Caroline, I so agree with your sentiment. While clever quips make a story interesting, it’s disappointing that people who want to know the face behind their food by buying from local growers are painted as somehow out of step. And snooty too. Ouch.

I wonder why people who like to spend money on their cars, such as fancy rims and sweet stereo systems are not called snobs and elitists. How about the folks that spend ridiculous sums of money on flat screen Hi-Def televisions (most of suburban America)- why aren’t they called entertainment snobs? So why do people who like to eat and support good food called elitists? It doesn’t make any sense nor is it accurate. While mainstream America likes to spend money on movies, electronics, and cars, some of us would rather spend that money on what goes into our bodies, something that reconnects us to humanity, culture, and history.

Hi Rebecca, the reason your other examples are not called snobs and elitists is that those groups support Big Corporate America through their purchases. Buying from farmers markets does not support Big Food. Stepping out of the corporate economy opens you up to criticism.

And add to your list a Freakonomics blog post from earlier this week (the blog runs on the NYT op-ed page) -- an interview with a conservative agricultural economist who makes some interesting negative comments about organic and local foods.

s. I should add that I mean “interesting” as in “curious” - and in keeping with the trend you observe.

This is, I believe, the post that Lainie is talking about: “The Illogic of Farm Subsidies.”

It’s so true - it seems like the media is looking for a new angle for local food, and this is unfortunately what they’ve landed on. I don’t personally see how having someone plant a garden in your backyard is any “lazier” than joining a CSA where someone farms on your behalf. Whatever method gets people eating local is a good thing.

A contributor on The Jew & The Carrot actually wrote a funny post that bashes the locavore backlash. I thought folks on Culinate might find it amusing:

http://jcarrot.org/loco-for-locavore-bashing-the-local-backlash/

I think we need to be honest with ourselves; it IS an elitist movement so far. To eat slow requires at least one of two things that many Americans just don’t have: enough money to support the higher prices, and enough time to actually cook slow food. (I live in a working class community, where folks are scraping together a living from shift jobs. The farmer’s market is so far from being at the top of their priority list).

That said, the backlash against slow food simply because it’s elitist is really misguided. First, because we’re at a critical moment in history, where we can either save small farms, and save land that can be used for agriculture, or we can lose them. Right now, those with the most resources are most engaged in saving them. Not everyone can do it right now; that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good thing.

Second, because if we can change policies, we can help make good food more accessible to more people - thereby making it un-elitist.

Lastly, because many of the greatest, most powerful social movements, from women’s suffrage to the abolition of slavery, started as elitist movements.

But I think that we need to reframe the discussion, from “it’s not elitist,” to “sure it is, but it doesn’t have to be.”

Although some of Severson’s phrases in the locavore article did seem a tad dyslogistic--"a meal that reeks of community...” and “lazy locavores,” I don’t believe the tone of the entire article was to frame all locavores as elitists, but merely to explore how the wealthy can buy anything, even that “good vibe” we all feel from having a beautiful vegetable garden and eating locally.
Just because one employs a housecleaner doesn’t make them lazy, just because one has a nanny doesn’t make them a lazy parent, etc. It’s common for people with money to hire others to do some of their domestic chores. Almost everyone I know hires a housecleaner, a garden service or both. I wouldn’t call them lazy or elitist., and I wouldn’t consider someone who can hire a vegetable gardener elitist either.
Along the same lines, obviously, I was not going to slaughter and butcher my own pig--and I don’t think that means I am a “lazy locavore,” merely wise enough to leave a difficult job to the experts.
I think that is the point that Josh Friedland makes in his blog, and I agree. But I think it is unfair to chide Severson for the quotes in her Slow Food story. She is reporting what others have stated about Slow Food. When people like Alice Waters and Steven Shaw make spaced-out statements, it’s her job to report the quotes accurately, which she did.

Good points, Ali. The truly radical reform movement behind all this fancy elitist fare is the goal of having good, clean, affordable food available to everyone, everywhere. We’ve written about the food-justice movement before on Culinate, particularly in Anne Laufe’s “The trip to bountiful.” And, hey, if the well-educated bourgeoisie could pull off both the American and the French Revolutions, why not a similar contemporary food revolution?

My challenge for the day: Will someone please open up a grocery store selling fresh, clean produce in, say, West Oakland?

Here’s a partial answer to my challenge, above: In her Slow Food Nation article, Severson briefly mentions People's Grocery, an organization trying to do exactly what I asked for in my last comment: bring decent fresh food to West Oakland, a veritable desert of decent produce.

I still don’t view it as an elitist movement because it is about choices. I know tons of working class folks that actually cook- it is cheaper than always eating out. I also know tons of working class (myself being one of them- I am a farmer’s wife) that choose to spend money on food rather than movies, cars, tvs, DVDs, cable bills, etc. that seem to consume much of American’s budgets, for better or worse. American’s still spend a trivial amount of our income on food while we spend an average of 30-35% on our cars. So for all those that prefer good cheese over big car payments, I say “hallelujah”!

Is the banter is getting a bit too snippy.. all around??
few points:
In our society, three things frequently happen to ANY grassroots movement that gets any traction. RE: the Local Food/Slow Food/ Good Food/ Real Food (call it what you will ) Movement(s) 1. FIRST: the principles get lampooned. this is great - if the humor is smart. (i’ve recognized a slow food lampoon in the early season of Six Feet Under- at the party for Brenda before her marriage.. a lampoon to slow food) 2. the principles get co-opted. Whole Food battled, for years, the accusations, of having co’opted the ethos and values of “food co-ops and organics”. AND, finally- 3. the reaction. the push back. the backlash. Personally, I’ve been curiously waiting as to what shape/ form/ rhetoric would arise. I hope it’s clever, like the lampooning and not just silly sniping - just to fill some blog space.

Good luck to all of us !

Marsha Weiner