I think you are right that the ideals of the slow-food movement line up well with the ideals of an ethic of care, for just the reasons you suggest. Food returns to the center of a variety of relationships that industrial food production, and the resulting consumption patterns, tend to marginalize or make obscure. But part of the argument of Reviving the Left is that the ethics of care, if it is to be politically relevant, must include within its orbit relationships that are not local.

Even though I don’t have a personal relationship with a winemaker in Chile or a coffee producer in Nicaragua, it isn’t obvious to me why I ought to care less about their circumstances, or value their product less than that of local producers.

Of course, there are issues related to resource and energy use that make using local food attractive. But these matters are complicated. While me might burn less fossil fuel using local foodstuffs we increase the water deficit by doing so. And while our local producers need the business, so do foreign suppliers and indigenous people who are often desparately poor.

So I am inclined to support global trade if it can be done efficiently.

It is important to remember that the “Green Revolution” (the old one related to the transformation of agriculture in the mid-20th century, not the alleged new one) had lots of positive effects on farm economies in underdeveloped counteries and their ability to increase food production. It had lots of negative effects as well which the slow-food movement is combating. But I wonder whether a local model of food production is a viable option for world food supplies. I’m not sure there is as yet a clear answer to that.

So in the end I think the slow-food movement is more an exemplification of communitarian ideals with some overlap with (at least my version of) the ethic of care.