Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Elena Aniere on The Slow Food Revolution (#057)

Transcript

Elena Aniere on The Slow Food Revolution (#057) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: The word organic has been taken out of context of its literal meaning to become certified.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's a food that is organically certified.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: And in most cases around the world, it's certified to be able to be exported.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it fits that globalization model.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: When we're talking about food, and that's the way consumers have been directed.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: They see organic, it's certified.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: There are costs to having that certification, and there are demands of documentation and so forth and so forth for farmers to be able to meet that certification.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it increased the cost, not because the production costs are higher, because the certification costs are high.
• 0:39
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• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what is really the statistics and the challenges of the current food ecosystem and when you really talk about good, clean and fair food, what does this mean for the human race at large?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for the interesting question, uh Swami.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think from a from a global perspective to a local perspective, um the people need to start thinking about where the food comes from.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: We need to be looking at it both from an agricultural perspective in regards to how farmers produce their food to also how and where consumers actually buy their food.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: From a farming perspective, for example, since the Green Revolution, there has been changes in workforce from rural areas moving to cities.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: It means that the number of farmers are changing their jobs and they're changing their jobs to be self-producing or small-scale farmers to be dependent upon small-scale farmers for their food.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: If we're looking at a global perspective, if you look at Asia and Africa and also Europe, there have been a loss of farmers in Asia, a loss in the last 15-20 years, about 45% of farmers have moved from farming to other jobs, other economic jobs.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: If you're looking at from a European perspective, the decrease has been about 49%, moving from rural jobs to jobs that are not farmers, while Africa has increased from 164 to 229 million people from 2020 to 2021.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: So as we see on a global perspective for the global south, there's been, and also Europe, there's been a shift from people moving away from farming to other jobs, which means that less people are actually producing food.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: If we're looking at food production, we're looking at food production in Asia and in Africa that are small-scale farmers and subsistence.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you're looking at the United States or Australia or Canada or in Europe also, the farming production is not so small scale.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's moved towards the industrial food system.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and the difference between the small scale farm system subsistence and the industrial food system is those the small scale is they produce enough for their family consumption.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's the principle of what they do, based on what they've always done.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: They produce enough and what they have excess, they provide and they sell or barter in their local communities.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: The industrial food system is about high yield production, it's about exportation, it's about production that has high inputs and high outputs, but also at a high cost.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the subsistence is a biodiverse model.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: It means that producers or farmers produce what they eat, and then it's a small-scale production model.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: So where we have around the world not only employment but also the production, we have from the green revolution, there needs to be a paradigm shift from the green revolution or industrial food globalized system to a more ecological intensified system based on family farming and also family farming and subsistence farming.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to move the subsistence farming and the small-scale farming into a higher notch, but it's not get big or get out.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's stay small, but also assist and work with the farmers to be able to help them not only produce enough consistently for their family consumption, but also enough excess to be able to sell to provide income.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because a more than 45% of our population produces food from small-scale farming.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to shift this.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it's if we look at it from a global perspective, it's very much in the United States, in Australia, in Europe, in regards to where that paradigm shift needs to take place, but also the small-scale farmers in the global south to ensure that they can sustain and maintain what they're actually doing.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: So this is where Slough Food Good, Clean and Fair fits in.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's good for you, it's clean for the environment.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: The fair is when we start to need to work with the consumers and raise awareness with consumers about where they get their food from.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, at this moment in time, the new generation, the next generation, the young, they don't know where food comes from unless they actually live on farms.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we've seen there's a shift from farming to cities.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Those that live in cities are dependent upon what's available in the cities or like large towns.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: And most of it is normally from a supermarket or from shop.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the transformation of more people getting a higher higher wage means that they buy food that is convenient.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: What Slough Food works with fair is bringing the consumer closer to the producer to ensure that the producer is paid a fair price and the consumer pays a fair price, but also there is cultural context and also social context in regards to that relationship the consumer builds with the producer.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is it fair and realistic to look at the small scale form farmer when most of the businesses today are talking scale, right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Be it any industry, you know, every industry talks scale.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you are having a contrarian view of local communities, small scale farming, and is that really something that's achievable?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: What slow food does is we provide an alternative.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so not all farmers have been are able to go into that industrial food system.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: One, they don't have the land, two, they don't have the technology, and three, they may not have the education to do it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: What Slow Food does is working with the small-scale farmer, family farmer, to ensure that they can sustain what they're doing.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: So they have a sustainable production food system to ensure that they are not a part of the equation that moves to a city because the farming does not provide an economic benefit.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: It also has a plus in that it provides social continuity and also cultural continuity.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, if everybody or all farmers are to move to cities, you lose your social binding, your family unit, but you also lose your culture.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we get standardized in that food production, which means we get standardized in both our culture and our social environments.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, SlowFood's not saying industrial food systems need to come into the context of small scale.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Slow Food's saying if you are a large-scale farmer due to circumstances that it started in the 50s and the 60s, there is a way that you can convert that you are producing more in balance with nature.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: With balance in nature is that you had taken ecological approach rather than a monocultural industrial approach where you add chemicals, you add fertilizers, you destroy your soil, you mass produce.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And if we're looking at that food production, that large-scale globalized foods production, you can say that 20% of our global climate, global emissions, carbon emissions are actually coming from agriculture and that agricultural system.