Carlo Petrini speaks only two words in English: “slow” and “food”. Combined, they make up the name of the movement he founded in Italy nearly 20 years ago.

Petrini (and his followers believe in “ecogastronomy”; in a nutshell: good food, locally grown and available to everyone. He outlines his vision in the English version of his new book, Slow Food Nation– why our food should be good, clean and fair. “I like to imagine the hands of the people who grew it, transported it, processed it and cooked it before it was served to me,” he writes. “I do not want the food I consume to deprive others in the world of food.”

Nice idea, and there is no doubt that it is catching on. From Morocco to Mexico, the movement has a worldwide membership of 85,000 people in 130 countries. But what about this country where, as a poll for the Linking Environment and Farming organisation showed recently, 47 per cent of people don’t know that beer and porridge have their origins on a farm?

When we meet at the Natural Kitchen, an upmarket delicatessen-cum-café in Marylebone High Street, Central London, Petrini speaks Italian in the sonorous tones of a storyteller. “We want to bring food and the environment back into a healthy relationship,” he says, his brown eyes sparkling. As he sips his coffee, his long, smartly dressed body relaxed at the table, he tells me about the ideas behind his new book. He is funny, warm and, when talking about food, the language he uses is poetic, even sensual. Above his belt sits a modest paunch, appropriate to the 58-year-old godfather of an organisation of international foodies.

Part travelogue, part agricultural investigation, the new book builds on his previous title, Slow Food Revolution (Rizzoli, £16), published last year, and moves the argument into a more practical, how-to sphere. While Petrini attacks corporate fast-food culture, unhealthy choices, genetically modified organisms and food-borne diseases, he offers alternative models to take back control of our food and to ensure that it is “good, clean and fair”.

By “good”, Petrini means healthy and delicious; he sees a direct link between health and pleasure. “Clean” means produced sustainably in ways that are sensitive to the environment, and “fair” means produced with respect for social justice. “A wine may be organic, but if it tastes awful it sends a shiver up my spine,” he says. After a recent trip to California to observe organic wine production, he says he was appalled by the lot of the Mexican workers employed there.

Born in Piedmont, North Italy, to a lower-middle-class family, Petrini learnt about good food from his frugal grandmother in the austere postwar years. In the early 1970s, he was a militant student and the founder of Italy’s first radical independent radio station. His concept of ecogastronomy grew out of outrage at the discovery that the celebrated square peppers of nearby Asti had almost ceased to be grown locally and were being replaced by tasteless, cheaper versions grown intensively in the Netherlands. In place of the peppers, the Asti farmers were cultivating tulip bulbs and exporting them to Holland.

“I was dumbfounded,” says Petrini. “These two agricultural traditions were being overturned and thousands of food miles were being clocked up. I realised then that we had to defend our foods and restore the producers’ cultural dignity by giving them a solid platform in the market.”

Over the past 20 years this has been achieved in Italy by Slow Food presidia, a network of local food communities, which has resuscitated the production of more than 250 traditional foods – local cheeses, varieties of ham and types of tomatoes. In Italy, Slow Food is now a well-respected movement, and it even runs its own academic institution: the University of the Science of Gastronomy in Pollenzo, which opened in 2004.

But what relevance does his message have to ordinary UK consumers who love supermar-kets, where £1 out of every £7 spent in UK retailers goes into Tesco’s tills? Petrini, who is single and childless and still lives with mother, is unapologetic. “You have to build a new food system and this starts with the elite. Gradually, as we’ ve seen with farmers’ markets in the UK [there are now more than 550 since the first one opened in Bath in 1997], this increases the size of the market, and then more and more people begin to demand higher-quality food.

“You need to raise awareness in schools, universities, hospitals and prisons and to relocalise consumption and agricultural production,” he says. And, though it sounds a big task, he has already had some success in the UK. There are about 50 local Slow Food groups, which support regional producers of, for example, pilchards in Cornwall, artisan Somerset Cheddar or Old Gloucester beef.

“To guarantee good, clean and fair food, the consumer has to think of himself as a co-producer,” Petrini says. “The era of the mere consumer is over; he is the primary accomplice in the destruction being done to the Earth.” Petrini’s passion is evident but, it must be said, he’s not the easiest man in the world to rub along with. At the Natural Kitchen he is rather grumpy about having to meet so early (9.30am) and he refuses point blank to be photographed next to food of any description. He says that he has no time for the way food is spun as “soft pornography”. He claims that celebrity chefs make him sick. And he calls off a shopping tour of Tesco because he says he doesn’t have the “local knowledge” to shop there.

But, personality quirks aside, there’s no doubt that his movement has valid points to make. “In the West we are losing our farmers: only 2 per cent of the workforce in Italy works the land now. Technology is all very well, but we can’t eat computers or information. Someone has to grow our tomatoes and aubergines. We have to be able to build and sustain a new farming class with dignity in their work. They are as important to society as any lawyer.” So what does Petrini eat himself? Is it possible to eat good, clean, fair food all the time? “No. But I try to. For example, I wouldn’t eat the food on a plane even if I was in business class.”

Petrini may not have all the answers, but he has thought long and hard about food and he is an inspirational spokesman gathering influential friends – from Al Gore to David Miliband – as he travels the world (presumably rather hungrily) raising Slow Food’s profile.

In London earlier this month, at the inaugural Future of Food lecture at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, he suggested that only the few members of the audience with white hair would remember what a peach truly tastes like. His ambition, he said, was to revive the taste of peaches to future generations. Bravissimo.

Slow Food Nation (Rizzoli, £11.95) is available from Times BooksFirst for £10.75: 0870 1608080, timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy

For more information: www.slowfood.org.uk

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