Salone coverage

[bloviatrix]

Today's NY Times has coverage of the Salone.

A Food Festival, Coffee to Caterpillars

[A_Broad]

I participated in one of the Slow Food sponsored dinners in Saluzzo (about thirty minutes south of Torino) at L'Ostu dij Baloss. A fun, good, long meal. The menu was as follows (those fluent in Italian feel free to correct my attempt to simplify and translate in English...I'm still learning!):

Ristorante L’Ostu dij Baloss, Saluzzo

Chef Davide Testa

I Cibi

Frittura di tinca gobba dorata di Ceresole (fried dorato)

Girello di fassone piemontese (Presidio Slow Food), marinato al sale con crema di tomino di Melle al pepe (raw round of beef with a thick creamy cheese sauce…honestly, in a good way, tasted like black peppercorn salad dressing)

Tonno di gallina Binaca di Saluzzo (Presidio Slow Food) su cerdure d’autounno con zabaione al rafano (tender shredded pieces of hen with boiled turnip, beet, fennel in a white sauce)

Ravioli di coniglio grigio di Carmagnola (Presidio Slow Food) con il suo tistretto al rosmarino (incredible grilled rabbit in ravioli in it’s own light sauce with rosemary)

Agnello Sambucano in tre cotture (lamb braised, grilled and roasted)

Castagnaccio con “martin sec” al vino rosso (dense chestnut cake with baby pears poached in wine)

I Vini – Castello di Ama, Gaiole in Chianti

Al Poggio Cahrdonnay 2003

Chianti Classico Castello di Ama 1999

Chianti Classico Bellavista 1997

Chianit Classico La Casuccia 1995

Vigna L’Apparita Merlot 1993

Chianti Classico Castello di Ama 2002

A photo of the end of the night...

http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/10992750..._1099317656.jpg

edited to correct "lamp" to "lamb". yeah, well my mother tongue isn't great either!

Edited November 3, 2004 by A_Broad (log)

[Marco_Polo]

Hi Robert,

Sorry for the delay in posting about this extraordinary event. It's taken a little while to digest it all, metaphorically as well as literally. Five days in Piedmont, focusing exclusively on food and wine is an intensely enjoyable and filling experience in every way. The Salone itself offers simply so much that is excellent and exciting, from all over Italy of course, as well as from throughout the world. The Slow Food Presidia projects are particularly fascinating.

Terra Madre, taking place simultaneously in the nearby Palazzo di Lavoro, was even more overwhelming, seeming the whole world gathered under one vast roof - farmers, fishermen, nomadic herdsmen and women, cheesemakers, winemakers, food producers, women's cooperatives - from 130 countries and five continents - all there to share and discuss common problems and solutions, to meet, make bonds and exchange friendship, ideas and visions for the future.

Here's my Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre report complete with some pictures.

As for Turin itself, it's a delightful city, extremely friendly (in spite of stereotypes of the cold north) and a lovely place to explore (seemed to spend quite a lot of time - very late at night - sitting out under the arches, drinking grappa gialla). Enjoyed dinner with friends at C'era una volta - a lovely small place in an grand old palazzo, plus an amazing meal the following night at the Villa Sassi (just outside of Turin) as guests of the Campania region (incredibly vivid foods and wines from Campania).

Then down to the Barolo wine zone to visit winemaker friends Mario and Luisa Fontana of Cascina Fontana and to sniff out white truffles in Alba.

Marc

[docsconz]

Nice report and website, Marc. You should add a link to your website to your signature.

[robert brown]

Marc. thank you so very much for sharing your experiences at the Salone. It was better than what I read in the newspaper, your reporting I mean. I agree with docsconz; you should always remind our readers of your website.

[echriste]

Hello all,

Here is a segment of my delayed Salone report. I've been struggling a bit with inserting pictures so I've put them up on a .Mac site.

My Salone Pictures

The first day was a complete sensory overload. It is still a bit of a blur. But there are many high lights for me.

1. Even after 4 days of handing out samples, sometimes talking about the uniqueness of their products, sometimes just trying to get something out for people to sample, the people that represented their products were truly passionate. This even held true for the league of Italian volunteers who translated for non-Italian speaking presenters. What struck me was the low production for most products. Most people talked about the impact of Slow Food in bringing consumer attention to their products.