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to take a we need to take a an awareness check in regards to what impact agriculture large-scale industrial food system impact is having on us as humans right now.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Obesity, climate change, soil destruction, erosion, deserification, you know, all of that included, to what can we, as individuals, farmers or consumers, steps we can take to actually make an impact to be able to change that cycle.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that when we're talking about fair and that large scale, we're not talking about change tomorrow.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about what we can do individually and globally to ensure that we all take a part in that in that conversation.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, our own food health.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: If we're talking about all the food-related diseases at this moment in time, you can take all of them back to what we eat.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Diabetes, some cancers.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's all interrelated.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: So let me come to your uh backstory, Elena.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not often people take this as a career, people take this as a I would call it as passion to as a passion to drive this.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So where did this all start?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And can you give me a little bit of background about how did you land up here and what was your motivation and inspiration to be with this slow food movement?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a little bit of my background is that uh I'm Australian.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: I live in Italy and I've lived in Italy working for slow food for 20 years.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Being an Australian, I went to university, I studied agriculture, agricultural business.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: I worked on large-scale farms, I worked on wheat farms, I worked on cattle and sheep stations, I worked on cotton farms, I've seen the destruction of what that large-scale industrial farming can do to our land, but also to our health.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I've seen it long term.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I've seen the desertification and I've seen the soil destruction, but also the exportation of all those products.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it was all based on exportation.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't about any local communities.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: I've worked in I studied environmental tourism.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I've seen the destruction of what humans can do in national parks and marine parks, specifically the Great Barrier Reef, with no management, um, nothing to shape, raise awareness about what impact humans have.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: I worked for the government in Western Australia um trying to minimize human impact in national parks and marine parks based on collective but also individual impacts they can have.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: I worked in restaurants and hotels, so I've worked with the food industry.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I've worked with farmers, the food industry, serving foods, uh, as well as customer service, um, to also the environmental side of agriculture.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: So before I I came to Italy in 2000, uh going to Salona de Gusto, which was the event at that time, um, I did things randomly and I had no idea about where or why or the direction I was going, you know, being young and so forth and so forth.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I just followed my passion to what I was interested in.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: When I came to the event that was organized by Slow Food in 2000, which was Salona de Gusto in in Turin in Italy, I walked into the event and it just clicked.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: You could say it was my epiphany.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: And all of those things that were randomly done just came under one umbrella.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't just one umbrella within Australia, it was one umbrella internationally.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: So it gave me uh, I suppose it brought all of those concepts, those passions together.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I asked them for a job.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: They said, go home, um, get involved with slow food, be a volunteer and you know, um find out more about what we do, find out uh more about what's happening in Australia.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I did that and I became the leader for a volunteer group in in Perth in in Western Australia.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I returned to the same event in 2002 and I said, here I am again.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still interested, you know.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'd like to be the coordinator for Australia and what else I can do.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: They said, please meet the person that uh we've just hired.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought, okay, well, obviously my my thinking was just wrong, um which I I felt was really strange.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I returned back, I continued being volunteer in Australia, and there was a Congress, a Slow Food Congress held in Australia in 2003, and they asked me if I was still interested working for Slow, and I said, yes, when?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: So in November 2003, I I went to the International Congress as a delegate, and then I started working for Slow Food in in February 2004 as a as a paid staff, as a coordinator for Australia, but also other areas around the world.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And my role has changed and evolved in that time, but I'm still there based on the fact that we all eat, we all have, we can all choose if we have the right information.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: I admit I love food and I love culture and the connection that food has with culture, and I love the diversity of what people around the world still offer.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, as a as a mission, I suppose, is to try and work with people how we can safeguard that.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: As mentioned at the start, I've seen the destruction of what industrial food system can do, and I've seen the beauty of what still exists in our subsistence small-scale farming, to be able to work with people and farmers to ensure that still exists for the next generation.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let me come back to uh this whole three pillars that uh you know slow food really talks about, and uh I want to talk to you a little bit about the biological and cultural diversity, which is one of the pillars that you talk about.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you do a lot of initiatives out there.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So tell tell us how do you take it to the consumer, how do you take it to the stakeholders, how do you take it to the farmers, and how does the vision of biological and ecological diversity how do you put it to maybe you can talk about that.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um thank you.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: If I can just give a little bit of background um in regards to our three pillars, is that uh in 2017 we have we had an international congress um that was held in in in in Chengdu, in China.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Prior to that date, we had a foundation of biodiversity where we worked with our biodiversity projects and campaigns and so forth and so forth.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't until 2017 that we started to bring all the things that we'd been doing for 30 years into an um into a communication that was clearer.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we'd always been doing the work, but we hadn't been clear, especially in English, we hadn't been so clear in how we approach it.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously, Slow Food is an Italian organization.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it was clear in an Italian context, but it wasn't clear in our messaging to get that message out into a into the majority of our where our network exists in in English speaking.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it was re-worded and put into a more strategic approach to divide our three pillars, being that the work that we'd always done, we'd always been working with biodiversity and defending culture and biodiversity.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: We'd always been working with education and we'd always been working with advocacy, but we really didn't know what we were doing with that one.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: So by developing a document, which we call this call to action, is to try and not just get people at in the head office in in Bra, in Italy, activated, but get everybody involved and to give a clear understanding for everybody of how they can be involved, no matter where you are around the world.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: So the three pillars being biodiversity, education, and advocacy, we gave clear objectives, which means that our objective is to defend biodiversity.