Pat Rayner reports on Slow Foods founder, Carlo Petrini’s address at the Sydney Opera House…
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Pat Rayner
I HAVE JUST SPENT A SUNNY Sydney Sunday with 850 others at the Opera House listening to Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food.
His inspiring message — at an international level — was that of Sydney Food Fairness Alliance at the metropolitan level and the Blue Mountains Sustainable Food Group, or your local permaculture group, at the community level.
Carlo’s issues
Carlo raised issues of:
- loss of biodiversity
- loss of species
- losing farmers’ knowledge
- water and its high usage in monoculture agriculture
- health
- malnutrition in affluent countries
- food miles
- and the waste of food while people are malnourished.
Carlo Petrini’s examples were international but they easily could have been our metropolitan or regional examples.
He cited the example of farmers in Piedmont, Italy, who now grow turnips for export because the capsicums they traditionally grew are now imported from the Netherlands as they are cheaper and fit into the supermarket boxes.
Valuing the local producer
The film on Terra Madre showed fishermen from Senegal, farmers from Nigeria, a raisin grower from Afghanistan, a bread maker from Lebanon, a high school student from USA and a haddock fisherman from Scotland. They all had the same concern — the need to value food, to value the small, local producer and protect these producers and the diversity of their produce.
In the 1950’s in Italy, 15 percent of the population were farmers. In the USA it was 40 percent. Now, less than 4 percent are farmers in Italy and in the US only 1 percent.
Carlo said we need an alliance of farmers and consumers… we need to learn where food comes from… we must give value back to food.
He said that affluent countries spend 12 percent of their income on food where we used to spend 30 percent, but we also spend 12 percent of our income on mobile phones. He suggested we make fewer calls and pay more for locally produced food.
We need to give value back to food. He suggested a holistic approach to food culture — local production and eating locally produced food which, in turn, develops the local economy and biodiversity in production.
Small farmers have a right to exist. He cited the example of Milan where farmers on periurban lands face the dilemma of low food prices but large sums from developers.
So, he said, we need to pay more for local food and politicians need to be more far sighted. He also gave an example of a high school in the US which wanted a school garden but had no space. Five spaces from the car park were given over to the school garden. Does this all sound very familiar?
It made me realise that we are all concerned about the same issues, face the same problems and are finding our own solutions, whether at the international level of Slow Food, the metropolitan level of Sydney Food Fairness Alliance or the local level of Blue Mountains Sustainable Food Group.
We need to see the interconnectedness of these movements, acknowledge the work of the others… and we need to forge links between these.
thanks for sharing Pat.
There are massive social and envrionmental reasons to do something about the current situation.
But did Petrini suggest why people should act for their own benefit?
Like eating more chemical free and locally grown produce gives better health, well-being, so leaving one with much more energy to do the other things they love.
The more people see they will gain themselves from localizing their way of life, the more they will embrace it. Lets make supporting local growers and feeding local people FUN