The Convent - Day 8

We began our day with a speaker, Simona Lanzoni who is the Director of Programmes at Fondazione Pangea. Simona spoke on microcredit and what her experience has been working abroad. She has worked extensively in Afghanistan where she lived for 3 years. She explained that post-conflict areas are the best period in which to empower women and increase their place in society. Pangea is interested in economic development, but it is mainly focused on the holistic and personal development of the microcredit “client”. Financial services provided by Pangea include working capital loans, consumer credit, savings, pensions, insurance, and money transfer services. Simona explained that microcredit is much more than simply providing a loan. Instead it also provides human rights training and business-development services, such as health and literacy. Pangea focuses on the “unbankable” people who do not have collateral to offer or to who the banks will not lend to in some societies, such as in Afghanistan or Bangladesh. Women typically work to make and maintain savings, extend the benefits they receive to their children and larger family as a whole, and access to this type of financial assistance increases female self esteem and their dignity.

In the afternoon we enjoyed presentations on the Deep Fryer, the Mixer, Coffee, and Stoves and Ovens in relation to Gender roles.

At the end of the day we were able to go into town and enjoy the Festival of St. Anthony. Outside of the Convent several people had been working all morning to create the image below. They used dyed flowers, seeds, corn, and other similar materials to make this beautiful image of this scroll.

Many students walked to the Castle in Bolsena to see the beginning of the procession of the Priests, the Mayor, and other groups who wound through the town carrying St. Anthony with them through the center of town and up the hill to eventually end at the Convent where everyone tried to get a Lily from the Statue of St. Anthony and also get in line to receive pork sandwiches in the Convent. Enjoy the pictures!

Convent Life: Back in the Habit

June 12, 2011. Day 7. By Jane Bleecker.

Today was a restful day for most of us. With no scheduled activities on the books, people took the opportunity to explore the sights and sounds of bustling downtown Bolsena, sleep in until absurd hours, marinate in sulfur hot springs, or talk to key informants for our case studies. I spoke to a hunter/forager/plumber/caveman about wild mushrooms and the philosophy behind short and simple value chains.

Because of the aforementioned relaxation mandate, I thought I'd blog today about something we all know and love: convent life.

When we're not in class, in the lab applying our skills, or in our rooms frantically preparing for a presentation, each of us has a repertoire of extracurricular activities that entice us in and around the convent. Here are some of the most common:

Eating copious amounts of bread, cheese, pasta, and locally sourced produce. This happens frequently and with great enthusiasm. I'll explain more later.
Jammin'. Crooning. Rocking out. Two guitar players and anywhere from three to fifteen amateur singers unite sporadically to make beautiful music, be it around the dinner table, in the library, or on a small crowded bus. Glorious harmonies ensue.

Learning to cook from the master himself, Il Signor Damiano. So far we've made pizza, pasta, and gnocchi. Just when I think I'm on the verge of coronary heart disease and will never eat again (it happens twice a day like clockwork), I sleep or walk it off, top it off with gelato, deep fry it and dip it in milk and then I'm ready to eat again, thanks to Damiano and his culinary genius. His love for food, flavors, freshness, flair, and from-here ingredients combine to create "una festa in la bocca" with every dish.

We're all looking forward to this coming week, especially tomorrow when Bolsenans (Bolsenese?) will decorate the streets with these flowers and the church will be filled with lilies, or giglios, for the local holiday. I wonder what we'll eat.

Day 9: The Forever Bus and The Slow Food Movement

Tuesday, June 14th 2011

Our Mission: Visit Slow Food Headquarters.

We were off to a rough start...about an hour behind our scheduled 5am departure time, to be exact. But after 8 hours of sleeping, drooling, reading, complaining, and breathtaking views on the "Forever Bus," manned by our burly, yet gentle and steady driver, Claudio, we were in Bra.

For most foreigners, Bra is not your typical tourist destination, unless you are a food fanatic and promoter of local food systems like we are. A small town located in the northwestern Piedmont region of Italy, Bra is the birthplace of Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement.

Founded in 1989, Slow Food is an international “eco-gastronomic,” non-profit, grassroots organization that promotes good, clean, and fair food in terms of consumption and production.

• Food that is good for the person, the community and the land that it comes from.
• Food that is clean in the sense thatit is produced in harmony with the environment and is healthy for human consumption.
• Food that is fair in that it is sold for exactly what it is worth and it is accessible for consumers.

With over 100,000 members spanning across 160 countries, Slow Food has created a network of 2,000 food communities who are geared towards local, small-scale, and sustainable production of quality food.

Why local and small-scale?