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we're talking about food biodiversity.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: So food biodiversity, we also have our projects.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: We have what we refer to as the arc of taste, which is like Noah's R, um, but the food context is we want to identify those foods that are at risk of being lost, okay, or extinction.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: And they are foods that are connected to a culture and also to a territory.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: So in that we ask everybody around the world if there are foods that they know of that might be at risk of being lost, either they're not being consumed anymore because there is an industrial globalized substitute, or as we talked about before, there are farmers moving away and they do not grow that food anymore.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Or there is other production that's coming in for higher yield for an economic benefit, and the social and the cultural and the environmental benefits are not being considered.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: So those products are at risk of being lost.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're nominated, they're put onto a catalog that's on our international website.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: We then merge Give me some examples of such food that's getting lost, and uh maybe you can pick up a couple of countries where it's getting lost, and that can be interesting learning for our audience.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: The food's getting lost uh globally because of the industrial food system, and also because people are moving away from the farming and they will go to buy something from a shop or from a market rather than growing it themselves.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that is a it's a global phenomenon.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just in one country.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: There are over 6,000 products that have been nominated globally.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: If I can pick some categories of products that are referenced around the world.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: If we look at rice, for example, there are many, there are thousands of traditional rices that have been grown in Asia, in Africa, and wild rices in Americas, and so forth and so forth.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Then they're not grown anymore.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: They now have high-yielding rices, whether it be Thailand, whether it be Vietnam, also in the Philippines, they went into a green revolution to bring the hybrids in to look at high-yielding products.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: It meant that farmers started growing high-yielding rices rather than growing their traditional rices.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: The traditional rices were selected year from year and selected of what would be growing dependent upon this climatic circumstances.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: The industrial rices or the hybrid rices were given and grown based on a high yield production to sell to someone else.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that indigenous or local traditional knowledge was being lost for high yielding to feed the world for the example.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Rices, there are thousands of rices that are being lost.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: There are many fruits that are being lost.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: There are, I'll give two examples that we're we're looking at in the Philippines, for example.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: We have a community in the mountains of the Philippines that have 33 different rice varieties.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: The Green Revolution and the government interventions asked them to start growing the hybrid rices for not only producing more rice for themselves, but also to be able to sell based on whether they wanted to improve livelihoods.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, with that soil degradation took place.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: These farmers don't have the capacit don't have the ability to use machinery.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: In ten years, those rices didn't grow anymore.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: So what they're doing now is they're reintroducing the traditional rice varieties because it provides them food security.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, whereas the hybrid rices don't, because it wasn't it wasn't being grown for food security, it was grown being grown for exportation.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the communities are in reintroducing the 33 slowly, slowly.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: It means now they're actually able to choose those rice varieties that they want to grow based on they have drought at the moment.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: So they have the rice varieties to grow for drought.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: They still have the knowledge, so then they pick and choose to ensure that they have the rice varieties.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Same things taking place in Thailand, in Vietnam, in rice producing countries in Asia and also in India.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a it's a global it's a global phenomenon, and that's just we can look at many products, whether it's salt, whether it's fish, whether it's any any product that we eat on a daily basis of understanding where the food comes from and what's being uh substituted from industrial foods or or um high yielding foods.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so when you really look at this lost food varieties the other thing you also talk about is how it impacts your health.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Industrialized food.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: So do you have some statistics on what industrialized food does in terms of health and the impact it has on diseases?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have some statistics to throw?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have statistics on that, unfortunately.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: I've read a lot about if we're looking at only because my memory doesn't the memory of of the statistics gets lost, but there's there's a lot of information in regards to the health the health of the chemicals and fertilizers that are used.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's been a study I've seen and read a number of years ago in Malaysia where a woman actually started looking at the illnesses that farmers were having because they were using and spraying chemicals on their foods and the illnesses that the children were actually taking when those children were born in those environments.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, from a health perspective, from the glyphate, in regards to, there's also studies in regards to now the the cancer that's actually being created from glycemate.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at any campaigns around the world, they're actually saying that these these chemicals should not be used, um, whether it be food that we're actually eating and growing, or they shouldn't even be produced.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: If we're looking at Agent Orange, for example, in Vietnam, it is what's used to actually make the chemicals now that we're spraying on other foods that people are eating.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: So you there are there, as mentioned, the w the statistics are uh are not in my head, um, but there are certainly many, many studies that are going around in regards to the chemicals and fertilizers.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: You also look at the soils in regards to 10 years from when they start using it, the soil's dead.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: So so they need to keep in uh they need to keep adding chemicals and fertilizers to ensure they have high production.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: As a part of this whole biological and cultural diversity, you also have a slow food gardens initiative.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: You also have a slow food cooks alliance.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us how do you take all these initiatives and give us a peek into how these work.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um let's start with um the slow food gardens.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: The slow food gardens have always been a project in Italy in that children got involved with growing food and also the United States with Alice Waters in her edible garden uh project that she initiated that has been transformed into other countries.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where Slow Food has has in regards to changing a whole food system, would be in Africa.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And in 2008 or seven, I think it was, Slow Food started a project that was called uh A Thousand Gardens in Africa.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: We had um a number of uh people in our network in in Africa said, you know, gardens in Africa just won't work.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, why why why would that be?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: They said, well, you know, gardens in Africa, you know, when we're at school, you know, if we do something bad, our punishment is to go and work in the garden.