The Ark of Taste Docks in Turin, Will Your Favorite Foods be on Board?

Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre will take place October 23 – 27, 2014, and what happens in those five days could have a profound impact on the future of our diets and of our planet. Think that sounds dramatic? Not when you consider that just in the past hundred years, some 75% of plant genetic diversity has been lost, and up to six livestock breeds are lost each month. If biodiversity continues to disappear at this rate, what will our food system look like four generations from now?

The Slow Food Ark of Taste is a unique project that documents foods that are at risk of extinction. No other organization in the world is calling attention to the connections between the loss of agricultural biodiversity with environmental degradation, the loss of income and opportunities for small producers, and our disappearing culture in the form of recipes, rituals and traditions.

But what also makes the Ark unique is the involvement of thousands of individuals around the world who have taken the time to tell us about these products – about a favorite cheese that was always part of a particular holiday meal that’s now difficult to find; about a drought-tolerant legume their mother would grow and sell at the market to help provide for the family; or about the a peculiar variety of rice, stickier and sweeter than others, used in a favorite family recipe.

This October, the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre will have the opportunity to share their culture through their endangered foods by bringing with them a product to board on the Ark of Taste, a six hundred square meter physical display dedicated to agricultural biodiversity.

If you’ll be at the event, we need you to join us in this fight to stop biodiversity loss by bringing a product from your culture to save! If you can’t make it to the event (or can’t bring your favorite livestock breed on the plane to Turin!) please use our online nomination form to tell us about your product.

The Ark of Taste is your story, and we can’t tell it without you!