Chers membres de Slow Food Grand- Duché, Chers lecteurs,
En cette période charnière qui voit le passage à l'année 2024, nous souhaitons prendre un moment pour réfléchir aux nombreuses réalisations que notre association a accomplies au cours de l'année écoulée. Ensemble, nous avons promu une alimentation saine, durable et respectueuse de l'environnement, mettant en lumière la richesse de notre terroir luxembourgeois.
En 2023, notre engagement en faveur d'une alimentation consciente a pris tout son sens, cependant, nous choisissons de regarder vers l'avenir avec espoir et détermination. Nous croyons fermement en notre capacité collective à apporter des changements positifs dans nos assiettes en continuant à favoriser une alimentation locale, en circuit court, et respectueuse de l'environnement, nous contribuons directement à la préservation de notre planète et à la création d'un avenir plus équitable.
En 2024, continuons à sensibiliser et à éduquer, à inspirer et à innover. Ensemble, faisons de chaque repas une occasion de célébrer la diversité de nos terroirs.
Que cette nouvelle année soit porteuse de projets passionnants où nous pourrons nous rencontrer et de moments de partage autour de tables remplies de saveurs authentiques et durables.
Bonne année à tous, empreinte de Slow Food et de valeurs qui perdurent dans le temps.
Slowfoodment,
L'équipe de Slowfood Grand-Duché
For more information, read:
- Slow Food’s Approach to Good, Clean and Fair Food Systems in the EU.
- The EU Food Policy Coalition’s “Policy Recommendations for a Meaningful Transition“
A View from Ukraine:
Only with Solidarity Can We Safeguard Biodiversity and Lay the Foundations for the Future.
A View from Ukraine:
Only with Solidarity Can We Safeguard Biodiversity and Lay the Foundations for the Future.
Whatever their nature, crises have much to teach us. One of their fundamental lessons is this:
Together we are stronger. This belief underpins the Slow Food network. Wars, pandemics and natural disasters only highlight our awareness that we are one big community with a specific duty, to help each other and protect our Mother Earth.
The solidarity that we have seen in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion exactly one year ago offers a strong and concrete example of this. More than 400 donors from over 27 countries have donated over €47,000, pledging to support not only the safety of those who have fled their home country but also those who have chosen to stay and look after their animals, crops and villages, protecting the wealth of local biodiversity currently under existential threat.
Slow Food has seen evidence of the network’s solidarity from around the world. Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian Slow Food communities are hosting refugees; Slow Food Australia has collected humanitarian aid and sent it to the borders; Slow Food Prague has run workshops to showcase Ukrainian cuisine; and in France and Italy Slow Food has organized fundraisers in aid of Ukrainian producers.
So far over 60 communities have been helped by this communal solidarity in various ways, with a focus on assisting those affected by the conflict to carry on with their daily lives and save local biodiversity. At a time of war, safeguarding biodiversity might not seem a priority. But in fact it represents a vital foundation for a future recovery.
“War is total destruction,” said Andrea Pieroni, professor of Ethnobotany and Ethnobiology at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, speaking to us last summer. “It also puts at risk the entire biodiversity of a country, and consequently an entire traditional gastronomic heritage. The environmental consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian war are manifold, and the effects fall (and will fall) as much on the present as on the future of each of us. But if a war can do damage, even more damage—and this time irreversible—can be done by reconstruction, if it does not respect the traditions and cultures that existed before, seeking instead to globalize and perhaps respond to global needs rather than local ones. The Slow Food network can play a key role in supporting Ukrainians to hold on to traditions, such as those of family production and farmers’ markets.”
The activities that Slow Food has been supporting in recent months include safeguarding traditional animal breeds by purchasing forage, providing medical assistance, distributing hatching eggs of local-breed chickens, providing farmers with seeds and plants of local varieties and helping to preserve local seed collections. The Slow Food network has also helped to purchase basic equipment, such as cultivators, fridges and wheelbarrows, for communities that have either been decimated or are hosting refugees. It has helped to fix a ruined school and buy containers for the meals being prepared by Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance cooks to distribute to the needy. For Christmas the network organized the delivery of food straight from farms to over 30 families where children were staying with their grandparents, so they could have good, wholesome food for the holidays.
“The money that we have received from Slow Food is vital, both to deliver humanitarian aid to people in need, and to preserve these native Carpathian bees and their ecosystem,” explained beekeeper Vitali Pavlu. “It’s all part of a spiritual and moral outlook that we promote: to do things not because they are profitable, but because they are good. So we take with one hand and give back with the other, to create harmony.”While some have donated financially, others have chosen to donate their time and work. Just one example out of many: Dutch Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance member Jeroen van Nijnatten and his partner Marike Reinhard. Normally working as a caterer, Jeroen is well equipped to cook on location. About a month ago he and Marike packed their van full of cooking gear and ingredients and set off for the city of Lviv.
