How Much is a Kilo of Identity?

Recently, at a local-organic-fair food market my attention was drawn by a little jar of sauce containing sardines. The man selling it was also the producer, and told me that those jars came from Campania, the Italian region where this product is “almost a religion”. When I asked how much, without any shame he answered '15 Euros' (about £12 and $16). When I instinctively asked why 15 euros, he answered: 'Because this is identity'. “This is pasta sauce!”, I objected, but it was too late. Starring blankly, the producer was explaining the entire production process, talking about Campanian families producing it with almost religious rituals, etc., and the conclusion was the undoubted link between high price and identity.

No one can exclude that food shapes who we are, but this has nothing to do with the price of a jar of pasta sauce. Instead, I believe that the high price of many organic foods has to do with frauds. Frauds regarding organic and local foods are growing every day. Not only do these foods cost insensately more than the other products, but also many foods sold as organic are actually industrially processed. Why are frauds growing around organic food?

Food cheaters rule where the direct link between people and food origins is broken, and a gap has to be bridged. Industrial food has broken this link, and in fact we know nothing about what we eat. As magicians, organic food producers promise us that by eating their foods we will find what we have lost. So, a jar of pasta sauce may miraculously give us the illusion that we are bridging this gap. Actually, this is not true. What is true, instead, is that a supposed identity is sold as a product, also at an expensive price, and people are eager to buy it to heal the wounds of consumerist society. But it's a paradox, because you can't recover from consumerism by remaining in the same logic. Instead, this system is only a further attempt of consumerism to make money. People who are not targeted by the mainstream market, are involved with an apparently different mechanism, actually working the same way.

What to do, then? Is our destiny already established and there is no chance of liberation? Whatever we do, are we condemned into the hell of capitalism, as many pessimistic sociologists say? I don't think so. Only, we should look at phenomena occurring out of the logic of consumerism. They are often hidden and ignored by mainstream media, but they do exist. One of them is the Italian GAS (Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale). They will be the topic of one of my next posts, as they deserve more space than the end of a post. They have been surviving in Italy for twenty years, even though they have never be come popular. But they are there, and this reassures me.