We don’t have time anymore. A paradigm shift in our lifestyle is urgently needed. Fraternity and listening are the tracks on which we must set out before the catastrophe. Enzo Bianchi and Carlin Petrini did not mince words to describe the current situation, requested by the director of Christian familyStefano Stimamiglio, late Sunday afternoon in the setting of Terra Madre, Salone del Gusto in Turin. The comparison, promoted in collaboration with the Hospitality Festival, between “a man of faith” and “a man of faith in humanity”, as the director presented them, was centered on “Food, Peace, Fraternity”. Three dimensions that may apparently seem distant, but which are more strongly connected than ever before, as the speakers pointed out.
This year Terra Madre had as its theme «We are nature, we are nature», and the whole meaning is already here, as Pope Francis reiterated in his message addressed to the numerous participants in the event: «I am addressing farmers, breeders, shepherds , chefs, fishermen and artisans who have been part of the Terra Madre network for twenty years, and I also address all those women and men who have the good of this Planet at heart: everything that surrounds us is a gift and we we have a duty to respect and preserve it. I invite you to continue walking together towards the path undertaken: your determination and your example will thus become symbols of true hope and decisive stimuli in building a better world.”
A better world that Terra Madre has been working towards for years, and whose edition this year is dedicated to two “friends of the community” killed in the war between Palestinians and Israelis, the Israeli farmer Dror Hore and the Palestinian Bilal Saleh, killed while harvesting the olives. Petrini warned: «We are at risk of extinction if we continue to exploit the land, the situation is dramatic. The main culprit is the global food system, which produces 37% of CO2, much more than the 17% produced by the mobility system.” He did not mince words to denounce the food superproduction which lives the paradox of accumulating food to feed 12 billion people, while we are only 8 billion, and then 800 million human beings have nothing to eat and every year millions of children die due to malnutrition. Change must start from the awareness that resources are not infinite.
Petrini remarked that we must abandon the phase of the industrial revolution, which considers the planet’s resources to be endless, and undertake the ecological transition, where “recycle and regenerate” are two verbs to embody. Enough, then, with the concept of being and feeling like consumers: it is Bianchi who suggests a simple but effective gesture: «Go into a supermarket, look at how many things there are that you don’t need. You will come out happy.” The antidote to consumerism is brotherhood. A theme to which Brother Bianchi has just dedicated a book (Fraternity – Einaudi publisher). «We have carried out great battles for freedom and equality – he recalled – obtaining good results, even if now, even in Italy, we experience strong inequalities between those who are very rich and those who are increasingly poor. But it’s as if we had forgotten about brotherhood.” But can we fight for brotherhood, he asked. For Bianchi, «you become brothers, you are not one by birth; brotherhood is not easy, it is necessary to educate children from an early age to welcome others.”
And a place where brotherhood and listening can be experienced today is the table. Here is the third theme of the meeting. Food, Bianchi recalled, is also justice: «We must respect the land and have food that is the result of the right work. If I met Moses, I would tell him that the commandment is missing: Love the earth as yourself! Petrini spoke again on food and justice, re-proposing the issue of gangmastering, which has also reached “his” Langhe, and urged people not to buy products made by exploiting people.
All this without politicians having fully understood what is at stake, but with a look of hope towards young people, aware of the situation and, despite experiencing it with suffering, experimenting with virtuous actions. All this in a context that sees various war scenarios, conflicts of which there is no end in sight and no solution in sight.
