Slow Food Almanac is online!

 Facts, figures & stories from the worldwide Slow Food network.

 Slow Food is pleased to present the new online Almanac: a colorful illustrated publication produced in six languages with facts, figures, stories and an overview of the organization’s membership, projects and finances through the year 2016.

Here is a preview of some of the highlights:

• Chefs from the Slow Food Chefs’ Alliance in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico talk about their passion for cooking using fresh, local products. Thanks to chefs like Perla Herro, Claudia Mattos, Esteban Tapia and Daniel López Aguilar, farmers who refuse to make compromises with a system that seeks to standardize flavors and skills are receiving the recognition and remuneration they deserve.

• From China, the story of the collaboration between the Rural Reconstruction Movement and Slow Food. New rural reconstruction attaches great importance to agroecological practices, looking for a sustainable balance between nature and agriculture and the preservation of biodiversity. For Chinese agriculture, restoring a harmonious relationship with nature is an incredible opportunity, not just for food, but also culturally and socially.

• The Guajira Bean Presidium in Colombia develops activities to promote traditional Wayuu foods with food security and sovereignty in mind. Agustín Rosendo Uriana, a young teacher in the Ishashimana traditional community and a Wayuu leader tells us that to save a plant variety means reviving skills that go back thousands of years, learning to predict rainfall, prepare the soil and establish the exact hour when the seeds need to be sown.

• In Cuba, the target of good, clean, fair and solar food is now becoming reality: the examples of two farms 20 kilometers outside of Havana, Finca del Medio and Finca Marta, demonstrate how it is possible to produce food using exclusively clean and renewable energy sources.

• In Southern Morocco, Slow Food is working with the local network to set up the Aoufous Date Presidium with a group of producers who proudly practice using traditional agroecology in the oasis of Tafilalt where, thanks to “layer farming”, 220 varieties of date are grown.

• Rwanda’s first Slow Food Presidium was set up to promote the Inyambo cow, a local breed under threat from a production-centric agricultural policy. The Inyambo cow is gradually being replaced by Friesians, which are expensive to rear and poorly suited to the country’s environment and climate. This story wants to show that local knowledge and traditions do not stand in contrast to modernity and social progress, but complement them.

• In Thailand Lee Ayu is a young man from Maejantai, home to the indigenous Akha people. Lee Ayu believed in his local area and has been able to bring Akha coffee to market without denaturing it, with respect for natural resources.

• Slow Food has set up the first national Earth Market in Mukono-Wakiso, Uganda. The Earth Market helps the community’s economy, but it’s also a place for communal relationships and for exchanges between young and old, chefs and producers, all working towards the same objective: affirming the value of local food.

Click here to download the Almanac on your computer.

For further information, please contact:

Slow Food International Press Office

[email protected] – Twitter: @SlowFoodPress

Slow Food is a global grassroots organization that envisions a world in which all people can access and enjoy food that is good for them, good for those who grow it and good for the planet. Slow Food involves over a million activists, chefs, experts, youth, farmers, fishers and academics in over 160 countries. Among them, a network of around 100,000 Slow Food members are linked to 1,500 local chapters worldwide, contributing through their membership fee, as well as the events and campaigns they organize. As part of the network, more than 2,400 Terra Madre food communities practice small-scale and sustainable production of quality food around the world.