Good, Clean, Fair

This entry was written in November 2006 after our return from the Slow Food, Terra Madre conference in Turin, Italy.  It was published in my Buffalo Horn Ranch, Newletter .  

Judy and I have just returned from three weeks in Italy and Germany.  We were honored to be nominated by Slow Food to attend the Terra Madre (Mother Earth) conference in Turin, Italy.  We attended representing the Bison Producers of Alberta and were amongst 5000 small scale, organic and natural food producers from 154 countries.  This was the United Nations of Food. We were brought together to share our experiences of small scale and traditional food production.  In this era of mass produced industrial food, genetically engineered organisms and and internationally homogeneous foods, we represented the traditional alternative.  We are in an time when more and more farming practices are decided in the board room and the laboratory is, unfortunately, becoming more important than the kitchen in preparing the food we eat.  For thousands of years small scale farmers have worked with the land, cultivating tens of thousands

of varieties of seeds and breeds of livestock suited to the local environment and working with mother earth to provide a healthy and sustainable food source and lifestyle for local communities.  Today the forces of globalization, large multinational food corporations, chemical companies and organizations like the World Trade Organization and the World Bank are dictating to the worlds farmers, the crops that they should grow and to the consumers of the world, what foods they should eat.  The motivation is no longer healthy and delicious food or sustainable agricultural practices, but quarterly profits for shareholders.  Small scale and traditional farmers around the world are under severe threat due to these trends.  Terra Madre was all about maintaining thousands of years of food traditions that result in food that is Good, Clean and Fair.  Good tasting, Clean of chemicals and other pollutants, and Fair as in fairly priced for the farmer who produced the food.  I will expand on what we learned at Terra Madre in future issues of the newsletter.  It was a honor attending this world meeting of food communities and we are obligated to share what we learned with you.