cultivar_22_Final_EN

30 ANALYSIS AND PROSPECTIVE STUDIES CULTIVAR Issue 22 APRIL 2021 With Wiuff, we talked about some of the premises of the new Scandinavian food movement, namely the idea of foraging – the collecting of wild herbs and plants and using these ingredients in our diet. The farmer seemed a little critical of this roman- tic idea, arguing that if we all went out and picked wild plants, they would all soon disappear. In Wiuff’s view, it would be better to start to grow them. It is worth reproducing a par- agraph from this article here which touches on another point that I think is key to the debate about the links between food and farming: “There is one thing above all that pleases Wiuff – selling his produce to those who rec- ognise its quality. ‘When you sell to a supermarket, you never hear “ahh, that’s good”, because if they did they’d have to pay more. It’s better to sell to restau- rants. They compliment you, but they also tell you when things aren’t good. That’s really important for your self-esteem. And producers need to have high self-esteem.” You start to realise the impor- tance of a close relationship between cooks and produc- ers right there. Nowadays when chefs are given star status, it seems unfair that the work of the farmers and producers is not given more attention. Fortunately, little by little, this idea has started to take hold and, while you still won’t find producers on the covers of magazines, we now have many chefs who use their high profile to pro- mote not just themselves but also the producers they work with. Later on in Portugal I discov- ered the extraordinary work of Maria José Macedo at Quinta do Poial in Azeitão and the relationship this producer, who is now dead (but whose work is being continued by her daughter, Joana), estab- lished with various chefs. At times, it was the latter who asked her to try and produce a certain product that they wanted to add to their dishes, and at others it was she who challenged them with some- thing she had tested in Poial. This is just one good exam- ple, but there are others, of course, although still rare. We hope they multiply. The close relationships between pro- ducers and cooks is essential for an integrated vision of what we eat and produce – that idea of an edible land- scape all around us. Over the following years, I continued to work on and research food themes which, as a journalist for PÚBLICO , I always argued should be treated holisti- cally. For me, it never made sense for “food” to be seen as a separate section in which critics wrote purely about restaurants and in a way disconnected from farming, health, the economy and culture. I becameevenmoreconvinced about this idea when I took another trip in 2012, this time to Peru, a country where peo- ple were also talking about an unfolding “food revo- lution”. Peru’s case was different from Denmark. This was a country with a strong food culture but which, for geographical reasons, was split in three: the coast and the mountain and forest regions. All three were quite different with their own food habits and ingredients, which often ignored each other. There is one thing above all that pleases Wiuff – selling his produce to those who recognise its quality. ‘When you sell to a supermarket, you never hear “ahh, that’s good”, because if they did they’d have to pay more. It’s better to sell to restaurants. They compliment you, but they also tell you when things aren’t good. Nowadays when chefs are given star status, it seems unfair that the work of the farmers and producers is not given more attention. Fortunately, little by little, this idea has started to take hold and, while you still won’t find producers on the covers of magazines, we now have many chefs who use their high profile to promote… the producers they work with. The close relationships between producers and cooks is essential for an integrated vision of what we eat and produce – that idea of an edible landscape all around us.