The Slow Food organisation
The Slow Food organisation spawned by the movement has expanded to include over 80,000 members in over 100 countries, every country with its own chapters. All totaled, 800 local convivia chapters exist. 360 convivia in Italy - to which the name condotta (singular) / condotte (plural) applies - are composed of 35,000 members, along with 450 other regional chapters around the world. The organizational structure is decentralized, each convivium has a leader who is responsible for promoting local artisans, local farmers, and local flavors through regional events such as Taste Workshops, wine tastings, and farmer's markets.
Offices have been opened in Switzerland (1995), Germany (1998), New York (2000), France (2003), Japan (2005), and most recently in the United Kingdom, late this year.; the head offices are located in Bra, northern Italy. Numerous publications are put out by the organization, in several languages. In the US, the Snail is the quarterly of choice, while Slow Food puts out literature in several other European nations. Recent efforts at publicity include the world's largest food and wine fair, the Salone del Gusto, a biennial cheese fair in Bra called Cheese, the Genoan fish festival called SlowFish, and Turin's Terra Madre (‘Mother Earth’) world meeting of food communities.
In 2004 Slow Food opened a new University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo, in Piedmont, and Colorno, in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Carlo Petrini and Massimo Montanari are the leading figures in the creation of the University, whose goal is to promote awareness of good food and nutrition.
Objectives
Objectives of the Slow Food movement include:
From time to time, Slow Food intervenes directly in market transactions, e.g. preserving four varieties of native American Turkey by ordering 4,000 eggs of these and commissioning their raising and slaughtering and delivery to market.
- Seed banks to preserve native varieties, usually in cooperation with more local movements
- An "ark of taste" for each ecoregion whose foods and flavors are preserved
- Preserving and promoting local and traditional food product know-how
- Organizing small-scale processing, e.g. slaughtering, of short run products
- Organizing celebrations of local cuisine within the region of production, e.g. the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada
- Taste Education
- Educating consumers about the hidden risks of fast food
- Educating citizens about the hidden risks of agribusiness and factory farms
- Educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few genomes or varieties
- Various political programs to preserve family farms
- Lobbying for agricultural policy changes to support organic farms
- Lobbying against genetic modification of foodstuffs
- Lobbying against the use of pesticides
- Teaching gardening, especially to students and prisoners
- Moral purchasing of foodstuffs produced by locals using methods that are morally acceptable to the consumer
Impact
It is difficult to gauge the extent of the success of the Slow Food movement, considering that the organization itself is only sixteen years old. The current grassroots nature of Slow Food is such that few people in Europe and especially the United States are aware of it.
Statistics show that Europe, and Germany in particular, is a much bigger consumer of organics than the US. Slow Food has contributed to the growing awareness of health concerns in Europe, as evidenced by this fact, but on society as a whole, Slow Food has had little effect. An example of this is the fact that tourists visit Slow Food restaurants more than locals, but Slow Food and its sister movements are still young. In an effort to spread the ideals of anti-fast food, Slow Food has targeted the youth of the nations in primary and secondary schools. Volunteers help build structural frameworks for school gardens and put on workshops to introduce the new generation to the art of farming.
A survey
In order to effectively assess the success of the Slow Food movement in persuading people to eat locally grown, healthier food, a survey seems the most logical method to extract public opinion towards the movement and its ideals. Survey questions that would determine if the general population has (1) heard of the Slow Food organization (2) how often people eat organic food, and what are their reasons (3) how do the classes differ in their perception of slow food. To be successful, the movement needs to determine who, if anyone, is interested in slow food, who can afford it, and why. With 83,000 members, Slow Food is on its way into the average household.
Criticism
Critics of the organization have charged it with being elitist, as it discourages nominally cheaper alternative methods of growing or preparing food. Slow Food responds by claiming to be working towards local production and consumption which will exploit "best practices" of science and professions worldwide but ultimately prove cheaper due to less reliance on transport and energy and chemical and technology intensive methods.
These arguments parallel those of the anti-globalization movement, Greenpeace and green parties against global export of monocultured foodstuffs, especially GMOs. A central point related to these arguments is that transport prices are artificially low because the true cost of fuel (including the protection of shipping lanes and other military interventions around the world) are not factored into the price of goods, and are instead paid for indirectly through personal taxes.