“Slow food” is healthy, and can be profitable

• Source: The Global Times
• [20:10 May 24 2009]
• Comments

By Gerald Schmidt

Illustration: Liu Rui

Living in different parts of the world is a bit like living in different times.

In China especially, one finds aspects of life that seem to belong to different epochs, brought together in one place, in a tumultuous present: cars and chickens, street markets and computer stores, apartment complexes and agriculture. Nowhere are different contexts more apparent than in farming.

For many Westerners, food seems to come from the store; many things are pre-prepared.

On the other hand, many well-educated and well-off people in Europe and the US want to know exactly where their vegetables come from, how the animals for their meat were raised, enjoying the difference in taste between different foods, even different varieties of green vegetables – things like that have come into fashion.

Growing some herbs and vegetables oneself is in vogue. Even the White House now has a vegetable garden. With the recession, kitchen gardens have been making an even wider comeback.

Not many people work in agriculture anymore, however, so most are removed from farming as a way of making a living.

This breeds some misperceptions – a view that sees farming as good, honest work that has to be a pleasure at the same time that it's dull, hard labor.

Some developments combine what customers want and perceive agriculture to be – a decent, indeed entrepreneurial, business.

These include local farming that uses organic methods with as few external inputs as possible; the use of “landraces,” varieties of crops and vegetables that have been developed by farmers in particular locales, adapting them to different growing conditions and creating a great plethora of flavors; and, maybe more importantly, the production of local specialty products, not just for the local market but for supermarkets as well.

This is what we call “slow food,” which tells a story of where it comes from, how well it is produced, what great flavors it offers.

Such goods are at once produced in traditional ways, but marketed in modern fashion, sold in local markets, but also in upscale stores, sometimes even around the world.

These developments are all the more interesting if we look at the situation in China.

Here, agriculture still provides the livelihood for more than half the population. But it is the sector of the economy that pays the least for hard work.

Oftentimes, it only provides for subsistence and maybe a little income. To really earn money and improve your life, you need to move away from farming.

However, consider this: China's “backward” agriculture which relies on labor and knowledge rather than mineral fertilizers and pesticides, is close to sustainable, organic agriculture. With some further improvements – and there's lots of research on sustainable agriculture in China – it could therefore be changed to produce the high-quality, safer food that consumers increasingly want.

Furthermore, at least some of the diversity of landraces can still be found, even as breeding to improve crops is also under way.

Modernizing not just toward higher yield, but toward sustainability, the resilience that can be gained from diverse agriculture rather than monocultures, and to independence from petrochemical input (fertilizers and pesticides are largely made from mineral oil) is an important step toward food security.

Preserving traditional diversity and local flavors, even while modernizing in such a way, also offers economic opportunities.

With the economic crisis, price has been playing a bigger role again, but China could likely produce organic food more cheaply than Europe or the US. And premium products still garner lots of interest: people will not spend their money on eating out or traveling as carelessly as before, but they will spend it on good food that they cook at home.

With products that are of a local flavor and high quality at a good price, one can bring the world into one's kitchen.

The allure of the exotic, the pleasurable, and the high-quality should not be underestimated.

In China, too, the appeal of the organic is great; filling the stomach is most important, but the food should also be safe and healthy.

Agriculture is and remains not just the production of a commodity alone, but an integral part of culture and human life. Or at least, that's what it should be. All the better if it is a profitable business as well.

The author is an Austrian ecologist and cultural anthropologist working as German lecturer at Xiangtan University, Hunan. His website is www.positive-ecology.org