Having just returned from Terra Madre, Slow Food’s international conference in Torino, Italy, I find myself in awe of and inspired by the beautiful people I met from around the world—sustainable farmers and fishers, food producers, chefs, educators and activists working towards a food system that is good, clean, and fair. For everyone. Thousands of people from over 150 countries came together to share their stories. At the Opening Ceremony an Ethiopian man said, “Food is life. Food is us.” This seemed to me to sum up the spirit of Terra Madre. The practice of Terra Madre is found in the continuing use of traditional knowledge about food, land and sea stewardship to guide our way forward.
To some, this may sound obvious. To others, it may seem naive, unrealistic. But this is not pure rhetoric. In moving towards an industrialized, anonymous food system over the last several decades, we have lost our close connection to food and land and with great consequences. We are besieged by the problems of global warming, hunger, chronic disease, pollution, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and the marked injustices faced by people on both ends of the spectrum—eaters and producers alike. The further away we’ve removed ourselves from the source of our food, from knowing and understanding our food, the worse things have become. A Guarani man from Brazil put it like this, “The world is sick.” But, he went on to say, “There are other ways. The world can and must change.”
Terra Madre stands for change through recognizing our roots—seeking innovative solutions to modern problems through the collective wisdom of our tried and true foodways. Those sane traditions that have kept people and places happy, healthy, and whole for generations; practices like sustainable fishing, ecologically sound farming, gardening, seed saving, cooking, and preserving can tie together the past and the future. Corporate interests would like us to believe that they have the key to feeding the world, but while they may have a monopoly, big ag can never feed the world in a way that fosters true health of people and places. We need the diversity of our worldwide communities instead of “putting all of our eggs in one basket.” The one size fits all mentality found in the practices of industrial ag’s GMOs, monocrops, and seed patenting only compounds the problems we face.
Over sixty meetings and workshops took place at Terra Madre, exploring subjects such as Food Policy, Sustainable Education, Healthy Food in Schools, Eco-Friendly Farming, Fair Trade, Agro-biodiversity, Food Sovereignty, Hunger & Poverty, Slow Fish, Cooks & Places, the Youth Food Movement, and so much more. One of the most exciting workshops I attended was a global meeting of indigenous people working together to create the Terra Madre Indigenous People Network. The TMIP Network will host their first meeting in 2011 to form a united voice, strong enough to take to the United Nations and to be heard around the world. “We have a lot to tell the world,” one woman explained. She affirmed what Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, had said at the Opening Ceremony, “Keepers of traditional knowledge; natives, farmers, women, elderly….should be listened to.”
Next door to Terra Madre was the Salone del Gusto –a vast artisanal food marketplace and exposition of food producers that embody the principles of Slow Food. Here, delegates from Terra Madre, and thousands of other visitors were able to taste food and drink from Europe, Asia, Africa, the America's and beyond. Raw milk cheeses, fruit preserves, cured meats, pastries, breads, dates, wild rice, legumes and beans, nut pestos and pastes, wine, spirits, seaweed, seafood, fermented foods, and much, much more were on display. Foods especially in danger of extinction were highlighted through Slow Food's
Presidia projects. (In the USA we have only a few Presidia, including wild rice or Manoomin, but the
Ark of Taste, a catalogue of more than 200 foods, works along these same lines of preserving biodiversity.) The Salone helped me to truly understand the concept of terroir-- the unique flavors that come from the soil, geography, weather, of where a food was produced. One cheesemaker said to me, “I want you to taste my land.” And I did.
After the conference was over, I had an opportunity to explore a bit of my own cultural food heritage. Taking the train down to Sicily, I was able to find my grandmother’s birthplace. A small mountain village overlooking the sea with terraced groves of olives and citrus dotted with figs, persimmons, grapes, prickly pears, wild mint, fennel, hens, and sheep. In Sicily I tasted the sea in the anchovy, sardine, octopus, squid, eel, swordfish, and jackfish that the small fisherman had brought to the fish market that morning. I tasted the land in the olive oil, sheep’s milk cheeses, almonds, pistachios, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, strawberries, grapes, olives, and vino. It was lovely. And the people of Sicily seemed warm and welcoming and truly happy. My friend said of the fishermen at the market, “they seemed the happiest people on the planet.” Imagine, living in close concert with your surroundings, living in balance, and finding pleasure… In my travels throughout Italy I witnessed people eating together. In homes, cafes, street-scapes, restaurants, markets I saw people enjoying each other’s company.
I left Italy at first with some reluctance, but in the end, returned with a renewed passion for seeking out the terroir of my home: the wild rice, winter squash, raw milk cheeses, hickory nuts, apples, organic oats in my pantry, the wild asparagus that will shoot up next spring, and the berries that will follow, the lake fish, the wild game. All places have foods worth celebrating. It is our job as humans to ensure that this food diversity remains. So, as my Sicilian grandmother would say, “Mangiare, mangiare!” Jc
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