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The newsletter for all members of the Terra Madre
network, defenders of sustainable
agriculture, fishing and breeding
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Projects
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Terra Madre Brazil |
Brazil has just marked a major step forward. From October
4 to 7, 2007, all representatives of food communities,
researchers and cooks of the national Terra Madre network
met in Brazil with local groups of Slow Food members
and representatives of Slow Food Latin America and Italy.
Among the 250 delegates present were 77 producers from
food communities, 26 cooks, academics from nine different
universities and all the leaders of Brazil’s Slow Food
convivia. In addition, 200 journalists, observers, and
representatives of NGOs and institutions attended the
event.
During various discussions, participants met to find
synergies capable of supporting sustainable local food
production that preserves the biodiversity of the country.
The cooks participated in Earth Workshops, where they
shared experiences with small farmers and artisanal
fisher people, and they prepared lunches and dinners
to raise funds for three presidia and one Brazilian
food community.
Terra Madre Brazil was organized by the Brazilian Ministry
of Agricultural Development in collaboration with Slow
Food. It was carried out jointly through the Feira Nacional
de Agricultura Familiar and Reforma Agrária, and to
really connect the two events, organizers created a
“Gourmet Space,” a restaurant open to the public that
served dishes prepared with ingredients acquired directly
from small-scale Brazilian producers. There, Taste
Workshops were offered for children
and meetings dedicated to themes of eco-gastronomy were
held by cooks from the Terra Madre network.
For more information, visit the site:
www.terramadre.slowfoodbrasil.com
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Taste Workshops:
are one of the tools created by Slow
Food as part of its taste education initiative.
During a Workshop the participant tastes a
food, a dish or a beverage with the guidance
of an expert or a producer who knows the product
well and can explain its sensory characteristics,
the production methods, and the cultural context
for the origin of the product, dish or beverage.
During the guided tasting, the participants
learn to recognize the uniqueness of a product
while a wine pairing or even a comparison
of the same product made by different producers
is offered.
Taste Workshops also serve to improve participants’
understanding of foods and to increase their
ability to make more informed decisions when
buying. The sessions help them learn an appropriate
language to describe the characteristics of
the food, without forgetting that tasting
a food is first and foremost a source of pleasure
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Community Learning in Cuba |
West of Havana, the capital of
Cuba, Terra Madre participants Vilda Figueroa, chemist,
nutritionist and researcher, and José Lama, mechanical
engineer, started a community project in 1996 that focuses
on low-income workers, schools, elderly people, housewives
and food producers. The objective is to improve the
food security and the food culture of persons facing
difficulty by teaching production techniques, processing
and conservation of foods in rural and urban areas,
while also defending a model of consumption more focused
on nutrition and the environment.
Little by little, the work of Vilda and José, within
their community of 1,500 inhabitants, is spreading throughout
the rest of the country, thanks to the non-commercial
means of communication that exists in Cuba and to the
regular publication of an informative leaflet, as well
as through face-to-face contact. The activities of the
project include expositions, numerous community meetings,
specific projects conducted with small groups of volunteers,
and workshops that instruct how to produce and conserve
foods and cultivate aromatic herbs and medicinal plants.
For more information about this project, contact:
José Lama and Vilda Figueroa
Havana, Cuba
www.alimentacioncomunitaria.org
conserva@ceniai.inf.cu
Focus on...
Wild and Foraged Foods
Wild berries, herbs and mushrooms are only some examples
of products the nature has to offer. Foraged foods demonstrate
extraordinary biodiversity and reflect the characteristics
of the place where they grow. Unfortunately, these foods
are often overlooked and undervalued. But turning these
foods into marmalades, syrups and or beverages following
recipes handed down through generations keeps local
traditions alive and also provides a source of additional
income for people who live in these areas. Usually such
products are sold in local markets and thus are also
valid examples of direct marketing from producer to
consumer.
Another aspect that at times is forgotten is that foraging
has fundamental importance for safeguarding the environment
because it permits the regular supervision of precious
natural areas that are normally at risk of neglect and
forest fire. On the other hand, increasing demand for
wild foods for use in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics
threatens the ecosystem. Hence, it is necessary that
in harvesting and collecting these foods to always pay
attention to impact on the environment.
