Geoff Andrews of the Open University was one of the panellists at the recent Festival of Economics. He and Lynsey Hanley were two non-economists contributing to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation sponsored session on poverty and place, along with economists Paul Gregg and Paul Johnson. It was illuminating, as the recording shows, to have the different disciplinary perspectives. We invited these two people to take part because Lynsey has written a book [amazon_link id=”1847087027″ target=”_blank” ]Estates[/amazon_link] about these types of place where poverty clusters, and Geoff was involved in the wonderful BBC2/OU series, Secret History of Our Streets, many of whose selected locations had been poor decades ago although many were now rapidly gentrifying.

I picked up at the Festival (the second will take place on 22-23 November 2013) Geoff’s (2008) book [amazon_link id=”0745327443″ target=”_blank” ]The Slow Food Story[/amazon_link]. It’s a description of the Slow Food movement which has spread from its origins in Piedmont, in Italy, with the publication of the original Slow Food Manifesto in 1987, to reach many countries and span the production chain from farmers in developing countries to consumers in Italy, the UK, US and elsewhere.

The book is really interesting; there’s a lot in it that I didn’t know about the movement. It’s also impossible not to be sympathetic to concerns about the effect of fast food on human health, on the one hand, and the poverty of small farmers on the other hand. I also wholly agree about the importance of preparing food for family and friends and sharing meals together. Just recently, I came across this American report on the beneficial effect of family meals on young people – highly plausible.

However, [amazon_link id=”0745327443″ target=”_blank” ]Slow Food[/amazon_link], the book, and the Movement, fail to even pose what seem to me some rather obvious and important questions about the political economy of food.

One is about productivity in farming/food processing and price. There are seven billion people now, and feeding us depends on technological revolutions in farming, including the use of fertilisers and pesticides, and genetic modification (the practice is ancient, only the techniques change). Achieving what the Slow Food people call ‘clean’ food production seems to involve abandoning these techniques. What will we eat? Will Slow Food require much higher prices? The book protests that the Slow Food movement is not characterised by nostalgic romanticism. I’m not persuaded of that.

Another is why the only issue for farmers’ livelihoods is consumer habits. Neither the book nor the movement seem to have anything to say about the concentration of the world agricultural commodities markets in the hands of a few huge trading companies, or for that matter retail concentration in specific markets. Nor about the impact of biofuels on agriculture and food prices. Nor about the growth of speculative trading in agricultural commodities in making prices higher and more volatile. While I want to share really good food with the people I love, these are the questions I’d start with in thinking about the economy of what we eat and the fast food business.

[amazon_image id=”0745327443″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure[/amazon_image]