Terra Madre Network

FRESH at Terra Madre!

FRESH at Terra Madre!

Terra madre is a network and biannual conference of 6.000 farmers, fishermen, food activists, students and many more from ALL over the world! We all were enlightened with exchange, cultural events, inspirational discussions, food for thought and knowledge, which comes from the heart. As Einstein put it, we cannot solve problems with the same mindset that created them. Everyone has a significance in that! Borders drop when the world is dancing together!

Read more on the NYTimes.com, which features our FRESH edible garden!

 

 

FRESH at Terra Madre 2012!

 

Reports and more pictures will follow soon...

 

 

FRESH at Terra Madre 2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Terra Madre, a gathering of Food thinkers from all over the world.   People who care about their mother earth, about their nature, their food and their culture… Food activists’  from all over the world, indigenous communities, youngster, elders, farmers, students, mothers fathers, raised their voices and spread their visions for a good, healthy, fair and clean future.

Dusha Manoharan

- I was amazed and inspired by the huge wave of spirit, enthusiasm, love, and power I felt during these days, which gave me a lot of motivation and the sense to keep on going with raising awareness on the complexity of our food.  ‘We see and feel disease but we don’t see the immune system,’ he said. ‘All the people here are the immune system of the planet. We are one united system and the only possibility for saving the planet. (Manfred Max-Neef at Terra Madre 2010)

Katie Mackie

- Terra Madre re-inspires and re-focuses, encourages and thanks all of those people around the world who are making a change, those who want to see the world slow down and those who appreciate diversity of culture of food. It energizes us!

Laura Sabaddin

- My mind and my heart were connected through a flow of ideas, colors, sounds, tastes, voices, thoughts, which at the same time were connecting all the people at Terra Madre. Something dynamic and strong was going on, and it will go on, both inside and outside.

Pavlos Georgiadis

- Terra Madre is the meeting point where bits of dynamism from around the world are merging together to the common, convivial spirit that unites us into fruitful, tasteful action! Terra Madre is like a river, going up and down. Down when we are all working quietly at our homes, up when we all meet together!

Richard Ebner

- It was my fourth Terra Madre and as every time a few things are obvious. Joy and Pleasure are always derived from diversity. Humble does not mean obedient and most of all we are more and we are everywhere.

Steffen Schweizer

- It has been said that Terra Madre is like a big river, mingled of countless rivulets. It streams jointly during the four-day meeting and carries a big load of knowledge, emotions, ideas, inspirations, believes, values, motivation and inventiveness. Eventually, when the river branches again into countless rivulets, it scatters its load all over the earth, but never demerges from the stream. As Carlo Petrini put it “Diffusion is our strength.“. Terra Madre does not reduce the people to a common denominator, but cultivate diversity for a new world.  Terra Madre made me feel the keen energy and responsibility of this world. Now I recognized that we are a diverse food community around the globe, in which everyone bears significance and responsibility!


Pavlos (top right) cheering among the indigenous people, all representing a different home country on our earth. Pavlos is therefore wearing an appropriate typical Greek dress
Terra Madre delegates from FRESH with Dr. Vandana Shiva from the Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology, India and Vice-President of Slow Food.
Terra Madre is not just presentations and speeches, it's world culture all-around! Here, Annabelle, Richard and Laura are looking at a series of photographies.
Pavlos, moderating the YFM session on "Youth and the Future of Food".


Richard, Camillo and Katie listening to on of the interesting presentations. In the back you can see a cabin of the translators. The speeches can thereby be followed in a whole bunch of languages transmitted to the headphones.
Annabelle taking a breath of taaaasty cheese. The upper one is covered with a special kind of straw while the lower one is wrapped up in tobacco leaves.
FRESH delegation with a friend from Thailand.
A big highlight was the YFM meeting on Sunday, 24 October. After having cheered "Food for Change" people didn't stop pouring into our room. So did Carlo Petrini, president and founder of Slow Food!


"Food for Change". Pavlos excites Terra Madre under the look of Carlo Petrini, president and founder of Slow Food.
EAT-IN our territory organised by YFM: About 500 people came together to share a meal in the middle of a shopping mall. This goes with a demand for Food that is good, clean and fair. And a call for the generation inheriting our food system to get out of their cars, turn off their computers and come to the table.


How time flies! On the closing ceremony on Sunday evening, it was time for "a panel of distinguished speakers [to] present the sustainability and food policies drafted during the preceding four days of meetings." On the picture: Raj Patel besides Daniele Giovannucci.
And more marvelous speeches: Manfred Max-Neef (“We have reached a point where we know a lot but understand very little") and Marcello Buiatti - "Big multinationals want to control us with this absurd system in which life is money. They are killing the land and killing living beings and making them into machines. They want one type of machine in the whole world. We must change the economy and we must use our cultural diversity to defend ourselves. We must be proud of our diversity.”More information

“If you patent life, you’re claiming you created life, claiming it’s a product of your mind.” said Vandana Shiva. But corporations do not have minds, she said, they are just “fictions with a legal personality.” She said that by building movements, creating knowledge sovereignty and nurturing the biodiversity of knowledge systems, we can fight this already-collapsing industrial world view! More information
In the end Carlo Petrini took the podium for the final speech. “Terra Madre is immensely larger than the people gathered in this hall,” he said. “It gets no respect from politicians, no attention from the media or the world of finance, but this humanity is more widespread than ever before. Diffusion is our strength.” he said, pointing out to Terra Madre Day!