The climate will change our diet. And what we eat, for that matter, is changing the climate. The correlation between the global food system and global warming sounds almost obvious, but the many ways it will influence our daily habits, in a future that is already present, often escape public opinion.
"Eating is an agricultural act": eating is agriculture. Simran Sethi, an Indo-American journalist hosted this morning at the Festival, cites writer-farmer Wendell Berry to summarize the close relationship between our choices at the table, the production system and the environment. In the book "Bread, Wine and Chocolate", Sethi travels between countryside, small businesses, farms and factories to tell the origin of the most common foods, the ones we love and that ultimately determine our identity and what we call "home". Foods that we are losing, accustomed to an increasingly standardized industrial system, which reduces variety to the minimum, uniforms diets and promotes extensive monocultures. All in the name of a productivity that, in light of the new climatic conditions, will be less and less sustainable and also practicable. Because there will always be less water. "Water scarcity is one of the major consequences of climate change and agricultural policies cannot ignore it. It is a strategic theme, vital for the future of the global food system ", stressed journalist Emanuele Bompan, who dedicated a long period of research around the world to the topic of" water-grabbing ". We need international policies, of course, but much could be done already starting from the local, as noted by Cristiana Peano of the Department of Agricultural Sciences of Turin: “It is necessary to involve the farmers, the companies. The agricultural world can and must make a strong contribution to climate mitigation, but unfortunately we are still weak on this front ".
From global to local to get to individual choices. "Global responsibilities - concludes Sethi - are everyone's responsibilities. We have tools in hand to act, starting from our behavior, from whom we vote in elections, from what and where we buy, from what we eat every day ”.
