Slow Food Mission
Slow Food USA seeks to create dramatic and lasting change in the food system. We reconnect Americans with the people, traditions, plants, animals, fertile soils and waters that produce our food. We seek to inspire a transformation in food policy, production practices and market forces so that they ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.
Become a member of Slow Food Mohawk Valley USA - For just $25 - click here and begin enjoying your membership benefits today
Good, Clean and Fair
 Good: The word good can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. For Slow Food, the idea of good means enjoying delicious food created with care from healthy plants and animals. The pleasures of good food can also help to build community and celebrate culture and regional diversity.
Clean: When we talk about clean food, we are talking about nutritious food that is as good for the planet as it is for our bodies. It is grown and harvested with methods that have a positive impact on our local ecosystems and promotes biodiversity.
Fair: We believe that food is a universal right. Food that is fair should be accessible to all, regardless of income, and produced by people who are treated with dignity and justly compensated for their labor.
Join Us Slow Food Mohawk Valley is shaped by your direct involvement. Slow Food USA offers many programs for chapters to apply at the local level. Plug in and make it happen: it starts with you.
The Slow Food USA Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By planting, promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure that they remain in production and on our plates.
Slow Food in Schools teaches youth about the values of eating locally, seasonally and sustainably through hands-on projects. Programs can range from after-school cooking classes to school activities to improve school lunches or establishing a school garden.
Slow Food on Campus is a network of Slow Food USA campus chapters that engage college students around food system and food justice issues. Start a chapter today!
1000 Gardens in Africa Slow Food is embarking on an ambitious project to create food gardens in every Terra Madre community across Africa. The challenge to create 1000 gardens in schools, villages and on the outskirts of cities was launched at the Terra Madre meeting last October.
Slow Food Mohawk Valley is raising funds to sponsor one or more gardens. (Gift certificates are available.)
Terra Madre USA is a network of over 7,000 food producers, cooks and educators from 150 countries united by a common goal of global sustainability in food systems.
To learn about Slow Food Mohawk Valley, please contact either of the chapter leaders:
For more information about Slow Food USA, click here.
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News and Events updated 2.2.12
- February 28th: Food for Thought Film Series
"Black Gold" Screening @ The Other Side, 6:30 pm - Just Label It! Say No to GMO's Campaign
- Presidium Project Focus: Makah Ozette Potato
Food For Thought Film Series:
Tuesday, Feb. 28th, 6:30 pm
@ The Other Side, Genesee St., Utica
Free Film Screening, $5 Coffee & Chocolate tasting to follow in support of community gardens here in Utica and Africa.
Click Here for Trailer:
As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, Black Gold traces one mans fight for a fair price.
GMO: Genetically Modified Organism.
We have the right to know . . .
just what is in our food!?!
For full story, click here!
SF USA Presidium Project Focus:
The Guardians of Ozette
Written by Gerry Warren, Slow Food USA Regional Governor for Washington & Alaska and the coordinator of the Makah Ozette Potato Presidium. This article originally appeared in the 2011 Slow Food Almanac.
In the 1980s an unknown fingerling potato was recognized as a staple in the diet of Pacific Coast Native Americans of the Makah Nation. The Makah occupy the region around Neah Bay, Washington, the most northwesterly point in the lower 48 states. According to tribal lore, the potato had been used by these people for about 200 years. The Makah had named it Ozette after one of their five villages located around Neah Bay. All potatoes originated in South America and it was thought that all potatoes now in the Americas were first taken to Europe by Spaniards before they came to North America. However, in 2004, phylogenetic analysis conducted at Washington State University provided evidence that this potato (Solanum Tu- berosum Group Tuberosum) had certainly been imported directly from South America. How did this happen?
After their conquests in South America, the Spanish began a mission to further establish their empire on the western shores of North America. In the spring of 1791, they established a fort at Neah Bay and, as was the custom, planted a garden that surely included potatoes they had brought directly from South America via Mexico. During the winter of 1791, the Spanish found the weather conditions in the harbor too severe to maintain their ships and they abandoned the fort. The Makah people, who were in need of a carbohydrate source, likely found volunteers of this rather weedy plant left in the garden of the abandoned fort. They quickly adopted the potato and became its stewards, growing it in their backyard gardens. Not until the late 1980s, nearly 200 years later, was the potato grown outside the Makah Nation. The Makah named the potato Ozette and we have named it Makah Ozette to honor their 200 years of stewardship. The firm flesh and creamy texture of this thin-skinned fingerling potato and its unique nutty, earthy flavor are appreciated by home cooks as well as chefs.
