Open University Ends Tesco Deal

posted by Geoff Andrews at Thursday, February 02, 2012

Following the news that the OU will end its partnership with the Tesco Clubcard Rewards scheme, here is my original article in Times Higher Education (2 March 2007), warning against the scheme.

So customers of the UK's largest supermarket are to be encour-aged to become students of the UK's largest higher education institution. A deal has been struck to give Tesco shoppers the opportunity to study at the Open University at discount prices.

Depending on how much they spend when they visit a store, they will be able to exchange the Clubcard points they earn at the checkout for full or part payment towards their course. It gives a whole new take on the now familiar description of students as "customers".

But the announcement of such an arrangement has serious implications for the OU and it has opened up a heated debate among the university's academics. Many fear that by seeking to extend education to new cohorts of people in this manner, the university will end up dumbing down its educational resources.

Brenda Gourley, OU vice-chancellor, has no such doubts about the merits of the deal. She sees it as being "true" to the university's original mission - "to be open to people, places, methods and ideas". Writing in the OU's Open House magazine, she describes the Tesco tie-in as an "innovative partnership... in order to extend our reach to new students, while students themselves will be able to take OU courses without running up large debts".

And, of course, Tesco welcomes the deal, declaring to its customers that "you can now pick up the gift of learning along with your weekly shop". The supermarket chain also informs its customers of the OU's academic reputation and its high ranking for teaching quality. Both parties stress the ways in which their organisations help to extend each other's opportunities and reach new markets. Listening to the two marketing departments, it is not always easy to discern which is the voice of the university and which the grocer.

But the way that Tesco, like all major food retailers, conducts its business makes me uneasy about the alliance. In the opinion of many campaigners, the chain hardly reaches the top of the supermarket ethical league table. There are concerns about the true social and environmental cost of its business from the "food miles" associated with its many foreign products to the livelihoods of small farmers blighted by the driving down of product prices. And despite its claims of greater "fair trade", only a tiny proportion of the supermarket's products are "fair trade accredited".

A report by the charity Oxfam in 2004 criticised the major global food retailers, including Tesco, for relying on suppliers who use cheap, seasonal labour.

The chain rejects such criticisms as inaccurate and out of date and insists that it maintains high ethical standards. But Tesco's 30 per cent share of the grocery market has raised further concerns. With a new Tesco Express opening almost every day, there are wider costs for independent shops and services and for the diverse character of local communities, with several ongoing local campaigns against the chain's increasing influence in the high street.

Supporters of the deal, who have attempted to reconcile "widening participation", "value for money" and "market innovation", ignore crucial differences between the two institutions that reflect wider differences between the purposes of education and those of big business. One myth held by education leaders is that this gulf can be overcome by glossy packaging.

While Tesco reaches its customers through the power of the market, the OU's reputation for extending opportunity has come from a long tradition of independent learning that respects the diversity, rather than the homogeneity, of the population. Its idea of equality is in no way reducible to the flexibility and innovations of the market. The OU's founding ideals centre on the social benefits of education and the value of learning for its own sake.

The OU, indeed, is a unique academic community, relying on the commitment and experience of thousands of part-time tutors. In many ways, it has always had an "ethical" commitment to higher education, whether through offering a quality alternative to education on the cheap, or actively challenging discrimination and elitism.

This ethical position has distinguished the OU from the mainstream and allowed it to develop an alternative kind of educational philosophy, based on distance learning for adults from a diversity of backgrounds.

The image of the bearded, sandal-wearing academic on late-night TV may be past its sell-by date. However, the idea of students buying their degrees at a Tesco checkout (two for the price of one?) is only another utopia.

In fact, far from being a modern, cutting-edge initiative, a deal between the OU and Tesco fails to recognise the major shift going on among the new more ethically minded consumers; surely a more appropriate focus for the UK's ground-breaking university?

