SLOW FOOD ITALY CONVENTION IN ABANO TERME: “WE’RE BECOMING POLITICALLY VISIBLE” PETRINI SAYS. RIGHT AND LEFT ARE PAST HISTORY. THE NEW WAY IS A HOLISTIC VISION OF THE WORLD...“

Slow Food, the Association of ‘good, clean and fair food’ is “ready to go” and show that “its impact on a territory is politically and culturally evident”. This is the message President Roberto Burdese (who is candidate again for the next four year term) launched at the National congress yesterday in Abano Terme (Padua).
“The main challenge in the next four years,” said Burdese, “is our impact on the territory. We must be considered a strong political entity: visible, active, capable of networking with others and building alliances”.

Gianni Alemanno, the President of the National Council of Anci (the Italian Communities Association) and Mayor of Rome, stressed how important it is that big cities take sustainable living to heart and facilitate all the activities that bring “the country to the city, which is why we support Slow Food initiatives such as Edible Schoolyard or Markets of the Earth that facilitate both the short distribution chain as well as meetings between producers and consumers. We are also working on renovating old farmhouses in town”. Alemanno also stressed, “Rome is working on becoming a model city that pays great attention to energy and developing and spreading models of production. And, the capitol city will be GMO-free.

The President of the Veneto Region Luca Zaia said “it is time to stop telling farmers the lie that genetically modified organisms are the solution to compete with countries where the salary is one euro a day. I am opposed to GMO, not ideologically, but on economic, cultural and health levels. I am deeply concerned about the idea of a seed that can produce a plant but not seeds,” he added, “but above all GMOs are not a solution for the agricultural economy in a crisis, while our real resource is quality, authenticity and variety of tastes. In the U.S. they are re-thinking and seeking out a second route for agriculture. The science world may be divided, but at least there is one certainty: Germany has banned a genetically modified corn that was carcinogenic in laboratory animals”.

The battle is about biodiversity,” said Luca Zamia, ”we have 4,750 local products in Italy and behind each of one of them there is a community and its history. We need to defend the real multinational businesses: the farmers, who do not earn more by using GMOs. It is not true that if you are against GMO you are against progress. That is just a slogan”. There is the problem of world hunger -1.2 billion people suffer from hunger and of these, 3 million die every year, while we waste food in the amount of one and half billion euros. “We too must help out, knowing that food is a great value, which also means,” said Zaia “giving the hungry the resources to buy food: the right to food has nothing to do with GMO”.



Focus – At Slow Food Italy Carlo Petrini said: “right and left are past history. The new way is a holistic view of the world...”

Slow Food is a new political entity that affects the reality of the country. Our political vision is out of the traditional norms and patterns of traditional politics: right and left are obsolete categories. The new way is a holistic view of the world. The old categories of thought based on the mechanism of reductionism, have now been dramatically overtaken by events caused by the current crisis. This scientific interpretation has damaged the farming world and our food: the principles of food are the same as those of life. The model based on growing consumerism has proved to be a failure. Pier Paolo Pasolini, with prophetic clarity, exposed this thought in his letter to Italo Calvino, in 1975. Even the term “sustainable development” is contradictory. The holistic view: no more separation between production and consumption. Today we face a major crisis, which needs revolutionary solutions. Slow Food’s contribution will be the four basic concepts of new humanism:

Quality of work - Rotate "otium and negotium" i.e., work without losing the sense of life and existence. People are not afraid to work hard; they fear alienation.
Strengthen reciprocity – This means putting new energy into motion through solidarity. Some models already exist such as Community Supported Agriculture or the Solidarity Purchasing Groups. They are inspired by the generosity of reciprocation in the farming civilization.
Everyone has a right to good quality as well as beauty. This is the political battle that will be Slow Food’s new mission for the next four years.

- Break the monopoly of knowledge that ignores the verbal communication of the farming culture. Return the proper status to indigenous languages and dialects, integrating them with the historical recognition of their mother tongue as a key element for building a national language that Antonio Gramsci left us”.

Carlo Petrini gave the Convention an appropriate metaphor: ”we are living in difficult times; it’s a cold winter and we need an extra blanket. Think of patchwork. It is made up of small pieces of cloth, which alone cannot cover anything. But if we unite these pieces in different colors with a strong thread, we will have a beautiful and warm blanket. The Mother Earth (Terra Madre) communities are the pieces of cloth. Slow Food is the thread. Be thread for the communities of your territories and together we will build our concrete utopia”.