To the attendees of the Women in Agriculture Workshop on Sunday 29th October
You are owed an apology. This is mine. I am a University of Gastronomic Sciences Masters student and had volunteered to cover this workshop and provide a summary for the Terra Madre website. Due to the lack of translation facilities I was unable to gain anything that could be described as a suitable overview. Due to the technical drop outs I could not hear everything and due to speakers being added at every turn, everyone was reduced to three minutes presentation time. The fact that the room was at ‘standing-room only’ level shows just how much the issues this workshop was to cover matter.
I am truly very sorry that I cannot produce anything meaningful from this workshop and that it will not be in the summary record from 2006. Maybe, in a future event, the organisation named after Mother Earth will see fit to devote a day to women, the role they play, the issues they face and solution they provide and furnish the facilities necessary. From my limited experience of my final stage project visit to Kenya, this is essential.
Gary
UNISG student, 17:34:PM | Earth Workshop, Food Networks, Language, English | Comment (3)
Being the coordinator of the workshop program I am the person who must apoligize for whatever did not work properly during the sessions of Terra Madre. I won’t list here the reasons for choosing a room of that size (the registrations of attendees were not that many) and I am not going into details about the technical problems. I just promise more care about this theme next time and of course I thank Gary for the suggestion about having more time for such an important issue. The transcription of all the presentations will be ready as soon as possible and will be put online in order to make everyone able to have an idea of what has been said.
cinzia scaffidi, 06:12 PM - 12 November 06Cinzia Scaffidi, Slow Food Study Center, Director
Don’t mistake me. I remain emphatically honored to have served as a delegate to Terra Madre 2006. I left the conference with, for the first time in my life, the exciting conviction that a global community of diverse peoples had actually pledged itself to toil together, day by day, to save our world from itself.
I regret to say, however, that I remain less than excited about what the workshop “Women in Agriculture� may have signaled about the conference’s commitment to women. Others obviously feel the same way.
Gary, for example, proposes a special day for women at the next Terra Madre. While Gary’s proposal is a truly wonderful one, something so extraordinary isn’t really required. Simply put, what’s needed by us women in agriculture is something as ordinary as respect as equals.
Had this been the case throughout Terra Madre 2006, the workshop, “Women in Agriculture,� would have received equal treatment by conference planners. For instance, the only session targeted at women would have featured: (1) a spacious meeting room instead of one that had us spilling over into the corridors; (2) a full complement of translators instead of the two present speaking for only two languages; (3) adherence to some sort of deadline for submitting presentation-time requests (this to avoid the inevitable chaos that accompanies honoring impromptu, last-second requests); (4) imposition of a tighter workshop theme accompanied by pre-screening of presentation proposals so that speakers stay on-topic instead of ricocheting off into areas with tangential relationships to the subject at hand.
As a woman directly engaged in both research and community outreach at the University of Wisconsin, I can say with certainty that women in agriculture want nothing more than to be treated equally, not differently. That’s all. Really. In a snail-shell, that is why I urge Slow Food’s workshop planners for “Mother Earth� 2008 to make sure that “she� is consulted beforehand.
Judith Reith-Rozelle
Judith Reith-Rozelle, 11:40 PM - 14 November 06University of Wisconsin Agricultural Research Stations
Competence and grace in the face of adversity….. a theme for women in agriculture generally, and no less so for speakers at the Women in Agriculture workshop at Terra Madre. It is in this light that I offer a sincere apology for my misstated remark about time at the workshop: I wish to make clear that I have enormous respect for the participants in this panel. It seems the workshop had too much success with literally enough speakers for three workshops! For specific suggestions as to how the workshop might have been planned differently, I defer to Judith’s excellent list in the post preceding this one.
I agree with the previous posts from Gary and Cinzia, that there should be more workshop time devoted to the subject at the next Terra Madre. The overflow crowd of attendees makes the demand obvious. The number and quality of speakers who came forward this time is one indication of the resource – but there is also a wealth of information among the delegates. One example: I saw in the room Domique Leveuf, who is a principal of U.S. based Adina World Beverages. The company, founded by Magatte Wade-Marchand, originally from Senegal, works with directly with growers in Senegal and other countries to supply the fruit for the beverages on a fair trade basis. This story and others like it would make for a fascinating workshop in and of itself. I look forward to seeing the great things that will undoubtedly emerge for the next Terra Madre!
Keith Jardine
Keith Jardine, 06:55 PM - 15 November 06Moderator of this and other Terra Madre workshops