A Sicilian Renaissance?

posted by Geoff Andrews at Saturday, January 14, 2012

14 January

The Sicily Unpacked series on BBC2 has already quite an impact judging by the reviews and comments on twitter. It has been important in opening up new generations to the wonders of the island’s unique art and architecture food, history and culture and Andrew Graham-Dixon and Giorgio Locatelli are a good combination. As we found when we made the BBC Radio 4 series last spring, the story of Sicily also offers another way of looking at the history of Italy and will hopefully change some existing perceptions of the island, as well as the need to recognise that Italy doesn’t start and end with Tuscany and Umbria.

We know of course that Britain has long had a fascination with Italy. This reached its peak in the expeditions of the Victorian and Edwardian travellers, writers and artists, among them John Ruskin, George Gissing, the Brownings, Norman Douglas and Edward Lear, as they set sail in pursuit of culture and civilisation. As John Pemble’s book The Mediterranean Passion - a remarkable and scholarly tour de force which beautifully captures this moment – makes clear, this fascination extended well beyond the now familiar terrain of Chiantishire, whose beautiful landscapes have seen such rises in holiday homes and tourism that it has become synonymous with the British-Italian experience. The current desire to reproduce this ‘Italian lifestyle’ at home, (even without the weather and under the misguided view that Italians habitually dip their bread into bowls of balsamic vinegar and olive oil), has survived even the vulgarity of Silvio Berlusconi. Believing, rightly, that ‘Italy is not Berlusconi’, Brits have continued to travel to Italy to be civilised and enlightened by its sheer capacity for the good life.

Sicily Unpacked will revive interest in the Mediterranean. A destination for many of the earlier travellers, Sicily has been overlooked for too long and when it does get mentioned, is often reduced to romanticised accounts of its Mafia – the Cosa Nostra. Yet this island of five million inhabitants is the most varied of all the Italian ‘regions’. The birthplace of some Italy’s greatest literary figures, it derives its rich cultural traditions from the legacies of the many different conquests and occupying powers over centuries.

And it is food, and not the Mafia, which best captures the essence of Sicilian identity. The conquests of Sicily by Greek, Romans, Normans, Arabic, French and Spanish invaders among them, have left behind an extraordinary variety of influences and ingredients, made richer by the warmer climate. The daily reality of extreme poverty has also left its mark in the range of ancient, cheap and delicious street food, such as Panelle – chick pea fritters - which still thrives in the centre of Palermo. An island disposed to insularity, fatalism and prejudice from the north – represented today by the Northern League – has shown a remarkable resilience in preserving its identity.

This was apparent to us when making the BBC radio series last spring. Arriving at the port of Trapani, on the west coast, we found ourselves walking through back streets more reminiscent of North Africa than Western Europe. At the Cantina Siciliana, owned by a long-standing communist, Pino Maggioni, couscous was on the menu, indicative of the Arabic influence. Yet we were told that this couscous, served with fish or pork, differed from the couscous in Marsala, only a few kilometres away, where the tradition was to serve a larger grain couscous, and served with snails. ‘Local food’ takes on a whole new dimension in Sicily.

More Arabic influences were to be found in the Vucciria market in Palermo; wild fennel, crucial to the delicious but complex dish pasta con le sarde; aubergines, crucial for caponata, one of Sicily’s best known dishes, and one of the examples of the sweet and sour combination in Sicilian cuisine. Sicily is rightly renowned for the richness of its pastries and desserts like Cannoli and Cassata, and these also owe much to the Arabic influence which brought sugar cane in the ninth century.

The Spanish influence was featured strongly in Sicily Unpacked and notably in the chocolate shops of Modica, a baroque town in the south of the island, synonymous in recent years for the quality and quantity of its chocolate producers, which have expanded dramatically in recent years. Like Sicily Unpacked we also visited the Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, the town’s oldest chocolate producer, and wondered if the revival and recognition of traditional methods of making chocolate, based on the Aztec tradition, offered another version of globalisation.

One of the virtues of Sicily Unpacked has been to challenge the view that Sicily can be reduced to the mafia. It is also true that you cannot explain Sicily – and above all its food – without understanding the way the mafia has controlled food production and distribution for so many years, with significant effect on exports and the making unnecessary detours for food distributors. The Vucciria, for example, has been controlled for many years by mafia extortion rackets.

