TERRA Australis will bring together indigenous people, farmers, cooks, chefs, young people and academics in an Australian edition of Terra Madre. Terra Australis will explore the challenges and opportunities faced by traditional food and farming communities across this vast continent.
In April 2009, the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture produced an important new manifesto on the future of traditional knowledge. After producing manifestos on the future of food, on seeds and on climate change, the Commission – instigated in 2003 by the president of Italy’s Tuscany Regional Authority Claudio Martini and Slow Food international vice-president Vandana Shiva – looked to traditional knowledge as a source of food heritage and sustainability.
‘We are very aware how traditional ancestral knowledge about food is seriously endangered, together with biodiversity, ecosystems and the cultures which have been moulded by them over the centuries,’ says Slow Food international president Carlo Petrini. ‘This knowledge is of fundamental importance. It has too often been dismissed as non-scientific and of minor significance but in fact it describes a harmonious relationship with nature, showing us how to produce food sustainably and use resources in ways that respect limits. It tells us about practices, such as using renewable energies or recycling, which are extremely relevant in our current critical situation. So I firmly believe that the food communities will be key players in a third industrial revolution focused on clean production, and that they still have a lot to teach us.’
With its extraordinary pre-European history, Slow Food in Australia – through Terra Australis and its associated project, Bush know-how – seeks to include Aboriginal people to build an equal and respectful dialogue between traditional knowledge, current food cultures and production practies and official science so that it can receive the dignity it deserves and its survival can be assured.
‘Traditional food communities teach us that remembering also means caring,’ says Petrini. ‘The manifesto on the future of traditional knowledge aims to introduce the new concept of knowledge sovereignty, similar to food sovereignty, so that communities have the inalienable right to practice, pass down and evolve their traditional knowledge, while respecting their identity and culture without anyone being able to interfere. This is another fundamental civil achievement which the Terra Madre food communities and the Slow Food network can proudly present to the world.’
Register your interest
- Slow Food in Australia proposes to stage the first edition of Terra Australis in 2010-2011
- You can register your inerest in helping to plan or participating in this event
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