2. The quality was so high that even products that I've had before were sublime in taste and mouth feel. The hundreds of salumi, jambon, and prosciutto I tried were so fresh and delicious - it took me three days to work through them all. One particular delicious product I had was a Salsicciotto del Vastese from Abruzzo that was so fresh it was spread between two slices of rustic bread. In front of the booth there were 10 people all slowly eating and reveling in the taste.

3. The enoteca was one of the best wine tasting experiences I have ever had. There were 2400 wines to sample - mostly Italian and Austrian. Most were one euro per healthy pour. The top Barolos were three euros per pour. If one wanted to, you could spend five days of tasting and not even try half of what was there.

4. The number of children struck me. Whole classes of kids were being led through the tasting areas and were given individual presentations. What a great opportunity for kids. I believe that Slow Foods provided a curiculum guide for schools. What a great way for kids to better understand the links between producer and consumer.

5. Sharing dinner with Ore. I got a chance to meet up with Ore at the Salone. This is a chef to watch. He truly loves food and shares that knowledge and interest with everyone. It doesn't hurt that he has movie star good looks and the energy of a perfectionist. After describing his use of a cryovac to encase a pork belly braise, I can't wait try his food. I hope to take a trip to Naples before he finishes his work at the restaurant there.

What I would do differently next time:

1. Brush up on my Italian - very helpful.

2. Go on Thursday - the crowds are literally shoulder to shoulder

3. Go with at least two friends who share the intensity - you can split up and identify products for others to try.

4. Get the Slow Food Presidio products book and read up first to pick a few things you don't want to miss.

5. Sign up for more tasting seminars early! - the interesting ones fill up quickly

6. Make dinner reservations early! Most of the restaurants I wanted to try were already booked.

That’s all for tonight. I'm making my list of memorable products and tastes for my next post.

[robert brown]

Eric, you really got to the heart of the matter and provided good advice and insight. Your photographs give a solid notion of what it must have been like to be there. How could one not attend the next Salone? I am sure all of us greatly anticipate your next installment.

[albiston]

Thanks to the generosity of Charles Shere eGullet has the good fortune to present in the Italy and Italian Cuisine forum his detailed and splendidly written reportage on his visit to the Salone del Gusto and participation in the Terra Madre section. You can read about Charles and his wife Lindsey, founders with Alice Waters of the world-renown restaurant Chez Panisse, by going to www.shere.org. It is a great contribution to our Salone coverage. We hope you enjoy reading it and check out the nice pictures that go with the report.

A big thanks also goes to Robert Brown for getting in touch with Charles Shere and doing the behind the scenes work necessary to make available this report on eGullet.

Each day of Shere's report will be posted seperately. But enough talk already. Here it goes:

Torino, Oct. 21

The flight over the Alps, delayed a half hour by morning fog across Europe, was short and spectacular, the fog breaking just as we crested those hard and angular peaks. The Alps, from the air, are more awesome than our Sierra Nevada, and I always wonder why. The effect was heightened (if the word may be used) by our altitude; we seemed to clear the peaks by no more than a few hundred feet. And while the snow was deep and nearly universal, the steepest slopes were bare, bare granite.

Then back into the fog except for one brief break revealing Italian farm country below. After landing and getting our beautiful blue Fiat Punto we drove out into that country, skirting fuel dumps and bleak airport villages and working girls and Novara before hitting the toll road in the full open beauty of the Po Plain, which I always find somehow curiously attractive. It’s like part of me knows it from way back; it’s resonant; I feel at home there. Flat open country with meandering rivers, occasional stands of poplars, big three-storey farmhous-barn combinations with tiled roofs, the walls pierced with grillages of roof-tiles, the same as those invariably roofing these handsome, utilitarian, stucco-over-brick buildings.

It was perfect country for fighting, back in Napoleonic times (and earlier, of course), and it’s perfect for corn, and hay, and -- when you cross into Piemonte -- rice.

There are two other kinds of landscape in Piemonte, “foot of the mountains”: those mountains themselves, the Alps bordering France and separating the province from that of Valle d’Aosta, to the north; and a series of river-valleys tieing those mountains to the Po Plain. Lindsey’s father was born in a hardscrabble town in one of those valleys, the one Hannibal led his elephants through, over two thousand years ago -- unless it’s true, as the residents of all the other valleys claim, that it was one of their valleys he descended.

