Terra Madre 2010 > journalist stories

George’s camera
07 Oct 2010 – ‘THIS is a negative from my grandfather George’s Minolta 110. He passed away about a decade ago and the film was left in the camera with two shots remaining. Natural curiousity led me to get the film processed and, as it was too degraded by time to get a decent print, scanned. That’s him on the right on picture 4. The picture was probably taken around 1980. Anyway most of my shots of Terra Madre will be taken with a Nikon D700 (when it gets here) but I managed to get some 110 film (it’s the skinny cassette style film from the 70s) and so I’ll take George’s Minolta along and take some photos. The son of a Bulgarian immigrant, he settled and cleared our family farm in the middle of nowhere (Muntadgin) in the 1920s. I think he would have liked the idea of conference in Italy dedicated to farmers.’

– Anthony Georgeff
editor, spice magazine
Fremantle, Western Australia

The mathematics of food
09 Nov 2010 – IT is safe to assume that Australian agriculture will always ride on export-orientated commodity food production. The mathematics of producing food enough for 60 million in a country of 21 million says so. At the same time, it would be a mistake for agricultural policy to be only geared for this outcome. The possibilities of small-scale, high-quality food and fibre production are large: greater diversification of land use, more return per hectare, more people on the land, more jobs, a broader base for agricultural produce. All of these tantalising prospects were on show at Terra Madre, the Slow Food gathering of small producers and those who use their products, and the associated food exhibition Salone del Gusto – a display of food and production prowess that really earned the accolade of ‘awesome’.

Salami from pigs that free-range in a certain forest; oysters from a bay in Scotland; cheeses produced from a few hectares of a special mountain pasture; coffee harvested wild from Ethiopian forests. Salone del Gusto shows that there are more ways to produce food, in more places, than most of us have ever thought of. Australia could seize this concept of small-scale ‘artisan’ production and make it a part of its landscapes. We are uniquely endowed with micro-climates, from alpine to desert to tropics, and with technical know-how.

We don’t have the traditions that have incrementally shaped the foods of older countries over centuries, but as we have shown with wine and cheese, that doesn’t have to be an impediment. We can take the best of the old and create the best of the new. But this concept falls apart under the notion of free trade. Australia’s faithfulness to the principles of free trade have served it well in commodity food production – despite the faithlessness of others’ interpretation of free trade – but the concept of trading on price alone can’t build communities of small scale farmers.

With our farm sector haemorrhaging under a range of issues – food and currency price swings, climatic challenges, an ageing farmer population and unfair ‘free trade’ – it’s a good time for Australia to think about how it builds a diverse, resilient domestic food system that adheres to the Slow Food principles of ‘good, clean and fair’.

One challenge would be re-educating Australian consumers about value, especially when it comes to ’good’ and ‘fair’. But the biggest issue would be confronting a trading system that allows – to take one instance – inferior bleached Chinese garlic to dominate our supermarket shelves when we are capable of producing outstanding garlic ourselves. And to allow local production to flourish in a way that doesn’t harm our international markets for meat, milk, grain and wool. It would be a tightrope act, but necessary, if we take the Slow Food approach and consider food production not just as another contributor to gross domestic product, but as a driver of environmental and social as well as economic outcomes.

Australia needs two food production systems: one that operates on the international market, and is built around economies of scale; and a purely domestic system that is protected from globalised economics and built to serve the health and welfare of Australians and our environment. Naïve? Maybe. But the economic, ecological and social trend lines associated with our current agricultural systems suggest that we need a good, clean and fair alternative.

Matthew Cawood
Journalist, Rural Press
Terra Madre media representative, writing in Stock & Land
> muddygreen.com.au

Australian plate, Australian palate
24 October 2010 – ‘AS a farmer, you can only develop things in partnership with the consumer: you can’t make a great product and have no-one buy it,’ says (Tasmanian) Matthew Evans. ‘In Australia, for the first time in a few generations, we have producers in contact with consumers through farmers’ markets. The markets cut out the fact that a farmer who gets eight cents a kilo for their onions sees them in the supermarket for $2 per kilogram. If you can put produce in front of people that is the same or cheaper than a supermarket, but still get a good margin, it puts food in front of people at the same or lower price than conventional food distribution – and they get to meet the grower and give them feedback.’

The 2010 Salone del Gusto food exhibition in Turin was ‘gobsmackingly good’, in Matthew’s estimation, but he doesn’t see why Australians can’t develop their own gobsmackingly good food culture.

‘As a nation that’s suddenly getting very excited about food and where it comes from and how it’s produced, we’d be mad not to take all this knowledge and use it,’ he says. ‘We won’t necessarily make ham the way Italians make ham, but we can learn how they’ve done it and adapt it to the Australian palate.’

Among other things, going down the Slow Food route might restore farmers to what Matthew views as their rightful place in the scheme of things.

‘(Slow Food founder) Carlo Petrini said the people who matter the most – the farmers, the old people with traditional knowledge – get the least press, because they are the least sexy. So who do we turn to? Some celebrity chef. And yet here are these people out in the rain and the sun, producing great food, and they get no recognition for what they are trying to do. But they are the ones performing miracles.’

– Matthew Evans
Rare breeds small goods producer, Cygnet, Tasmania
Terra Madre producer delegate, interviewed by Rural Press journalist Matthew Cawood

Food is work
22 Nov 2010 – I WENT along to Terra Madre as press or STAMPA, as my badge said. It was kind of appropriate as I spent my days at Terra Madre stamping  around with several kilos of stuff slung around me chasing delegates, workshops, events, wi-fi and mostly just my own tail. I couldn’t help but feel a little removed from the farmers, artisans, chefs, educators and community workers that made up the shared interests of Terra Madre, but as with birds and feathers, I managed to find another journo. In this case, a freelancer from my ancestral homeland of Bulgaria who spoke Bulgarian, Spanish, Italian, French and English and didn’t mind translating. It was this that freed me from the communicative limitations of a few uncertain words and smiley thumbs up (which may have been offensive in several of the 150 or so countries represented) around the celebration of small producers and the Presidia food that was on display at Salone del Gusto.

All food is work and that work is in the tasting but it’s language that makes the link to the person and gives us their stories. The place they came from and how they came to be there. A small pile of beans is a pile of beans  but its actually there because the person who grew them had no idea how many he’d sell and had to go and get some back off a customer to be able to show them for the rest of the event. I could gladly go back to the 1600 bottle Enoteca but the real unsated feeling I left with was that I never talked to nearly enough people.

– Anthony Georgeff
editor, spice magazine
Fremantle, Western Australia