Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ganic, biodynamic, agroecological and permacultural production the focus begins
with nutritious food grown in ways that respect the land, the soil and the people that
depend on those resources for food and livelihoods. While subsistence - or having
enough food to live healthily - remains an issue, the core focus is on the quality of
the food and the production style. he diferent branhes of the quality movement
- suh as vegan, vegetarianism, humane meat production, preservation of the peas-
antry, prevention of deforestation, water issues, etc. - then give those understand-
ings of 'quality' and 'style' their own meanings. But the concern here is to not es-
sentialize the argument of quality to an assumption of moral superiority, an issue we
will return to below.
Slow Food
We classify the Slow Food movement as typifying what we call quality issues sur-
rounding food security. While famous for protesting at a McDonald's at the base of
the Spanish Steps in Rome, the complaint was not against McDonald's
per se
but
against the symbolic (food) violence perpetuated by a food system enamoured by the
logic of quantity. Slow food celebrates diversity and local knowledge. It highlights
cultural, regional, and national foods and encourages a sharing across borders, both
real and imagined. Its emphasis on the quality of the food, and the nurturing of so-
cial relationships during food preparation and consumption that help sustain cultur-
al knowledge and practices, make Slow Food a quality movement.
Yet being 'slow' for the sake of slowness doesn't feed people either. Feeding a
soul is fine when the body is nourished. We still need to produce food - a lot of it
- if we want to feed the world's growing population. Wendell Berry, for example,
worries that, given the West's collective detahment from the land and food pro-
duction, we might not have the embodied and explicit knowledge any more to raise
suicient food via alternative methods. We doubt we'll see a signiicant bak-to-the-
land-movement in developed countries, at least as traditionally conceived. Nor do
we necessarily think that suh a thing would automatically improve food security,
recognizing that while people may be moving bak to the land they are not moving
bak in droves to agriculture, leading to rural gentriication (Phillips 1993).
Moreover, we know first-hand just how difficult it is to fix roots to any particular
place. Mihael has lived in Iowa, Illinois, the Netherlands, Washington state, and Co-
lorado in a mater of just a couple of years. Paul too has found it diicult to stay
in just one place, moving from Missouri, Illinois, Colorado, and New Zealand over
