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Slow Food International - Sloweb.
(((Carlo Petrini:)))
(...)
Back in 2004, few of us imagined that things would evolve as swiftly as they have. Nor did we imagine the havoc that is being wrought all round the world or an economic crisis that is throttling sociality, people’s daily lives and politics.
We’ll remember 2008, most of all, because, in the first part of the year, it was demonstrated that multilateralism doesn’t work. The FAO meeting acknowledged that the goal of halving the number of malnourished and starving people in the world was and is not achievable. On the contrary, the number of those who suffer from hunger and malnutrition is about to top the billion mark. That means one person on the planet out of every six. This is an epoch-making debacle and it is happening because all the rich countries put together have failed to keep up their annual contribution of 30 billion dollars. To think that, over the last fortnight alone, they’ve managed to put together 2,000 billion dollars to help banks in distress on account of crooked finance! They couldn’t come up with 30 billion a year, but they forked out 2,000 in a fortnight. In the face of this, we shouldn’t just protest, we should have the pride to show our outrage.
If the FAO summit failed, so did the WTO summit. It’s no coincidence that the greatest discord was over duties on foodstuffs. The powerful just don’t seem to be able to come to an agreement over the food question. They agree over other things, they meet hurriedly to save the ailing economy, but they fail to do anything constructive about food. In mid-2008, after speculating on the homes of poor people, on energy and on oil, what many have defined as ‘creative finance’—but what I think of as crooked finance—ultimately decided to speculate on food and foodstuffs. In next to no time, the price of rice, grain, and corn rose fivefold, with a string of repercussions across the planet.
We Italians spend 15 percent of our income on eating, but in many countries they spend 50, 60 and, in some cases, 80 percent. The impact can be catastrophic in some countries: hence the number of malnourished has increased by 100 million in one year alone, and in 50 countries there has been rioting over the right to food. Now the speculative bubble has burst. Speculation on houses, oil and food has fallen flat. The crisis is now systemic. The whole economic system is suffering a memorable defeat. People who think this is a passing crisis are wrong. It is a profound one and it is going to last for many years to come.
This is a moment in time in which many of us are feeling mixed sentiments. (...)
"Many people view the local dimension condescendingly. They say your products are too small, too marginal. In actual fact, joined as one, all you small-scale producers arguably form the biggest food multinational of all. You don’t produce standardization or leveling out, you don’t produce pollution or poverty. You produce wealth, diversity, exchange, conservation of memory and progress. This is the value of the local economy.
Your economy is the most modern thing in the world today. To all those who, in good faith, view Terra Madre as a pacific meeting of poor, marginal humanity, as if you here were representatives of a world of losers, I say: you haven’t understood a thing. Such people have failed to grasp that here is where the future is being played out, Insofar as it’s you who represent the huge mass of the world’s farming classes and villages. Half the population of the world today.
Farmers and peasants will be the leading players of the third industrial revolution, which will start in your villages, your businesses and your countryside. The first industrial revolution with the steam engine and the second with electricity both used fossil materials. The third industrial revolution will be the revolution of clean and sustainable energy. It will set out from the countryside because agriculture is the only human activity based on photosynthesis. For centuries farmers have been able to worked thanks to the sun, so I exhort you to develop and use clean, renewable energy. Produce solar and wind energy and energy from anything else you can come up with to produce wealth for your businesses and for your families.
This is the new deal of tomorrow. Get in touch with anybody you know who is working in this direction. To the many managers in the audience who wish to work in the field of sustainable energy, I say: ‘Go and pick the brains of farmers and peasants’. They know how to reuse materials, they have a close relationship with the land, they waste nothing. They already have plenty of the know-how it takes for the new revolution, the one that, to some extent, will characterize the revival of the real economy.
You should be proud of yourselves. You represent the world’s diversity, the greatest wealth of all, the finest resource of all, a guarantee for the future of humanity....