Yet, here too, there are signs of a renaissance. One of the most optimistic developments in Sicily in recent years has been the passion and commitment of anti-mafia activists. Foremost has been the association Addio Pizzo which plastered the centre of Palermo with stickers calling on people of Palermo to preserve their dignity and refuse the pizzo (protection money) and Libera Terra, an association which promotes the use of land confiscated by the mafia for the production of wine and olive oil.

The key to understanding the Sicilian Mafia is the mentality which has roots in Sicilian culture. The importance of belonging, of the first loyalty to family, of honour and are deeply rooted Sicilian values, reflected in the absence of a strong sense of state and civic traditions which are the result of centuries of conquest and domination. The mafia has cultivated its own negative interpretation of this; presenting itself as the only option for security and career hope for young people, in a land often perceived as fatalistic.

Yet, as we know there is a more positive, genuine interpretation of Sicilian hospitality and friendship which Sicily Unpacked captures well. It has also has made a very interesting connection between art and food. A similar connection could be made between literature and food. The complex nature of Sicilian identity is central in the work of some of its greatest writers, notably Leonardo Sciascia, Luigi Pirandello and often food seems to reflect wider cultural and political questions. There is a famous scene in Lampedusa’s The Leopard, where the pleasure of eating Sicilian food survived the attempted imposition of a ‘national’ diet in the moment of unification.

For Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian detective, Inspector Montalbano – recently introduced to the BBC – food is also crucial. His loyalty to the Trattoria Calogero, his uncompromising lunch rituals and knowledge of the tastes and flavours of his island, notably in the province of Agrigento and the shadow of the Valley of the Temples, is crucial to the way he lives and works.
Sicilian food has not only survived but is now beginning to prosper in the era of globalisation, which is normally characterised by the imposition of drab standardised fare. Instead its extraordinarily rich history, encompassing such a variety of wonderful flavours, has finally found its moment.

Violent Consumerism in Junk Food Britain

posted by Geoff Andrews at Friday, August 26, 2011

26 August

The recent UK riots – ok English riots – have brought many responses and much analysis. I have been unconvinced by much of the debate. The right favours knee-jerk responses which seem to have been reflected in some absurd prison sentences unlikely to solve the problem. They refuse to even countenance the point that there may be some underlying causes. The left, on the other hand, has fared little better, with familiar and tired phrases, notably claiming to discover hidden political radicalism waiting to get out – according to this view ‘everything is political’. Fake sociologists and cultural populists, with their privileged keys to the explanation of what is really happening, always step forward in these discussions.

In fact analogies with the riots of 1981 seem misplaced – then the infamous ‘sus’ law, and overt as well as institutionalised racism of the police was much more evident in many cities. Nor do comparisons with student demonstrations or anti-global protests hold up. In fact, the riots were a kind of endorsement of materialism and individualism; a kind of repressed hedonism. The riots were really a form of violent consumerism, as Mary Riddell argued in the Telegraph. The controversial footballer Joey Barton, in his twitter comments about materialism, makes more sense than many of the experts in the media. After all, it is the big global corporate chains which have ripped the heart out of inner cities and towns across the country. Junk food has had a particularly pernicious effect, not only for their effects on spiralling obesity levels, but the ways in which they help destroy any civic sense of community.

The domination of corporate chains on British high streets is far more evident than in other European cities. It was noticeable that the ‘clean-up’ campaigns were organised by local citizens and mainly independent shops. In Birmingham, for example, it was independent coffee bars like the Six-Eight café rather than the chains which took civic responsibility seriously. The chains have no significant local identity and their power is partly evoked through their indifference to diversity and tradition. As George Ritzer, the author The McDonaldization of Society argued, this kind of globalisation amounts to ‘ a world of increasing homogeneity, a world in which virtually anywhere one turns one finds very familiar forms of nothing’. ‘Nothingness’ is an apt description for the centre of many towns and cities in the age of globalisation.

Of course cities are places of great diversity, but we should not confuse – as many of the cultural populists do, hiding behind the veneer of post-radical chic - the diversity and vibrancy of popular culture with the dominance of global brands. There is a lot of creativity in urban places which allows culture to thrive despite the monopoly of the chains, but the damage of the global corporations is now sadly evident.

