The Slow Food Movement is starting to influence consumer behaviour in ways that food producers never could imagine.

Credit crunch might be a reality for all of us, but there are still powerful trends beneath the surface that are change behaviour.

Jamie Oliver, for example, launched ‘Pass-it-on’ cooking coaching where people learn a cooking technique and share how to cook it with a friend, who then coached another friend.

Shared cooking ideas is one of the key objectives of ‘Slow Food’.

There are many more clues within the Slow Food Movement’s objectives that will eventually effect food production.

Find out what these objectives are, read on:

The Earth Workshops for Terra Madre (Slow Food) cooks enjoyed enthusiastic and active support, with a veritable explosion of ideas. Here are some of the many suggestions and recommendations put forward and shared by cooks from many parts of the world, including Africa, Ireland, United States, France Colombia, Lithuania and Brazil, among many others.

- Be patient … it is necessary to be patient in communicating what might seem obvious to all of us.
- Educate your colleagues about the importance of seasonality in products used. There are still relatively few cooks who understand the benefits.
- It isn’t enough to get supplies from markets of small producers: we have to “adopt” them, and build up a real relationship with them.
- Go into schools, meet children, teach them to cook and eat properly
- Think about what you could eliminate from your work environment in order to reduce pollution: bottled water for example, or tablecloths which have to be continually washed.
- Set objectives, even if minor, and keep to them.
- Teach at least one person to cook something.
- Persuade producers to sell directly to restaurants and other institutions, cutting out intermediaries.
- Teach cooks to establish direct relations with farmers and producers, and try to resolve any logistical problems that might arise.
- Create opportunities for cooks to meet and discuss, build up networks.
- Motivate young people to eat good and fair food.
- Don’t fall into the certification trap: it is not always the right answer. Sustainable food products often cannot bear the costs, while certificated “organic” products may be enormous monocultures. Get information about your producers.
- Organize days involving the community, for example a soup day, where people pay according to their means for a simple meal shared with other people.
- Ensure that young cooks can prepare their grandparents’ dishes.
- Reduce waste as much as possible through recycling and composting. What comes into a restaurant is important, but so is what goes out.
- Reduce the amount of meat in menus in favor of vegetables.
- Being a cook isn’t a job: it is a collective experience.
- Never forget the importance of pleasure.

This guide is deceptively simple, many of these suggestions could fundamentally change / revive agricultural production. Watch this space…

I look forward to hearing your thoughts,

Rob Ward
www.on-ward.co.uk