It is Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the Oval Lingotto, room F, attending the USA delegate meeting. Some Italian guy is talking trying to bridge the gap between Slow Food International and Slow Food USA. We are the second strongest network in the world he says. Looking around, the room is full. We do look strong

He asks us to help find the solution to create good clean food. Asking us to unite, to be stronger, and to be world-wide. There are 148 countries participating in Terre Madre this year.

We then watch a film that tries to capture the life of Santa Cruz farmers. It is encouraging to see several young people in the film talking about farming as a life-long career. One farmer reflects on the relationships farming fosters saying, “People in cities need farmers and farmers need city people.”

Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse in Berkley, CA) is the next speaker. She motivates the delegation by saying, “We are the heart of the counter culture of America. We want to create something unique and it is a political force.”

And one way Slow Food USA plans on stoking the fire is by organizing an event called Slow Food Nation; a gathering of Slow Food Folks in San Francisco, May 2008. This will allow U.S. folks to network without having to come to Italy.

Michael Pollan (wrote Omnivore’s Dilemma) is the next speaker and he says most of the US sees Slow Food as a dining club: a meeting of Hedonists. He sees Slow Food as a political movement that is concerned with what is on our plate, how it got there, and how it affects us in the realms of public health, local economy, national security, energy uses. Wendell Berry and Eric Schlossinger have both agreed to speak at the Slow Food Nation event.

I was sitting next to Scott Marlowe and we both were like why have it in May? Our farmers are so busy then. It is a pause for concern because we see farmers as a key part of the discussion.

Some of the other speakers were one of the ladies form NPR’s Hidden Kitchen series, Gary Paul Nabhan, and our very own Andrea Reusing. Andrea is our Slow Food Chapter convivium leader and has been a long supporter of local food using many of our farmers items in her restaurant, Lantern, in Chapel Hill. She has also done some work with Slow Food’s raft (their way of preserving breeds/varieties about to go into extinction) by conducting a tasting of rare breed chickens.

Andrea does a great job of giving a snap shot of our community. And she recognizes each farmer by name and their contribution to agriculture in the Triangle.

Okay, so that’s enough about the U.S. delegation meeting (all countries have a time to gather as a country,) let me tell you a bit about my experience overall.

Terre Madre is a huge event. 6,000 delegates all together. We are attending workshops and the Salone del Gusto which is a gigantic tasting event that happens once a year and is happening the same time as Terre Madre. The Salone is a great way to learn about specific producers and their production techniques.

I am getting important bits and pieces from the workshops. I’ve attended workshops concerning cured meats, market access, and seed saving. I’ve got to wrap this up because I want to go to a workshop on origins of products. Yikes. I’ve got to go!

It is great to be here with all our farmers. We are getting to spend good time together.
Very best from Torino,
Sheila Neal

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 29th, 2006 at 3:27 am and is filed under Terra Madre 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.