Terra Madre is an international network that regroups food communities every two years in an international conference. Terra Madre was founded in 2004 by Slow Food, in partnership with the city of Turin, Piedmont and the Italian Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Each community takes upon itself preserving the quality and diversity of local agriculture and food productions. Slow Food, as historian John Dickie describes it, is “an Italian project for world salvation through good food.” It strives to “combine the pleasure of good-tasting food with a deep-seated sense of responsibility in regard to the world environment and the agricultural production” (Website of the organization). This movement, once created in 1986 following the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in the historical center of Rome, regroups nowadays 100,000 members from over 150 countries.

 

The Italian cuisine, however, is often linked to its rich urban tradition, particularly given the fact that until the middle of the twentieth century, the rural populations were still relatively poorly fed. Furthermore, the richness of this cuisine emanates, on a large scale, from the multiple, secular influences, notably of the Arab World, France and the US, especially when talking of tomato, the iconic food component. Yet, these facts are only paradoxical on the face of it. The success of this movement comes as a result to the increase, since the 1970’s and 1980’s, of what historian Julian Csergo calls the “regional nostalgia.” In the Mediterranean Europe, which has been a scene of an industrial and agricultural revolution that has introduced food affluence after centuries of malnutrition, the globalization is accused of standardizing the world in favor of an American food model. The local products that are seen as “authentic” are considered therefore to be the flag bearers of history and regional identity, in addition to being a symbol of cultural resistance in the face of the so-designated industrial and urban modernity. It is from this focal point that Slow Food has raised the voice, claiming the high ground as a political, as well as gastronomic, movement.

 

-DICKIE John, Delizia! A culinary history of Italy « Delizia! Une histoire culinaire de l'Italie », Buchet Chastel, 2007.

-Siniscalchi Valeria, « Slow versus fast », Terrain, l-imaginaire-ecologique – The ecological imaginary (March 2013) « L'imaginaire écologique », [Online], posted online on March 12, 2013. URL : http://terrain.revues.org/15122. Consulté le 18 mars 2013.

-CSERGO Julia, Regional Nostalgia « Nostalgies du terroir », dans BESSIS Sophie (dir.), One Hundred and one mouths. Cuisines and cultural identities « Mille et une bouches. Cuisines et identités culturelles » Autrement, Coll. Mutations/Mangeurs, N°154, Paris, 1995.