Slow Food Climate Pledge

In 1934 at the height of the Dust Bowl, a massive storm swept through the Great Plains, lifting thousands of tons of topsoil into the atmosphere.

Two days later, the great cloud of topsoil arrived in DC, reducing visibility to just a few feet and clogging the nostrils of our legislators. A message had been delivered with uncommon force and eloquence, and the government quickly responded with agricultural policies to encourage farmers to protect their soils.

Something similar is happening in agriculture today. But this time around, the warning cloud is invisible carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide.It demands an equally urgent and coordinated response.

Our industrial food system is a brilliantly productive system when all goes according to plan. It is also a brittle system — one that works well only as long as you can hold all those variables steady, which is precisely what we won’t be able to do in an age of climate change.But agriculture has the potential to actually help roll backa significant portion of the impact of all sectors on the climate.

What if we did what we did in the 1930s?

What if we responded with urgency and encouraged farmers and eaters to take care of the soil once again?

This is what Slow Food is doing, and what theSlow Food Climate Pledgeis all about.

Slow Food has been the most visionary and effective movement to connect the dots in food, between farming and gastronomy and political action. We need a very different way of conceiving our relationship with nature.

Will you take a moment tosign the pledgeand make a change in your daily food?