Food should be cheap, and labor should be cheap, and everything should be the same no matter where you go; whether it's a McDonald's in Germany or one in California, it should be the same. And this message is destroying cultures around the world. Needless to say, agriculture goes with it.

I have a love affair with tomatoes and corn. I remember them from my childhood. I only had them in the summer. They were extraordinary.

I think the biggest impediment to fixing the food system in the United States is that we expect food to be cheap. We want to by other things with our money. We're so disconnected from agriculture - from the culture in agriculture.

Because only slow food can teach us the things that really matter - care, beauty, concentration, discernment, sensuality, all the best that humans are capable of, but only if we take the time to think about what we're eating.

To have a basic ingredient that can be prepared a million different ways is a beautiful thing.

We can't think narrowly. We have to think in the biggest possible way.

Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.