Carlo Petrini
Speech at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Conference
April 28, 2005

I'm extremely moved by your welcome. I'm terribly sorry I don't speak English. But I'm sure that you understand because it is yet another sign of biodiversity. And after the wonderful musical interlude we had, you will find Italian is a musical language, so we at least can follow music with a little music. With a little help I may actually sing myself! I very much want to thank the Kellogg Foundation for their hospitality and for this wonderful group I have had the pleasure to meet.

Here we have humanity that can change the world-strong humanity right in this room. I am reminded of a very large assembly in Turin in October of last year that was called Terra Madre-Mother Earth. There were five thousand food producers from around the world-farmers, fisherman, nomads, people who make cheese, people who transform raw product. 1,330 communities that produce food were represented from over 130 countries. It was a vision of planetary biodiversity. We have to construct this biodiversity. Seldom before in history have we been in such a moment of betrayal. Man has come to be fully formed, rich, happy and yet at the same time we are approaching the extinction of our species. And this not just some radical ecologist saying this, nor is it pessimistic, it is simply scientific reasoning. A few months ago there was a publication on the ecosystem of the millennium. It had been a four-year research study, involving 1,400 scientists from around the world. There was a disastrous picture that came out of it: systematic destruction of our ecosystem, pollution of our earth, loss of biodiversity. In the last 50 years man has created more disaster than in all of human history. Here in this report was documented scientific proof. And we just go on living kind of like idiots.

I am reminded of something the greatest Italian poet said, he happened to be called Dante. He was speaking of medieval Europe which was in a destroyed moment. I think that we can now reapply some of those verses to our current state. I will replace Italy with Earth in this metaphor: As Dante said, "Mother Earth is a hotel of pain, a ship without a guide, with all the passengers seemingly happy but bound to wind up in complete destruction." This is the earth today. A grand " bordello." Mother Earth has never been this offended. It has never been so attacked. And we are going to have to pay for this. And if all these species are disappearing, so can man. So we have to decisively change the road we are on.

There is this wonderful French sociologist, Edgar Morin, who uses the metaphor of earth as a spaceship. It is driven forth by a four engine motor. This motor is absolutely indestructible, this is what drives this spaceship. It's just a single thought, it's like our world religion. These four engines are science, technology, industry, and profit. Just that. You have to say you're against this four-cylinder engine driving the spaceship! Go around in America and say you're against profit! Science should be something divine. "We are born for industry," this seems to be the only thought today. And this of course leads us to destruction. If we accept this religion it's going to be our own destruction.

On this spaceship, there are a lot of us. We've got to change the motor in the middle of the voyage. And while the spaceship is going forward we have the change the engine, and start bringing forth into action other concepts: ecological sensitivity of the planet, friendship, solidarity, poetry and other values. These other values are our own richness. We are not a land of stupid children. These values are our force. And if we don't start substituting these values for other ones, the spaceship will crash. Think what has happened by putting industry inside of agriculture. It has meant giving sheep meal to cows to eat, and of course we now have mad cow. Agriculture has its own rhythm, its own logic. You just can't take industry and put it inside of agriculture. Otherwise we will be without agriculture at the end of it. The earth won't give any more flavor. This engine will keep producing, producing, producing. We have substituted quality for quantity. We've got to change this. Maybe we should start with an internal revolution, and return to a new humanism. After giving force to technology, let's give force back to humanity!

Slow Food began with a particular science which is gastronomic science. When I say I am a gastronome, people laugh and say "Oohh, you're a gastronome, eh?" The logic is that you're fat, you really like living well, you're always happy, and you are a professional at eating. This is the general conception of gastronomy. And for three centuries there has been this widespread conception. If you turn on the TV and look, you see people with these food shows, giving recipes, recipes, recipes. And these glossy magazines. No, this is not my idea of gastronomy. This is pornography! It's a kind of self-gratification. This shouldn't be gastronomy. It's something serious. Gastronomic science is something complex and multidisciplinary. We have to reclaim gastronomy and put it at the service of science and free gastronomy from this population of idiots. Restore its profound historical sense. So let's now think of modern gastronomy.

In 1825 one of the fathers of modern gastronomy, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, asked "What is gastronomy?" It's agriculture, it's technology, it's the art of transforming raw ingredients-the noble art by which from milk you obtain cheese and from grapes you obtain wine. But it is also economy. It's political economy. Because even then there were taxes on food. And wars were fought over food. And now there is a new war over GMO's. It's certainly political economy. It is also health, of course. And tell everyone it's also pleasure. As you see, it's a complex science and multidisciplinary. To reduce gastronomy to these idiotic demonstrations on television is really stupid. Today a gastronome who is not also an environmentalist is an idiot. And an environmentalist who is not a gastronome is a sad case! So let's turn all of the environmentalists into gastronomes, shall we?

The beginning of the organic movement had a mistaken attitude because it didn't place any emphasis on pleasure. It was an ideological, almost religious approach. It ignored pleasure. Pleasure is not antithetical to health, pleasure is not the enemy of sustainability. Pleasure is moderation and with moderation we can be sustainable. An environmentalist or an organic farmer that is not also cultivating pleasure is just out of this world.

