AT 3PM TODAY, some 5,000 artisan food producers from over 130 different countries will convene on the outskirts of Turin for what might be described as the mother of all food conferences. Terra Madre - which translates as Mother Earth - has been a long time coming, but this inaugural event is proof that good things are worth waiting for.
The event is the latest initiative by Slow Food, the multi-faceted, international movement which is the antithesis of the global fast food culture, promoting and preserving the creation and enjoyment of traditionally crafted food stuffs.
Foodies
will already be familiar with Slow Food’s Salone del Gusto, its biennial Hall of Taste, which this year has been timed to coincide with Terra Madre and expects to welcome 130,000 visitors to the Lingotto Exhibition Centre in Turin to sample the ecologically sound wares of more than 500 exhibitors.
However, Terra Madre is strictly for those who help make foodies’ lives worth living, namely 5,000 food and drink producers, hand-picked from around the globe for this four-day convention. Those lucky enough to receive an invite will attend workshops and meetings on every food topic imaginable, from the promotion of single-flower honeys as a means of defending biodiversity, to the positive effects of raw milk (including the importance of free choice when it comes to producing and buying pasteurised cheese). Also under the microscope will be the effects of globalisation on food and destruction of rural economies.
Food communities, sustainability and biodiversity are the buzzwords here. In clusters, the Terra Madre participants represent 1,200 individual food communities while collectively they symbolise one global Food Community with the common goal of creating and maintaining a sustainable future for agricultural biodiversity.
"The goal of Terra Madre is the Terra Madre meeting itself," says Carlo Petrini, founder and president of Slow Food, "an opportunity for representatives from diverse agricultural realities to meet, bringing together people who would not normally have the chance to share their experience and reflect on communal problems.
"What really sets Terra Madre apart is that other agricultural seminars do not directly involve the people whose interests are being discussed: the producers themselves. This is our small revolution. To have invited the people that work the land, not those who manage it."
Three Scottish communities are being represented at Terra Madre: the Highlands Food Community; the Community of Scottish producers, and the Community of Loch Fyne fishermen. Pam Rodway, a cheese-maker based at Wester Lawrenceton Farm in Moray, which is Soil Associationcertified, is heading up the Highlands Food Community at the event. "I’m very excited about talking to other artisan producers and farmers about global issues in a local context," she says. Like all the Terra Madre participants, Rodway will be staying in the home of an Italian food producer or farmer. "We’ll be making real contact with local people," she adds.
As an international movement, Slow Food was established in Paris in 1989, before moving to its base in the southern Piedmontese town of Bra. Since its inception, it has attracted a following of more than 80,000 fully paid-up members in 100 countries across five continents.
I first stumbled upon Slow Food in Manchester only four years ago. Working as a food and drink editor, I was invited to join the local Convivium which hosted various events, including tastings of locally produced cheeses and chocolates (not at the same time). It seemed like an excellent idea. Back then, friends and colleagues would ask me what Slow Food was and I would respond that it was "an anti-fast food movement". Although it was born out of the extreme distaste experienced when McDonald’s opened at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome, I fairly quickly realised that my brief definition was too simple. In my defence, this is because Slow Food embraces so many different elements and even the organisation’s own description of itself is somewhat imprecise: "Slow Food is an international organisation whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenisation of modern fast food and life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, develops taste education, conserves agricultural biodiversity and protects traditional foods at risk of extinction."
Protecting the pleasures of the table from homogenisation? This is the anti-fast food bit, but it also extends into conserving the individual character of foods, for example, encouraging the production and consumption of regional specialities and artisan produce such as farmhouse cheeses and rare breed pork.
The all-embracing "variety of initiatives" part tries to sum up the rest of what the somewhat sprawling movement, with its many arms, is all about.
Its publishing arm has a catalogue of 60 titles, including the respected annual guide to Italian eateries, Osterie d’Italia. Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Sciences opened earlier this month with campuses in Pollenzo, Cuneo and Colorno, Parma.
Then there is the Foundation of Biodiversity, which includes the Ark of Taste, the body which catalogues hundreds of rare and/or exceptional regional products from around the world, which are in danger of becoming extinct. However, as Slow Food discovered, it’s all very well documenting endangered foods, but what about protecting them? Cue the Presidia, bodies which offer assistance in protecting Ark of Taste products, whether through marketing or building manufacturing facilities.
AND WHAT EXACTLY is the Slow Food Movement achieving with its myriad manifestos and missions? The movement prefers to play down its lobbying power, although Petrini says that its political pull has grown globally in the last few years.
"In Italy in particular, Slow Food has supported several campaigns on its own and together with other associations - particularly environmental groups - and is increasingly consulted in debates concerning agricultural and food issues," he says.
The Presidias are also impacting positively on the Italian economy. A study by Milan’s Bocconi University of Economics and Business looked at the impact of 54 Presidia in six areas of food production, including fish and cured meat. Over two years, the overall increase in quantities sold in each category was 63.5 per cent while the average price per product rose by 32.6 per cent.
Good news for producers - and ultimately good news for consumers (even if some prices have risen). Slow Food gives foodies an outlet for their gastronomic passion, and artisan producers a network of like-minded folk in a fast-food-friendly world. It is in the dove-tailing of these two sectors’ hopes that the organisation finds its strength. As Terra Madre becomes the latest arm with which it protects those who appreciate the merits of Slow Food, it is clear that this is a movement which is steadily gathering pace.
Terra Madre 20-23 October, www.terramadre2004.org Salone del Gusto 21-24 October, www.slowfood.com
