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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

One of the great joys of Salone del Gusto is the opportunity to have some real face time with some of the foods that in their vast numbers tend to overwhelm one in the exhibition halls. For an hour or so you can rest your feet, meet some producers, and learn about their wares.

Urban agriculture has been on my mind in recent years, so I was happy to see a series this year called Feeding the City, which offered panels from Berlin, Milan and Paris. I couldn’t make the Berlin one, but I had two very different experiences in the others.

Milan put on an excellent show. A panel representing Nutrire Milano (Nourishing Milan) explained the idea behind their project, which was to see if it was possible to feed the city with food from the local area, a maximum of 40 km from the city centre. They brought a variety of products that used such products as raw milk, fruits, vegetables, honey and cured meats.

Two young cheesemakers offered us some excellent ricotta and mozzarella, and some sublime aged (2 years) cheese made from Jersey milk.

Another youthful producer

who is learning sausage-making from his octogenarian grandparents introduced his salame (Filzetta – named for the casing),

Cotechino (normally served warm, but logistics dictated the circumstances)

and liver mortadella, which had been ground with mortar and pestle in a method used before mechanization.

He uses natural curing in his half-dozen varieties, which are made between September and April (not in the summer when it would be too warm).

The monks were cloistered, so couldn’t come to introduce the beers themselves. They are Benedictines, who learned the brewing methods from Trappists, and ferment the beers in the bottle (like champagne). We had an amber and a dark one

The maker of the goat cheese selection wasn’t there, but her handiwork was excellent.

We had two variations of Tronchetto, one coated in ash and the other a blue.

And one that had been aged in chestnut leaves.

Mauro the apiarist urged us to save some of the goat cheese for tasting with the honeys he’d brought, observing that the bitterest (chestnut) was excellent with aged and blue cheeses (he was quite right).

The honeys were (clockwise from the lower left): acacia, millefiore, tilia cordata (wild linden), castagno (chestnut), melata (honeydew). It was served with bread made from flour grown around Milan

and baked by Davide Longoni who pointed out the connection between the words pane (bread), padre (father) and fame (hunger). His bread is big and broad; the kind of food for which you need a table, company and good wine, he said. He said it was flawed but he was learning how to work with the flour – the know-how of working with local “extreme” flours (with little gluten) to make traditional breads has been lost – but he hopes one day to produce loaves he’s happy with.

The Paris tasting could not have been more different, in every possible way. A sell-out crowd gathered, each relieved of 40 euros for the privilege of being there to – as it turns out – drink some beer and cider

and (to be cruelly blunt) eat a bit of clear broth with half a charred onion floating in it.

It was good, but the experience left a definite bad taste in the mouth. Even the translation was crazy, after a commendably seamless week of simultaneous translation. Speakers said their bit in French; notes were taken and translated into Italian, which was then translated into English. Though we could pass the time looking at handsome slides from the handsome book that Michelin-starred chef Yannick Alléno

was flogging. Much was made by the panel host of the strikes in France and the difficulties of getting the panelists to their flights which had apparently been booked with odd timing that managed to cut the proceedings short. It is a shame the panelists hadn’t managed to pack a few more ingredients in their bags; I ended up feeling the same sense of rip-off that I have felt eating in Parisian restaurants. No, not all of them. But this was really no place to short-change your customers.

No “feed the city” sentiment at work here either. The young beerseller, SimonThillou (La Cave à Bulles) had knowledge and affection for the beers and ciders, Ok, admitting cliched expectation here but I was looking forward to a fleet of French wine, so the locally produced (from imported ingredients) beers and ciders – a bit sweet for my taste – from apples grown in the Isle de France, were disappointing.

And Samuel Nahon’s Terroirs d’Avenir caters mostly to high-level chefs like Alléno. So how commendible is it to source local (Isle de France) artisanal product for a niche and exclusive market? Not sure; not (as I grumble) that we saw much of it. He declined to expound on difficulties he’d encountered, and simply explained that he’s providing a guaranteed market for low yield or “ugly” but delicious fruits and vegetables, and giving Parisians a chance to taste foods known by their grandparents. He does sell to the public somewhat spontaneously in “marchés éphemères” (pop-up markets) as well.

Info and action – www.cban.ca/474

PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release

Conservatives Shut Down Debate on Biotech Harm to Farmers

Parliamentary hearings cancelled to protect biotechnology corporations

October 28, 2010, Ottawa – Today, House of Commons Agriculture Committee hearings on Private Members Bill C-474 – dealing with the issue of genetic engineering – were cancelled and invited witnesses were turned away because, last night, Conservative Members of Parliament voted down a motion to extend debate on the Bill. The motion to extend the debate by 30 days was defeated by just 4 votes.