The Presidium was established by Slow Food Seattle in partnership with the Makah Nation, Full Circle Farm, Pure Potato (a laboratory and farm which develops and produces potato seed), the USDA Agricultural Research Station in Prosser, WA, and the Seattle chapter of Chefs Collaborative.
The Presidium’s promotional efforts have raised the demand for the potato enough to warrant a significant increase in the production of certified seed (estimated to be 50,000 pounds, around 23 tons, in 2010) by our partner Pure Potato. The number of farmers and home gardeners growing the Makah Ozette Potato has markedly increased with the availability of seed. The potato is prominent at fall farmers’ markets and on restaurant menus in the region.
A major Seattle artisan bakery used some 200,000 pounds, or 90 tons, of these potatoes to create loaves of Makah Ozette Potato Bread, “the best potato bread we have ever produced.” The bakery has vowed to make this bread a feature of their seasonal production as long as the product is available.
In 2010, flooding devastated the growing areas of both the major production crops as well as Pure Potato’s seed crop. Pure Potato had to start again with the three-year process of producing an abundant crop of certified seed potato – a project they had just completed. We are grateful they are willing to do it again.
The Certified Generation program starts with PreNuclear minitubers. These are first grown in “test tube” then planted in the green house. The resulting crop of mini tubers are planted the next year for reproduction in the field and are then classified as Nuclear. The following years they are classified as Generation 1, 2, etc. as long as they remain within the disease parameters specified by the Department of Agriculture.
This Spring Pure Potato will plant 32 pounds of PreNuclear Makah Ozette minitubers in the field. This should yield approximately 30 one hundred pound sacks of Nuclear seed potato. In the spring of 2013 they will plant 16 sacks per acre that will yield 200 sacks per acre.
The question for Pure Potato is: how much to plant and how much to sell? We need potential growers to tell us of their intentions and to get on the list for notification of availability by email. Next year, 2013, depending on the yield, there may be a limited supply of Nuclear Generation Makah Ozette seed potatoes for sale at $2.00 per pound. The plan is to keep reproducing this variety and increase the volume to meet the needs of all those interested in growing it.
Slow Food in Schools
School gardens: Teachers and parents have found that introducing children to hands-on experiences in food-growing gardens helps them to understand and appreciate where their food comes from, make better food choices, be better stewards of the environment, and fall in love with fresh vegetables.
News from Slow Food USA
Food News: December 17, 2012 - January 6, 2012
More Young People Going Into Farming
Dinesh Ramde, Associated Press
A Wisconsin factory worker worried about layoffs became a dairy farmer. An employee at a Minnesota nonprofit found an escape from her cubicle by buying a vegetable farm. A nuclear engineer tired of office bureaucracy decided to get into cattle ranching in Texas. While fresh demographic information on U.S. farmers won’t be available until after the next agricultural census is done next year, there are signs more people in their 20s and 30s are going into farming.
Marion Nestle, The Atlantic
Q: What's on the food politics agenda for 2012? Can we expect anything good to happen?
A: By "good," I assume you mean actions that make our food system safer and healthier for consumers, farmers, farm workers, and the planet. Ordinarily, I am optimistic about such things. This year? Not so much.
U.S. Approves Monsanto Drought-Tolerant GM Corn
Reuters
USDA approved the variety after reviewing environmental and risk assessments, public comments and research data from Monsanto. Corn is the most widely grown U.S. crop and farmers grew 91.9 million acres of the feed grain this year, the second-largest area since World War Two.
Photos from our Mill Hollow Maple Tour:
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Good: The word good can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. For Slow Food, the idea of good means enjoying delicious food created with care from healthy plants and animals. The pleasures of good food can also help to build community and celebrate culture and regional diversity. 
