Gentiloni: “Slow Food’s values as a guide for the European fight against climate change”

“Slow Food today teaches Europe the link with the territory and with quality agriculture”: to WineNews Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, from Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, starting today in Turin, where he photographed the complex situation of the world, and praised the “snail” and the themes that the association founded by Carlo Petrini has always carried out, in Europe and in the world.
“I feel close to the values of your community - said the European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Paolo Gentiloni, to the audience during the inauguration of Terra Madre Salone del Gusto n. 12 - which is fundamentally an optimistic community, certainly committed, supportive, combative, which, however, has always carried out its commitment with a dose of joy, which we need in such a complicated moment. In two years, we have experienced two unpredictable events in sequence. First, a pandemic, from which we have basically emerged, as Europe, quite well, forgetting, however, that it has seriously affected many other parts of the world, for which we should express the same level of solidarity. After the end of the pandemic, we experienced a growth that we can define as impetuous, and now we find ourselves on the brink of recession”.
A slowdown that affects the US and Europe, starting with Italy. “The price of energy has risen and inflation is moving towards 9%, but we know less than the many low-income countries that have asked for help from the IMF - International Monetary Fund, because the strong dollar, for those countries, is a problem. We talked a lot about the food crisis - continues Paolo Gentiloni - but rarely from a general point of view. We must save our skin, overcoming the next few months that are going to be very difficult, and we have to do it without going back or reversing the course. This is the challenge in which the European Commission is committed, and that is why they accuse us of being utopian or exaggerated in not compromising on the ecological transition, but it is others who are wrong”.
The goal, concludes the EU Commissioner, is not for the short term. “We must look beyond the crisis, to the next few years, to our future. In this sense, Italy has many credentials, shared with the culture of Slow Food and Terra Madre, from the link with the territory to quality agriculture, from the circular economy to the reduction of emissions. The point is not just to save the planet, but to innovate, produce better, consume better, and live better. That is, the message that Slow Food has always given: by changing you can produce and consume in a better way. Regeneration means giving new energy, changing the development model, going beyond the cold data of the GDP, trying to do it by having a better quality of life: breathing better, eating better, and moving better in our cities”.
Speaking of the fight against climate change, which cannot be stepped back, the words of Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, are clear: “the climate crisis is a real misfortune that is upsetting the lives of millions of people, but the main culprit of this upheaval is the global food system. Already today, when the world population does not exceed eight billion people, food that is produced can feed twelve. It means that 32% of perfectly edible foods are thrown away: it is an epochal failure because in the meantime about 900 million people in the world are suffering from hunger. Moreover - added Petrini - to produce that food we wasted billions of liters of water and used millions of hectares of land. We need to reduce waste in our homes, not increase production, as I hear repeatedly”.