Bill C-474 would support farmers by requiring that “an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.”

“The Conservatives ended the debate in order to protect the biotech industry from any more scrutiny,” said Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. “This Bill spurred the first real debate in Parliament over the negative impacts of genetically engineered crops and that’s why Conservatives shut it down.”

“The vote to extend the hearings should have been an uncontroversial procedural matter but the Conservatives made a calculated political move to save biotech corporations like Monsanto from the spotlight,” said Sharratt. “The debate was exposing the reality that some genetically engineered crops can cause serious economic harm to farmers and the Canadian economy, and our government currently has no legislative way to stop economically harmful GE crops.” Farmers are at risk when GE crops are commercialized in Canada without also being first approved in our major export markets.

This morning’s Agriculture Committee hearings were cancelled and National Farmers Union President Terry Boehm, who was invited by the Committee to testify, was turned away. Boehm traveled from Saskatchewan and planned to speak in favour of the Bill. Many more witnesses, including other farm leaders, will now not have a chance to present to the Committee. The Committee has already heard strong testimony in support of Bill C-474 from organizations representing conventional alfalfa growers. The growers are predicting that Monsanto’s GE alfalfa will harm their markets. “The debate was making it increasingly harder to justify a position against the Bill,” said Sharratt.

The final vote on the Bill could be called within weeks. The Bill was introduced by Alex Atamanenko, the NDP Agriculture Critic and MP for British Columbia Southern Interior.

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For more information: Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, 613 241 2267 ext 6; cell: 613 263 9511 coordinator@cban.ca

I paid a fleeting visit to a session on GMOs, functional foods and nutraceuticals, both areas of concern for Slow Food, whose No-GMO campaign was visible during the week.

A few snippets:

Marcello Buiatti:

• more is spent on marketing than researching GMO products;
• GMO is a technology of failure, because only 4 plants have been successfully modified since 1987, and these use the same processing methods as the nineties, so no advancement in the ten years 1997 to 2000;
• plants evolve in ways that GMO do not; there is the same cross contamination between regulatory bodies and biotech firms in Europe as there is in the US, for example the marketing manager for Syngenta came from the European agency responsible for risk analysis and testing of GMOs.
• the “3 sisters” (why the feminization?) Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta with the other five (including Pioneer, Hasbro, Sogeti) control most of the seed companies in the world, and have made alliances with pharmaceutical companies who develop fungicides;
• and that Monsanto earns more from royalties than it does from plants and seeds.

Manuela Giovannetti from the University of Pisa spent some time explaining the “substantial equivalence” myth

which has been contested since the nineties, and yet is still in use to allow GMOs into our countries. There are many other sources of information which call into question the science upon which the policies pursued by governments are based. And with that I had to flee to a tasting, about which more another time.

Paid an even briefer visit to the Earth Workshop on organic and biodynamic farming, which was underway when I arrived.

I caught some discussion of a 21-year study (1977-1998) in Switzerland which compared organic, biodynamic and conventional farming methods using 7 year crop rotations. The study was funded by government rather than multinationals, a dangerously rare situation nowadays. According to the speaker, the soil fertility findings were of particular interest because biodynamics came out far ahead of any other method, showing an increase in soil fertility, which he attributed to biodynamic methods of composting. The trials showed organic methods caused a drop in soil fertility of 10% over the 21 years; conventional methods, using chemicals as well as manure, dropped soil fertility 8%, and conventional using only artificial inputs dropped 15% while biodynamics increased soil fertility 1% (after an initial drop of 4%).

Friday’s workshop on “Ensuring food diversity and safety in Europe” had some sponsorship from the EU’s Directorate-General for Health & Consumers. If I understood correctly, this was the first year that EU delegates came to join the discussions at Terra Madre, and they were well placed to respond to concerns – long publicised in the media and elsewhere – that EU regulations are out to destroy traditional foods in Europe.

Eric Poudelet was first up, talking about food safety. He cited a figure of about 4000 declared instances of “food intoxications” – estimating the total with undeclared instances could be more like 2 million (for the EU’s 500 million population). The EU’s response to the major food problems of the nineties (BSE, Belgium’s dioxin contamination, etc) was a white paper on food safety in 2000, which proposed some 80 food actions to assure “farm to table” safety, including traceability of feed and food, and risk control measures. (This led to the creation of the European Food Safety Authority, whose mandate includes food and feed safety, nutrition, animal health and welfare, plant protection and plant health.)

