Imposing industrial farming systems on traditional agricultural economies is actively destroying both biological and social capital and eliminating the cultural identity which has its roots in working on the land. It is also fuelling the frightening acceleration of urbanization throughout the world and removing large parts of humanity from meaningful contact with Nature and the food that they eat.
So this "flight from the land" is happening in both developed and developing countries. Unfortunately, these trends towards urbanization are almost inevitable while societies throughout the world continue to put a low valuation on their food, denigrate food to the status of fuel and abandon any loyalty to their local and indigenous farmers.
But there is another consequence too. There is now a growing body of evidence that suggests that in the so-called developed world we are in the process of creating a nutritionally impoverished underclass - a generation which has grown up on highly processed fast food from intensive agriculture and for whom the future looks particularly bleak, both from a social and a health standpoint.
As Eric Schlosser has pointed out in his brilliant book "Fast Food Nation", fast food is a recent phenomenon. The extraordinary centralization and industrialization of our food system has occurred over as little as twenty years. Fast food may appear to be cheap food, and in the literal sense it often is. But that is because huge social and environmental costs are being excluded from the calculations. Any analysis of the real costs would have to look at such things as the rise in food-borne illnesses, the advent of new pathogens such as E. coli 0157, antibiotic resistance from the overuse of drugs in animal feed, extensive water pollution from intensive agricultural systems, and many other factors. These costs are not reflected in the price of fast food, but that doesn't mean that our society isn't paying them.
So perhaps, having said all this, you can begin to see why I am such an admirer of the Slow Food Movement and of all the hard-working, indomitably independent people like yourselves, all over the world, who are part of it.
Only a few years ago it would have been impossible to imagine that so many people across the world who are either directly involved in small-scale artisan food production, or are interested in consuming the fruits of such labours, should gather together in this way. This, of course, is a great tribute to the unceasing energy of Dr. Carlo Petrini.
Slow food is traditional food. It is also local - and local cuisine is one of the most important ways we identify with the place and region where we live. It is the same with the buildings in our towns, cities and villages. Well-designed places and buildings that relate to locality and landscape and that put people before cars enhance a sense of community and rootedness. All these things are connected. We no more want to live in anonymous concrete blocks that are just like anywhere else in the world than we want to eat anonymous junk food which can be bought anywhere. At the end of the day, values such as sustainability, community, health and taste are more important than pure convenience. We need to have distinctive and varied places and distinctive and varied food in order to retain our sanity, if nothing else.
The Slow Food Movement is about celebrating the culture of food, and about sharing the extraordinary knowledge - developed over millennia - of the traditions involved with quality food production. So it is important to ask how this gathering can promote those ideals more widely, particularly when we are faced with remorseless pressure to operate on a larger and ever more impersonal scale.
I believe you are in a better position to answer that question than me, but for what it's worth, I do believe that simply coming together and sharing ideas, and above all joining the international Slow Food Movement and to create, by the extraordinary process of cross-fertilization and invigoration which takes place at gatherings like these, an ever more influential and powerful association that cannot be so easily ignored, the the answers will emerge organically. As the old saying goes, there is safety in numbers, and people tend to listen to organisations with a very large membership. They do!
On this theme it does seem to me that the other great food movement with which I am associated, the organic movement, has so much in common with the Slow Food Movement and this communality of purpose and direction ought to be a source of co-operation and, also of course, celebration! So I do hope that we may see ever-closer links between these two important movements.
And the importance of your Movement cannot be overstated. That is, after all, why I am here - to try and help draw attention to the fact that in certain circumstances "small will always be beautiful", and to remind people, as John Ruskin in the 19th century did, back in England, that "industry without art is brutality". After all, the food you produce is far more than just food, for it represents an entire culture - the culture of the family farm. It represents the ancient tapestry of rural life; the dedicated animal husbandry, the struggle with the natural elements, the love of landscape, the childhood memories, the knowledge and wisdom learnt from parents and grandparents, the intimate understanding of local climate and conditions, the hopes and fears of succeeding generations. Ladies and gentlemen, all of you represent genuinely sustainable agriculture and I salute you.
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