A bit more promotion, this time of a fine book by the splendid Wayne Roberts. The No Nonsense Guide to World Food is a handy, and short, overview of why we’re in the mess we’re in today. Look for it at your local independent book store.
A wonky posting today, from the ever excellent Daryll Ray who points out that one of the elements in the conversation about food that is making a timid, but welcome, return to the policy debate is an idea that’s thousands of years old – grain stores. Read more, below the fold.
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?
San Francisco’s Slow Food Nation is gently being dismantled — even the Victory Garden will be dug up in November. But there are spaces where the good fight is being fought, and which will endure. Proving that public art has a place in that fight is Mona Caron. She already has a range of murals in and around the city, and her latest is in the Noe Valley neighbourhood, around a farmers market.
Eric Schlosser was one of the heroes on stage at Slow Food Nation here in San Francisco this weekend. He was, relentlessly, the only person who demanded that labour be treated with dignity. His friendly critique of Slow Food Nation is up at, appropriately enough, The Nation. And reposted below…
It’s a tried and tested solution – the British were using it so that the poor could feed themselves, but it’s heartening nonetheless that the idea of community gardens is catching on. Below the fold, the story of Mexico City’s new community gardens.
Now that biofuels have been caught out by increasing evidence of the damage caused by their cultivation on the environment, society and economy, they’re heading in a new direction. Off the map.
Photo credit: Welt Online
This post falls firmly in the ’shameless self-promotion’ category, but I’m really pleased and proud that San Francisco’s literary festival, Litquake, is hosting a conversation between me and Molly Watson about the future of food, on October 10th. The best bit: we’ll be having our discussion in the new California Academy of Sciences, which is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. Check out the virtual tour. Details on tickets soon. And, yes, I promise to get back to writing about food, and food justice, in the next post.
Slow Food Nation will hit San Francisco this weekend. The City’s already fluttering with SFN posters, and the Victory Garden, planted on the land outside City Hall, looks very handsome indeed. To prepare for the jamboree, I thought I’d go back to Carlo Petrini’s book of the same name, and to Geoff Andrews’ new book, The Slow Food Story. Together, these writers offer a corrective to the hoity toity food culture that has become synonymous with the organization. Although it’s often forgotten, Slow Food’s roots are radical.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License