Throughout history, all of humanity has always wanted to produce food also to produce pleasure. The poorest nations of the world eat very poor food. But these people, with culture, they transform an economy of subsistence into good food. Our grandparents had this knowledge, how to make something good out of nothing. So this is fundamental pleasure. And it is a grand alliance in changing the world. This idea is part of the complexity of a new gastronomy. We can't change the world by just preaching boring messages. We have to re-discover the value of taste and understand that at its root, taste is connected to pleasure. Taste is pleasure that reasons, or knowledge that enjoys. Nice, eh?
Recently I was in Mexico, and I went to a house of farmers. And I was with a great cook who was showing me around. When we toured the fields with the farmer, the cook showed me a plant. She said it is a fantastic plant, and that she can make a great soup out of it. But the farmer whose field it was, said she never used it. And then we walked a lot further and we came across some red pepper plants, and the cook said "Wow, look at these red peppers here!" And the farmer said, "No, the animals eat it, we don't use those." Then a van came selling a commercial brand of bread [the markets in these small towns are in vans] and what happened? They had just destroyed this traditional knowledge. The farmer who had these ingredients in her field, had no gastronomic understanding and would buy items from this van after being shown things in her garden she had know idea how to use anymore. And this is what we at Slow Food examine, and try to change. Don't detach sustainability from the culture of gastronomy. It's all part of the same philosophy of food. It's small observations like these in Mexico that add to the intuition of Slow Food and our whole philosophy.

This is how I was convinced to become an environmentalist: I went to eat in a small restaurant in my own native territory near Turin. I had grilled sweet red peppers with olive oil and garlic, a specialty of the Piedmont region. I tasted it, and there was something wrong with it. They just weren't that good. I asked, "Where do these peppers come from?" They said "Oh, they're from Holland." They were grown hydroponically. They were all identical. There were 32 to a box, not 31, not 33. "And they cost less than ours," the cook was proud to say. "And they last longer than ours." But of course, there was no pleasure of taste. And so I asked the farmers around this restaurant, "Hey, where are those local peppers you used to have around here?" And they said, "Well we just don't grow them anymore because we can't make money on them." And I said, "Well, inside those hot houses where you used to have red peppers, what do you have now?" And they said, "Tulip bulbs!"

And you may laugh, but in your hometown this is happening everyday. Look what you've got on your plate, and you'll see your red peppers come from Holland too. And tourists come to Piedmont because they are told there are famous red peppers. And this is the great cheat. There is cheating every day on our plates. There is deceit. Either we go back to local agriculture, and go back to giving pride to these farmers, having a human rapport with these farmers, or we might as well just blow our brains out.

So the really important quality is the gastronomic quality of these products. This quality of food has three pillars, like a three-legged stool. The first one is organoleptic: it must taste good. This is also always a cultural value that it tastes good. In order to say that it tastes good you have to respect the local culture that decides it tastes good. Somebody from Turin doesn't have the same taste as someone from say, Boston. To respect the culture of someone else is to respect their taste. I'm sorry that the Anglo-Saxon tongue doesn't give the same significance as the Latin tongue. I'm not the pope! But when the Anglo-Saxon taste, they say "taste." When they say knowledge, they say "knowledge." So these are two very different things. But in Italian, there is only one vowel that changes between taste and knowledge-"Sapore" and "Sapere." This is the first element of cultural politics. Taste is a part of knowledge. To respect the taste of the other is to respect the culture of the other. McDonald's hasn't understood this. They think their taste is good all over the world. It's not true. So that's the first element, taste. And respect for other people's differences. I come from a region in Piedmont where we make a cheese. We let this cheese putrify, then worms form in the cheese, and it becomes a cream. And we spread this cream on bread and let it sit on the stove. Imagine-it perfumes the whole room. It smells a little like dirty feet. For us Piedmontese who love it, it's very moving and evocative. When I smell it, I go back to my childhood. You'll think I'm an idiot if I say, "What a wonderful smell of my childhood!" But you have to respect every other culture's taste.

The second of the three qualities is an environmental quality. It is not food if it doesn't respect the ecosystem and the earth. And you are all masters of this so I don't have to go on with it. Third element: the quality of social justice. If you don't pay the farmers a fair price, it's not a valid product qualitatively or in any other way.

This affirmation has to have consequences. We've got to apply it ourselves. If you agree with this, don't let any of these legs on the stool fall off. You won't have the proper conditions of global quality if you let any of them go. Recently I was in California, I saw all of these organic farms. It was just a marvel from the point of view of the environment. It was also good in terms of taste. But in the fields there were Mexican workers being treated like slaves. This is not quality. You have to have all three. Don't just be blinded by organic food. There has to be justice and good taste. So keep fighting that fight. And keep hammering at that nail. Bang at that nail, because without all the three, it's not quality. I don't care if it's just good. I am not interested if its just well paid for. If it's destroying the environment it's not quality. You must have all three, all three!