Torino, “Turin” in French and English, is the capital city of the province, and a fine, handsome, moderate city it is -- though it’s in the midst of preparations for the 2006 Winter Olympics, to be held here and in those valleys and on those mountains. So one of my favorite piazzas, the Piazza San Carlo, is hidden behind opaque plastic windows, for they’re digging it up entirely, to install below-ground parking.

The Piazza straddles one of the two principal avenues, whose several blocks constitute a seamless 18th-century architectural unit, arcades lining it with shops and bars and cafes; but all the life has gone out of those arcades and piazzas for the moment, and we haven’t had time to find out where it’s gone.

For today was given over to the Salone del Gusto, the biennial Slow Food fair that brought us here this time, and two years ago, and two years before that. It’s as huge and daunting and delightful as ever. We spent hours walking the main floor, inspecting the long aisles of producers of cheese, salame, wine, bread, beer, jam, pastry, spirits, dried beans and peas, poultry, pastas, beef -- all of it approved for one reason or another, its artisanality or its rarity, by the Slow Food Authority, however it works.

This year the Salone is preceded by a similarly colossal undertaking, Terra Madre, a gathering of farmers who produce foodstuffs belonging to the Slow Food canon, whether for their traditional persistance in the face of global uniformity, or their threatened extinction, or simply because they have something important to offer to the part of the world most of us belong to, by far the largest part in terms of world culture and material worth and global power, but much the smallest in terms of cultural depth, and the most recent and ignorant in terms of awareness of life-and-death universalities.

Our friends Jim and Lisa, who are staying in our hotel, attended the opening ceremony which we missed because of bad weather. They were impressed by its opening parade of delegates, one person chosen to represent each country. They were encouraged to wear their traditional garb, and that, along with color and stature and gait and demeanor, must have produced an amazingly varied scene, reminding everyone that the world is immensely rich and varied, and emphasizing the dreary sameness our first-world economy has tried to impose on it, like so many airports and shopping malls.

Numbers: 4300 delegates from 130 nations. Breakdown: 15% each from Africa and Latin America; 14% from Canada and the United States; 12% from Asia and Oceania; 12% from Eastern Europe, 16% from Western Europe; 17% from Italy. Seven languages are officially recogized and provided for: English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, and Italian.

Yesterday these farmers were welcomed by the Mayor of Torino, the Governor of the province of Piemonte, and the Secretary of Agriculture; and the welcomes were not token statements, Jim tells me, but heartfelt and sympathetic invitations to the delegates to do their work, share their stories, and open their hearts and minds to tell Italy and, through her, the world, how their small and slow and local and ancient knowledges can correct the tendency of global commercial agriculture to destroy the variety of the world in its search for efficiency and profit.

The Governor of Piemonte, Enzo Ghigo, had a column in today’s paper: “Why to say ‘no’ to GMO.” A practical politician, he writes that he has reason to believe that the legitimate motives of profit and the marketplace can be joined to the development of biodiversity through sustainable agriculture and thereby represent the guarantee of a market truly free to and a hope for many nations.

And then he adds a remarkable paragraph, the centerpiece of his column:

“The dedication to human concerns has brought us to stripping the earth of its fruits; the love of the earth will make of us a humanity ever more free.” (L’amore per l’uomo ci ha portato a sfruttare la terra, l’amore per la terra ci restituirà un uomo più libero. More elegant, concise, and striking in Italian.)

--

This afternoon and evening Lindsey and I attended to workshop labs, and we’re stuffed and sleepy, and further comment will have to wait. Suffice it to say, for now, that I’ve sampled five fascinating wines of terroir in the first of four workshops investigating the influence of soils on wines, and then in the evening tasted four different preparations of raw beef, all from a single 16-month-old Piemontese cow specially bred for the high quality of its meat, each matched by a magnificent wine ranging from a dry Italian sparkler to a deep and magisterial Barolo. And Lindsey has similar things to report, involving hams from various countries matched to white wines, and four or five blue cheeses accompanied by as many sweet wines.

[albiston]

Here's the second part of Shere's report.

