Venice Rising

Gen and I made it to Venice.

We bit the financial and logistical bullet and departed for Italy in mid-October. Our excuse was my selection as an American delegate to the biennial Terra Madre ('mother earth') conference in Turin. This is a global convening of farmers, chefs, academics, students, and activists involved in sustainable agriculture, organized by Slow Food, a movement launched in 1986 by Italian gastronomist Carlo Petrini as a deliberate push-back against American-style fast food. This was the third Terra Madre event, but my first and I went as a producer of local, grassfed beef - which tickled the former Sierra Club activist in me.

Slow Food's official mission is to protect, conserve and defend traditional and sustainable foods, primary ingredients, methods of cultivation and processing, and the biodiversity of cultivated and wild food varieties. This mission is premised on the wisdom of local communities working in harmony with the ecosystems that surround them.

Unofficially, it celebrates really good food.

Over time, the Slow Food movement broadened its goals - arguing that diverse, healthy food is the foundation to overall human well-being and, as a consequence, the very survival of our imperiled planet.

For example, the 2008 edition of Terra Madre featured the debut of a 50-page Manifesto on Climate Change and the Future of Food Security, which stated that agriculture is both part of the problem as well as the solution to climate change - which the Manifesto's   authors   called   the  ultimate  test  for  our collective