Novara hills, Slow food inaugurates a new market

Piedmont is enriched with a new Slow Food Earth Market. Last February, in Fontaneto d’Agogna (Novara), in the presence of the international coordinator of the Earth Markets, Elena Sandrone, the 37 local agricultural companies and small artisan businesses met who decided to create the Slow Food Earth Market of the Colline Novaresi, the sixth in Piedmont, which joins those of Alba-Langhe-Roero, Bra, Candelo, Saluzzo and Turin.

The structure is part of an international network of 95 Earth Markets, promoted by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Onlus, founded by Slow Food International and Slow Food Italy. The birth of this new Earth Market is due to the Slow Food Convivium of the Colline Novaresi, which was established in 2017 to implement the Cureggio and Fontaneto blonde onion project and has since then organized the blonde onion fair in Fontaneto with growing success. and other agricultural and farmers’ markets in the Middle Novara area.

«We started recently, from a small and humble onion but rich in history – says Luca Platini, president of the Slow Food Convivium and coordinator of the nascent Earth Market –. We decided to make it available to the area to ensure that it could tow the other treasures of our area. In our journey we have always chosen people before products and we are proud of this choice, and we will consistently carry it forward over the years – he adds -. We want to walk alongside curious and passionate women and men, those who put us before I, be they producers, local administrators, associations, groups, schools, chefs, consumers, alongside those who love the area they live in, want it promote and enhance starting from what the earth offers us while respecting the environment. This is what led us to commit ourselves to markets and to enhance them as places of meeting, knowledge, exchange, growth and friendship. This is what led us to create the Colline Novaresi Earth Market. We are entering a global project and all this will bring great added value to the agronomic treasures and typical products of our area. It is a goal – he concludes – that we want to share with as many people as possible, which is why each stage of this market will be itinerant and will touch different squares and municipalities”.

Precisely in a historical moment in which farmers’ protests are spreading in Italy and beyond over ever-increasing production and supply chain costs, in the face of a final price on the shelves that reaches four-five times that paid to the producer, «a small response that we can try to give in our area is to go shopping directly from the producer, who is able to guarantee local and quality products» adds Platini.