Torino, Oct. 23

The Hotel Luxor Best Western here in Torino is not the Las Vegas Luxor. It is not a pyramid; it lacks slot machines; no Nile wends its lobby. I have not yet seen a Texan among its guests.

On the other hand it is not an American Best Western. The television set is not much bigger than my 12-inch laptop screen. Not every electrical socket functions. There is no bathtub. There is, however, a bidet, compulsory it seems in every Italian bathroom, just as every shower has a mysterious pull-cord said to summon the medics in case you collapse while washing your hair. One understands that a Senator’s wife may have done so, resulting in this obligation imposed by the State on all hotels; but how explain the compulsory bidet? Perhaps it has been requested by the porcelain lobby.

Our first hotel in Italy, thirty years ago — no, the second; the first was the Albergo Chiomonte, then in Lindsey’s family — our second hotel in Italy was in the hills above Lake Como in a town whose name I forget. It was found in a moment of desparation: all other hotels were unavailable for some unimaginable reason. It was a bare-bones country hotel with no amenities to speak of. But it did have a bidet, an enamelled steel basin of the correct size and shape, on folding wooden legs like those of a camp cot, tucked away underneath the bathroom sink.

The Hotel Luxor is near the railroad station, nicely situated, small, friendly. Its breakfast is more than adequate: granolas, fruit compote, stewed prunes, croissants, fruit juice, fresh fruit. Cappuccinos, of course. But no eggs, ham, sausages, or cheese, which perhaps explains the absence of the Dutch among the guests. We hear plenty of English in the breakfast room, but mostly Italian. It’s the kind of place we like.

Not that we’ll be spending much time in it. The Salone del Gusto could easily consume all of each day here; on top of that now, there is the Terra Madre to entertain us. Yesterday we made our first visit there, listening to a conference on “Healing the Soil.” Farmers from several continents discussed their methods of returning farmlands that have been compromised by technological farming methods to a more natural state.

It occurred to me that Nature in her wisdom has buried most of her injurious matter, and that the history of man has included the systematic digging up of this stuff and its distribution. This is a recurrent narrative among the German Romantics. E.T.A. Hoffmann has a fine story about miners — is it called “The Mines of Falun?” Gold, petroleum, lead, uranium, copper, sulfur, noxious substances all, are dug up and hoarded and passed around and prized for the mischief they can do.

Fertilizer, poison, and explosives are intimately related, and the chemical industry has much to answer for. And humanity is all too gullible. I don’t think it’s only the advertising industry that explains this; I think this dark trade has an attraction, an appeal which is built into our genetic makeup, an appeal which the advertisers no doubt take advantage of, if only without actually knowing it. Perhaps this use of dangerous substances is the Knowledge the gods wanted to withold from us, like the Promethean fire.

In any case a farmer from Ontario recounted his decision, forced by economy, to depend on horses rather than petroleum for his farm-power: muscle-power reproduces; diesel power does not. He couldn’t afford a tractor until he had sold enough colts, the by-product of his team of horses, to pay for one.

A fellow from Venezuela talked about returning dry tropical land to production of a native plant useful for its fibers, for fodder, for human food, and particularly for its ability to store water.

An Italian microbiologist talked about the absolute need for soil bacteria, billions of them, to prepare minerals for their assimilation by the roots of plants. These bacteria are routinely slaughtered by deep herbicides and pesticides, and it takes years to replace them.

A Greek agricultural economist askes if this may perhaps explain the spread of soil-based diseases, not only plant diseases but also animal diseases: might they not be flourishing in recently sterilized soils because their natural predators are no longer there?

All this goes on in a number of languages, and is simultaneously translated into French, Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The audience comprises farmers from every corner of the world.

In a large entrance hall, as big as a train station, our friend Lisa points out the Americans and a number of Europeans gathered at the Internet points and picking up their e-mail, while the Third World delegates from Siberia and Kenya and New Zealand (Maoris are still Third World, I think) and such have set up shop at folding tables. The Siberian, a small handsomely dressed man who might pass for a businessman from Milan, offers teas: the taste of one replicates a Siberian meadow; another a birch forest. They make me want to walk the Siberian countryside, a thought that has never come to me before.

