October 2009

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In this edition:

	Editorial by Carlo Petrini Slow Food key word Food community Campaigns Terra Madre Day Project of the Month Sensory Learning Support a project to improve the daily diet of students and improve awareness of local production in Belarus From Land to Table... Family Treasures Slow Food France and the Paris-Bastille convivium launch the ‘Granny’s Recipe’ competition in the lead up to Eurogusto 09. Rare Encounters A Russian scientist and Slow Food member meets breeders of native Italian breeds. Dream Canteen Slow Food launches a new European network to improve school meal services Land of Fire and Ice Local members make connections in Iceland Slow Food in Parks Protocol of understanding signed between Slow Food International and the Europarc Federation Presidia Tasting Monthly events to highlight unique Presidia product in Italy Voices from Terra Madre Up On Mountain Pastures Adrien Lahitette is a young shepherd of 22 years.... Food Traditions Duck with Rice An organic approach to rice cultivation in Vietnam Food for Thought Local Economies In Print Wild Foods Celebrated Calendar Terra Madre Austria Terra Madre Norway

Slow Food  key words

Food Community
The term food community was coined by Slow Food in 2004 for the first Terra Madre meeting to define the many diverse trades and professions involved in the food production chain, historically, socially or culturally linked to a specific geographical area: from seed savers, cooks, farmers and fishermen to wild food gatherers, livestock breeders, scholars, and so on. It defines the place of origin of these producers and reflects a new idea of local economy based on food, agriculture, tradition and culture. Food community members are involved in small-scale and sustainable production of quality products. They share the problems generated by intensive agricultural methods, and by a mass-market food industry focused on standardization. Today the Terra Madre network is made up of at least 2,000 food communities across 150 countries.


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Terra Madre Day Getting Ready to Celebrate Join the worldwide celebration of Slow Food’s 20th anniversary and ‘Eating Locally’ on Terra Madre Day this December 10, by organizing an event or activity in your community. To help you get going, the Terra Madre Day website includes an Organizer’s Kit that provides resources to assist you in the planning and promotion of a local celebration. Download the Information for Organizers guide for a full overview, event ideas, tips on promoting your activities, FAQs and more. In addition, there are range of graphic materials and designs available here, including the Terra Madre Day logo and world map, posters, banners, postcards, pins etc. The postcard and poster are provided in both pdf and word formats – with a space in the word version where you can easily add your own text. The site and all of these documents are available in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. As soon as you have an outline of your Terra Madre Day activity, please register it on the site, using the online form which asks for details of the coordinator, the event name, date and location and a brief description of what you are planning. Each registered event will be added to our world map. www.slowfood.com/terramadreday Email: tmday@slowfood.com Terra Madre Day Around the World With Terra Madre Day just a month and half away, here is a snapshot of some of the wide variety of events being planned in all corners of the world. In Bangladesh the Pabna food community is inviting their community to a folk concert where traditional foods will be served, including the local specialties such as homebaked pitha cake. In Africa, Masaku Central Convivium in Kenya will hold a range of activities to promote the value of local food to children, including presentations, visits to farms, and creating new school gardens, while in Uganda, Slow Food Mukono is bringing together their members with school children, producers, consumers, teachers, parents, and local leaders, for a huge Eat-In - a shared meals of dishes made from local ingredients to represent the nation’s different food traditions. In Cuba, the Las Terrazas food community is running a full-day program: planting of food trees with children from a local pre-school, a lunch for local farmers prepared by students from the “Cocina Ecologica” association, a community tasting of local juices and foods and a film screening. Meanwhile, in Australia Slow Food Sunshine Coast is inviting everyone to follow the 'Snail Trail' through the region, where they will be able to sample local ingredients and meet producers, as well as attend several Eat-Ins in parks. This convivium is also inviting participants to submit their best photo and a story about their Terra Madre Day experience to be published on their convivium website. No Oil, No Money Italy – For Mario Gala, a shepherd in the Terra Madre network and producer with the Langhe Sheep Tuma Presidium, the ideas promoted by Terra Madre Day have long been part of his daily work. Mario produces sheep and goat cheese using artisan methods and has turned his farm into an agritourism business, "Il Finocchio Verde". Here among the hills of the Alta Langa, Mario Gala welcomes guests with produce from his land and surrounding woods, all accompanied by home-made bread and honey. In addition, Mario passes on his knowledge to dozens of young people in schools or when they come to visit from all over the world. By offering farm holidays to people who want to rediscover rural life, Mario aims to diversify his activities and extend his sources of income. This additional money will soon enable Mario to accept and train two or three young apprentice shepherds on a permanent basis. To celebrate Terra Madre Day Mario has decided to organize a zero food miles dinner with the title “No Oil, No Money”. The invitation is open to everyone who shares his ideals and is prepared to come without using a polluting means of transport: on foot, horseback, by bicycle—or sleigh! People wanting to contribute can bring some homemade food. A musical accompaniment will further enhance this evening of giving and sharing. Click here to view more details on the website.

