In 1986 Carlo Petrini founded the organization Slow Food to resist the opening of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Three years later, in 1989, delegates from 15 countries gathered in Paris signed the founding manifesto of the international Slow Food movement.
As the name itself indicates, Slow Food was born to promote an alternative to “fast food”, and to strive to preserve traditional and regional cuisine, in part by encouraging the farming of plants and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. Local food is the core of centuries-old traditions of gastronomy, which the industrialization and globalization of food production were destroying.
Terra Madre is a network of food communities launched by Slow Food to support small-scale food producers committed to producing quality food in a responsible, sustainable way.
Nowadays Slow Food has expanded to include over 100,000 members with branches in over 150 countries, and Terra Madre has more than 2,000 food communities around the world.
Both parts of the organization bring together academics, cooks, consumers and youth groups to improve the food system.
Since 2004 Terra Madre has held a major biennial conference in Torino, Italy, to promote discussion and introduce innovative concepts in the field of food, gastronomy, globalization, and economics.
Hosting the event is the Salone del Gusto, Hall of Taste, the world’s largest food and wine fair, organized by Slow Food in the pavilions of the Lingotto Fair in Torino. The Salone del Gusto also takes place every two years in October. The Terra Madre conference and the Salone del Gusto food fair are perfectly complementary and become more powerful one through the other.
At the latest conference, Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto presented food stories from all over the world. It could be compared to an Olympics of food, where individuals who are passionate about good, healthy, and fair food gather and have the opportunity to discover each country’s and region’s unique local products and cuisines, especially highlighting Slow Food’s Ark of Taste and Presidia projects to preserve rare and endangered foods and food practices.
Thousands of small-scale producers demonstrate the extraordinary diversity of food products and preparations. Participants attend lectures, taste workshops, cooking classes, and discussions where they can experience good food and expand their understanding of the impacts of our eating and consumption habits on the welfare of the planet’s people, animals, and ecosystems. Through taste education, Salone del Gusto not only spoils us with amazing flavors, but also brings us closer together as a world wide community and makes us understand in a tangible way what is discussed in Terra Madre workshops and presentations.
This year, from the 23rd to the 27th of October the events brought together more than 1,000 exhibitors from 130 countries, including over 300 Slow Food Presidia, chefs, farmers, fishers, eaters, authors, advocates, academics, artisans, international representatives from wine and gastronomy, and Slow Food’s network of small-scale producers and food communities on six continents.
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