A Maori offers abalone chowder, little pieces of abalone he’d dived for, tenderized by a secret process he was glad to share and stewed in coconut milk. A fellow from Ecuador gives us a taste of a fiery hot sauce he’s made of pepper seeds: it persists through an emergency drop of Fernet Branca, but is flavorful and sweet and I’m glad I had it.

Among the most colorfully dressed are the Africans, of course, and we move up to a table run by a Kenyan woman, very dark, indeterminably old, wrapped in a brown and white figured cloth. Her table is covered with clear plastic bags of dried herbs, each neatly labelled with copy that on first sight offers very little detailed information. She looks at me for a moment, sizing me up, and shows me one package of very dark twiglike herbs. “This is good for cancer,” she says. That’s very interesting, I tell her, I’ve had prostate cancer for nearly ten years now.

She smiles. Good, she says, and I know that what she means is Good, you’re obviously in good health. I have had cancer for twenty years, she continues; I had breast surgery nineteen years ago.

She has other herbs for HIV, for various immune-deficiency problems, for miscellaneous ailments. She sells them over the internet. She shows photos of one of the nineteen children she has adopted over the years: at birth, he was so dark and deformed there was little reason to keep him alive. She gave him herb teas and cared for him, though, and another photo at two years old showed a bright energetic little boy.

We swap cards. I ask if I may take her photograph: Yes, she says, but you have to send me one! She wants Lindsey in the photo, and I take their portraits, smiling at one another, then smiling out at me. What handsome women they are, I think; how good they look together.

We skip lunch and go straight to our workshops, saffron for Lindsey, four different-aged Goudas with Champagnes for me; then, at four o’clock, Duch pecorinos for Lindsey, the second in a series of wine tastings for me. In between we have a little time for a stroll in the food hall, ostensibly to meet a friend but she is detained. Instead we watch a violinist, an accordionist, and a man who plays guitar and mandolin, playing Italian street songs outside the lunchroom set up by the region of Emiglia-Romagna. (Many Italian regions have set up such restaurants, serving characteristic dishes at both lunch and dinner; they offer very good bargains and a rare chance to sit down for a half hour at this fatiguing exhibition.)

Before long two couples are dancing. They dance quadrilles and couple-dances, dances dating back across a century and more. At one point I notice the older man is making mock menacing gestures to his partner, like a rooster with serious business on his mind. He crouches low as he wheels around her, his arms bowed at his sides, his eyes intent on her; and she pretends timidity, backing away, pinching the corners of the bottom of her jacket and holding them away from her like wing coverlets.

I think of the colorful dress of the Africans, the Peruvians, the Mongols, the Ecuadorians; and I think of the colorful crests and wattles of the capons, plucked but proud in the refrigerated showcases of the poultrymen. The Salone, like Terra Madre, is a true celebration of life as well as the death life feeds on, and Italy is a country apparently at ease with the complexities and contradictions of poultry, religion, tradition, and folding bidets.

[Marco_Polo]

Each day of Shere's report will be posted seperately.

Thanks, Alberto and Robert, for sharing here Charles' magnificent, finely observed and beautifully written reports of the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre. They give a truly comprehensive impression of the majesty of these important events.

Marc

[robert brown]

Marc, in the end it was you who made it all possible. So a great big thank you. How you find the efficiency and the energy to write on Eat Words and eGullet is remarkable.

[John Whiting]

All of Charles Shere's 2004 Italian Journals (26 installments so far) are now posted on his website, together with links to photos: http://www.shere.org/Italy2004.html

[Marco_Polo]

All of Charles Shere's 2004 Italian Journals (26 installments so far) are now posted on his website, together with links to photos: http://www.shere.org/Italy2004.html

Thank you very much, John, and of course thank you again for first sharing these first on EW. When you are next in touch with Charles, please let him know how much we've all enjoyed his superb writings. I'd like at some point to discuss bagna caôda with him (based on his further journal installment). I had a most wondrous initiation on my recent visit to the Langhe - not the first time I've had it, of course, in fact we make it occasionally ourselves, though not ever quite like this was, probably the simplest, purest preparation I've ever had, and definitely the most delicious and digestible.

