Terra Madre 2008: A Voice from the Youth Delegation
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Described by some as the “United Nations of food,” the third biennial Terra Madre gathering, held by the international Slow Food convivium, brought together thousands of small farmers, fishers, artisan food producers, cooks, academic researchers, and other participants to a small village in Italy in celebration of food.
Student Whitney Brown was part of the 700-member international youth delegation. She shared her experience on the Slow Food Triangle blog. It sounds amazing!
I have never seen such a spectacle in all my life. It was like the UN meets the Olympic opening ceremonies meets a populist farmer rally, and it was beautiful. I found myself alternately laughing with delight, scrambling for photos, wiping away tears evoked by moving speeches, and excitedly scribbling notes about Slow Food International’s politically-charged, inspirational rhetoric.
Before I left for Italy, I’d been seriously contemplating the class and race issues embedded in food–and Slow Food–so I was pleased to see them tackled head-on in Italy by both the US delegation and the international leaders. As much as I love to grow things and cook and eat, I am most interested in the socio-economic and cultural politics of food. Under the expert direction of Dr. Rayna Green, I am taking a class right now at UNC called “The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Native Foodways,” so Native American issues in particular have been on my mind lately. (I’m especially interested in Native foods recognized by the Ark of Taste and Presidia and also the many others in the Ark of Taste that are described as having Native origins/ties. Who’s growing this stuff, and why? What, if anything, does this mean for Native peoples?) Over the years, I’ve done a lot of work on African-American history and culture, including a stint as the one [relatively] radical white girl in a history class at the University of Alabama on the Black Power movement. I myself am descended from people who were tenant farmers in the foothills of South Carolina only two generations ago, relying completely on the land and the seasons for sustenance. My grandmother remembers always having plenty of good food to eat, but the family never got ahead until they got off the farm and into wage labor in the textile mills and the military. All of these things have helped to shape my interest in food and farmers and land and marginalization, which are on my mind more and more these days.
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I was pleased that the rhetoric and the literature at Terra Madre were outwardly political, relying heavily on concepts of “rights” to good, clean, fair food, as well as handing out “manifestos” on the future of seeds and food policy. I definitely felt momentum building for social justice at home and abroad. Many leaders referred hopefully to the upcoming US presidential election and the role our next president must play in crafting better US agricultural and food policy and in addressing the world food crisis. I admit I went to Terra Madre feeling a bit embarrassed to be an American, and I hate that. Actually, each of the three times I have gone abroad in the last eight years I have felt the same way: embarrassed at our wealth and our waste and our war… And our president. In truth, I don’t know anyone who loves this place more than I do, problems and all, but I guess that’s why I’m so disappointed in us at the moment. It was clear from day one at Terra Madre that America–and America’s food policy–has a disproportionate amount of influence on the rest of the world, and our influence has been an increasingly negative one in recent years. Still, Carlo Petrini’s even-handed speech made me feel hopeful and proud. It was refreshing to me to hear that although people around the world are angry at America (and rightfully so), they still believe in our potential for greatness and our ability to impact positive change across the globe. And speaking of change, it was quite clear who the world wants us to elect. I can’t tell you the number of folks who wanted to talk to me about Obama, which made me even prouder to live in a state that might just swing his way.
Anyhow, as these big ideas began to sink in, it struck me how lucky the Slow Food movement is to be guided by such great thinkers and powerful speakers. Call me a neophyte, but Vandana Shiva, whom I had somehow never heard of before Terra Madre, absolutely floored me during her opening ceremony speech on GMOs and big agriculture, during which she explicitly railed against American agribusiness giants like Monsanto. In the US regional meeting, Winona LaDuke gave us a powerful glimpse of the Native American perspective on Slow Food and GMOs and sacredness of certain crops. “We are not fighting to eat at Whole Foods,” she said, as she explained that we must care for our crops as if they are our family members, and they will care for us in return. Stressing the importance of cultural diversity alongside biodiversity, as did many others, she declared, “This movement cannot be a monocrop.” Though rushed for time due to earlier speakers running over their allotments, Will Allen and his daughter Erika Allen nevertheless gave a moving talk that echoed LaDuke’s sentiments about the need to diversify the movement, and they called for us to reach out to folks like the poor, urban African-Americans with whom they work. They explained yet another perspective on food and agriculture that I think is important for us to understand, which is that agriculture is a politically loaded endeavor that is often viewed unfavorably by the descendants of slaves and sharecroppers who fled Southern plantations for Northern cities in the twentieth century. Agriculture is often seen by those folks as a regression, and others are wary of Slow Food as an elitist white thing, to be frank. It’s just something most of us–and by “us” I generally mean middle to upper class white people–driving the movement here in the States don’t think about. For a lot of us, it just hasn’t been part our world.
In the end, what I took away were series of important questions: what are our goals? Whom are we serving? What can we do to be more effective? The most current rhetoric calls for inclusiveness regardless of race or income and declares the “right” to good, clean, and fair food at a price that works for both producers and consumers. The biggest question for me is, what can I do to help? There certainly were many inspiring models around me; I’ve just got to figure out how to apply some of what I learned there now that I’m back here.
I don’t know what it was like for the producer delegates, but the youth all agreed that we could feel the hope and enthusiasm pulsing through our segment of the delegation. Indeed, I came home inspired to do more and to do better in every part of my life, whether in my academic work, my political activism, my gardening, or my cooking, but also to find ways to make my work affect people’s lives for the better.