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, wow, so if we do gardens in Africa, then, you know, it's like a punishment.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, yeah, well, you know, that's what how it was perceived.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, okay, so we got, you know, we did workshops and and with the network in Africa to say, okay, how do we go, how do we get past this perception that working in a garden, they said, well, let's just start small.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just start working with where we've got a strong network and start putting gardens in.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So when the kids actually say, well, that's a punishment, they actually start to enjoy their time in the garden.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: They actually start to see the fruit of what they're actually producing.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: They actually start to eat what they're actually producing.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Then they bring in their parents that have been a part of that generation of it's a punishment, and they start to eat what's actually produced in the schools and the communities.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that cycle of thinking that's another generation starts to change.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: The children start showing the joy of working in a garden and they bring their parents into the garden.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, with that, over five years, the change of mentality from it being a punishment to it being joy and we actually have food security, we actually can grow our own food.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: We resolve the little challenges of, you know, where the water comes from or we don't have any materials to be able to work the garden or the seeds.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: They get taught how to seed save so they become self-sufficient.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: And with that project that was a thousand, it's moved to now 10,000 gardens in Africa.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: We work in 25, 25 countries in Africa based on that project.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And we're also not just growing food, we're building leadership.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: So we're actually getting people involved in gardens that then want to be involved in agriculture, that then want to be teaching other youth and other people in regards to how to grow food.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So our network in Africa started off with something small of changing a punishment into a joy, but also more seriously, providing food to people that may not already have food and also providing them with an economic benefit.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: When they have access, they actually sell their product.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: So it's changed a whole cycle in less than 10 years from being no one wants to do it to everybody wants to do it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm talking about everybody that's within our network, obviously, but we get applications from new schools and new communities that want to be involved in the project, and we just try and keep up with how we get funding to support them.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not a it's not a funding that you get given everything.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's a funding of we will provide, we'll seek the basic essentials for equipment for you to be able to grow the garden, but our network teaches new people how to seed safe so they don't need to buy, how they can actually grow in a sustainable way, how they compost.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: So all of these things are taught by Africans to Africans that are led by Africans to build a new a new future.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's the gardens.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what about the Slow Food Cooks Alliance?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: So how does that work?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: The Slow Cooks Alliance was also developed because we have we've always had a lot of chefs that are involved with Slow Food.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: What we wanted to do is to help them belong to to the network.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we have chefs that come to our events, we have chefs that work locally with the producers they sell.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: So what we did was we created a cooks alliance, Slow Food Cooks Alliance.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's a global alliance, but at the same time, it's a local alliance.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it's connecting the chefs to the local producers that we're working with.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: But the objective is to safeguard and to promote the biodiversity in that area.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it's to work with the farmers about not what they grow for a cash crop.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's to what they grow that's small scale.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's to bring the chefs and the producers together to start providing a new way that chefs can educate the consumers, because they have a responsibility to do that, the consumers to be able to say, where do you get your food?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is how it is, and this is how it's this is how it's grown.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: We might not produce, we might not cook it in a traditional way, but it's still grown, it's still grown in a good, clean and fair way.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: So the the chefs become a catalyst to sharing information with consumers, brings the chefs together to start working together rather than individually, which makes the message stronger.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we have Cooks Alliances in in many countries in Europe, obviously in Italy.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: We have them in Germany, we have them in France, we have them in hot in the Netherlands, we have them in the UK, Canada.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're just building one in the Philippines, in the United States, in South America, we also have Cooks Alliance to build the network between producers, consumers and chefs take a responsibility in You also conduct on the citizens or on the on the society side awareness for slow food, right?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And today with the world becoming a faster place to stay and grow and move, where do you see the awareness increase and influence that's needed for a movement like this?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you influence minds and mindsets towards slow food?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: Again, it's uh it's a big issue um and it works on very, very many different levels in regards to policy, government policy, institutional policy that we work with.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Slow Foods uh created, started uh an office in Brussels um more than close to 10 years ago, um, because that's where the uh food policy for Europe is is concentrated.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: So Slow Food made a strategic move to actually have an office there, to start working with other other institutions, other civil society organizations, other NGOs, to be a voice in that conversation, to be a voice to be able to put a different perspective forward to the policymakers in Brussels for the EU, for the European Union, to ensure that these conversations are actually open and being raised with the policymakers.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: So there's been a CAP, which is the um agricultural policy for Europe.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Slow food, with over 200 different uh CSOs, civil society organizations, NGOs, have put in a different model in regards to the to the industrial food system.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's where we've been strongest in Europe.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, in other areas where we may not have offices, or we do have offices, put in similarly.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: We work with governments to change that food system.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: We work with governments to bring the good, clean and fair into the policy.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: And given a local example, we have a community again in the Philippines that have been to our events in Italy, and the mayor came in and he came and saw our event, and he's actually put into their uh municipality ordinance the slow food principles of good, clean and fair.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And there are 14 different barangay or villages that are in there in that municipality.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: They need to start practicing the slow food principles of good, clean, and fair.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it means that they don't use chemicals and fertilizers in their production, they continue practicing their traditional food practices, but also educate the children of how to do that and raise their profile and value in regards to their indigenous culture.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And they also at the same time have food security.