Vermont cannot afford to miss this opportunity.
The “Slow Food” movement began about 17 years ago years ago in Italy and has a Vermont chapter. The movement looks differently at our environment and the ravages of mechanized agriculture. Instead of “Eat brown rice and less of it,” we are urged to celebrate the joy of eating diverse native foods finely prepared with family, friends, or neighbors.
“Slow food” is the inverse of “fast food.” It has its own lovely language. A convivium is a meal organized around unique regional foods prepared traditionally and celebrated with friends or neighbors. The Ark of Taste is the list of endangered animal species, fruits, vegetable, legumes, and other edibles along with their traditional means of preparation – the movement’s “watch list.”
Why is this relevant? It is an opportunity Vermont could, but should not miss. Even though it is centered in Italy, the Slow Food movement discovered Vermont before Vermont discovered Slow Food. Early on, Vermont was cited as a source for traditionally raised foods. Its cheeses and fresh vegetables have been celebrated internationally. Last year’s US national meeting was held at Shelburne Farms. Notables from around the country were in attendance, Alice Waters, Deborah Madison and officials
from the Slow Food movement.
Vermont dairy farmers get paid about 12 cents a pound for their fluid milk. Fine cheese retails in New York and Paris for $18/lb. This is a multiple of almost 150 times in value-added processing – fluid milk into fine cheese.
The consolidated ownership of market channels, processing plants and retail outlets shifts pricing power from the producer to the industry. Commodity farms can often produce to such a cost structure; family farms can’t There are alternatives. The producer can choose to add both value and margin by and for themselves. Vermont needs a state policy that balances commodity and value-added production. The Internet has opened up market access to all. Ben and Jerry’s sells their ice cream through Amazon, delivered two days later. Orb Weaver can do the same.
Vermont seems to be trying to understand value-added agriculture. Much of Europe was wise enough never to let it go. Since 1260, 200 communal fromageries in Franche-Comté in Eastern France draw on 3400 regional farms to provide the world with the absolutely unique Comtés and Morbiers cheeses, fetching premium prices around the globe. In the Western Périgord region, the world-renowned blonds D’Aquitaine and Charolais beef, raised on small farms and marketed communally, also fetch premium prices. Our neighbor to the North, Quebec, in an effort to revert to value-added agriculture, has imported both breeds. One can find many of the finest foods in France now raised and freshly made just across our northern border.
Slow food is about thriving agricultural communities and celebration. We don’t want to preserve family farms, we want them to thrive. Vermont combines breathtaking natural beauty and a number of budding “slow food” enterprises. Add the Web and you have a direct market channel to the world.
This is the opportunity that the Slow Food movement offers Vermont. We still have family farms, a great culinary institute, community suppers and a beautiful landscape in which to enjoy it all… slowly.
They have seen in us what we are just coming to see in ourselves. In many ways the community values of agrarian Vermont are the same as those of the Périgord region of France, Tuscany in Italy and the Cotswolds in England. Only the cultures and tastes vary. Let’s make Vermont the capital of Slow Food in the Northeast… before our neighboring states do.
Bill Schubart
6:38:03 AM 
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