Slow Food – Deliciousness as a development tool

SAO PAOLO, Brazil – The problem was local, but the solution and the acclaim
are global. During the mid-’90s, Adolfo Vera Mirim, leader of Rio Silveira,
a Guarani village in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, and president of the state’s
council of indigenous people, noticed that the jucara palm was becoming
scarce in the tropical forest surrounding his home. To save the tall,
slender tree, which is central to Guarani cosmology, Mirim convinced his
community and surrounding ones to stop cutting it down for its edible and
medicinally valuable core, or heart.

He then began a replanting project – cultivating seedlings in his home
garden and placing them throughout the forest with the help of fellow
villagers. The venture was an unusual one for the Guarani, who historically
collected palms in the wild, but did not plant them.

The palms and the project flourished. Eventually, Mirim collaborated with
Maurizio Fonseca, coordinator of Sao Paulo State’s Center for Native Issues
and a consultant to the Guarani, on an application for assistance from Slow
Food, a 65,000-member consumer organization that is based in Italy but
supports artisanal producers worldwide.

Italian journalist Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food nearly two decades ago
under circumstances that have become legendary. Petrini was so horrified to
see a McDonald’s opening in Rome that he contacted wealthy Italian
winemakers for help in defending his country’s traditional foods and
refined way of life against the fast-food invasion. It wasn’t just the poor
quality of the fare that shocked him; he also objected to the
industrialization of agriculture that makes a McDonald’s meal so cheap.

“If we wish to enjoy the pleasure this world can give us, we have to strike
a balance with nature,” Petrini has said. Since then, the organization has
sought to save the world by teaching people to savor it – to marry
enjoyment with responsibility – via gourmet eating clubs, a travel service,
courses, a magazine, and the Ark of Taste, an ever-lengthening catalog of
the planet’s most delicious, most carefully produced chow. North American
foods that have made the list include Iroquois white corn, from the Seneca
community at Cattaraugus and Navajo Churro sheep, with their lean, tender
meat.

Bottom line? These foods taste good, said Anya Fernald, program director of
the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, which the parent organization
spun off to invest directly in worthy projects: “At Slow Food, we begin
with the plate.”

So, to decide whether to support the Guarani effort, the organization’s
staffers first tasted the tender, crunchy palm hearts, which have a flavor
reminiscent of celery. Then they visited Rio Silveira, saw the replanting
efforts, and finally dubbed the plant not just an entry in the Ark of
Taste, but a “presidia,” which is their term for an endangered,
culturally-important food that is deserving of investment.

The jucara palm joins presidia from many nations – Ethiopia, Madagascar,
Great Britain, Mexico, Australia and more. The first Brazilian presidia was
guarana, a berry that contains a caffeine-like substance and is gathered in
the forest by the Satere Mawe tribe; it was honored in 2002. That year, the
annual Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity went to Brazil’s
Kraho tribe for replanting its heritage pohypey corn, thus breathing new
life into its traditional farming methods and culture. In 2003, the prize
went to a North American community, the White Earth Band of Chippewa, for
its protection of true (not hybridized or paddy-grown) wild rice.

In about a decade, when the newly planted jucara palms are mature, Slow
Food and Brazil’s Ministry for Agricultural Development will help the tribe
bring the hearts first to a local market, then to international ones. In
the meantime, the two groups – which have just signed an agreement to
assist artisanal Brazilian producers – are helping the Guarani to
commercialize faster growing palms and to involve more villages in
replanting the all-important jucara type.

In the Slow Food universe, though, nothing is rushed. Projects, like fruits
and vegetables, need time to mature. “We’re working toward sustainable
development,” said Fernald. “We wouldn’t want to stress out a community and
make them import workers. We’re happy to let everyone go slow.”

In that spirit, discerning gastronomes will sample jucara palm hearts and
other delights at the Slow Food’s annual food fair, Salone del Gusto (Hall
of Taste), which will take place Oct. 21 – 25 in Turin, Italy. When the
snacking is over, deals may be struck with distributors seeking to expand
their offerings from the vast buffet of unusual foods.

Mirim, who will travel to Turin, said, “It’s important to get involved in
the partnerships, but most important is the work in the community and the
effect that the restoration of the palm will have on our children and on
the future of our culture.”