Episode #057

October 24, 2024

Elena Aniere on The Slow Food Revolution

Education and Empowerment, Healthcare and Social Impact

The ContraMinds Podcast is available on

Transforming Global Food Systems Through Local Action

Elena Aniere, a 20-year veteran at Slow Food, shares profound insights into how the movement is revolutionizing food systems worldwide. From their successful transformation of 1,000 gardens into 10,000 across Africa, to preserving 6,000+ endangered food products through their Ark of Taste initiative, Slow Food is championing “good, clean, and fair” food practices globally. Aniere explains how the movement connects local farmers with consumers, chefs, and communities, building sustainable alternatives to industrial food systems while preserving cultural food heritage and biodiversity.

Building Sustainable Food Communities for the Future

The conversation delves into practical approaches for making sustainable food systems viable, from establishing Earth Markets that directly connect farmers with consumers, to developing Slow Food Travel programs that promote gastronomic tourism in rural communities. Aniere discusses how Slow Food’s advocacy has influenced EU policy, particularly in preserving traditional food practices like raw milk cheese production. She emphasizes that while change may be slow, their community-based approach – now active in countries from Italy to the Philippines and India – is creating lasting impact through education, biodiversity preservation, and advocacy, providing a blueprint for future food security and sustainability.

About Elena Aniere

Elena Aniere stands at the forefront of transforming food systems across Asia and the Pacific, serving as Network Coordinator for Slow Food International. Her territory spans from Southeast Asia to India, and from Pacific Islands to Azerbaijan, where she brings two decades of passionate commitment to sustainable food systems and cultural preservation. An Australian native with deep roots in agriculture and environmental tourism, Elena found her calling at Slow Food in 2004, and her journey from working on large-scale farms in Australia to championing small-scale, sustainable farming practices offers unique insights into both sides of our global food system. Her recent focus has been pioneering innovative approaches that link food biodiversity with sustainable tourism, creating pathways for rural communities to thrive while preserving their cultural heritage. Through her hands-on experience in project management and capacity building, she has helped transform thousands of communities across her region, making her a leading voice in the movement for good, clean, and fair food systems.

Connect with Elena: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-aniere-91192b29/

Connect with Swami: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivaraman-swaminathan-9856501/

Here are 5 key takeaways from the conversation with Elena Aniere:

1. The Power of Small-Scale Farming:

Small-scale farmers produce 45% of the world’s food, yet face increasing pressure from industrial agriculture. The solution isn’t “get big or get out” but rather “stay small and get stronger” through sustainable practices, community support, and direct market access.

2. Good, Clean, and Fair Food Systems:

Successful food systems need to balance three elements: good (quality, tasty food), clean (environmentally sustainable production), and fair (reasonable prices for both producers and consumers). This trinity forms the foundation for lasting change in food systems.

3. Building Trust Through Direct Relationships:

The key to sustainable food systems lies in rebuilding direct connections between producers and consumers. Through initiatives like Earth Markets and the Cooks Alliance, Slow Food creates platforms where farmers can sell directly to consumers, eliminating costly middlemen and building community trust.

4. Cultural Preservation Through Food:

Traditional food varieties and farming methods aren’t just about agriculture – they’re about preserving cultural heritage. The loss of traditional farming practices often means losing generations of cultural knowledge, as demonstrated by the case of 33 traditional rice varieties in the Philippines.

5. Change Happens at the Local Level:

While global food systems seem overwhelming, real change starts locally. Whether it’s school gardens in Africa or coffee communities in Tamil Nadu, successful food system transformation happens community by community, building resilient local food networks that can withstand global pressures.

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Show Notes

01:28 – 07:30 Why should people care about food ecosystems?

07:30 – 10:58 Is small-scale farming realistic in today’s world of scale?

10:58 – 15:47 What drew you to the Slow Food movement?

15:47 – 23:16 How do you put biological and cultural diversity into action?

23:16 – 25:24 What impact does industrialized food have on health?

25:24 – 29:53 How do Slow Food Gardens work?

29:53 – 31:53 What is the Slow Food Cooks Alliance?

31:53 – 36:21 How do you raise awareness about Slow Food?

36:21 – 43:20 How do Slow Food communities work globally?

43:20 – 47:57 How do you build trust between farmers and local consumers?

47:57 – 53:03 How do you make local produce affordable?

53:03 – 56:38 Have you seen small farmer systems impact larger food ecosystems?

56:38 – 1:01:35 Which countries have embraced Slow Food at a national level?

1:01:35 – 1:04:38 How do you fund the movement?

1:04:38 – 1:06:28 How do you stay motivated when change is slow?

1:06:28 – 1:07:53 What does success mean to you?

1:07:53 – 1:09:15 What advice would you give to a university student?

1:09:15 – 1:09:57 What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

1:09:57 – 1:10:52 What do you believe that others don’t agree with?