Their action was supported by the Ukrainian Education Platform and Kerk In Actie, a Dutch collective of Protestant churches. Since then, they have served about 1,400 pancakes in and around Lviv. Moving their mobile kitchen from orphanage to shelter to football stadium, everywhere the displaced happily queued up for a plate of warm Dutch pancakes. Marike has also been running yoga sessions for children in local orphanages. Says Jeroen: “The people we cooked for—mainly women and children of course—were very happy. The best part of these weeks was to see that they really felt supported.” Jeroen and Marike have recently returned to the Netherlands, but plans for a second trip are already being made.
Solidarity has also been on show in the places where Ukrainian refugees have arrived. Kateryna Prykhodko is a goat’s cheese producer and veterinarian who attended Cheese 2019. She fled from Kiev to Italy in March 2022, bringing three children, her mother and a number of dogs. In Ukraine, she had a farm called Dragonfly, located on the outskirts of the capital. Now everything is destroyed. But thanks to the hospitality of Eros Scarafoni and his family at the Fontegranne farm in the countryside near Fermo, in the Marche, Kateryna has found not just a safe haven but also the opportunity to continue her work as a cheesemaker, teaching the locals the secrets of her blue goat’s cheese. Local and regional Slow Food coordinators are working closely with her to promote her Italo-Ukrainian cheeses, organizing a series of meetings and events to give Kateryna a hand so that her Dragonfly can “fly” again.
“We are infinitely grateful to each of you, each community, each national association and the international headquarters,” said Slow Food’s coordinator in Ukraine, Yuliia Pitenko. “We are grateful to the whole extended Slow Food family for the quick and very effective assistance. We have been able to help those who are in the occupied territories, those who are near the front, those who are in Kyiv and those who received displaced people in western Ukraine, without bureaucratic obstacles. We understand that this is solidarity, real solidarity. We understand what heart-to-heart help means, and even now, when we don’t know what will happen tomorrow, we still want to invite you to Ukraine, let it be in a year, when we will have restored our country and saved our local animal breeds, seeds and gastronomic dishes.”
Despite the unbelievable horror of the situation on the ground in Ukraine, many of our Slow Food leaders and activists have decided to stay behind to protect, feed and restore their communities. They are calling on us—the global Slow Food family—to support them; both those who have had to leave their homes, and those who have stayed behind.
Slow Food will raise funds to support Ukraine in two ways:
1) Saving Ukrainian biodiversity. To support those farmers who, even in wartime, have not left their farms and continue to work under the most difficult conditions, risking their lives to preserve the animal breeds and plant varieties they grow in order to nourish their local community and feed the future. We are making a plea to the global Slow Food community to support them financially with a donation.
2) Keeping knowledge alive. To create matching opportunities between Ukrainian Slow Food Community members and their counterparts throughout Europe, thus allowing for refugee farmers and food producers to be hosted by fellow producers to facilitate a meaningful opportunity for learning and exchange. Beekeepers to be matched with beekeepers, cheesemakers with cheesemakers, and so on. We believe this exchange will not only allow for Ukrainian food producers to keep practicing their trades in exile but will be a fruitful exchange of skills: skills which will be vital for the post-war reconstruction of the country.
As we develop these two projects, we will provide constant updates on this page and on all Slow Food communication channels: the list of Slow Food Communities to be supported, how the resources will be distributed, and the matches that we will create.
We ask you for your support: any amount you can give helps. DONATE NOW and share the message with your friends and contacts, so we can all ensure that urgent support is given where it is needed to most.
The funds raised will be entirely allocated to the Slow Food Communities in Ukraine, according to the indications provided to us by the coordinators of the network.
Slow Food agit aujourd'hui pour protéger la biodiversité, la sécurité alimentaire et la survie des communautés rurales du monde entier
Grâce aux dons reçus l'année dernière, nous avons ouvert cette année un nouveau Jardin en Afrique par jour. Mais nous devons faire encore plus l'année prochaine. Lorsqu'une communauté a perdu sa souveraineté alimentaire, il est extrêmement difficile de la retrouver.
Cette année, nous avons également ajouté chaque jour deux nouveaux produits à l'Arche du Goût. Mais nous devons faire encore plus l'année prochaine. Car toute biodiversité perdue est absolument impossible à retrouver. Nous n'avons pas de temps à perdre.
Hausse des températures, sécheresses prolongées et tempêtes imprévisibles rendent plus difficile que jamais la vie de celles et ceux qui font pousser notre nourriture. Soutenir Slow Food, c'est soutenir ces individus face aux défis qui les attendent. Nous pouvons être fiers du travail abattu jusqu'ici et du chemin parcouru ensemble, mais nous avons besoin de vous à nos côtés pour aller de l'avant.
Agissez aujourd'hui pour l'avenir de la planète
Merci de faire
avancer Slow Food Grand-Duché