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: So there's the large scale on a on a continent perspective to the local of how those um the adverse advocacy can work in a policy perspective.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: When we refer to individuals, we can work on different ways, whether it be a consumer working in a city, getting the farmers to have a farmer's market, people start to being aware about what they eat.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Normally, when we talk with consumers, we start with taste.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and they actually start to taste the difference.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, if they start to taste the difference and we raise awareness with that taste, then people will st people like to eat well.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it means that with the first one is taste, and then they have a connection with the farmer, so they start to understand where their food comes from, they start to build a relationship, and then we have that connection between producers and consumers.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: We also organize events to bring individuals to raise awareness.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: All the three, all the two pill the two pillars, the biodiversity and the education, are all directed also to consumers, not only producers.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: So we work along that producer production consumption model spectrum to bring people into that conversation.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then people can be involved with slow food individually, or they can be involved with slow food in a community or collective way.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: So how do these uh slow food uh communities work and are there slow food communities in say a country like India?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: So how does it work and are there examples that you can share of the work or I would say you may be at the start of the work in India.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: So talk to us about a bit which areas are you seeing adoption of slow food.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: Slow food communities came about again in in our evolution, uh officially uh in 2017, because before 2017, Slow Food was an association, so it was membership-based.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: It meant that people became paid a membership and would need to renew it on an annual basis.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: This model uh was very set up for Western cultures, not so much for Asia.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: And certainly my experience in Asia, the convivium model and the membership model really didn't work except for those people that had the funds to be able to be involved.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: In 2017 again, we wanted everybody that wanted to be involved with slow food the opportunity to be involved.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Our history was that we organized an event called Terra Madre, being Mother Earth, and we hold that every two years, and we always brought from 2004, we brought food communities to Terra Madre.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: So what we did is change the terminology from a food community to a slow food community.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: And a slow food community is literally a group of people that have a similar objective that undertake the same activities to be able to get an outcome or to reach their objective.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: So slow food community is a number of people in an area that have an objective that they want to achieve, and we work with them about what activities they should undertake to achieve that goal.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously in a slow food context.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so that's the slow food communities.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: It came into officially they came into effect, or they were acknowledged and recognized in 2017.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: So since then we've had a major growth in our slow food communities because it gave our farmers and our groups of people a place to belong, because it wasn't dependent upon my membership fee.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, slow food's philosophy is that everybody, everybody can be involved with slow food.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we just created a way that encourages that.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: Slow food communities, we have over 4,000 uh at this moment in time, and many being um developed at the same time.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: We have in India specifically, we have I think five or six at this moment in time.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and the history of India is um is a part of our story based on our evolution.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so remembering before 2017 we were membership-based.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it meant that people in India that were involved with slow food were those that could afford a membership fee.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Many of them were based in cities, um, and they created their groups.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: With that, we went through uh an evolution to create a network in slow food so they could decentralize, determine how and what slow food would do in India.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: The pandemic hit, and then all of a sudden everything stopped.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: In that time, I have become involved again with the development of slow food in India, seeing the impacts of the pandemic and also seeing the impacts of food distribution and food production, of how that works, is that we go back to the model of grassroots.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: So our model is to reactivate the network in our current model of where we're at now, so food communities, but also membership-based, so it provides the two options.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Looking at how people want to be involved and having them become examples of how slow food works in India.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the examples that I can we have a number of new communities, so I'll give you the communities that have been with us for a couple of years, at least since the pandemic.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: One is that um in Tamil Nadu, we have a community that is focused on coffee and it's a part of our coffee coalition.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and our coffee coalition is a global coalition of coffee producers and the value chain, people involved in the value chain, so from baristas to roasters to coffee producers, that believe in the production of coffee should be agroecological.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it should be based on a forest production, it should be based not on monoculture, but on supporting the coffee trees and the quality of the coffee, which is normally again small scale, to bring that to the consumer.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have, again, the community in India where they're a part of the coffee coalition, they produce their coffee in an agricultural, in an agroecological manner, and they're working independently, collectively with Slow Food.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Our local networks are in collaboration with Slow Food International.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: They're not separate, they are a part of the global network.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: We also have another indigenous community in and I probably won't get it correct in the pronunciation.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jarkin.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Jacken.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um there is a Sloughford Indigenous community there, and they are working towards bringing back their indigenous culture to raising their profile that the indigenous food culture is actually has value and to to support the farmers to continue to grow those foods and bringing them economic benefit by organizing markets and vents and so forth and so forth.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: So they're the two at this moment in time.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: Remembering that we're reactivating the network since since the pandemic, so this is just a couple of years.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: We have a number of new communities that we're working with that we're just starting to get to know each other to see how what they do can be um and is uh developing the slow food concepts.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're bringing um a number of these communities to our event Terramadre, which we're h holding next month, which will be in Italy, to start the discussions about how we align what they do, which we they already have been doing, align them to slow food so we can raise their voices about what they're doing on a slow food context.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, Alina, one challenge that I see here is I'm a farmer.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: I produce ecologically balanced or I would call it safe food.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a small scale farmer.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: I have to serve the local community and ensure that I earn enough.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: So this challenge of belief that the local community will buy what I produce and the conviction.