As Eric Schlosser reminded us in Fast Food Nation, the impact of fast food is far-reaching, entering ‘every nook and cranny of American society’. It has become a way of living and its effects on environment and urban life are profound. It is interesting that a debate on taxing junk food is finally taking off in Britain at this time: in the US, similar arguments for a ‘soda tax’ have already been heard in many states. Junk food chains and corporate brands more widely carry huge symbolic significance for new generations. More optimistically - and maybe this is entering the political realm- perhaps the ‘Murdoch’ effect can now extend to a wider critique of corporate domination. Let the real debate begin.

Hugh's Fish Fight. The Gastronome (Re-) Enters Politics

posted by Geoff Andrews at Sunday, May 01, 2011

1 May 2011


Hugh’s Fish Fight, recently screened on Channel Four, is another highly publicised campaign led by a well-known TV food personality. Following Jamie Oliver’s earlier programmes on school dinners and battery chickens (something which had also engaged Hugh F-W) this has also had significant effect on public debate, raising awareness of the state of the fishing industry, the plight of endangered fish species and the health of the oceans, the conditions of fisherfolk and EU food policy. The campaign made clear once again the power of the media to evoke images and put important questions onto the agenda. And once again, it is food that drives public debate, a unique domain which connects political economy and the environment, the local and global, diet, nutrition and questions of biodiversity, like no other.

Increasingly, food is at the centre of many different questions. Yet we also need to recognise the role of the gastronome in articulating the multi-varied concerns of producers and consumers and the consequences of a cheap food economy. We take, of course, the modern meaning of the gastronome, freed from ‘elitist’ connotations or the narrow concerns of gourmets. Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, puts it well. ‘I am a gastronome. No, not the glutton with no sense of restraint whose enjoyment of food is greater the more plentiful and forbidden it is. No, not a fool who is given to the pleasures of the table and indifferent to how the food got there. I like to imagine the hands of the people who grew it, transported it, processed it, and cooked it before it was served to me’.

Perhaps Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is the nearest UK equivalent to Petrini, (a modern mixture of Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin and William Morris). There is a similar passion for food and the continuing optimism that by heightening public awareness and changing our attitudes to the way food is produced and consumed we can resolve many related concerns of modern living.

This creativity, imagination and vision, has been rarely apparent of course in the lack-lustre election campaigns currently on offer from all political parties, nor from the insular concerns of many of them. Food, for many on left or right, has become a kind of no-go area. It seems to carry many taboos. For many on the left, unable to distinguish between luxury and pleasure, quality food inevitably implies ‘elitist’ associations. In the US, writers and activists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan have long addressed these questions and have argued intelligently and passionately for the democratisation of food for the future health of the nation. Their argument is that everyone has a right to quality food, which is the underlying principle of Hugh F-W’s and Jamie Oliver’s campaigns.

Meanwhile, on the right of the political spectrum there is a reluctance to break with the power of big corporate monopolies, as has been made clear in the involvement of McDonald’s and others in the writing of the government’s health policy. Despite the growing criticism of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, this has not translated into much political opposition: he has received one of his biggest grillings from Sheila Dillon on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme. Right and left seem to have little to say about the effects of the big supermarket monopolies and remain wary of upsetting voter fears by talking up good food at times of austerity.

Fortunately, campaigners like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, have the imagination and vision beyond the narrow time-frames and often parochial preoccupations of Westminster (and Edinburgh and Cardiff). The Fish Fight is a very good example of how gastronomes – a term still regarded with contempt over here – can intervene effectively and call to account those who exercise power over our palates – Tesco’s, Big Salmon factories, and politicians included. This is a very creative campaign against over-fishing, engaging the public in on-line petitions and cajoling them to become more discerning consumers in questioning fishmongers and supermarkets, forming effective alliances with movements like Greenpeace to force Tesco and Morrisons to change their practices and by drawing on the knowledge of marine biologists, as well as local fishermen, to highlight the cause of endangered fish species. Hugh’s Fish Fight, as the website makes clear, is a powerful campaigning lobby which has complimented other campaigns from concerns over blue-fin tuna to the absurdity of EU fishing bans, notably those expressed in very evocative ways by Charles Clover’s book The End of the Line, later made into a successful documentary film. Hugh’s Fish Fight is a campaign which has extended far outside the living room.