He denied that Brussels aims to kill of traditional food products, maintaining that they believe it’s possible to prepare traditional food products while respecting hygiene rules. Member states are responsible for developing and administering appropriate hygiene procedures in line with EU guidelines.

Poudelet said that the EU wanted to stimulate the use of raw milk, one of the most important ingredients of great food in Europe, and the guidelines were adaptable to this and other traditional methods and ingredients. So for example although stainless steel is preferable for mixing foods – including meats – wood or copper can be allowed if these are important to traditional methods of preparation. Protected designation of origin, which protects these exceptions, does not cover all varieties of foods, but it may be extended to cover products that are currently excluded. So that’s hopeful.

Academic Jean-Pierre Poulain, who teaches sociology and anthropology at the University of Toulouse, spoke next about the importance of traditional foods in European culture. He talked about urbanization, and the food traditions that have moved on and off the land with the people moving to cities; he noted that “peasants” are still few but vocal, and they should be heard as we work out how to feed the world.

He went on to discuss some of the shifts in the world of food; how it’s becoming more and more “medical”. Though it’s true we have more treatable medical conditions than ever before, we can view food as one of the factors in both cause and prevention. There are new challenges to improve the quality of our food as we grow older.

Food is also becoming more “legalized”: many laws and regulations try to govern traceability and safety, and lead to prosecutions. We may not all be victims taking our complaints to the courts, but the legal profession is getting actively involved (he gave the example of Erin Brockovich), and this further distances people from food.

Food is also “politicized” through protests against industrial food systems; the north/south divide and dialogue over access to food; climate change and carbon emissions; and the “buycott vs boycott” effect for marketing ethical, fair trade and local foods.

Food heritage is also on the table: in principle at least, the UN is willing to admit culinary traditions to its intangible heritage lists, which register for protection “practices, representations, and expressions, and knowledge and skills which are transmitted from generation to generation and which provide communities and groups with a sense of identity and continuity.” (Although food traditions that relate to the activities that have been approved for the list are often included, no culinary tradition on its own has yet been approved, as far as I’m aware, though France and Mexico have both tried and been rejected twice.)

Poulain ended with a brief analysis of the issues around animals, and the two poles of concern: anthropomorphism (Bambi syndrome) vs idealization of the natural, neither of which is helpful when addressing the full scale of the place of meat animals in a world struggling to feed itself equitably. What planet do we choose to leave to our children, he asked, and what fairness can be found between north-south and urban-rural divides?

One other speaker I’ll mention was Daniele Rossi, the project coordinator for Truefood which has 11 member organizations (Federalimentaire is the Italian one; there is no UK representation) representing some 35,000 small to medium European food and drink businesses. Because most research into food safety and technological innovation is done for large-scale enterprises, Truefood aims to find applicability for smaller ones, and to help them tap into food safety initiatives and technological innovations, as well as better understand consumer perceptions and improve marketing and supply chain development. In other words, it seemed to me, to make small companies act more like big ones. It left me wondering how helpful that really was when the economic might of the multinationals overhangs us all; might it not just prepare the small fish to be more easily digested by the large?

Small-scale traditional food production is a massive segment of the European economy: in Italy alone about two-thirds of the national sales turnover is in traditional foods. Europe-wide, some 300,000 small/medium sized producers, most family-owned, typically with fewer than 20 employees, account for 4.4 million jobs. When you consider the numbers, that’s a lot of clout, but it’s fragmented and dispersed throughout the continent; on the other side of the balance are the 30 large multinationals. And we know what their aims are.

There has been a lot of discussion this week about the skewed reality we’re living, where economics has overwhelmed humanity, and left us a more brutal world to live in. More on that in the next post.

If I had a few more lifetimes I would have gone to a few more workshops – can’t imagine how many there were at Terra Madre, with 8 meeting rooms, a Lingua Madre space and a Slow Food Projects Meeting room; plus two auditoria for larger gatherings. And then the many tasting events occuring simultaneously.