Slow Food believes that fewer food–miles not only allow for fresher tasting food, but also allow for better knowledge and control of the food people eat along with ensuring the maintenance of traditional, environmentally sustainable production methods, and the preservation and protection of local landscapes.

Terra Madre

One of Slow Food’s largest initiatives is the Terra Madre network which provides a voice to small-scale farmers, breeders, fishers, and food-artisans by connecting them with academics, cooks, consumers, and youth groups with the aims of working to improve the food system while protecting the environment and communities.

During our time at Slow Food Headquarters, our group met with the lovely Carmen Wallace, a Slow Food representative who gave us an in-depth overview of Slow Food International. Afterward, we had a stimulating discussion with Cinzia Scaffidi, another Slow Food representative, who helped us understand the Slow Food Movement in the context of the themes covered in our course.

According to Cinzia, Slow Food promotes Food Sovereignty and agricultural reform, especially as a vehicle for food security and gender equality in the developing world. The industrialization of our food systems has led to a market-oriented system that caters to big enterprises, making it extremely difficult for small-scale farmers to access and compete in that market. This is exemplified in the recent "land grabbing" phenomenon of the last several decades, where large agricultural corporations are acquiring the best lands for production of food for profit (lands which they also pollute and deplete of precious nutrients). If food security is a concern of the poorest 1 billion people in the world, then they are not customers of the big agricultural industries, whose number one objective is to generate profit. They need access to land for cultivating their own foods, lest they depend on the big industry and the industrialized market.

As far as Food Sovereignty and gender equality are concerned, Cinzia discussed how women and young girls are known to indicate the well-being of a society as a whole. To explain, she used the analogy of roses in a vineyard:

In Italy, roses are planted at the front of each vineyard-line to serve as a warning system for parasites. When parasites are near, they will attack the roses first, and the farmers become aware of their presence. This way, they can take the necessary precautions to protect their crops.

Similarly, in the developing world, when families face chronic poverty and food insecurity, the first visible signs of this are among the women and young girls. They are the first to have their portions reduced, the first to be pulled out of school, and the last to see a doctor. Women, however invisible, are key players in agriculture, and more and more research is showing that food security and poverty eradication is achievable if we can empower women by giving them access to land and access to the market, so that they may feed their families.

Our meeting with Cinzia turned out to be quite rewarding and little discussions could be heard amongst some of us on the Forever Bus afterward, as we headed to Casa Scaparone, an agritourismo hotel we were expecting to stay at.

However, upon our arrival and to our surprise, we learned that, at the last moment, the hotel was not only unable to accommodate us, but was also abandoned and most likely haunted.

Although tensions were high (after a 14-hour day with all of us in extremely close quarters), our fearless leader Sabrina, supplemented by our prompt hotel-searching skills, found Hotel Madea, which was able to accommodate our party of 18. Although we were void of Chef Damiano’s delectable dinners, we managed to survive the night and began another day’s journey aboard the Forever Bus.

Day 4: Formaaaaaagio!

Today, I am officially made out of cheese. We travelled to Sugano to a farm where we learned about the production of small-scale, artisinal goat cheese (followed by a lunch of bread, wine, and 12 types of cheese).

Overall impressions of the farm in Sugano: One thing I noticed immediately was that this farm was a family operation. The mix of toys on the lawn and small red galoshes by the entrance to the door was an automatic acknowledgement of a family-run business. While most group observations might have been the actual process of cheese- mine was more about the people. The first thing that struck me was a comment made by the owner. To paraphrase she remarked--the life she and her husband live was about giving back to nature and working with nature. She continued stating, it was an intentional choice to pursue this particular lifestyle and raise their children in this environment.

This got me thinking—much of the choices we make in life are not just to secure our own livelihoods but those of our families, perhaps neighbors and friends. While many people might not have the choice to pursue certain lifestyles, this family did--and it was deeply rooted in the value they clearly had for the land and the passion they held for the production of their cheeses. In understanding how their farm was interconnected to local markets and linked to the bureaucracy of cooperatives—the challenges they face in securing these livelihoods became more tangible. For me, placing faces with an issue that we speak so much about in class formed an even greater reality in which I felt finally connected to our subject matter.

So what makes their cheese so special and why did we go there? Well as we mentioned, they follow an ancient artisanal method with the kind of care and attention that it would be impossible to achieve on an industrial scale. The very land itself – the nutritious native grasses that feed the goats – is crucial to the process. But they face obstacles: to get the highly-coveted “Organic” stamp to market their product competitively, they need to buy grass grown in North America and shipped across the world. So they have struck a balance of buying some “organic” foreign grass while supplementing the feed with the native stuff; its their way of staying competitive while also respecting the wealth of the land, the traditions of the past, and actually improving the quality of the product.