Yet it is also about seeking out practical alternatives, introducing more people to the delights and health benefits of sardines, mackerel, sprats, herring and anchovies, as alternatives to over fished salmon, tuna and cod. The programmes are good on response and impact; a testament to the possibility of policy being influenced by popular movements. Hugh F-W does this well, making the link between simple gastronomic pleasures and ecological responsibility, in ways well beyond the imagination of politicians.

Time For Lunch

posted by Geoff Andrews at Saturday, April 16, 2011

In a recent BBC Radio Scotland lunchtime interview, I was told by the interviewer - possibly in a hurry for his supermarket sandwich - that we don’t really have time for lunch anymore. Those that do (and I imagined him pointing the finger) are clearly a privileged minority, wandering around farmers’ markets at their leisure, while ordinary folk went about their business in harsh times with great velocity. In fact, ‘fast’, normally seen as the key to enlightenment and progress, was now seen as the austere and inevitable condition of modern life. Inescapable. Time for lunch? Must be joking.

However, those that see the erosion of the lunch hour as a necessary consequence of the recession underestimate its wider social value. The situation in schools is one example and has produced big debates on both sides of the Atlantic. Slow Food USA’s ‘Time For Lunch’ campaign was an ambitious project aimed at influencing the Child Nutrition Bill, and in particular raising the meagre $1 dollar a day school lunches. It was launched in 2010 with 300 eat-ins and 20,000 people involved in a nation-wide network. The overall goal is to take lunch seriously and to provide all kids with healthy sustainable food that tastes good. Such a campaign gets to the core of the ‘cheap food economy’, making the link between health care, diet, the production of food and the environment. The campaign provides another clear illustration of how the way we eat defines how we live.

In Britain, our own school meal campaigns, led by Jamie Oliver and others, have had their own impact, though the new coalition government has threatened recent progress by involving McDonald’s and other fast food monopolies in health policy. But the problem is more severe than that and goes beyond school meals. We are in danger of forgetting about lunch entirely. The British ‘lunch hour’, the product of a wider historic struggle for working conditions down the years, is now in jeopardy. In fact, according to the campaign group ‘Bring Back Britain’s Lunch Hour’, launched by the online recruitment firm Monster, 19% of British people take 15 minutes or less for lunch, while 10% never take a break. They found that one of the most favoured lunchtime activities was the ‘power nap’.

In 2010, apparently thinking along similar lines, Unison, Britain’s largest trade union, launched a ‘Reclaim your lunch hour’ campaign to combat workplace stress with a free picnic for members. Yet, the current recession and widespread financial insecurity is likely to curtail Britain’s lunch hour further as employees seek to economise as much as possible. The sandwich next to the computer, or employees remaining ‘chained to the desk’ as Monster refers to it, is already a familiar sight in offices across the country.

Long lunches have unfortunate connections with the ‘business lunch’ culture of the 1980s. These ‘yuppie’ years, associated with arrogance, excess and drunkenness, have given lunch a bad name. Even in food conscious Italy, the ‘Milano da bere’ (the ‘Milan you can drink’), in which Silvio Berlusconi first made a public impact with his TV networks, the Italian corporate world embraced such gastronomic horrors as Pasta con salmone affumicato. In Britain long lunches are inevitably equated with big drinking.

We have no need to return to those years. Yet, ironically, the current alcohol-free fast and work-dominated lunches have brought different problems. On the one hand this reflects a prissy managerialism which has replaced convivial eating with a rigid live-to-work culture. If lunches take place at all, these are dull business affairs with specified outcomes to be achieved by the time the bill arrives. Ordering wine in such company is like swearing in public; dessert, clearly frivolous and off-message. For the majority, lunchtimes have become individualised and anonymous, with employees furtively returning to consume their sandwiches in front of the computer. For all its acclaimed sophistication, global-speak and service ethic, corporate culture has more than done its bit to erode the simple pleasures of life. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but soon there may be no lunch at all.

