Day One of the University of Gastronomic Sciences/Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity’s farmers’ market research project (from the perspective of one-third of the researchers).

I’m going to Terra Madre this year for the first time. Of course, the road from Parma to Torino is a little too direct, so I’ve decided to get there via Canada, Ireland, England, and Wales. Seems like a more interesting route even if there are some scary monsters to contend with.

No, I’m not a frequent-flyer mile whore. Nor some fantasy-game weirdo plotting imaginary travels in foreign lands. This little trip is part of a research project that I’m doing, along with two of my colleagues from the food culture and communications program at UNISG Master of Food Culture. In an effort to learn more about the current best practices of farmers’ markets in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada, we’re hitting the road for a couple of months, talking to market communities (and avoiding the trolls and demons of the food cultures we travel through). Then, at TM, we’ll have a whole pile of learnings to share about what makes a good market. The workshop we’ll run there will be a chance for other communities (outside the northern/western regions we’re visiting) to comment on and help evolve that package of “guidelines,” so they make sense in regions that don’t already have a farmers’ market culture. (To be clear for a moment, I’m defining farmers’ markets here as those places where producers sell their own products directly to the consumer; where a closed-loop food chain communication is made.)

I’ve just arrived in North America to start my piece of the research (the Vancouver Island and Halifax regions) so everything is still to come. The research, the learnings, the reporting, the workshopping. But it seemed like a good moment for a quick perspective on what we’re doing. Terra Madre is still a dim glow on the horizon for me, but it’s a useful marker through the haze of my current jetlaggedness. It’s as exciting and scary as anything new that’s happening in the food world--will it make sense once all this work is done? Will there be a result we can tangibly point to? Will it ultimately make a difference against the tide that TM and Slow Food are swimming against? No knowing, but we soldier on nonetheless.

Reentry to the U.S. has been a bit daunting. I made the mistake of watching a few minutes of the Today Show on NBC this morning, not 18 hours into being here. The commercials and the inanity of the program itself started to drain all the gastronomic/revolutionary vigor that my last eight months in Colorno had built up in me. Watching the tube, I felt like I was watching an entertainment-industrial complex of fear-based food culture in action, and it seemed unchangeable. It seemed like no individual, no organization, no world meeting of food communities could do anything against it. I have to say, I was bumming, until I remembered that I have free will, and switched off the TV. Then I remembered what else I’ve been learning and thinking about. I’m hoping that the past year at the UNISG has provided me with a kind of armor. Not just of knowledge and spirit, but of the ability to disconnect from something I don’t believe in. Today in Portland, Maine, I don’t feel very connected to this, my former home. A bit sad, but I think it’s going to help me do battle with the dragon that is U.S. food/news/media culture. I can dart between its legs and gather magic information from food princesses working in N. American markets, then retreat quickly to the Slow Food castle keep, where we will plot our process for wiping out the firebreathers. (Hmm. Too much metaphor? Too much purple ink? Good thing this blog is text-color controlled....) As an individual, I can reconnect later. As a researcher, the distance is empowering.

So this post is just to say: see you soon. Farmers markets--Ho! I’ll be writing from wherever I am, checking in with you, my ether-based food buddies. Keep your fingers crossed for me and email any good recipes for dragon-protection sprays or potions.

a dopo--
David Szanto
(shameless self promotion: iceboxstudio.com/blog AND! cibomatic.com)