The “slow food” movement may sound like a group for those who don't like to rush the dining experience, but in reality it is a world-wide network aimed at encouraging consumers to support local producers.
It currently has 83,000 members worldwide, and a Prince Edward Island chapter (actually called a Convivia) may soon be formed. With funding help from the Prince Edward Island ADAPT Council (which administers the Canadian Adaptation and Rural Development Fund in the province for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), Brian Turner attended Terra Madre – a World Meeting of Food Communities, held in Turin, Italy last October. Now the long-time National Farmers Union (NFU) member is working at establishing an Island presence for the movement.
“It was a fantastic conference and I had an opportunity to meet people from all over the world,” he said. “I have lots of ideas and now I am going to get some interested people together and figure out where we proceed from here.”
Turner explained the slow food chapter would help to expand on such current initiatives as farmers’ markets and the new beef processing plant in Albany by hopefully bringing local products to even more consumers.
He is hoping the slow food chapter would be able to convince supermarket chains to feature more Island-produced products, thereby ensuring increased markets and an improved bottom line for producers.
“The approach and philosophy of the slow food movement is such that contemporary and niche marketing of farm products can be diversified to maintain the farm, but also meet the growing desires and interests of consumers,” he said.
Founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986, Slow Food opposes the standardization of taste, defends the need for consumer information, protects cultural identities tied to food, safeguards foods and cultivation and processing techniques inherited from tradition and defends domestic and wild animal and vegetable species. Slow Food has offices in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the USA, France, Japan, and Great Britain.
The network of Slow Food members is organized into local groups coordinated by leaders who periodically organize courses, tastings, dinners and food and wine tourism, as well as promoting campaigns launched by the international association at a local level. More than 800 Convivia are active in 50 countries.
The movement also has its own publishing company and its own institution of higher learning in Italy – the University of Gastromic Sciences.
(This is one of a series of articles prepared by the Prince Edward Island Agricultural Awareness Committee and funded by the ADAPT Council and other partners to highlight new and innovative developments in the province's farming community.)