Let us propose the ‘Slow Lunch’. The best lunches I enjoyed recently have been in Badellino’s restaurant in Bra, Piemonte, Italy, while researching my Slow Food book. They were long and delicious, with seasonal local produce always on the menu. But they were also convivial. My companions were a rich mix of Slow Food afficionados and locals, with our hosts Giacomo and Marilena cheerfully putting up with the eclectic diet of football, food and politics. Slow Lunches needn’t be solely an Italian phenomenon. In Balthazar, the bustling Manhatton bistro, waiters are admired for their ‘civil inattention’ to the diners, rather than grabbing your plate as soon as the fork hits the table or bringing the check before you have asked for it.

Therefore, we shouldn’t think of Slow Lunches as the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure or only possible in Italy. They are good for work too. Not for the ‘points mean prizes’, how- to-motivate- your- workforce-for-better-performance kind of way. Rather, for generating ideas and exchanges, intellectual promiscuity and above all for reviving one of the simple pleasures of life.

The New Food Movement

posted by Geoff Andrews at Monday, April 04, 2011

Open Democracy 4 April


The international food debate has exploded over the last decade, extending from the many banal and trivial TV programmes - “food pornography” as some call it - to the proliferation of local food groups, the development of ideas of “slow food”, and a burgeoning interest in all aspects of the food economy. A broader politicisation of food is evident in the emergence of some unusual political alliances and new political subjects - the gastronome, the dinner-lady and the small farmer (the last of which has reached almost cult status in the rapidly evolving food movements in the United States).

Indeed, I would argue that the movement around food in the US is one of the most significant of modern times, drawing as it does both on the traditions of the 1960s-1970s and the energy of the new social movements. Food has become - to use an older phrase now being recycled by contemporary activists - the “edible dynamic” at the heart of mainstream economic and environmentalist debates (see The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure [Pluto, 2008]).

Slow Food USA is becoming the most powerful political wing of the international Slow Food movement. It has a rapidly growing membership and a strong presence on university campuses, and is supported by an impressive range of writers and activists (such as Alice Waters, Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser). The popularity of films like Food.Inc has touched a chord with a new generation; with more than 100,000 twitter followers, @SlowFoodUSA is now out-tweeting McDonald’s.

Britain’s Conservative-Liberal coalition government, in power since the election of May 2010, is pursuing a regressive health policy in regard to food. The health minister Andrew Lansley’s decision to involve fast-food chains like McDonald’s and supermarket monopolies in so-called “responsibility deals” threatens to halt encouraging initiatives to improve school dinners and tackle obesity and alcohol abuse.

Many of the new food movements have denounced the proposal. Jeanette Longfield of the food and farming group Sustain argues that this is the equivalent of allowing tobacco companies to decide on smoking legislation; the TV gardener Monty Don questions whether this is a “junk-food government. Yet the response from most of Britain’s centre-left, from the Labour Party and trade unions to assorted intellectuals, has been (to say the least) tepid. There has been little attempt to galvanise opposition amongst the growing movements, or prioritise food as an area where the government is vulnerable. Food, compared to other issues - fundamental as it is to so many of them - remains marginal for many on the left.

The appetite for change

This reflects a deeper flaw on much of the left (and here too Britain is something of a exception in relation to much of Europe). The enduring suspicions of sensual pleasure on the left reach a different sort of peak where food is concerned. The tendency to miss the unifying and egalitarian potential of food politics - and see only the divisive aspects - has led to their removal from some of the new movements.

The cultural underpinning here is partly that the left in Britain often confuses “pleasure” with “luxury” - in direct contravention of one of its heroes, William Morris, who condemned luxury as the “sworn foe” of pleasure because the race it entailed to provide goods for the rich had replaced the simple pleasures of life with ugliness and waste. Moreover, historians like EP Thompson (Morris’s biographer) and Raymond Postgate gave great attention to food in their accounts of early working-class movements; and Postgate went on to become the first editor of The Good Food Guide.

A positive sign here is Slow Food’s commitment to the “universal right to pleasure”, which draws on the energy of earlier social movements while arguing that everyone should have access to healthy, sustainable and good-quality food.

