Deep Roots

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When Slow Food started designing this gathering, it found

that it needed new words. The expression ‘rural community’

was not adequate to define the basic unit of an event such

as Terra Madre. Only in some parts of the world do rural

communities perform all the functions involving a food

product, from its production to final sale. But you can find

sustainable food everywhere. How do things work when a

rural community doesn’t exist? In countries where an individ-

ual, not the community, is at centre stage, how can sustainable

food make its way through all the necessary steps?

The term ‘chain’ also seemed inadequate. It refers to the

technical and production context conceived as a whole and

involves a single person being aware of all the various stages.

But very often there isn’t explicit cooperation between the

various groups making up a sustainable food chain.

A food community consists of people who may do differ-

ent tasks, live in different places and experience different

conditions (levels) of development. But they are all part of

a community since their activities are performed with the

same purpose, sharing the same values and with the same

objectives. When a shepherd sells milk to a cheese-maker

who supplies cheese to a restaurant owner, these people are

a community even if they do not actually know each other.

Real food, which is good for everyone, moves from the

person cultivating, to the person transforming, the person

cooking and the person eating, without forgetting the one

who researches, communicates, promote and educates. It

is good for the earth in which it takes root and grows, it

is good for the water and the air which feed it and the sun

which keeps it alive. It is everyone’s and everything’s food.

And this is how we come to the redefinition of quality

using the criteria of good, clean and fair. Good in taste and

cultural terms, considering a culturally rooted taste or a

‘trained’ one; clean in terms of environment and health;

fair in terms of rights and respect for people and animals.

The strength of this message lies in the fact that it doesn’t

choose between the three options, but states that the concept

of quality cannot be reductive, it must necessarily be complex

and embody other concepts and values without hierarchical

priorities. It is, we want to repeat it, a matter of relationships.

Image: Paolo Andrea Montanaro

The main aims of family farming are to feed the family and animals, maintain soil fertility and create a pleasant and diverse landscape

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