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LovingTerra MadrecarLo petriniSLow Food preSidentWhat you will read over the following pages are small stories. Stories that, through the Slow Food movement and the steady, irresistible growth of Terra Madre, we have become used to telling you for years. You will also see the faces and hands of the network’s delegates, the ones who took over the city of Turin in September, bearing witness to their humble work, daily rituals with an extremely high intellec- tual value, transferred within the network along with the knowledge that enables them to carry out this work.Terra Madre has existed since 2004, and since then much of its embryonic ideal- ism has come to fruition. Many of the concepts expressed at the time on ecologi- cal sustainability, once considered to be based on rash views or, worse, the prod- uct of unnecessary and excessive scaremongering, now have a level of aware- ness that, while not truly popular, is certainly more widespread internationally.However, the road ahead is not easy. In particular, there are two issues that, in my opinion, threaten the future of our planet more than anything else today. One is climate change, while the other is the building of new walls that are increasingly the response to migrants fleeing oppression, war and despair.We are at a watershed moment in which the production of food to feed a hungry population is having an extremely heavy impact on natural ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. For the first time in human history, it is jeopardizing our ca- pacity to meet those same needs in the future. We must not forget that the Earth can be both a generous mother and, when under pressure from reckless use of her resources, a wicked stepmother. It is therefore vital that we question how we live in our shared home and what we will leave behind after we have gone. It may seem an unrealistic question, but the survival of the human race can no longer be taken for granted.Advances in technology and production in the last two decades have undoubt- edly freed us from a large number of urgent needs, particularly primary ones. Alongside this, though, a model of turbocharged capitalism based on massive6 AlMAnAC© ForrEST CAvAlE