Marc

[albiston]

All of Charles Shere's 2004 Italian Journals (26 installments so far) are now posted on his website, together with links to photos: http://www.shere.org/Italy2004.html

←

John, thanks for the link. For those who'd like to read the end of the stroy here on eGullet, here is the concluding part of Charles Shere's report:

Torino, Monday, Oct. 25

These have been five days absolutely packed with input -- conversational, informative, and physical, with two tasting workshops a day, fairly substantial breakfasts in the morning, and dinners in the evening ranging from a fine but unexceptional pizza-by-the-meter with friends to last night’s gala dinner, rather a formal one, in a rustic palace an hour’s drive away.

The most impressive moment so far was a long one, the two-hour plenary session concluding Terra Madre. We were gathered in the Palazzo di Lavoro, the Worker’s Hall, an enormous hall built in modernist concrete in the 1960s when, as one speaker reminded us, the hope of the future lay in huge corporate industrial efficiency.

On the stage a hundred and more delegates were seated facing us, delegates from a hundred and more countries around the world, many wearing the distinctive clothing of their communities -- Peruvians in brilliant red hats and capes, sequined or embroidered, Bolivians in their characteristic hats, an Amazonian whose cap sprouted amazingly long brilliant blue-green feathers standing straight up into the air -- to name only a few from one of the six continents represented.

Between these delegates and the thousands of us in the audience stood the podium, sleek and elegant as only the Italians could make it, ground and transparent glass hovering over the floor, a seventeen-inch computer monitor almost invisible on it to help the speaker of the moment.

And behind the delegates, and for all I know behind us as well, enormous multi-screen monitors relaying the proceedings of the moment in much-larger-than-life so everyone has an equal chance to see the facial expressions, the demeanor of the speakers, and occasional glimpses of closeups of the audience as it responded.

All of this, of course, simultaneously translated into the seven official languages of the Terra Madre. (I was struck by the fact that six of them were European languages, the seventh being Japanese; the Africans and Asians present seemed little discommoded by this, being able to make do with English or French or Spanish; such has been the domination of the world by those of European extraction.)

We heard a keynote speech by Winona LaDuke, who reminded us that all living organisms are related, that humans share the world with many thousand others having an equal right to their existence, and that we are all mutually dependent.

A Mexican delegate -- I will have to get all these names later – spoke of Terra Madre as an unprecedented moment organizing the food-producer chain from everywhere in the world into a forum in which individuals retain their personal identities, a counter to the more familiar organization of global agriculture into a mechanism of constituent faceless business- and profit-oriented entities.

A Kenyan spoke of the imperatives of food safety, biodiversity, and cultural integrity. Food rights are human rights, he declaimed to great applause; and powerful nations must stop mis-advising the agricultures and economies of developing nations, ruining their self-sufficiency in the name of profits elsewhere in the world.

A woman from India thanked Terra Madre for its revalidation of the processes her seed-exchanging community had been developing. Terra Madre had put food production right back on its feet, she noted, and in so doing had shown the world the role of women in agriculture.

An Italian fisherman noted that a failing of his tuna-roe community had been its tendency to guard its methods and knowledge as closely held secrets -- the inheritance of an earlier historical imperative. Terra Madre has suggested the greater need for shared information and mutual trust; it counters peasant suspicion and corporate intellectual property with the optimism of pooled knowledge.

A Russian noted that here at Terra Madre we decide if there will be a future or not -- whether the world will be commited to technological development or ecological development.

Then came the three important politicians involved, all of whom had spoken at the opening session a few days ago. The Mayor of the city of Torino spoke for the possibilities of an optimistic political cutlure, citing the United Nations and the example of Brazil’s President Lula. The future lies in growth, not development, he noted; and he thanked, quite passionately and earnestly, the huge audience and the delegates for reminding him of the qualities so impressionably conveyed by farmers: happiness, peace, dignity, and nobility.

The governor of the region of Piemonte promised that his region, a proud and historically self-sufficient one, would be GMO-free as long as he was governor, and noted that Terra Madre was a logical extension of the political agricultural policy of Piemonte, whose rice, milk, cheese, beef, wine, and corn , I would add, leave little margin for improvement. And he noted that in this multiversity of languages and local cultures the first language is that of food, uniting us all, rather than separating us.

The Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of the nation of Italy noted that he’d been to many conferences of economics and politics, and that Terra Madre was the first involving the farmers and producers themselves. We must commit to a fundamental issue, he noted: whether to confront agriculture from an international point of view; or to recognize that the production of food is different from other World Trade Organization preoccupations because it must necessarily reflect local differences. We must end pitting farmers against farmers, and we must end non-farmers profiting at the expense of farmers. Trade must enhance farming rather than spoil its lands, for it is difficult in the extreme to recover from the ruins of exploitation.

Further, he argued, the living world must be protected from the demands of profit and intellectual property rights. Geographical terroirs must be designated and protected, through international political organizations working perhaps through Slow Food and Terra Madre. And the Kyoto Protocol on environmental issues, now finally signed by Russia, is now in force and will be enforced, and agriculture is a fundamental note in that protocol.

These three speakers lent great political reality and substance to Terra Madre. I think Italy is developing a very interesting role in the community of developed nations. It is after all quite advanced technologically, but of all the most advanced First World nations it has retained most successfully (and proudly) the cultural and agricultural differences of its constituent regions; it has most successfuly combined the forward view of technology and the arts with the rootedness in tradition and history of its daily life values. I think it sees itself as a mediator between the developing nations and the developed, and I hope both Italy and the rest of the world remember that an evolving national character is bigger than any momentary political condition within it.

Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, summed up the final session, and introduced the final two speakers, Alice Waters and Charles, Prince of Wales.

The concluding address was set up by what one might have thought would have been the conclusion: the remarks given by Carlo Petrini, the founder of the international Slow Food movement.

Petrini is a Piemontese, a native of this rather autonomous (though not officially) region of Italy. Piemonte boasts a rich combination of industry (automotive, hydroelectric, printing) and agriculture (wine, fruits, nuts, corn, rice, wheat). Further, it has stood for centuries as the buffer between southern and eastern Italy on the one hand and France to the west. Torino itself, the capital city, is elegant and intellectual, as French as it is Italian; the Piemontese cuisine has marked French influences; the dialect hovers between French and Italian; and the region has been French, Italian, and independent (as Savoia) by turns. Furthermore, it was the first part of Italy to move toward the integration of the modern Italy.

Petrini draws on this heritage of pride in region within a framework of internationalism. He was active in the Italian Communist party, as I understand it; and as I understand it that party was always more Italian than communist as we in the United States think of international communism.

But he has always been a gastronome as well. A journalist, he wrote for years on food as well as politics in a left-wing journal. A few years ago, revolted by the opening of yet another Big Mac in Italy, he had the happy idea of countering fast food with Slow Food, and ever since he has been working tirelessly in true leftist fashion to gather around him the populist forces of farmers, fishermen, butchers, dairymen, orchardists, vintners, and restaurateurs in a cordial but politically active gathering of local, independent “presidia” dedicated to local, traditional, artisanal foods, often endangered ones threatened with the extinction of the resources or methods on which they rely.

He has folded this activity into a constantly expanding network of “convivia,” local gatherings of people who share his enthusiasms, either as producers themselves or, more often, as “consumers” – those of us who admire and desire such products, and resist seeing them disappear under increasing piles of hamburgers, tacos, and take-out. (In Sonoma County, where I live, there are at least four of these convivia.)

So Carlo is the founder and the patron saint of Slow Food, and it was his place to conclude this historic first gathering of the presidia and convivia he has invented. He began by admitting that he didn’t know if this conference could be repeated with the same passion and force: everyone who attended -- press, politicians, visitors, and delegates -- were struck with the great lesson in life the conference had presented: the life, dignity, work, and methods of these independent producers, gathered from Siberia and New Zealand, Peru and Finland, Wisconsin and Kenya, Great Britain and India and all points in between. Other debates he had witnessed have been harsh, Petrini said;; this one was relaxed. And this was not an exercise in folklore: the delegates all exhibited a pride in their identity.

The building we were in, the Palazzo di Lavoro, bad been built in 1961, when industrialism was paramount, when the “First World” was drawing its wealth from the resources of the Second. Now, Petrini said, we are living in a post-industrial age, and there are three worlds: one is poor, ruined, needy; another is balanced and sustainable; yet another is rich but committed to an unsustainable lifestyle. Beware, you of this rich world; you can no longer profit by exporting your poisons to the south. Farmers and scientists must begin to work together.

