Take a leaf from Carlo’s wild garden
Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini is in SA to put the taste back into food, writes Andrew Unsworth
SOUTH Africans, and especially young people, must act now to reclaim and protect their agricultural and culinary heritage, according to Carlo Petrini, founder of the global Slow Food movement, which is changing attitudes to food and heritage in more than 170 countries.
He is visiting South Africa at the invitation of the Slow Food movement in Johannesburg and Cape Town, which aims to create 10 000 food gardens in the country.
In a message that will resonate with those fighting for land rights, Petrini, 67, said it was essential to protect and encourage subsistence farmers, and the unique crops and species they used.
“The future of agriculture is small-scale producers.”
He said it was also important to protect ways of cooking that had been adapted to a country.
Petrini started the movement 30 years ago in reaction to the opening of the first McDonald’s outlet in Italy. It is now a global movement working for the eradication of hunger and the protection of biodiversity, while giving people access to good, fair and clean food. It also focuses on returning people to traditional cooking, and deriving pleasure from food.
Petrini said the reduction in agricultural biodiversity, in plant and animal species, was a threat to the future of humanity.
“It is a crime against the future,” he said, calling for a peaceful revolution against modern farming practices.
“This is not an archaeological operation to conserve the past; this is a new modernity using new technology to preserve the best and create a different economic pattern for food production. We need to start a pacific revolution and we need a lot of young people to go in with energy, to give dignity to the heritage of this country. Take back the pride in your territory.”
Petrini encourages community and farmers’ markets, as by cutting out transport costs both farmers and consumers benefit, while food quality improves. He said that although they might start out as elite, organic markets in rich suburbs, they soon spread to other communities.
He is visiting food gardens in Soweto and Cape Town and said the examples he saw in Kenya and Tanzania before coming to South Africa were “fantastic”.
“It is a miracle in the villages and schools. Organic food is not just for people with money.”
The local gardens will work to save Africa’s biodiversity and supply communities with food. The aim is also to create a network of young leaders who are aware of the value of their land.
The movement has drawn up an “Ark of Taste” to “save the planet of flavours . . . from the flood of industrial uniformity”.
It lists species and products that are unique to a country and should be protected.
The local “convivium” of the movement has so far listed 40 of those unique to South Africa (from the mokopana or African horned cucumber to Zulu rainbow maize and sheep) and plans to add 30 by September.
Petrini is delighted, saying if Italy has 700 such products, South Africa should have far more.
People should share seed to preserve their cultivars, he said, and not depend on commercial seeds. He is scathing about the effect of multinationals on farming, seed supply and food manufacture.
“Today, 80% of seed in the world is controlled by five multinationals. We must protect our indigenous seed. When 100% of seed is controlled by multinationals, agriculture will be over.
“We don’t want our indigenous agriculture polluted by [genetically modified] products. We have a right to gardening, and communities have a right to it.”
For Petrini, the environment and good food are inextricably linked, and in the past 50 years food has lost its value.
“Any gastronome who is not an environmentalist is stupid, and any environmentalist who is not a gastronome is sad.”
Has he ever tasted a McDonald’s burger?
He threw up his hands: “No,” he said, in the most emphatic Italian.
We must protect our indigenous seed. When 100% of seed is controlled by multinationals, agriculture will be over