Around fifty Slow Food members, activists, leaders, and food producers from the Nordic countries gathered at Terra Madre in Turin, Italy. At the Nordic network meeting focused on current Slow Food activities in the region, Slow Food President Edward Mukiibi highlighted the importance of meeting and collaborating.
On a late mild September evening in Turin, Terra Madre delegates from the Nordic countries gathered in a classroom at the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin, slightly off the main event ground of Terra Madre.
Among presentations on Slow Food Farms, communication efforts, and other current projects in the region, the meeting offered an opportunity to find common ground, inspiration, and collaboration for Slow Food activities in the Nordic countries.
While the participants savored local Nordic delicacies like lamb sausage, honey, and preserved fish, Jannie Vestergaard, Chairperson of Slow Food in the Nordic Countries, and Eleonora Olivero, Network Coordinator for the Nordic countries at the Slow Food Headquarters in Bra, Italy, welcomed the participants.
The Importance of Gathering
A highlight of the evening was a visit and speech by Edward Mukiibi, President of Slow Food. In his first meeting with representatives from the Nordic countries, he emphasizes the importance of gathering in person to drive change.
“We need to meet more than ever, reconstruct, start locally, and share our vision of unity and diversity with the rest of the world,” he said, stressing our shared challenge of protecting the biodiversity of our regions.
As Mukiibi also noted, the upcoming event Terra Madre Nordic 2025 is an important gathering for addressing the challenges of biodiversity loss, as is the Slow Food Farms project launched at Terra Madre.
“Your region has a long history of agroecological farming. Use this experience to bring farms together and share experiences with the rest of the world,” Mukiibi stated.
The Slow Food Farm Program is Landing in Sweden
Continuing the theme of Edward Mukiibi’s talk on the importance of preserving biodiversity, Michaela Saax from Slow Food Stockholm presented the Slow Food Farms program and its launch in the Nordic region. The initiative aims to create a worldwide network of Slow Food farms focusing on agroecological methods.
“It is a recognition of the farm and its practices, not a certification,” Saax explained.
The program has been piloted around Stockholm and Uppsala in Sweden over recent months, with discussions with farmers on the program’s possibilities and challenges unique to the Nordic region. Saax talks more about the initiative on a Slow Food podcast episode on Slow Food Farms; listen here.
Next up, the program will take off in the Nordic countries with digital training for accelerators. These persons will identify farms eligible to join Slow Food Farms. More information about the program can be found on Slowfood.com.
Terra Madre Nordic in Norway
Among other news from the network, Jannie Vestergaard welcomed everyone to Terra Madre Nordic, the third event of its kind following editions in Copenhagen and Stockholm. The event will take place in Norway in October 2025. The exact dates and place of the event will be revealed soon.
Other presentations during the meeting included an invitation to the Agroecology Europe Forum 2025, which will be held in Malmö, Sweden, in October, and the opportunity to nominate initiatives for the Food Planet Prize.
Karin Lindroos, a copywriter with Slow Food and the communication contact for Slow Food in the Nordic Countries, presented upcoming efforts to increase the organization’s presence on social media and welcomed members to be in touch regarding communication matters.
After a group photo, the Nordic delegates spread into the September night in Turin, with a few more days of lectures, talks, workshops, and networking at Terra Madre ahead.
See you in two years in Turin and next year in Norway for the Nordic edition of Terra Madre.
