Slow Food

Carlo Petrini; with Ben Watson and Slow Food Editore

Excerpt

excerpt from "Region Is Reason" by Hermann Scheer

The fast food question is not just about McDonald's. Fast food is one the main features of the world economy. It subscribes to the principles adopted for the Olympic Games: quicker, higher, further. In our data-obsessed society, this leads us to live in an increasingly stressful world, continuously under pressure, in constant competition with others and in obeisance to a single rule: producing ever more quickly and cheaply. This model has no future and embodies at least two contradictions. The first relates to the problem of transportation, one of the fundamental factors of global economy and global agriculture. The transportation system is based on an absurd principle according to which apples from New Zealand are shipped to Western Europe and Perrier water to California. Food that may be produced locally is thus increasingly moved from one end of the world to the other simply because fuel prices continue to diminish.
The low cost of energy does not promote well-balanced development and is the result of a mistaken policy. Moreover the regional character of our agricultural production is inevitably undermined by a number of factors: lifting fuel taxes on air and sea transportation, deregulation of air transportation, and increasingly high export subsidies that distort the market and promote large distributors to the detriment of small producers and distributors. The globalization of production in the agricultural market can in no way promote healthy development.
It is also time to face the fact that any attempt to make quick profits in agriculture tends to be highly destructive. The fast food -- fast profit ratio inevitably squeezes the breath out of small-scale production, which is unable to compete. . .