Petrini spent his life campaigning for slow, sustainable, good food.
Carlo Petrini, the Italian gastronome and activist who founded the global Slow Food movement, died on Thursday evening at the age of 76. He passed away at his home in Bra, in the northern Piemonte region.
Petrini spent his life campaigning for what he called food that is “good, clean and just” – a shorthand for produce that tastes good, is grown sustainably and is fairly traded.
His movement began in 1986 as Arcigola, a response to the opening of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome, which galvanised Italian food lovers into organised resistance against the advance of fast food culture.
On 9 December 1989, at a founding congress in Paris, the Slow Food Manifesto was signed by delegations from more than 20 countries, and Petrini was elected president, a role he held until 2022.
Movement
Slow Food grew into one of the most influential food and environmental organisations in the world, championing biodiversity, small-scale producers and traditional culinary knowledge.
In 2004 Petrini created Terra Madre, an international network of food communities bringing together small farmers, fishermen, artisans, cooks, academics and young people. The network now spans more than 160 countries.
That same year he founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo, near Bra – the first academic institution in the world to offer an interdisciplinary approach to food studies.
A journalist and prolific author, Petrini wrote for publications including La Stampa and La Repubblica, and directed all proceeds from his journalism to Slow Food and the Pollenzo university.
He was also co-founder, in 2017, of the Laudato Si’ Communities, inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment.
Legacy
His international recognition was considerable. In 2008 he was the only Italian named by The Guardian among the 50 people most likely to save the planet, and in 2013 he received the United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth award.
Slow Food remembered him as a man of extraordinary vision and empathy, driven by love of the common good, of human relations, and of nature and biodiversity.
Petrini himself liked to sum up his philosophy in a single phrase: “Those who sow utopia, reap reality.”
Photo credit: Slow Food