We have to construct for ourselves a new alliance in order to bring this about. We have been saying this for a long time. But we say it as if it's almost two different subjects-producers on one side, consumers on the other. For a hundred years they've been saying we have to unite these two sides. But that's not right. We have to change the nature of this subject, and arrive at only one subject. Which is a citizen. Stop using the term "Consumer!" Cut off your tongues, don't say consumer! Because the consumer is someone who steals from and destroys the planet. We want to say co-producer. To be a co-producer means to be responsible. It means to be rich in culture, education, understanding how food is made, understanding the necessities of farmers. Become active, not passive people. This needs to be a historic transformation.

One of the world's great intellectuals, Wendell Berry, said "Eating is an agricultural act." And this is part of this new idea of a co-producer. This citizen must feed himself and also the farmer. Because if someone eats badly there will be bad agriculture. But if the farmer knows how to eat well, he can help determine a new agriculture. I think that a lot of you are producers in this room. So if as Wendell Berry says the first agricultural act is to eat, I say to you producers, to cultivate food is a gastronomic act. When you grow food you have to be gastronomes too. Have pride in what grows from the earth with the help of your hands. We need a cultural revolution to bring this about. And it has to begin with the value of food, because if it doesn't, we'll never succeed at this.

And so we have to preach that for food to have good value it has to have a proper cost. We are cursed with the idea that food should be cheap and we are used to cheap food. People who think food should be cheap are our enemies. Never in the history of the world have we spent so little on food. In 1970, Italians spent 32% of their household income on food. Today only 16% is spent on food. We have just changed what we consume. And if we want to spend even less on food, we are going to start eating mad cows and we will destroy agriculture. So we have to say this to our co-producer friends: don't think food should be cheap. I'm not happy to live in my own Italy where people are only spending 16% of what they earn on food. A family will happily spend 12 % of their income on cell phones in Italy. When I eat prosciutto, after a few minutes it becomes Carlo Petrini. But Armani underwear is always outside of Carlo Petrini. Go around the world preaching this message, will you? You can't omit oil in a car, you need it. You have to pay the good price for it if you want the car to run and if you want yourself to run.

And I will conclude. In this strategic phase where we are all trying to defend the same philosophy, we've got to defend ancient wisdom. Traditional wisdom is at risk of extinction. It's not just agricultural practices, it's gastronomical practices. The hands that make pasta at home, there won't be any in a couple of years. We have to defend this wisdom. It is a great endeavor to defend traditional wisdom and knowledge that involves all of cosmology, not just individual practices. It is a vision of a world that involves music and socialization. Let's defend traditional knowledge. It's not a retrograde battle, it's an avant-garde battle, because we find for ourselves so much richness inside this traditional wisdom. We are not the only reserves of truth. I understood this at Terra Madre. I understood what humanity is. These countries from the Southern part of the world with their incredible dignity, their sense of self-esteem, they give us so much more then we could give to them. We've got to get over this Eurocentric, western focus of ours. It is we who need them. And when we give them money we are not giving them anything. If they can give us an ounce of their serenity it's a lot more than our money can give them. It's got to start with these concepts. We can't think of these countries as poor countries-they're not poor. The term for Gross National Product in Italy is known as Gross Internal Product. I propose instead that you can measure the richness of a country by measuring the Gross Internal Happiness. And that is another kind of richness. It is the richness we need. We are frenetic. And on the alter of our lives we place speed. We've got to bring it to halt. All of these monetary transactions go so fast-even our human rapport. There is a much richer conception of this in other cultures, and they are a lot more tranquil than we are. In the end, who's better off? We all going to wind up in the same place-better to go there slowly with a little bit of calm.
This concept of interdependence is fundamental. So to get to this interdependence let's get there via two fronts: between the producers and the co-producers, and the north and the south of the world-interdependence. We each need each other. Happiness is being interdependent. If you're independent you are unhappy. We are happy if we depend on others. I am happy if I need your love, if I'm depending on your happiness.

A little story to illustrate this interdependence-a Chinese sage dies. He was a great Chinese sage so he was given a choice about where he wants to go. He says "I want to go to hell." He goes to hell, comes into a big room, huge table, every food in the world in the middle of the table. The most delicious food. Around the table are all the people who are supposed to eat, all with long chopsticks. The most beautiful food but they just couldn't get to it. They were unable to get it to their mouths because the chopsticks were too long. That's hell! So close but yet so far. So he said, "Ok, I've had enough of this," and he goes to paradise. He found the exact same scene-huge table, most gorgeous food, and people with the same long chopsticks, but everybody looked happy around the table. They were feeding each other with the long chopsticks. This is interdependence. We all have long chopsticks and we have got to find someone to feed, and they in turn will feed us. That is the politics of Slow Food.

Because I travel a lot in my life, I consider myself a traveling salesman of sorts. I now will have to sell you all a membership to Slow Food. If you've got your membership card in your wallet, you'll be sharing with 100,000 people around the world and you'll be able to connect your own local territory to a virtuous globalization. The local is too weak on its own. Globalization on its own is violent. We have to find the right balance between the two. Sustain your local knowledge and traditions, and create a world-wide network of virtuous globalization. This is the only thing that will help us win this great battle. This is the only thing that will allow us to change that motor midstream. We won't destroy ourselves if we can change that motor, for us and for our children.