The international Slow Food movement preceded, and gave rise to, the farm-to-table movement that gained momentum in the U.S. in the early 2000s and was popularized by culinary superstars like Alice Waters and agricultural luminaries like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Wendell Berry. In the age of globalization and industrial food systems that fell forests and deplete soil for fast food and convenience, Slow Food provides a sensible and sustainable ethic and practical framework for returning to the pre-industrial agricultural values and practices of regenerative farming.

Even still, Slow Food USA has also struggled with the image of being an elite foodie supper club. Jim Embry, a Black civil rights and eco-activist farmer and recipient of a James Beard Leadership Award for his decades-long food justice work, is a seven-time USA delegate to the Slow Food International’s biennial conference, Terra Madre. After his first experience there, Embry came home and tried to get involved in the chapters in Slow Food USA only to discover they mostly comprised of white people having $50-$100 dinners at fancy restaurants. 

This was a direct contrast to his experience in Italy, which was more culturally inclusive and had greater emphasis on farming. Not an average conference, Terra Madre is dubbed the “United Nations of farmers,” and gathers thousands of people from over 100 food communities around the world for a free multi-day event organized in conjunction with the city of Turin and the Piedmont region of Italy to envision a better future through food. 

The incongruity Embry found between Terra Madre experience and chapters in the U.S. led him to work with the Equity, Inclusion and Justice working group of Slow Food USA where he was able to help embed justice principles into Slow Food’s three values: Good, Clean and Fair. The group created a manifesto for how justice can be interwoven into everything Slow Food stands for.

“In the U.S., we’ve taken Slow to the extreme,” Embry said. “We think it means being real slow about involving the whole community. Being real slow about reaching out to more cultural diversity. We need to bring in not just big-time chefs and restaurant people, but common, local farmers.” 

Bush’s work has also led her to understand the underlying economic realities of making high quality food available at low cost. The industrial food system and shrinking available farmland make it challenging for farmers to provide high-quality food products at competitive prices compared to industrially grown food. 

“In all my years working in these circles and talking to so many different farmers and farm educators and farm advocacy folks, there doesn’t seem to be a way for the farmer to make a living and also make the food affordable to the working class, which is why sustainably grown organic food has gotten labeled as bougie and elitist,” she said. “When good quality food is made available to the working class or food insecure folks, it’s generally grant-funded. In this system, the farmers themselves end up selling their baby vegetables to a chef so that they can make a living, and that’s really unfortunate.”

“Co-op”eration for food resilience

Issues of food security and access tend to get more attention than where and how that food is grown. However, with population growth and more farmers aging out and selling land to developers, the steady, loss of farmland in Tennessee has started to gain attention. The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture projects that Tennessee will lose two million acres of farmland by 2027.

Bush isn’t content to simply identify the problems with food access, she’s also envisioning a better future and making strides where she can. With connections to Three Rivers Market, Vuck Farm and Slow Food Tennessee Valley, she recently initiated a three-way partnership in support of the New Farmer Training Initiative, a project that aims to bolster food security for the region and help career farmers who grow food for their communities at production scale. 

The Old City Gardens, located at 300 E. Depot St. on land owned by businessman and University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd, currently has raised beds for individuals and families to grow food and flowers. When the quarter-acre lower portion of the land became available to manage, Bush was the first one approached. This is what sparked the idea for an entrepreneurial farmer incubator for individuals or collectives with technical growing expertise who have not yet secured farmland.

The partnership allows for Slow Food to promote the program through community events, like its signature annual Pesto Festo, while also serving as a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor to help secure state and federal funds. Three Rivers Market offered to sponsor the project with guaranteed shelf space at the co-op, paying the garden rent, and providing micro loans to help new farmers with expenses, such as seeds and fertilizer. Meanwhile, Vuck Farm provides mentorship and technical support for the new farmers on topics such as crop planning and product marketing. 

Even though the program started late in the 2024 growing season, the first season kicked off with two farmers. Between them they are growing pea shoots, watermelons, sunflower bunches, filet beans, fennel and an assortment of fall crops. Bush says that applications for the 2025 growing season will be accepted in December.

Two varieties of tomatoes grown at Vuck Farm include Striped Heart in the foreground and Valencia, a Slow Food Ark of Taste variety, in the background.  Élan Young/Hellbender Press

Feeding a vision for the future

One way that Slow Food helps people envision a better future through food is through its Ark of Taste catalog, a biodiversity project that seeks to save the world’s endangered food products from exctinction and educate institutions and consumers about the need to protect them. Among the variety of tomatoes grown at Vuck farm is the bright yellow Valencia, which is also an Ark of Taste variety grown for market and seed saving.

Another outreach technique is bringing food enthusiasts and farmers together around the table to enjoy the fruits of the harvest. The signature annual event of Slow Food Tennessee Valley is Pesto Festo, which includes a pesto contest, prizes, music and recognition of local community grant recipients. This year’s Pesto Festo will again be hosted by Dancing Bear Lodge in early August. 

While the labor of farming and organizing Slow Food events can be consuming, Bush and Teets save time for growing the vision of regional food resilience through a farmer training center at Vuck Farm similar to the ones that Bush apprenticed at before moving back home to East Tennessee.

The duo has already received a Tennessee Agriculture Enhancement Program grant to build out an Earth Market farm stand on site, which is a Slow Food initiative that holds produce to the highest standard of land stewardship, labor criteria and food quality. They’ve secured funding that will pay for event parking, a pavilion and interpretive signage and are currently awaiting a grant to match those funds for a farmer training program.

Today, many health-conscious consumers have been trained to look for organic produce, but that label doesn’t actually account for how far food has traveled, or regenerative practices that give back to the land. Beef has also gotten a bad reputation amongst environmentalists, but outside of factory farms, small-scale regenerative farms often rely on cattle to provide a natural source of nitrogen through manure.

Slow Food can be a way to bridge the gap in knowledge about eco-agriculture. In addition to being an organization, Embry said that Slow Food is also a theory and a practice.

Prior to WWII, people farmed a greater diversity of crops without the use of chemicals and used more parts of the animals after they were slaughtered. “If you want to have healthy soil that can grow wonderful delicious plants, you have to make sure that soil is fertile and is cared for,” he said.