They face a similar obstacle when making the cheese itself – law requires the use of harsh chemicals to disinfect everything – but this would also kill the desirable bacteria that give the cheese its special character. As we entered the production room, we saw buckets of milk, cheese out in the open, and standing water on the floor. We collectively thought: “Hmmm, is this sanitary?” Well unsurprisingly the ancient production methods he uses (though maybe not perfectly in line with newly-contrived safety laws) are time-tested and true. Independent biological analysis of his products at all stages showed that they were perfectly safe: the good bacteria actually regulates the bad and ensures a healthy, delicious product.

Hopefully, this experience shows us that traditional food made with care and skill on a small scale can respect the environment, find a successful market, and empower a family. In visiting, we witnessed different aspects of the cheese making process—from the goats in the stable to the place settings on the table. We left the farm having consumed a richly tasting product made with great intention, hard work, and infused with ideals and hope to strengthen a family’s prosperity.

Day 2 - Coldiretti, gelato and the farm

We had a guest speaker in the morning - Andrea Fugaro from Coldiretti. Coldiretti is the largest organization of farmers in Italy with 1.5 million member. The organization is designed to advocate for farmer's as entrepreneurs and help change policy so small farmers can more easily make a living.

In the afternoon we went to the Sarchioni gelato factory and met a father/son team whose family has been in the food business for more than 150 years.

We learned the ins and outs of gelato making and tried some lemon sorbeto. We teased a little bit of gender information out of the folks at the factory but didn't make tons of headway with them. We found out only 2 of the 8 people working there are women and that the men are the only folks who drive the trucks.

In the early evening we moved on to a local farm where we toured the fields with one of the owner's of the farm:

We spent a significant amount of time discussing the value chain of the various fowl that are raised on the farm and where the value is added at each step. Here are some pretty chickens we met:

We also learned about some amazing Italian dogs that guard sheep. These particular farmers have somehow magically trained these dogs to guard their chickens so they don't have to intrude on the local wildlife by hunting or trapping.

We ended the day by having a farm to table dinner at the farm. We ate chicken from the farm in a couple of different forms, vegetables from their gardens and other locally sourced items. 

The division of labor at this farm seems to be that the man deals with the agricultural regulations, the woman deals with the guest house and they both do the actual farm work with the help of one other employee.

Lastly, as always, Domiano showed up for our field trip. He tickled the ivories as we finished eating supper:

The Convent: Day 3

The so-called Second Green Revolution marked by the genetic modification of seeds and spurred by the TRIP agreement, exemplifies the globalization and corporatization of food systems.

The seed market is tightly controlled by a handful of powerful players.

Narrowing competition, commodifying food and weakening/distancing the links between producer, buyer, processor, retailer and consumer, threatens the human right to adequate food.

The homogenized and monopolized features of the global food system spell danger for biodiversity, food sovereignty, food security, etc.

Lab lesson of the day: Consent/assent

Ensuring human dignity in research is priority. Whether using a rapid technique like observation or a key informant, if using video or photo, a code of conduct should be followed.

Day 1

First day of a new class - Women and Food Security. On the menu for the next couple of weeks: trips to organic and not-so-organic farms, learning to milk cows, make goat cheese and pasta, sample gelato, hear from a plethora of guestspeakers on topics including how to mobilize grassroots resistance to agro-business, pre-historic feminism, the role and impacts ofregulation in industrialized food production. The objective: to understand implications of the industrialization of food systems on historical and cultural norms as well as on food security and to learn tools to assist in analysis and program strategy development for improving food security.

Todays lecture whet the appetite with several interesting tidbits about food and women:

• women are responsible for 60-80% of food production in most developing countries
• girls are 2x as likely to die from malnutrition
• women invest an average of 90% of their income back into the household, whereas men invest an average of 30-40%
• women in Africa work 50% longer than men
• women have far less access to land and credit than men
• estimates show that if women had better access to farming land, fertilizer, & ag training, yields in sub saharan Africa could improve by 22% (even without other capital investments)

For our first afternoon session, we had a quick briefing on observation, community mapping, and transect walks before splitting up and hitting the small town of Bolsena. As we walked, we noted home gardens, small locally stocked grocery stores and other not-so-locally stocked grocery stores. And of course, once in town, who can pass up the opportunity to savor the latest flavors at the local 'slow food' gelateria?

Back at the convent, it was another masterpiece dinner from Damiano. Delectable. Ready for Day #2.