1:10:52 – 1:11:57 Closing

Selected Links

The Thousand Gardens in Africa Project

Coffee Coalition

Agroecological Coffee Production

Raw Milk Cheese Preservation Campaign

Terra Madre Network

Slow Food Earth Markets

The Ark of Taste Project

Traditional Rice Varieties Preservation

Slow Food Travel Program

Slow Food Presidia Projects

Food Policy Advocacy

Episode Transcript

Q1 Why should people care about food ecosystems?

Swami (00:27.63)

Thank you. Elena, I just wanted to kick off our conversation with something which I believe is very, important. Why should really people care about the food ecosystem? And what is really the statistics and the challenges of the current food ecosystem? And when you really talk about good, clean and fair food, what does this mean to the human race at large?

Elena Aniere (01:01.214)

Thank you for the interesting question, Swami. I think from a global perspective to a local perspective, people need to start thinking about where the food comes from. We need to be looking at it both from an agricultural perspective in regards to how farmers produce their food, to also how and where consumers actually buy their food. From a farming perspective, for example, since the Green Revolution, has been changes in workforce from rural areas moving to cities. It means that the number of farmers are changing their jobs and they’re changing their jobs to be self -producing or small-scale farmers to be dependent upon small-scale farmers for their food.

If we’re looking at a global perspective, if you look at Asia and Africa, and also Europe. There have been a loss of farmers in Asia, a loss in the last 15, 20 years, about 45% of farmers have moved from farming to other jobs, other economic jobs. If you’re looking at from a European perspective, the decrease has been about 49% moving from rural jobs to jobs that are not farmers, while Africa has increased from 164 to 229 million people from 2020 to 2021. So as we see in a global perspective for the global south, there’s been, and also Europe, there’s been a shift from people moving away from farming to other jobs, which means that less people are actually producing food.

If we’re looking at food production, we’re looking at food production in Asia and in Africa that are small scale farmers and subsistence. If you’re looking at the United States or Australia or Canada or in Europe also, the farming production is not so small scale. It’s moved towards the industrial food system. Okay. And the difference between the small scale farm system subsistence and the industrial food system is those, the small scale is they produce enough for the family consumption. That’s the principle of what they do based on what they’ve always done. They produce enough and what they have access they provide and they sell or buy in their local communities. The industrial food system is about high yield production. It’s about exportation. It’s about production that has high inputs and high outputs, but also at a high cost. Whereas the subsistence, is a biodiverse model. It means that producers or farmers produce what they eat and then it’s a small scale production model. So where we have around the world, not only employment, but also the production, we have from the green revolution, there needs to be a paradigm shift from the green revolution or industrial food globalised system to a more ecological intensified system based on family farming and also family farming and subsistence farming.

So we need to move the subsistence farming and the small scale farming into a higher notch, but it’s not get big or get out. It’s stay small, but also assist and work with the farmers to be able to help them not only produce enough consistently for their family consumption, but also enough excess to be able to sell to provide income because more than 45% of our population produces food from small scale farming. So we need to shift this and if we look at it from a global perspective it’s very much in the United States, in Australia, in Europe in regards to where that paradigm shift needs to take place but also the small scale farmers in the global south to ensure that they can sustain and maintain what they’re actually doing.

So this is where Slow Food Good Clean and fits in. It’s good for you, it’s clean for the environment. The fair is when we start to need to work with the consumers and raise awareness with consumers about where they get their food from. Okay, at this moment in time, the new generation, the next generation, the young, they don’t know where food comes from unless they actually live on farms. So we’ve seen there’s a shift from farming to cities. Those that live in cities are dependent upon what’s available in the cities or large towns. And most of it is normally from a supermarket or from a shop. the transformation of more people getting a higher wage means that they buy food that is convenient. Okay.What SlowFood works with fair is bringing the consumer closer to the producer to ensure that the producer’s paid a fair price and the consumer pays a fair price, but also there is cultural context and also social context in regards to that relationship the consumer builds with the producer.

Q2 Is small-scale farming realistic in today’s world of scale?

Swami (06:41.458)

Is it fair and realistic to look at the small scale farmer when most of the businesses today are talking scale, right? Be it any industry, know, every industry talks scale, but you are having a contrarian view of local communities, small scale farming, and is that really something that’s achievable?

Elena Aniere (07:13.442)

What Slow Food does is we provide an alternative. Okay, so not all farmers have been and are able to go into that industrial food system. One, they don’t have the land. Two, they don’t have the technology. And three, they may not have the education to do it. What Slow Food does is working with the small scale farmer, family farmer, to ensure that they can sustain what they’re doing. So they have a sustainable production food system to ensure that they are not a part of the equation that moves to a city because the farming does not provide an economic benefit. It also has a plus in that it provides social continuity and also cultural continuity. OK, if everybody or all farmers are to move to cities, you lose your social binding, your family unit, but you also lose your culture. And we get standardized in that food production, which means we get standardized in both our culture and our social environments. Okay, SlowFood’s not saying industrial food systems need to come into the context of small scale. What SlowFood’s saying, if you are a large scale farmer, due to circumstances that it started in the 50s and the 60s, there is a way that you can convert that you are producing more in balance with nature.

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