Project of the Month

Sensory Learning Support a project to improve the daily diet of students and improve awareness of local production in Belarus

From Land to Table...

Family Treasures Slow Food France and the Paris-Bastille convivium launch the ‘Granny’s Recipe’ competition in the lead up to Eurogusto 09.

Rare Encounters  A Russian scientist and Slow Food member meets breeders of native Italian breeds

Russia – After recently nominating ten traditional products from Russian breeds of domesticated animals to the Ark of Taste - including moose milk, grey cattle beef, and Kastroma cheese - Dr. Yuriy Stolpovskiy decided to visit Italy to see the work which is being done to protect rare breeds by Slow Food there. In Russia, work on protecting autochonous breeds only began a short time ago by a small group of dedicated experts. Today Yuriy and others have identified 200 local breeds of domestic animals – still a very small number for a country of this size – and assist farmers to identify if they have a rare breed and qualify for government support.

Yuriy started his Italian trip at the international Cheese festival, where he met many cheesemakers from across Europe and tried their products made from the milk of natives goat, sheep and cow breeds. He then travelled to visit four Presidia found in the northern Italian regions of Piedmont and Trentino-Alto Adige. It was particularly fascinating for him to visit the Grigio Alpina Ox Presidia, a relative of the Russian Grey Steppe cattle that is almost instinct, with only 127 animals remaining on a farm where Yuriy himself worked for five years. This small herd is situated in Russia’s Altai region, on the boarder with Mongolia.

“Witnessing what communities and regions can do and achieve to save a local breed from extinction was a great inspiration… seeing the great importance and value given to the end products and how the work with animals can make people happy,” said Yuriy. “And it was wonderful to see so many beautiful breeds represented at Cheese. This is very important to me, as I want to know what I eat. Here we not only see a cheese, but we get to know an animal, a field, and a landscape.”

Russia will soon have ten products listed on the Ark of Taste and is looking forward to presenting their first Presidia at the Salone del Gusto 2010.

Yuriy Stolpovskiy
stolpovsky@hotbox.ru
Researcher at the Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences;
Slow Food Kovcheg Moscow Convivium committee member

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Dream Canteen Slow Food launches a new European network to improve school meal services

Land of Fire and Ice Local members make connections in Iceland

Slow Food in Parks Protocol of understanding signed between Slow Food International and the Europarc Federation

Italy - A protocol of understanding was signed between the European Association of Parks and Slow Food International during a conference of the Europarc Federation held from September 9 - 13 in Sweden. Its main aim will be to develop initiatives in parks which promote a harmonious coexistence with humans and their agricultural activities, including protecting biodiversity.

Through this collaborative venture, Slow Food and Europarc wish to promote traditional agriculture and rural communities that live in protected areas. The plan is to create a network through the Terra Madre food communities, and to make Slow Food’s methods available to Europarc to assist them to address food production issues within European parks. This will help to support small-scale agricultural products which are still able to keep local economies alive in rural areas as well as the increasingly endangered social fabric.

Slow Food has collaborated with Italian Parks for many years and this was reflected at Cheese (held in Bra from September 18 to 21), where products included cheeses and honeys from the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park and also from the Mercantour Park which extends along the border with France.

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Presidia Tastings Monthly events to hightlight unique Presidia products in Italy

Italy – From October 2009 to July 2010, Eataly (a supermarket selling high-quality Italian food) will host a special tasting event for Slow Food Presidia products once a month in Turin. These events are a great opportunity for people to discover the background of a wide range of foods and the issues which the producers are facing: from mountain economies to the African rural situation, deforestation and the state of the seas, the importance of protecting bees or the impact on the planet of industrial farming.

Each event will involve a tasting of dishes prepared by cooks involved in the Presidia Alliance project in Italy, a lecture, screening of a short film and exhibitions (photographs, eco-sustainable fashion etc.). These events are organized by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity and Slow Food Torino, in collaboration with Eataly.