Then he moved into his conclusion: We have played an overture: now the opera must begin. Its libretto, its words, will not be written by Slow Food; it will be written by all of you. It will be your history: what you do. You are twelve hundred communities, around the world. When we proposed this gathering, this Terra Madre, many said it was madness, utopian. But: Who sows utopia will reap reality.

This drew a lot of applause. But then Carlo Petrini introduced Alice Waters, who quieted the audience, asking them to give a warm welcome to a radical guest who would conclude the session. Radical may seem a strange word to use to describe him, she said; but it is an accurate done: radical means rooted. And in the next moments we heard a remarkable address, elegantly written and eloquently delivered by Charles, Prince of Wales.

He began by asking for indulgence: he had been eating and drinking his way through the Salone del Gusto, the huge exhibition of foods and beverages Slow Food has invited to fill Torino’s vast exhibition hall.

“Despite the best intentions of many,” the Prince said, “we have to face up to the fact that often, the consequence of globalization is greater unsustainability... Left to its own devices, I fear that globalization will -- ironically -- sow seeds of ever-greater poverty, disease and hunger in the cities and the loss of viable, self-sufficient rural populations...

“If all the money invested in agricultural biotechnology over the last fifteen years had been invested in developing and disseminating genuinely sustainable techniques -- those that work with, rather than against, the grain of Nature -- I believe that we would have seen extraordinary, and genuinely sustainable, progress.”

He noted that “even without significant investment, and often in the face of official disapproval, improved organic practices have increased yields and outputs dramatically.” He supported this with citations of recent UN-FAO studies in Bolivia, Cuba, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Pakistan. In the United States, of course, studies of agricultural production in such countries are not exactly in the news, and we tend to accept another side of the story, locally written and paid for.

A central paragraph in the Prince’s speech was particularly arresting:

“Imposing industrial farming systems on traditional agricultural economies is actively destroying both biological and social capital and eliminating the cultural identity which has its roots in working on the land. It is also fueling the frightening acceleration of urbanization throughout the world and removing large parts of humanity from meaningful contact with Nature and the food that they eat. ...

“At the end of the day, values such as sustainability, community, health and taste are more important than pure convenience. We need to have distinctive and varied places and distinctive and varied food in order to retain, if nothing else, our sanity.”

He then addressed himself to Slow Food, which “is about celebrating the culture of food, and about sharing the extraordinary knowledge -- developed over millennia -- of the traditions involved with quality food production. ...

“After all,” he concluded, “the food you produce is far more than just food, for it represents an entire culture -- the culture of the family farm. It represents the ancient tapestry of rural life; the dedicated animal husbandry, the struggle with the natural elements, the love of landscape, the childhood memories, the knowledge and wisdom learnt from parents and grandparents, the intimate understanding of local climate and conditions, the hopes and fears of succeeding generations. You represent genuinely sustainable agriculture and I salute you.”

We were all greatly moved at this. We have all seen Prince Charles ridiculed in the press, caricatured and disparaged for the perceived irrelevance of his position, extremity of his disagreement with prevailing tastes in architecture, apparently eccentric attachments to such movements as organic food.

But his speech, which went much further than I have been able to suggest here, ranged widely over both rural and urban problems today, revealing awareness of real social and economic conditions as well as the fundamental human and humane imperatives. Widely as it ranged, it was concise and articulate, and spoken with great clarity and dignity. Its delivery, and its reception, revealed the commonality of a prince and a peasantry, and as I say we were all immensely moved.

[docsconz]

Thank you all for these reports. It appears that Terra Madre and the Salone del Gusto were as stunning as I thought they would have been - perhaps moreso. I just hope that the movement is able to build on this momentum. It is interesting and gratifying to see Italy take on the role described in the posts above. Given its role as a pillar in the history of western civilization, it is uniquely situated to be able to do so.

[Ore]

Ciao,

What is really amazing is that I met the Shere's at a Mexican beer and Tequila stand where Mr. Shere was enjoying a tasting of tequilas. We spoke for about ten minutes about random stuff, and went on our seperate ways - funny - they were very cool before the post - now they are even cooler!

Ciao,

Ore

(still working on my post!)