Slow Food and NUS. Protecting and promoting endangered food products

Slow Food (SF) is a global grassroots organization and movement that seeks to guarantee everybody access to good, clean, and fair food. Since its inception, SF has articulated a holistic vision of gastronomy that understands food as a web of relationships linking pleasure and wellbeing, people and landscapes, producers and consumers, cultures and ecosystems. Underlying all of SF’s work is a commitment to defending biocultural diversity and traditional knowledge within foodscapes in order to enhance the resilience of human communities and the global food system. SF approaches the theme of neglected and underutilized species through the broader lens of endangered foods and has developed projects such as the Ark of Taste, Slow Food Presidia, and Gardens in Africa in order to protect and promote these endangered products within their larger sociocultural and ecological contexts. Endangered products are identified using a grassroots approach, and SF believes that putting technical support, networking capacities, scientific knowledge, and markets at the service of local communities is the most effective way to ensure sustainable and equitable results in the long term.