For further information please write to: g.talpo@slowfood.it

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Voices from Terra Madre

Up On Mountain Pastures France - Adrien Lahittete, a young 22-year-old shepherd from the Terra Madre community of Béarn shepherds, which recently became the Béarn Mountain Cheese Presidium, came to Cheese 2009 to present his produce. He also told us about his life....

“At the moment I am attending a course in the Development and Promotion of Local Products at the Pau Agricultural Institute. I have chosen to train in this area because I have been involved with farming since I was a child: my parents are farmers and my mother runs a farm. At first I wanted it to get away from agriculture, because looking after animals 365 days a year and risking having your family life upset by your work is a difficult choice to make. But then thinking about it more carefully and seeing that, in fact, things were no better elsewhere, I decided to return to doing what I know best."           Click here to read the rest of Adrien's story on the Terra Madre site.

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Food Traditions

Duck with Rice An organic approach to rice cultivation from Vietnam

Vietnam - The Terra Madre Organic Rice Producers of Tan Lac food community are from a region of traditional rice cultivation. Following the Green Revolution, farmers in the area became dependant on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, however many quickly realized the negative consequences and started to learn about integrated rice-duck farming. They found that introducing ducks to the rice paddies has improved the soil and the water conditions, and increased their security as they now produce both rice and duck meat and eggs. They have also started to bring back local varieties of rice to protect biodiversity and their food security for the future.

Rice-duck farming is a traditional organic, mixed-farming technique, which is starting to regain popularity. In this system, rice and ducks are raised simultaneously on the same land. The ducks effectively control weeds and insects, thus helping eliminate the application of pesticides and herbicides, reducing weed growth by as much as 92-96 percent. The ducks eat young plants, as well as the plant’s seeds, and their trampling further helps to keep the weeds under control as well as oxygenating the water and encouraging the roots of the rice plants to grow vigorously. Finally, their droppings provide many essential nutrients for the rice crops. Ducklings are released into the rice paddy when they are around seven days old, and are left there until the rice plants begin to flower - while ducks do not eat the rice plants' leaves, they cannot be trusted with the maturing grains.

The Organic Rice Producers of Tan Lac food community are particating in the Terra Madre meeting at Slow Food Nippon on October 23. Click here for more information on this community.

To view Greenpeace’s video on rice-duck farming in China click here.

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Food for Thought

Local Economies

The idea of ‘local economies' based on food, agriculture, tradition and culture is becoming increasingly appealing in today's world in which the globalized market economy is showing its many limitations in terms of wastefulness and damage to the environment. The micro-economies of local communities have the potential to work in a way that is financially rewarding and respectful of surrounding ecosystems, human health and cultures, and they also foster conviviality and solidarity among people.

Wendell Berry introduces the concept in his essay The Idea of a Local Economy:

"If the government does not propose to protect the lives, livelihoods, and freedoms of its people, then the people must think about protecting themselves. How are they to protect themselves? There seems, really, to be only one way, and that is to develop and put into practice the idea of a local economy - something that growing numbers of people are now doing. For several good reasons, they are beginning with the idea of a local food economy. They are trying to learn to use the consumer economies of local towns and cities to preserve the livelihoods of local farm families and farm communities. They want to use the local economy to give consumers an influence over the kind and quality of their food, and to preserve land and enhance the local landscapes. They want to give everybody in the local community a direct, long-term interest in the prosperity, health, and beauty of their homeland. Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice."

Click here to read the full article.

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In Print

Wild Foods Celebrated

A new book, Indigenous People's food systems, co-published by the FAO and McGill University, explains how indigenous communities across the world, from tropical forests to polar environments, are keepers of a vast treasure house of healthful, nutritious foods - many with extraordinary properties. The bad news is that as wild habitats are lost to development and our lifestyles are increasingly standardized across the globe, these native foods are quickly disappearing - together with the diets that once kept indigenous peoples healthy and fit.

The 12 case studies presented in this 350-page book show the wealth of knowledge in indigenous communities in diverse ecosystems; the richness of their food resources; the inherent strengths of the local traditional food systems; how people think about and use these foods; the influx of industrial and purchased food; and the circumstances of the nutrition transition in indigenous communities. Photographs and tables accompany each chapter.

Indigenous Peoples' food systems: the many dimensions of culture, diversity and environment for nutrition and health, 2009, FAO. ISBN: 9789251060711

Click here to read more.
Click here to download the book.


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