybe 25 farmers
— and their families — who aren’t buying blue
jeans and church dresses and socks and toothpaste and automobiles
in “town “ because now they live in cities and work
at jobs far away from the farm community of their birth and heritage.
Local economies have also lost local food production infrastructure
such as custom butchers, meat locker storage, community canning
kitchens, and farmers markets.
The international Slow Food movement has a different idea about
what food ought to be and the opportunities this offers to family
farmers. It was founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini as part of an
effort to stop the spread of McDonald’s in Europe. Slow food
is food with a story, that originates in the region, is grown with
ecologically sustainable and humane agricultural practices, and
provides farmers with economically viable businesses. It is therefore
in direct competition with fast food as we know it— which
is the same everywhere, bland, unremarkable, manufactured in factories
and deriving its tastes from industrial chemicals, and pays the
farmer the absolute least amount of money possible, while charging
the farmer the highest prices for supplies and equipment.
Stop for a moment and think about how important real food is to
our holidays and celebrations. Suppose you showed up at Grandma’s
house on Thanksgiving, and dinner was Big Macs, McFries, and Mcapple
pies, with maybe some micro-waved convenience store bean burritos
on the side. You would think that she had lost her mind!
Nobody wants fast food on Thanksgiving. Everybody wants “slow
food” for celebrations. Turkeys stuffed with sage dressing,
seasoned with herbs, carrots, onions, and celery, baked sweet potatoes,
real mashed potatoes, gravy made from the broth from the turkey,
and home-made pies and rolls. That is a Thanksgiving dinner. It’s
not cheap fast food sandwiches made with mystery meats and industrial
chemicals.
The Slow Food movement is at the vanguard of the next big thing
in food. It rejects the tasteless, anonymous, homogenized, and industrialized
flavors dished up by the modern agribidness system. It embraces
real food — meals prepared from basic ingredients that originate
in local farms with stories and histories and are distributed via
local “Value Chains” where every stakeholder benefits
and receives a fair price for their contribution to the final result.
Evidence of growth in the movement is not hard to find. In the
last 10 years, the number of farmers’ markets has increased
from 1,755 to 3,137 — that’s 78%! Certified organic
farms multiplied from 4,050 to 11,998 — nearly 300% increase!
The number of cooking schools increased 275%, from 338 to 930, and
viewers of the Food Network grew more than 1000% — from 7
million to 74 million people. Sixty-six percent of consumers buy
some organic products at least occasionally, up from 55% in 2000.
“nd there are 130 Slow Food “conviviums” (local
organizations) throughout the nation.
A recent survey of the Chef’s Collaborative found that 57%
preferred to purchase items directly from farmers. A survey of the
general public found that 71% are willing to pay more for local
foods, 71% are willing to pay more for food produced using environmentally
friendly practices, and 59% thought family farms should be supported
even if it means higher prices. A survey of consumer motivations
found that 98% thought that taste was extemely or very important
in making food choices. 96% thought quality was extremely or very
important, and 69% thought buying food that supports local farmers
was extremely or very important.
What the chefs are doing now, everybody will be doing in five
years, this is the accepted wisdom among food folks. People are
tired of boring, homogenized, “everything tastes the same
“foods that are found in the commercial food system. They
are looking for the authentic local and regional tastes of foods
that have stories. Slow foods — local foods — are not
anonymous, they are not mysteries. The tastes of local and regional
cuisines are not manufactured in factories or laboratory test tubes.
They come from humanely and sustainably managed free ranging flocks
and herds, and from organic and natural agriculture. They are brought
forth by people with names and stories rooted in places and times
who remember and conserve what has gone before and pass truth and
wisdom and heritage farming knowledge on to future generations.
Slow food will not be a passing fad, because it represents a complete
change in the way that people are thinking about and doing food,
and once you set off down the slow food journey, it is hard to turn
back. My household has been getting 80% of its food from local sources
for more than 2 years now. We have learned new ways to do food and
re-learned heritage knowledge that somehow got lost along the way.
We are never going back to the supermarket for items we can get
from Oklahoma farmers. A while back we were out of bacon, and we
wouldn’t be getting another pig from a farmer for another
month. One morning I was hungry for some bacon, and so I went to
the supermarket, bought the same brand of bacon I had purchased
for years before discovering local foods, came home, fried it up,
nibbled on a piece — and fed the rest to the dogs.
One final note about slow foods: The best slow foods are produced
by people with love in their hearts. My grandfather Glen Waldrop,
was a farmer all of his life in Tillman County. Every year he used
to plant 4 or 5 acres of black-eyed peas. They weren’t for
sale, but anybody who wanted some could come and get them. The economists
would scratch their heads about that idea. From a strictly money
viewpoint, it would have been “better“ to plant cotton,
sell it, and then buy dried black-eyed peas to give to people. But
Glen and Dovie Waldrop knew that there was no substitute for fresh,
just-picked black-eyed peas. All of their lives their neighbors
had been kind to them, and they considered it an honor to be kind
in return to their neighbors. That is the essence of slow food,
and this is why in the race between the fast agribidness rabbit
and the slow food turtle, the turtle will win.
For more of Bob Waldrop’s writings go to:
Getting’ the Right Eats: Bob Waldrop’s Oklahoma
Food Blog
http://www.oklahomafood.coop/bobsblog/
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