“We are all involved. Climate change is a current crisis that demands the united efforts of all of humanity”. Carlo Petrini, Unisg & Slow Food’s president
“We are all involved. Climate change is a current crisis that demands the united efforts of all of humanity. Each of our choices can make a difference, because it is the sum of all our individual actions that will drive change.” Slow Food’s president, Carlo Petrini, is not alone in warning that global warming is a reality. Climate change is not coming in some indefinite future, but is a present certainty. “It is Slow Food’s duty to work on climate change: There can be no quality, no good food, without respect for the environment, for resources and for human labor.”
Today Slow Food is officially launching Menu for Change around the world, the first international communication and fundraising campaign to connect food with climate change. Agricultural emissions caused by plant and animal food production are among the leading sources of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The agrifood industry is one of the biggest culprits in the overheating of the planet, while the first victims of this advancing catastrophe are rural agriculture and pastoral economies.
It takes a lot of imagination to be able to come up with possible alternatives and construct new solutions. With Menu for Change, Slow Food wants to show that starting from food, each of us can and must make a difference, helping to stop this phenomenon whose solutions can no longer be deferred: We must act now. Slow Food will be doing what it can, communicating the responses of our network and how Slow Food supports and adds value to small-scale quality food production that respects the environment, running projects in the field to protect biodiversity, promoting food and environmental education, collaborating with our chefs and turning conviviality into a tool for raising awareness and influencing international politics.
We have no time left. Harvey, Irma, devastating downpours that wake us from our sleep, untimely harvests, falling crop yields, the scarcity of fresh grass and the premature end to summer pasturing in the
mountains, ocean acidification and rising sea levels, the reshuffling of animal and plant ranges as they adapt to changing temperatures: This is what climate change looks like. Extreme weather events are no longer worthy of record but have become the new normal. And the causes can be found in human activity and most of all in the greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels.
Agriculture is responsible for 21% of total global emissions (FAO 2015), compared with 37% from energy, 14% from transport and 11% from industry. Within the agrifood sector, the main source of greenhouse gas emissions is enteric fermentation, due to the methane produced by livestock during digestion. This alone accounts for 40% of the sector’s total greenhouse gas outputs. The next biggest source is the application of synthetic fertilizers, responsible for 13% of agricultural emissions (725 Mt CO2 eq.).
“Even though they are among the lowest producers of greenhouse gases, African countries and the other weakest countries are among the first to pay the consequences of global warming,” warns John Kariuki, the vice-president of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. “The extreme weather changes are primarily affecting farmers, herders and indigenous communities, increasing poverty and food insecurity. In Kenya, my country, the pastoralist communities are the hardest hit and many are being forced to migrate. If mitigation and adaptation measures are not taken into serious consideration, the situation will only worsen. Slow Food is working on this in Africa and the whole world through the promotion of agroecology and the protection of biodiversity, standing alongside producers. There is much to be done, and Slow Food cannot be victorious on its own.”
“Reducing emissions can no longer be a postponable possibility. It is an obligation. And each of us must intervene, for example by eliminating waste, especially food waste,” says Carlo Petrini. “We must try to prioritize locally produced food, to eat less meat and to avoid meat from factory farms. And we must ask ourselves a few simple questions: How was the food that I share with my family produced? Where did it come from? How much energy and water was needed to make it? Slow Food is working to spread this awareness and to promote and support food production that uses resilient and ecological practices, the only ones that can contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change. Help us to continue with our projects. Even a small donation will make a difference.”