A refreshing refutation of the Whole Foods mentality:
In Europe and the United States, a new line of thinking has emerged in elite circles that opposes bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers and opposes linking those farmers more closely to international markets. Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that “sustainable food” in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn’t work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.
If we are going to get serious about solving global hunger, we need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming. And that means learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we’ve developed in the West. Without it, our food would be more expensive and less safe. In other words, a lot like the hunger-plagued rest of the world.
Read the rest.
In Robbo’s humble opinion, the kind of limousine liberal nostalgie de la boue discussed in the article is pretty damned offensive, both in its preening, infantile, self-satisfied ignorance and even more in the ironic fact that it hurts those who have no yearning for the mud, but who are instead desperately trying to get out of it.
Perhaps not so ironic, however, since one cannot help wondering if all those Western Elites playing at peasants and shephards want to keep the real ones where they are in order to satisfy the Elites’ sense of “authenticity”.
But that’s just me, Mr. Cynical.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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April 30, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Fear and Loathing in Georgetown
I had a post a while back that explains some of that nostalgie de la boue. It’s a matter of viewing the present, capitalist, technological, Western world, as somehow inauthentic. Consequently, they are drawn both to foreign cultures and the preIndustrial past as presumably more authentic. My post was prompted by a NYTimes piece complaining about the inauthenticity of the Indian Casinos in upstate CT. Obviously, returning to the “authentic tribal lifestyle” or whatever would’ve also meant returning to dire poverty.
May 1, 2010 at 6:15 am
B.B.
I have an interesting perspective on htis, having graduated from a community college culinary program here in Oregon that emphasizes “slow food”, especially the local emphasis. Our final dinner that we held for hte public was a 100-mile menu — every item of every course had a main ingredient harvested from a farm, ranch, or fishing boat within 100 miles of campus.
In concept, it’s a great idea, and for those of us living in a place as abundant as Oregon, it really was a great way to highlight the bounty of our home. For Restaurants and high-end dining, local organic food is a wonderful way to really develop a very impressive local cuisine.
But here’s the catch:
It ain’t never going to feed the masses.
The Slow Food Movement wants three things: Local, organic, and Sustainable. If we accept the definition of sustainable as being able to sustain humanity with a minimal and reparable impact on the environment, we see that you can accomplish any two of those goals, but not all three. Organic farming methods have a limited capacity for yield — the amount of food per acre produced using modern fertilizers and pesticides so far outstrips organic methods in most cases — not to mention the difference in man hours of labor — that there is no way to sustain modern human populations with pure bred “Slow Food” methods. You either accept the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, you expand your growing range outside the elite’s definition of “Local”, or, if you were ever to adhere strictly to those standards (Local, organic), you accept that starvation will occur.
I sometimes think the left is actually OK with the third option.
May 1, 2010 at 11:46 am
Robbo
Right. And that’s the thing: There’s nothing actually wrong with local, organic food. But it’s a luxury, a wildly inefficient way of doing things that appeals to our vanity. But while you and I can afford to dally with “organic” gardens out back because we’ve got the economic cushion to sustain it, Joe Dirt Farmer cannot. And it’s the increasing tone of “Well, let them eat tofu,” that really infuriates me.
May 1, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Jordana
You say this all so much better than I did in my post about the same article. I grow so weary of the elitist adding on another step to “real food” at every turn. Every time I turn around there is another “thou shalt not.” Including now that all canned goods are bad. I sure do weep for those poor people getting fed from food banks who have to eat the poisonous stuff.