The 1st of May, the World EXPO in Milan will open its doors. The EXPO has always been the place where the world gathers to wonder at the new technological and innovative solutions that will shape our daily lives in the near future. The EXPO is known for it’s icons like Christal Palace in the UK, or the most famous of all, Paris’ Eiffel Tower. The theme of this years EXPO is ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. It is not a coincidence that the EXPO’s theme is food. The discussion about the future of food, which Slow Food has taken part in since its very beginning, is now more vibrant and relevant than ever. It seems like the EXPO is making use of this momentum.
On the EXPO’s website we can read; ‘Over this six-month period, Milan will become a global showcase where more than 140 participating countries will show the best of their technology that offers a concrete answer to a vital need: being able to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone, while respecting the Planet and its equilibrium.’
With this ambition, the EXPO organization aims high. It is interesting, maybe even ironic, that the EXPO, once the high mass of innovation and industrialisation, is taking on food as its main topic. After years and years of industrialisation of agriculture and our food cultures, implicitly the EXPO admits that the industrial revolution in food and agriculture has failed. Today, still about 1 billion people go hungry, while another 1 billion people suffer the consequences of an unhealthy diet. Next to that, the worlds farmers, the people that are feeding the planet on a daily basis, are ageing. Fewer young people want, or can, make a decent living of a farming life.
Besides the beautiful words on the website, the question is to what extent the EXPO will be able to find answers to the crucial questions it asks itself. How can you, on the one hand, embrace the Milan Protocol, and on the other hand welcome corporate sponsors like McDonalds and Coca Cola?
Feeding the Planet might be the biggest challenge our generation has to face. But: governments and business are not feeding the planet. People are. Young farmers, fishermen, food producers are the people who will feed the planet in the future, It is up to them to decide what this future will be.
That is why Slow Food and the Slow Food Youth Network invite thousands of young farmers, fishermen, and food producers, to come to Milan, as the EXPO comes to a close. To show the world exactly who is feeding the planet. We need new solutions, innovative ideas, and hands on projects to shape the food system of the future. Therefore our event will be an open dialogue, for different points of view, diffent cultural backgrounds and different ways of working. Where different world views collide, that’s where innovation is being created.
Let’s lose our preoccupations, let’s lose our dogma’s, and let’s come together in Milan to think, work, and enjoy ourselves. By means of this event, we will build an interdisciplinary network of change makers, that will actively shape the future of food and farming. Because it is our generation that will feed the planet.
See you in Milan!