Life-changing Wild Foods
Karol Majewski is a Polish man who has pursued many interests
over his lifetime – he’s been everything from a sports
trainer to a music journalist. But five years ago, friends
convinced him to turn one of his hobbies into a real profession,
and so Karol began to produce wild fruit-based spirits
that he now gives to his friends and sells commercially.
In 30 years of at-home experiments, Karol has created
32 types of different liquors based on wild fruits. It
has taken him two entire years to obtain the necessary
authorization to sell the beverages (the permission requires
the approval of five ministers!). Karol has revived a
16th-century Polish tradition, obtaining his spirits through
a demanding process that require two years of aging. He
doesn’t pick the fruit himself, but leaves it to people
who gather from the forest for a living.
Today Karol sells his distilled beverages to restaurants
and hotels not only in Poland, but also in China, Japan,
and Singapore. He participates in various events and fairs
to promote his products and in 2006 he joined the Terra
Madre network. His experience is another encouraging example:
by investing in quality, wild fruits can become a winning
ticket in the market.
Contact
this producer:
Karol Majewski
Warsaw, Polonia
Mail: nalewki@nalewki.pl
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Slow Food
key words |
Cheese
Every two years, during the month
of September, Slow Food organizes Cheese in Bra, the
Italian town that is home to its international headquarters.
This festival is dedicated to cheeses of extraordinary
quality and is a unique occasion for consumers to
meet producers and taste cheeses from all over the
world. The event also allows experts and enthusiasts
to discuss the most current problems and challenges
of cheese production.
This festival puts artisanal cheesemakers in the limelight,
underlines the importance of pasture and animal feed,
promotes the rearing of native breeds, supports small
producers from areas that are difficult to access
(for example the producers who follow the tradition
of producing cheese naturally and on high mountain
peaks), and affirms that production with raw milk
that respects hygienic standards produces superior
cheese.
http://www.cheese.slowfood.it/welcome_eng.lasso
Voices from
Terra Madre
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I am an American journalist and I had the
good fortune to participate in both editions
of Terra Madre in Turin. One thing that struck
me was seeing so many people take pictures
of food at different displays. When I returned
home, I decided to create a place where people
can share their photos and stories of food,
“to show what the world eats.” I would like
to everyone to send photos of their favorite
dishes, prepared at home or in a restaurant
or even those of produce that you grew to
the site www.BeenThereAteThat.com.
That way, we can all sit together at the same
table – at least virtually. |
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Gayle Keck
gakeck@aol.com
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Food Traditions
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Slow
Preparation of an Unusual Sweet |
The Kanak, a native population of New Caledonia, an island
in the southwest Pacific Ocean, make an unusual confection
they call the “sweet of scarcity,” because it is traditionally
prepared in the period between the two seasons of sweet
potato harvest – a product which is the staple food of
their diet – or in case of natural disasters like cyclones.
The main ingredient of the sweet are mangrove fruits,
fibrous plants typical of tropical coastlines. During
harvest, leaves of palm, banana, and coconut trees are
cut and the women weave baskets with them that are later
used for filtering. The fruits are beaten with a wooden
stick and then put in the baskets and covered with burao
(Hibiscus tiliaceus). The baskets are tied shut with coconut
leaves and placed in pools of salt water, where there
must stay, entirely submersed, for 15 days
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After two weeks, the women wash the baskets, remove the
leaves and knead the fruit with grated coconut and sugar
until it is soft and crumbly. Molds are then filled by
hand with the sweet paste, closed, tied and finally arranged
in a pot placed over a flame for cooking. These age-old
“sweets of scarcity” are consumed today as an afternoon
snack, accompanied with tea.
For more information about the Kanak, visit the
site:
www.adck.nc
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TELL US ABOUT YOUR TRADITIONS!
Describe your community, your regional
dishes and the occasions on which you eat
them. We’ll post the best entries in
this section:
communication@slowfood.com
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Something
to Crow About
Where I come from we
have a metaphor to explain why chickens produce
eggs that are more in demand than those laid by
turkey hens. Chickens cluck when they are laying,
and this is how they “market” their eggs. They make
themselves noticed and turkeys do not.
