Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities [Paperback]

Carlo Petrini (Author), Alice Waters (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2010

More than twenty years ago, when Italian Carlo Petrini learned that McDonald's wanted to erect its golden arches next to the Spanish Steps in Rome, he developed an impassioned response: he helped found the Slow Food movement. Since then, Slow Food has become a worldwide phenomenon, inspiring the likes of Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Now, it's time to take the work of changing the way people grow, distribute, and consume food to a new level.

On a global scale, as Petrini tells us in Terra Madre, we aren't eating food. Food is eating us.

Large-scale industrial agriculture has run rampant and penetrated every corner of the world. The price of food is fixed by the rules of the market, which have neither concern for quality nor respect for producers. People have been forced into standardized, unnatural diets, and aggressive, chemical-based agriculture is ravaging ecosystems from the Great Plains to the Kalahari. Food has been stripped of its meaning, reduced to a mere commodity, and its mass production is contributing to injustice all over the world.

In Terra Madre, Petrini shows us a solution in the thousands of newly formed local alliances between food producers and food consumers. And he proposes expanding these alliances-connecting regional food communities around the world to promote good, clean, and fair food.

The end goal is a world in which communities are entitled to food sovereignty-allowed to choose not only what they want to grow and eat, but also how they produce and distribute it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Terra Madre is the way Slow Food has kept itself the international pioneer in food justice and good food, defending the power of the small against the big and embracing the new. If you haven't been to this extraordinary gathering you'll want to go to the next-and Carlo Petrini will inspire you to find your own way to lead food into the future."--Corby Kummer, Senior Editor, The Atlantic, and author of The Pleasures of Slow Food

"When the world's food traditions come together at Terra Madre, we catch a glimpse of what it would be like to exchange, learn, share and widen our lives in ways that are truly sustainable. In this fine manifesto, Carlo Petrini captures the essence of that world, and offers an agenda for change that is both necessary and deeply desirable."--Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing

"Timely, essential, and full of joy!"--Judy Wicks, founder of White Dog Cafe

About the Author

Carlo Petrini, born in the small northern Italian town of Bra in 1949, is the founder and international president of the Slow Food movement, committed to the promotion of "good, clean and fair food." The author of several books, he contributes regularly to Italian dailies and magazines on matters related to gastronomy and food politics. To write Terra Madre, he collaborated closely with Carlo Bogliotti, an editor of the Slow Food magazine and governor of the Slow Food Italy association.

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing; 1 edition (February 22, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603582630
• ISBN-13: 978-1603582636
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carlo Petrini is the founder of the international Slow Food movement, which was established in 1986 and now has more than 70,000 members in 45 countries around the world. Slow Food is committed to celebrating and preserving biological and regional diversity in food, and to promoting taste education, as well as supporting local agriculture and economies in our increasingly homogenous world.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Didn't live up to my expectations May 27, 2010

By Chicago Book Addict TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

In Terra Madre, Carlos Petrini, founder of Slow Food, details the principles behind Terre Madre, a conference/organization he founded to bring together small farmers/producers from all over the world. I was immediately drawn to this book because I am very interested in food and especially local and sustainable food movements. I've read a lot of books in this area and thought this would be right up my alley.
Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this book at all. I had a few key problems with it. The first was that the book didn't really flow at all. The writing felt choppy and lacking a sense of storytelling, which meant at points I almost had to force myself to keep reading. Since this is subject matter I usually enjoy I find this shocking! However, Petrini talks about it in a dry way, barely weaving in the stories of the producers or the communities that comprise Terre Madre.

I also don't know that he provides much of a new perspective on things like sustainable agriculture, local food, biodiversity, or the other topics he covers in the book. His perspective is covered only at a high level and doesn't really add much to what is already being said. It almost feels like you're having a rambling conversation with him where he tells you all the things that are important to him, but doesn't really relate them to one another or give you all the knowledge you need to understand them fully.

I think the true testament is I finished this book hardly remembering what I read not feeling like I learned very much. I cannot say I would recommend this unless you already have a very strong interest in Terra Madre or are a fan of Petrini.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Idea but Dull to Read May 7, 2010

By Kitten Kisser VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The three stars are all for the idea & noble cause of the book & not the book itself. I am a huge supporter of local and organic foods as well us encouraging others to grow & raise their own food. We are organic hobby farmers and we raise organic happy livestock as well as growing a lot of our own food. Normally books like this are right up my alley. Not so with this one. I have had the book for 2 months now & it just shouldn't take that long to read something so tiny. It is boring. Utterly mind numbingly boring. It's really too bad. If the author could have written this in a more engaging way, I think it would have caught more attention. The more attention paid to supporting slow food, local food, organic food - the better.
I don't want to say not to get this book, but on the other hand, I can't say get it either. There are many other "green movement" books out there that are much better & as a result, very popular. Michael Pollan being one of them as well as Barbara Kingsolver. Just searching for their books, will lead you to many other similar types of books. 'Fast Food Nation' by Eric Schlosser is a long time favorite of mine. It is not about slow food. It's about fast food. But reading it will most likely make you want to eat slow food & appreciate it's value. All three of the above mentioned books are available on Amazon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Preaching to the Choir January 28, 2011

By Gene Twilley VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Petrini seems to come out with guns blazing at people who just don't "get" the value of being part of the local sustainable food process. While there are some great stories and snippets of what folks are doing around the world to encourage hetero-agronomies, there's also a healthy dose of judgmental overtones against people who aren't doing the same (or who are not, at least, consumers of the process). Additionally, I didn't expect the text to be so much of a self-advertisement regarding his own movement.

To let you know, I write this even as one who plants and harvests in a community urban garden that my wife helped start, who tries to purchase local vegetables in season and meats that are also harvested locally (with minimal intervention from hormones, steroids and with diets that tend to be more natural), who has participated as a sharer in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and who values diversity in what is grown over and above homogenization of produce by large corporations.

But if I were as one who was more from the outside looking in, I would walk away from reading this book thinking that Pertrini is generally self-focused and unwelcoming to those who don't already see the world as he does. I also don't think that the salvation of our diets and culture at large are found through methods of growing in a diversity of grains and fruits (which is what seems to come across as the key to Terra Madre).

At the end of it all, I found myself fairly unimpressed and questioning the intent of what this book is about written by a man who seems to think that it is impossible to think rightly if you don't think as he does.

** As an aside, I think it should be noted that I don't really have anything against Carlo Petrini; these are just my opinions of his book...