Slow Food and Indigenous People

Last month at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) 'Right to Food and Food Sovereignty' session, Slow Food President Carlo Petrini gave Slow Food's perspective. 


He said "For twenty-five years now, Slow Food has sought to preserve agricultural and food biodiversity as a tool for ensuring a future for our planet and humanity as a whole," ... "it would be senseless to defend biodiversity without also defending the cultural diversity of peoples and their right to govern their own territories. The right of peoples to have control over their land, to grow food, to hunt, fish and gather according to their own needs and decisions, is inalienable. This diversity is the greatest creative force on earth, the only condition possible for the maintenance and transmission of an outstanding heritage of knowledge to future generations."



Slow Food is working to support Indigenous communities through the Foundation for Biodiversity projects and Terra Madre network of food communities to reintroduce local food products. Slow Food also works with the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty, a network of Indigenous communities and organizations committed to defining their own food and agricultural practices that sustain agrobiodiversity, assisted by scientists and policy researchers.


In 2011, Slow Food International along with Slow Food Sweden and Slow Food Sápmi organized the first Indigenous Terra Madre meeting in Jokmokk, Sweden, a second is planned for 2014 in India.