2nd Edition of the Terra Madre-Local delegation to participate in meeting of food producers in Italy |17 October 2006

The delegation will comprise Serge Benstrong, chairman of SFA, and Arthur Bresson, chairman of SFA’s Praslin Sub-Committee.

This event is being organized by the Terra Madre Foundation (which is made up of the international Slow Food, the Ministry for Agricultural Affairs and Forestry, the Italian cooperation in the development of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), by the Piemont region, and by the town of Turin.

Terra Madre is an event that brings together representatives of food communities that produce good, clean and fair food in a responsible and sustainable way.

At the Terra Madre 2004 in Turin, 5000 such small-scale food producers from all over the world met to share information, ideas and solutions to the challenges of their work.

Terra Madre 2006 will focus on network (especially strengthening the network of food communities, cooks and universities and establishing communication channels within the network); agro-ecology (agriculture that respects the environment); and market access (finding new outlets for small-scale producers, who face crushing competition from industrial producers and distribution, through associations and cooperatives and collaboration with cooks and universities).

The meetings will be managed by the communities themselves, so they can exchange their experiences and understand the real concepts of progress and development.

Meanwhile, in a message to world leaders on World Food Day 2006 (celebrated yesterday), Jack Wilkinson, President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) said that investing in farmers means investing in a profitable future for farm families.

"It is they who are the central actors driving the development of rural communities.

Farmers need investment that gives them access to credit and land, access to local markets, access to risk management instruments, access to good regulatory systems, strong farmers’ organizations, and strong agricultural cooperatives. To invest efficiency in agriculture, we need to adopt an innovative 'farmers centred approach'," says Mr Wilkinson in his message.

He says that farmers need to be organized to have a voice in policy and to be empowered in the market.

"For IFAP, public-private partnerships are a key part of the solution to improving farmers’ social economic conditions and to promoting rural economies.  But government must assume their responsibilities by investing in good regulatory systems so that farmers everywhere are able to meet international food safety standards and are able to benefit from the markets which function competitively and which deliver fair prices to farmers," says Mr Wilkinson in his message.