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: in the local community to buy the local produce.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do you build this trust between these two stakeholders?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: That is the million dollar question.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is on that scale, it's the probably the not the hardest to do.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's we're talking about change.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: And when we're talking about change people don't people don't trust anything new.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but if we're actually talking about it, we're actually not talking about anything new.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about re-establishing what ex actually existed.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: So um the starting point is understanding what food is produced because when we're talking about one farmer we're not just talking about one farmer we're talking about collective farmers in the community.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about also a collective consumer.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, not just one consumer but a collective so if we're talking about farmers in a and I'll give an example we're talking about farmers in a rural area that are producing food and let's say whether it's a I don't know if you call it squash or pumpkin depending on the terminology.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're growing beans okay one farmer might grow one kilogram of bean and they might eat what half a kilogram.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: So they have half a kilogram to sell.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, half a kilogram to sell to a farm from a farmer to a consumer the consumer's well that's not going to feed my family.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: So what we do is we work with farmers collectively.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: So we bring farmers together.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: One of the projects that we work with for example is the presidia where we do this.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: We have a product that's at risk of being lost.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: We bring farmers together that are producing that product we call it a presidia we work on marketing strategies and also raising the awareness that this product exists.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: We understand the quantities of what this product is by those farmers to be able to sell to the market.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: The easiest entry point for slow food is via cooks because they will actually we know exactly the quantity that they want and we also work they work with the producers with the cooks alliance to start understanding when that product is available during the year so they can actually start selling that and diversify in their menu.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay so we're talking about change both from the producers working together cooks working together and start to understand what produce it is produced.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're not asking we're not asking the cook to tell the farmer what to grow we're actually asking the cook to find out what the farmer grows based on seasonality because the farmer knows.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay so there's change on both sides.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: When we talk about that collective farmer group and it might be a community if it's not a Presidio it might be a slow food community we start to work with organizing what we refer to as earth markets.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay and we don't call them farmers markets because farmers markets in the context globally means you can sell art and craft it means that not only farmers are selling traders are selling so the slow food earth market is is a model specifically for farmers themselves to sell to consumers.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: It then starts to grow awareness for the consumers in living in a rural area of what is available.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Each area will depend on the circumstances of what slow food models to adapt that will suit those conditions.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: There isn't a one-stop shot as such this will work for you it needs to be discussions with both the farmers but also the the different stakeholders in the area to find out what model will work and then slowly slowly start to change start to change the food system if it if it has totally changed.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: How do I make it affordable right because when I'm growing on scale it becomes affordable but when I'm actually growing on small scale it may be expensive and the local community may not be able to buy it at that price.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you bridge that gap of value and affordability with earth markets?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's always a question of really it stumbles me because I don't get the logic in that and I get the the economic scale I get that but if you're growing food without chemicals and without fertilizers and your seed saving there are no input costs.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: The only cost that you have is labor.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay and if you're a family farm your labor is dependent upon what you sell so I'm not clear of why your price would be higher other than you have a small quantity.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not based on the inputs okay okay so let me give you an example yeah so when I look at industrial markets uh normally organic is more expensive right or it is positioned as pure is is positioned as no fertilizer in a safe ecosystem and therefore it's priced premium right but if I'm a far small scale farmer in a local community my assumption is I I can only produce very I would call it affordable quantity or what can I can I grow is what I have which means that there's a bit there's a the risk of availability therefore premiumness starts to increase.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's really the economic model on which it works.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, absolutely and it yeah as you say it's very much an economic model and we need to take that in c into consideration.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: If I can just start on the organic the word organic has been taken out of context of its literal meaning to become certified.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay it's a food that is organically certified and in most cases around the world it's certified to be able to be exported so it fits that globalization model.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay when we're talking about food and that's the way consumers have been directed they see organic it's certified there are costs to having that certification and there are demands of documentation and so forth and so forth for farmers to be able to meet that certification.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay so it increased the cost not because the production costs are higher because the certification costs are higher okay it means that people can buy food no matter where they are around the world and a food is certified but really is it?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do we know it's got a stamp USD certification organic certification it's got DEMTA okay and those models are supporting those organizations for certification.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: What Slow food does we don't we don't we're not an accreditation organization.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: We don't do certification we try and build the trust between consumers and producers so consumers start to understand the true cost of food production and food so they start to pay a little bit more than I'll go and find the cheapest food if they want that they can go to a supermarket and they find the cheapest food in a supermarket.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: If people want to start raising being aware about what they eat, where they come from and supporting economically local communities you start buying from your local community farmer okay so and if we're also looking at that if we're looking at the obesity issue around the world people are eating too much.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to be looking at it in a in a true cost of food where is our food coming from do we want to support our local community and our local farmers because if we don't those that food will not be there in the future in the next generation and we're all buying food from a supermarket and then everything farmers around the world and the production that they have is and the standardization of food are all going in the direction that industrial food systems are.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: So the roles of bringing consumers and producers together are done in different ways.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Slow food also refers to the difference of food not the similarities because they're culturally contextual to what a local community is so the answer is it's not just based on economics it's also environmental and also in um environmental and also cultural or social because we need to bring that food production into a sustainable model which it's not at the moment if we only look at the economic equation.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: So do you believe if the small small farmer systems are resilient the uh large ecosystems will get cracking and uh will it will it will it have an impact?
