What happens when 5000 farmers, breeders, fisherman, and traditional food producers from 130 countries get together with 1000 chefs and 400 academics from around the world? As a freelance writer, food activist, and President of Slow Food in the Tetons, I will find out when Slow Food International’s worldwide food community meetingTerra Madre 2006 convenes in Turin, Italy, on October 26, 2006. I will be joining prominent leaders in all areas of sustainable agriculture including David Masumoto, a peach farmer in Del Rey, California, Jim Gerritsen, an organic potato grower in Aroostook County, Maine, and chefs Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Judy Wicks of White Dog Café in Philadelphia, PA.

Terra Madre 2006 will be the largest international gathering of small-scale farmers and food producers in history, and will provide a forum for producers whose traditional methods and ways of life are threatened by an industrialized world food supply. Terra Madre is based on the concept of the food community- the long chain of people involved in bringing the food from the field to the table. The traditional farmers and producers who provide the raw ingredients, the chefs who transform them, and the academic researchers who study them will convene to discuss how to make environmentally sound, socially just, quality small-scale food production possible. Terra Madre will run concurrently with Salone del Gusto, an international fair dedicated to high quality artisan food from around the world.

I am honored and thrilled be accepted as an observer at this event. At times, though, I wonder “Why me?” Do I have the right qualifications? Yes, I realize, Terra Madre is for me, for my community. I am the one living in rural Idaho surrounded by Mormon potato farmers who love the agrarian lifestyle but no longer can make a living. I’m the one trying to convince the grocery stores that buying organic produce from a warehouse in Los Angeles defeats the purpose of organic. And I’m the one digging up purple carrots on my hands and knees every Friday morning at our local CSA. I’m the one longing for good goat cheese that doesn’t come across the country in a small plastic wrapper. I’m the one who cries five times when I see the award-winning documentary Troublesome Creek about the downfall of a family farm in Iowa. I’m not a famous chef, an artisan food producer or a wine expert. I’m someone living in the middle of the American Farm crisis, I am terrified by the obesity epidemicand McDonaldization of our food supply, I love to cook, travel and eat, and I am desperate to help save what little cultural diversity has thus far survived globalization.

I will be going to Italy representing the rural communities of Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming where tourism and development are rampant and farming families who have lived on this land for over a century are giving up and selling out. I will be investigating solutions to challenges faced by small farmers throughout the world and exploring innovative approaches for a sustainable future. I applied for a grant from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole to help pay for my travel expenses to this event. They turned me down saying they just couldn’t see how one person going to a conference could make a difference in the out-of-control development in Teton Valley. I am off on a mission to prove them wrong.

For more information
Slow Food International
Slow Food USA
Terra Madre
Salone del Gusto