Sindyanna News

ntellectuals of the soil!" So people dubbed the 4888 participants at a Slow Food conference in October, the first of its kind, sponsored by Terra Madre at Turino in Italy. The participants were small food producers, farmers and marketers of quality foods. Invited by the Italian chapter of Slow Food, they hailed from 128 countries, representing 1200 communities and organizations. In an age of globalization and gloves-off capitalism, the Terra Madre meeting bore a message of protest against the fast-food chains and the multi-national corporations producing engineered food.

Terra Madre invited Sindyanna of Galilee, which was represented by Hadas Lahav, Director, and Tzipora Freedman, Financial Manager. They were joined by Daniela Andreoli, representing the Friends of Challenge in Italy. The convention lasted four days and featured 61 workshops on agriculture and food production.

Hadas Lahav was invited to speak on "Olive Oil: Quality and Territory." She stressed the importance of the Fair-Trade system at a time when the market suffers under conditions of warfare and oppression:

"Everything in our region has a political meaning. You cannot avoid it when you have a situation where one people is occupying another. In the Middle East you cannot simply talk about Fair Trade without referring to the painful political situation."

Lahav's words received much applause. PARC, the Palestinian delegation, expressed its appreciation for Sindyanna's work.

Slow Food communities in Umbria invited the Sindyanna representatives, along with the Lebanese delegation, to a study tour of their region. Umbria is thought to produce the best olive oil in Italy. Lahav and Freedman were able to meet olive growers, to visit the most advanced olive presses in the world, to visit the Agriculture Department of Perugia University, and to hear about the latest researches in the field of olive oil.

The two also visited Liberomondo in Bra, about 50 km. south of Torino. Recently, Liberomondo began marketing Sindyanna's oil to fine-food and Fair Trade shops throughout Italy, where it's been having great success. They also visited the shop of Chico Mendes in Milan. Chico Mendes gave an evening in honor of Sindyanna. Here Lahav talked about the Via Dolorosa which a bar of soap undergoes from the trees in the West Bank to the bathroom shelf in Italy.

www.challenge-mag.com/en/article__172/sindyanna_news
23.05.2012, 02:05