Slow Olive 2018 is about to kick off

The second edition of Slow Olive, a biennial event centered around olive and olive oil, will be held in Ayvalık (Balıkesir, Turkey) on the weekend of April 14-15. The event is organized by the International Slow Food movement, the Municipality of Ayvalık and the Slow Food communities of Turkey.

Participants from Palestine to Spain will meet in Ayvalık, Turkey to discuss the issues as diverse as the olive tree itself. Participants will share their expertise, work and experience on Olive as our Commons. The livelihood of small scale olive producer, the preservation of ancient olive groves, the task of registration of olive varieties and indigenous olive landscapes are among the issues Slow Olive 2018 will open to discussion.

The opening ceremony on Saturday April 14 at the Taksiyarhis Museum will be followed by the opening speeches of Rahmi Gençer, the Mayor of Ayvalık, and Defne Koryürek, the founder of Slow Olive.

Among the many discussions are:

• Ahmet Uhri (Turkey) and Angelo Lo Conte (Italy) on the history of olives;
• Güven Eken (Turkey), Marco Antonucci (Italy) and Silvana Subashi’yl (Albania) on the indigenous olive and olive oil varieties and the Italian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Presidium;
• Önder Algedik (Turkey), Gönül Işık (Turkey) and Kemal Koçak (Turkey) on the ecosystem of the olive trees and the value of the ecosystem in the judicial system;
• Fareed Taamallah (Palestine), Souhad Azennoud (Morocco) and Barbara Massaad (Lebanon) on the diversity of geographical regions and olive trees.

On Sunday April 15, a morning meeting with Barbara Massaad (Lebanon) will be held and her book, Soup for Syria, also published in Turkish, will be discussed. Later in the day Aytaç Timur (Turkey) will moderate an olive forum held with the participation of olive producers.

In addition, Slow Olive delegates, producers of olive, chefs, cooks, activists and people of Ayvalık will get together and go on foraging on the outskirts of an olive grove accompanying Nedim Atilla (teller of history and folktales, Turkey) as he presents the richness of wildlife in the Northern region of the Aegean.

For more information, please contact:

Slow Food Fikir Sahibi Damaklar

Aysenur Arslanoglu, [email protected]

+90 (532) 712 51 96

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.