Our regions, the regions of food communities, are
full of excellent and important products that are
wonderful to promote. They come from fascinating
traditions and we know it. Too often these things
are outside of our network and we don’t know how
to share them with others. Many communities despair
in how difficult it is to find the right channels
to sell their products, even within their own local
markets. Because standardized products have become
more international and available to the masses,
local products with unique characteristics from
their origin have been forgotten.
Thus it becomes necessary to know how to “cluck”
about these products even in the regions they come
from – to describe and explain traditions to those
that are no longer aware of their real identity.
It’s fundamental to allowing the products to be
better understood and valued within and also outside
of the community. It’s a crucial part of a strategy
for local economies. In clucking, we tell a story
and sell something intangible, the human and characteristic
ways of life of a place, the lives that are behind
these foods. In crowing, we glorify diversity and
the special qualities of a region.
In a local community network, in a world where it
is necessary for local economies to prevail in large-scale
systems, it is diversity that can be most striking
or fascinating. In terms of visibility and success,
a community is best able to grow by focusing on
itself and on its unique identity. This is because
food is not only fuel for the body. And likewise,
pleasure owing from exceptional taste qualities
is not sufficient either. It must be conveyed always
in respect to cultural diversity. If a community
– not only the food community, but all of the local
community – is aware, therefore also proud, and
keeps its traditions alive and incorporates their
own products into their everyday diet, it does not
need to follow the classic rules of marketing. It
will be enough to cluck just a little to make itself
noticed because the community is acting as it naturally
should.
Carlo Petrini
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Join
a great international community that defends sustainable
agriculture, fishing and breeding.
Celebrate the pleasure that the finest foods in
the world offer us in all their variety
servicecentre
@slowfood.com |
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Your Questions Answered
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I have just recently begun,
more or less by chance, to produce blue cheese:
I had previously put white salted cheese in
a terracotta container and the natural molds
present turned it blue. I would like to have
more precise information on this type of production.
Kiril
Georgiev
Tcherni Vit, Bulgaria
kiril_boriana@cablebg.net
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During Cheese, the event organized by
Slow Food Italy, Kiril received an answer to his question
directly from an English cheese producer. He had just begun
producing a raw milk blue cheese again after being interrupted
in 1989 when such production in England had been halted in
favor of production with pasteurized milk. The English producer
underlined the aspects that are necessary to carefully control
during production and aging and suggested grating off about
a millimeter of the cheese’s crust in order to slow down the
appearance of mold and then to prick the surface evenly all
over with a long stainless steel needle, without going through
to the center. The cheese must then be kept in a very humid
place for several weeks. This producer only uses light and
dry salting, in order to allow the unique taste of the blue
cheese to be fully expressed.
If you also have advice and experiences to share, post your
comments to the Terra Madre blog under the cheese
section.
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Did You Know
that
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Do-gooder Tourism |
Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the world, is rapidly
drying up because there is not enough precipitation and a lack
of adequate environmental protection. Numerous farmers and fishermen
in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya depend on its water for their
basic needs. To support the local community, the Kenyan association
UVIP has created an eco-tourism project in collaboration with
the Italian association Mondo Solidale. Through the promotion
of eco-sustainable activities, UVIP hopes to attract the attention
of political authorities to the necessity of safeguarding this
important and delicate ecosystem. In Italy, the producers of
the Dried Calizzano and Murialdo Chestnut Presidium (Liguria)
have recently decided to welcome tourists interested in discovering
their region by taking them into the forest to collect chestnuts
and then introducing them to bakers and gelato producers that
transform the nuts into jam, gelato, cookies, cakes, and tarts.
The Presidium producers also decided to give part of the profits
from the visits to the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity,
in support of their other presidia projects in Africa, Asia
and South America.
To contact UVIP:
Peter Onyango
peter_onyango@yahoo.com
To contact the producers of the dried chestnut Presidium:
Federico Santamaria
f.santamaria@tiscalinet.it
www.calizzano.com
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