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen some examples of it happening can you give me examples of where you have seen some impact happen in which countries and give me some examples when the small farmer ecosystem local community ecosystem becomes resilient the larger food ecosystem starts to crack have you seen examples of this no in that not yet I should say not yet there are we're talking about an alternative to a industrial globalized food system.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: There we we're working we're providing an alternative to a multinational food system.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay there was a we're providing a grass movement to have change.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: On a global scale that means we need a lot more people we need a lot more cooperation from governments and institutions to make that paradigm shift slow food is not the only organization working on this we have you know if we look at FAO they're talking our language now 15 years ago they were on the industrial food globalization side in the 15 years then we're now speaking the same language okay if we look at other UN agencies they're also talking our language now if we look at other NGOs they're all talking not all most of them are talking our language when we talk about food systems.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's talking now about agroecology as being an answer to climate change we can't do it alone.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's not slow food's job to do it alone.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: We need millions of people to be doing this to change that to have that paradigm shift we work locally we do what we can there are changes absolutely locally there are changes also on national perspectives in regards to that but the global food system has millions and millions and millions of dollars behind them to continue marketing and doing what they do and the multinationals the five multinationals we can't compete at this moment in time unless we've got the population talking about what we're doing.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: So slow food we have a snail as our as our symbol who means that we move slowly but surely okay and that snail continues it knows exactly where it's going we've been doing this for 30 years.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay so now after 15 we have UN agencies talking the same thing.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody you know in time the more we get involved with the advocacy and government policies starting to look at this as a as an alternative so we're looking at sustainable food production not just economic benefits.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as we start speaking the same language then we start seeing the paradigm shift okay there are examples in countries where it's been on a national scale it's being taken on but globally is a so tell me uh nationally where where where do you see it's been taken at a national level and give me some examples of countries countries that that uh have taken this up in right earnest if we can look at Italy for example it's where our largest network is and and historically has been in that slow food works on different themes.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: We work on cheese being cheese that's not pastoralized that is cheese made from raw milk in that cheese made from raw milk there was a legend there that wanted to make all cheeses in Europe made from pasturized milk.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: Slow food went into a campaign more than more than 10 years ago to safeguard cheese being made from raw milk because it always had been cheese traditional cheeses more than 200 traditional cheeses in Italy have been based made on raw milk cheeses and with one led policy that was being directed by the EU they wanted to wipe out all those family farms they wanted to wipe out all those traditional cheeses that were still being eaten today.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: Slow food holds an event called cheese every two years and it campaigned against the EU policy to ensure that countries could determine what took place in each country.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: With that those protests that took place not only in Italy but also each state so each country within the EU can now determine how and what cheeses are produced and how, as long as they meet the health regulations.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: So in Italy there are separate health regulations because that was the major reason for making parcelows is because it wasn't good for our health and yet for centuries people had been eating raw milk cheeses but someone in Brussels had decided that eating raw milk cheese was not good for our health.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_02: So Italy now has their own legislation Spain has the legislation France has their own legislation and these are traditionally cheese producing countries.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful beautiful on a source that's please go ahead yeah so there are other examples for example in again the the Philippines in a non-European context everybody loves the word slow food it's like you know it's opposite to fast food and it's not until they get involved really of what we're actually talking about and the diversity of what slow food can offer and how you can be involved and the the holistic approach that we actually take.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just all slow food we get to eat well it's like everything that we've talked about before.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: But in the Philippines everybody loves the word slow food.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we have a lot of interest from government agencies in the Philippines for us to implement and to be involved with agriculture but also with tourism they see tourism and gastronomic tourism as being an economic benefit slow food takes the approach it's not Slow Food's job to work with tourism but what Slow food's model of Slow Food travel is to work with farmers to provide diversity of food in a certain area that creates food regions.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_02: That means difference taking people out to visit the communities so they start to again raise awareness about how coffee is produced they start to raise the consumer starts to raise awareness about how people live in villages they start to raise awareness about what community life in villages is and start to then bring that economic direct contact the economic benefits by taking people out to the villages they buy directly from the farmers for coffee for example and the the Philippines has very much taken this on board of they really like the slow food model because we're talking about redistribution of tourism at the same time we're not talking about the mass tourism anymore and every country that has mass tourism wants to go back to when they didn't.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_02: So if we look at Barcelona we look at Venice everybody now has entry points or they don't want the cruise ships okay they don't want the mass tourism so the slow food model starts creating food tourism in rural areas which distributes the income but also the can also the traveler to provide a different a different experience which brings more people in all all around food.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: So different contexts about how um different countries are are taking on slow food dependent upon what their agenda is and dependent upon how slow food can fit.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: And slow food does not always fit a government agenda.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do you fight this uh you know huge monolith where you have multinational organizations and industrial ecosystems of agriculture you need funding for this right so do you crowdsource funding for your organization how does funding happen because obviously there are stakeholders who you need support from and therefore how do you ensure that there's good money behind fair food now that's been our dilemma for 30 years.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that even that is um is an evolutional uh concept in regards to how and what um we we get our funding from and it it's changed.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_02: Terramadre our event has been funded by the department in the past it's been funded by the Ministry of Agriculture Italian agriculture since it started in 2004.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: Salona de Gusto was our commercial event where we we make money so we have a a uh an entity slow food entity in Italy that is a company to make money to reinvest in the development of slow food.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's in a European context in an Italian context.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: In Italy we also have a publishing house which is also a company out to make money it's a profit making company to be able to reinvest again back into the development of slow food being the foundation and also the the networks in Italy we have a model where it's membership but that's changed.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: So before one third of our um funds before 2017 were derived from membership fee okay because we want everybody to be involved it wasn't a fair approach so we balanced it out we get funding to sustain us in um in Europe for from EU grants to sustain what we do hence the discussion what we talked about in changing food policy in the EU is very very strong because uh funding comes from the EU.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: We have funding that comes from different countries uh in South America that support the implementation of slow food projects in South America in the United States they have an office they also have just started organizing events again they have convivia that have membership they have convivia that raise funds to support a national body local events so it's always about local and then we also have projects that fund the projects that we implement around the world so there are different avenues of where fun we need to diversify obviously we so our funding approach is very similar to our approach to biodiversity and the approach that Slow food implements nice nice so how do you manage slow change as a leader?
