Terra Madre: 1,600 Food Communities Book

A profile in words and images of the world's most significant food summit, and the people who are struggling to keep our diverse cultures and voices alive.

In October 2006 the international Slow Food movement held its second biennial gathering of the world's "food communities" in Torino, Italy. Described by some as the "UN of food," Terra Madre once again brought together 5,000 small farmers, fishers, and artisan food producers from 120 nations, as well as some 1,000 remarkable cooks and a host of academic researchers - all of them sharing the common goal of developing a grassroots alternative to the one-size-fits-all, global ized food system. Terra Madre is a forum that helps fight the McDonaldization of the world, in which multinational corporations ignore or destroy the traditional producers and regional cultures that form our collective human heritage.

As much a celebration as a political statement, this catalog of the 2006 Terra Madre describes world "Presidia" projects from around the globe, through which Slow Food supports and promotes specific groups of people who maintain and promote traditional products and foodways. The book also profiles the food communities themselves, and brings needed attention to a subject to a subject (food) that is at once so basic and so taken for granted in the industrialized world.