But more generally, the power of global capital and associated supermarket monopolies, the growing global divide between abundance and hunger, the conditions of workers in the food industry should all be at the centre of a sustained critique by the left about the new politics of food.

The food movement in the US has taken on these concerns, informed by post-1960s counter-cultural politics. Michael Pollan’s seminal article “The Food Movement, Rising” (New York Review of Books, June 2010) reflects on the ideas of the “back to the land movement”, Woodstock and the Diggers, to conclude that the current food movement encapsulates a similar focus on identity, community and pleasure.

The politics of food in the US also reflects the country’s deep ideological divide, where initiatives to tax soft drinks (the “soda tax”) go to the heart of the “cheap food economy” and its reliance on fast food and big global brands. At its simplest and most evocative, this politics is reflected in the idea of Slow Food Nation. This is more than a slogan, or simple opposition to fast food; it has become emblematic of an alternative way of living. After all, the idea as defined by Eric Schlosser expressed a form of domination that had entered into every “nook and cranny of American society” - implying that the alternative too needs to be be politically and culturally holistic.

The Slow Food Nation idea - originally the title of an event held in San Francisco in 2008 - is driven largely by a new generation of student activists, environmentalists, small producers and farmers as well as politically engaged foodies. A leading student movement in the country is Slow Food on Campus, which organises a range of “eat-ins”, boycotts of campus refectories selling GM or unsustainable food, and “buy-ins” of local organic produce from independent producers. These have had some success in changing catering policy but probably a bigger impact on what used to be called “consciousness raising”. Student-farmworker alliances have also had some success in gaining better working conditions amongst migrant workers.

Slow Food Campus was created by the Slow Food USA movement under the visionary leadership of Josh Viertel, a former farmer and youth food activist. Slow Food USA operates in quite different conditions from Italy, where the movement was founded; it is fast becoming the international movement’s most political arm in raising awareness of food poverty and inequality, and pressing politicians over the Farm Bill, school lunches, and other issues.

The taste revolution

There is no reason why the food movements should be the property of any ideological movement or political constituency. The politics of food has certainly brought together some unusual alliances, drawing in organic farmers, green activists, urban-guerrilla gardeners, and metropolitan gastronomes. The ecology of activism stretches wide, from (in Britain) the Soil Association and Sustain, which have forged effective alliances on the now-threatened school-food initiatives, to Slow Food UK, which has launched its own Slow Food on Campus.

Perhaps the one movement in Britain that embodies the energy of earlier decades is the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra). This group, founded in 1971, focuses on a wide-ranging set of concerns that encompass support for local beers and historic pubs with opposition to the power of big breweries and defence of the pub’s community role (an issue which relates directly to the availability of cheap supermarket alcohol and it association with many social problems). Camra’s impact in mixing politics and pleasure has brought it over 100,000 members, 200 branches, sixteen regional associations, and 5,000 volunteers who organise 150 beer festivals a year.

The politics of food and its implications for the new movements have been explored on openDemocracy (including in a series in 2003, and in later articles) and elsewhere. The distinctive feature of these movements is the links they make between politics, the economy, the environment and health.

The “edible dynamic” provides both a holistic critique of the way society is organised and a prefigurative approach to the future (reflected in the rise of the Transition Town movement which invests in local and sustainable food producers). Perhaps more than on any other subject, debates about food concern ways of living and the future of the planet, where - from from farmers’ markets to food festivals - citizens can taste what Alice Waters calls the “delicious revolution”.

Raise a Glass for the Wye Valley Brewery

posted by Geoff Andrews at Sunday, November 28, 2010

At the BBC's Food and Farming Awards last week, the Wye Valley Brewery, a family-owned brewery in Herefordshire, won the best drinks award. This was good news for all those who appreciate great beer and support sustainable local breweries. Made from local Herefordshire hops, using traditional production methods, their beer has been commended for its subtle flavours. My own favourite is Butty Bach. The Wye Valley Brewery embodies a strong sense of place and local identity, evident to anyone who has been in any of its four pubs: above all, The Barrels, in Hereford, the original site of the brewery.