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: How do you keep yourself coming back to work with intensity and energy when change is slow but you need to work at a rapid pace.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_02: How do you manage that diversity diversity would have to be my um it's my driver doing the same thing every day I I just get bored.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: The the change and the diversity of whether it be cultures communities how to implement this different or how to get people involved with slow food is the diversity of slow food has kept me here for 20 years.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: There are challenges every day that we have but it's that diversity both in challenges to have less challenges which never takes place because as soon as you start bringing more people on you get different challenges the the people when they start to get it and they start I don't need to be saying how this works that is when I know that what I've been doing has been successful in in my Terminology because it means that someone can be doing what I'm doing.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, someone locally can be sharing that and they can be running with that because whatever or however I've said it, they've got, have understood, and they start doing it themselves, which means that I have more time to be doing it somewhere else.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it's that sharing and delegation.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the more people that get it, it means the less energy I have to be spending in one area I can be spending it in another.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what does success mean to you?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_02: Eating well.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um no, uh success for me is again seeing people in all the different farmers benefiting about what we're talking about, consumers benefiting in what we're talking about because they're actually eating.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they're not going to the supermarket to buy everything.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying you don't go to the supermarket to buy some things, but they're actually the link between the producers and the consumers is starting to um it's it becomes sustainable.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: It means it's not just a one-off, it becomes common practice.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the more people that are putting them into practice locally, the more people get to see it.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it means that we have local models that can be that give us credibility, obviously, but they that can then be shared to other people to say it's not just a a European Western model, it can be applied anywhere around the world because we're talking about a thinking, we're talking about how people can grab a thought and run with it.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's your definition of success.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: What would be uh your advice to a 18-year-old in a university?
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_02: Be curious put your telephone down, don't watch TV, start talking to people.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_02: Get involved with your community, find out where your food comes from.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: Start to use your internet and your the access that you have to information to start looking about how you can eat well.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, our generation has has taken us on a path that does not look after the future generation.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_02: Take joy in eating food.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_02: Don't eat sugar.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, there's so many things um in regards to supporting farmers, getting involved with communities.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_02: Go and work on a farm for a couple of months or a week or something to learn about and being outside.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_02: Go and finding out more about the food system and farmers and so forth.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't take much, you know.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's wolfers, there's many organizations around the world, and farmers that want youth to come and have that experience to help working.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_02: Do that experience and find out something that's different.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: Jodith, what's the best piece of advice you ever got and which you even practice and remember today?
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: Probably the most fundamental advice that I got when I worked for the government in Australia to make change you need to be within the system.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: Not outside it.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I've adapted that to be within slow food because we work with numbers, we work with many people.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's easier to work together than it is to work individually.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic, fantastic.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It it applies to anything that we do.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's a brilliant piece of advice.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's one thing that you believe in that others really don't agree with you?
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's been an ongoing question for my life.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Fundamentally, um people don't agree that they can um be a part of the change and people don't agree that they they have an impact on their and in this case food choices.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: They don't think they're a part of the system.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's a part of the system and everybody can uh make food choices to be a part of that change.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: People just uh are are not conscious to that.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So on that note, Elena, thanks a lot.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was lovely talking to you.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this whole concept of slow food, something that you're trying to change the world, has been a fascinating conversation.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_01: It opened my mind.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot of things about the food ecosystems as I read through your organizations.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And in this conversation, I learned so many things that can be done to actually keep the food ecosystem clean, good, and fair.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot, and thanks for your time.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much, Swani, for your for your your persistence in trying to get me onto this podcast.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a great pleasure to be here and to have a conversation with you.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um and just what I've talked about is it's just a start.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Once people get involved with slow food, it's it's never ending.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and at the end of the day, people enjoy to eat.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_02: So what we try to do is to give people more people that joy to be able to have access to good, clean and fair food.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:12:06
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• 1:12:12
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