One hopeful session I went to was about sustainable education

where Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef (author of Human Scale Development) rocked the room with frank views on the economic, social and political context in which we’re living. Decision-makers, he said, are letting us down: political action can only come from the bottom up. For all the talk of an improved economy, nobody mentions the people: are we all five percent happier now? His vision for new economies, coherent with the problems of today have five aspects:

1. Economies serve people rather than people serving economies;
2. Development is about people, not objectives;
3. Growth is not the same as development; growth doesn’t require development;
4. Economics cannot ignore ecology;
5. Economics are a subsystem of a larger system, the biosphere, so infinite growth is impossible.

His bottom line: under no circumstances can economic interests be above reverence for life. The most developed society, he says, is the one where its people have the best quality of life; where growth can be measured by whether you are happier next year than this. Yet the more stupid a society becomes, he says, the more it consumes, and that is what economists mean by growth. He points to problems in how economists have been trained, with utter disregard for the ecosystem. It is easily apparent that the contributions by the ecosystem to this planet are many time more annually than global GDP, but economists value them as zero.

Alice Waters was on the panel as well and explained that she came to start the Edible Schoolyard program because she had been a Montessori teacher before she went into restaurants. It is a principle of Montessori teaching that if you can engage children at the table and in the kitchen, you can open their sense and give them the values that will allow them to become good stewards of the earth. Although this teaching is aimed at young children, the American food system was so broken that she aimed her program at teens, middle school kids. First they made the garden, and then built a kitchen, but the aim was to take over the cafeteria.

Her dream is to achieve funding to feed American kids at school, to help the economy (fair pay for local farmers), tackle obesity and nutritional deficiencies (by serving nutritious, delicious food at school), change the social order (kids involved in food and cooking spend time in communal kitchens rather than watching tv, and spend money on food instead of cell phones and computer games) and help the environment (kids involved in growing their own food understand and care about where it comes from).

In what was one of many examples I heard that were sad reminders about the shameful social atrocity visited upon the Canadian prison system, she spoke briefly about Catherine Sneed, whose horticulture program in San Francisco County Jail, growing vegetables on prison land that were then donated to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, was so successful it spawned a sort of halfway garden for released inmates, The Garden Project.

Many participants got up to share their experiences and projects; it is these exchanges that prove the world is not yet bereft of hope, energy and positive action. Some of these extraordinary initiatives that Terra Madre delegates are working on include

• the Manor House Agricultural Centre in Kitale, Kenya, where high school students are offered a biointensive agriculture course, basically relearning what their grandparents knew, with an emphasis on building soil fertility and growing and saving seeds in low-input, low technology farming methods;
• a Colombian program to teach nutrition and food safety to youth and students in agro/ecological schools;
• an open slaughterhouse (s-laughterhouse, he called it) in Virginia, to teach people where their meat comes from, and the difference between industrial and small-scale slaughter of meat animals;
• school gardens in Romanian highschools, where students visit farmers and bakers and learn to make their own bread; as well as gastronomic summer camps where Unisg and community trainers teach international students about everything from cheese production, nutrition and herbs to biodiversity and food processing.;
• a series of 60 national Venezuelan programs that bring veterinarians and others to teach principles of sustainable development to farmers and young people, to break the idea that knowledge is sequestered only in universities;
• Argentinian initiativesthat bring chefs into impoverished areas to give cooking classes (and learn themselves about traditional food preparation methods from the elders they meet there); and over 30 growth centres funded by the government that teach organic methods of home-growing vegetables;
• a former Unisg graduate from Brooklyn has started a Good Food Jobs website (overwhelmingly American at this point but perhaps that will change) and asks anyone working in this area to contribute stories about grassroots change: what are you working at that is making positive change to food?
• another Argentinian initiative, the Argentinian Movement for Organic Farming, a nonprofit that educates farmers and provides support and produces new knowledge about farming methods;
• an Argentinian who was so empowered by learning about prison gardens in California that she started a program in Argentina; the first year there were four people involved but the interest this engendered by other inmates expanded it to 40 participants, who could grow food for themselves, to support their families at home, and to feed their fellow inmates. As they moved to different institutions they brought their knowledge and interest with them and the program is expanding in a holistic way throughout the prison system;
• a school project in Istanbul that seeks to restore the connections lost between urban and rurual life, through interactive lessons in the classroom on seasonal eating, and fair and ethical production and consumption. The program also includes taste and sensory education and cooking lessons; they are planning school gardens but there is no space within the urban schools so they are seeking community spaces for these;
• a German university initiative teaching students at the University of Hohenheim about food growing and environmental safety, as well as providing an open space where students can watch or participate in cooking food from the university’s food garden or from local farmers; as well as an academic program to combine agricultural science and ethics to teach about areas such as land grabbing.