Terra Madre (TM) was probably the most diverse meetings of ordinary and extraordinary people the world has ever seen. Most of the 5000 delegates, from
130 countries, were more or less ordinary in their natural settings but became extraordinary when brought together from the ends of the earth for one great
cause: The celebration of traditional and local food communities nurtured by Terra Madre--Mother Earth. As exciting as was the displays of exotic foods and native costumes, there was a more significant display: The actual and potential power of grassroots activists to steer global societies toward more sustainable food supplies in more stable and just communities.These vital strains in TM at Turin was grasped and expounded by our climax speaker, Prince Charles of Great Britain. His words and spirited presentation should be read--and preferably viewed--by anyone who wants to
understand the reality and potential of TM. At the least, we should note his closing points: 1) That he came to TM to show his support for the Slow Food
movement and 2) To challenge and strongly urge us to go home and grow much bigger. "Numbers count."

Despite TM's grand themes that moved me, it was the personal
contacts and social experiences that warmed my heart. Much to my surprise and delight, I was one of the many favored delegates to be quartered in the traditional
Piedmont countryside surrounding Turin. My nitch was a ridgetop villa near the village of Dogliani, whose name is well known to wine connoisseurs. A bus marked
"Dogliani" collected several dozen of us North Americans twice a day and sped us the the 60 road kilometers to and from the meeting. It turned out to be a daily joy ride that has inspired us to preserve the memories and personal contacts through an e-mail
network that may reveberate for years to come.

However exciting the conference days, it was the nights that warmed the heart. For me the trite expression of being "wined and dined" will forever be elevated to Italian alpine heights. Every evening we were whisked
to another villa for another feast prepared by and eaten with the most hospitable local people one could ever hope to meet.Bless them and those in Slow Food who made this miracle for us totally free. Or was it? I believe it was, in a way, their investment and trust
in us that we in turn would give--and keep on giving--of ourselves toward the goals of Slow Food.

On the slow side of TM, I found that it was more inspiring than informative. Very little in the workshops that I attended actually addressed my specific concerns as an organic vegetable farmer. Then, owing to my scheduling mistakes, I even missed a couple of U.S. oriented workshops where I might have mentioned two pet projects: 1) A radical concept of cooperative growing and distributing food in the suburbs, now called"LIFE"--Local Initiatives in Food and the Environment. And 2) Sod Strip cultivation, an ecological system of growing row crops in precisely fixed perennial beds
that are flanked by permanent strips of lush sod. Sod Strip cultivation would be sustained by a 21st Century family of appropriate low-powered tractors and
precision implements, now being assembled as prototypes.

Being a Slow Food delegate to TM brought me to Europe for the first time in 27 years. It reminded me that my holiday vacation in Great Britain in 1977 had included a U.S. Embassy Christmas Week party where the guest of honor was a McDonald's Hamburger executive who was in London to inaugurate the first McDonald's in London--and probably all Europe. And here I was in 2004 joining another, much bigger, party dedicated to ending the McDonald's phenomenen. It was like placing bookends to an era of food history.

Finally, TM was one of the most memorable and significant episodes of my 83 years of life. It resonated with long-held convictions and reverberated with personal events long remembered. I was blessed to have been a part of it.

Hall Gibson