Slow Food Glasgow

05/10/2026

Last week we got back from , the international gathering of the Slow Food network. Every two years, it brings together farmers, cooks, fishers, researchers, policymakers and activists from all over the world to swap knowledge and help shape the future of our food systems. The different perspectives of Cam, Donata and Fede made the experience so much richer. A few well-established ideas gained fresh weight and evidence this year:

🌱 Community is infrastructure. A network is only as strong as the bonds that hold it together, social and emotional as well as physical. We heard many people say they felt less isolated once they'd joined a wider community, and that tells us a lot about how we should keep building networks here in Scotland.

🌍 Biodiversity is cultural as well as biological. Looking after seeds, breeds and landscapes goes hand in hand with looking after recipes, skills and the knowledge passed down through generations. Communities that manage land together are turning out to be some of the best guardians of both.

🏙️ Food education is a matter of public policy. Food literacy is increasingly seen as essential to public health, environmental sustainability and social justice, and cities and local authorities have a big part to play.

🤝 Collaboration across the supply chain. New models are bringing producers, processors, hospitality and consumers together to share value more fairly and to face climate and economic pressures as a team.

We also picked up plenty of inspiration from Slow Food Travel. There were exciting new itineraries and experience exchanges in Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, Azerbaijani food routes to taste, and community-led agroecology initiatives. It was a vivid reminder that food heritage can sustain resilient local economies while opening doors for locals and visitors alike. Terra Madre is always the right place to discover new concepts and frameworks worth exploring and developing, and we've come back with plenty of them.

17/09/2026

🌈 We had the incredible chance to be involved by Stilla Finest Scotland Ltd  on a tour organised by Stilla’s Director and our board member Diana Maria Zilioli in collaboration with the South of Scotland Destination Alliance (South of Scotland Destination Alliance) and VisitScotland | Travel & Inspiration to promote regional sustainable development and local gastronomy in Galloway, a Scottish region full of hidden gems and focus of the campaign .

🧀 We started off by championing local, seasonal food at Lodge which prepares dishes using ingredients sourced directly from its own kitchen garden. We then finally got to meet David the The Ethical Dairy Farm and The Ethical Dairy Cheese, who exemplifies the principles of sustainability and care for the environment and those who inhabit it, raising cows alongside their calves, promoting biodiversity and supporting natural microbial cycles to improve the ecosystem and boost productivity.

🐝 We also met beekeeper Raeburn at & Dee Honey, who tends local bees that capture the wild character of the Galloway landscape — from the hills and fields of the Glenkens, along the banks of Loch Ken, to the shores of the Solway Firth — bringing the natural diversity of its wildflowers straight from hive to jar. We even got to handle some beehives ourselves (with protective gear on, of course!).

🌱After years of trying to arrange it, we finally managed to visit  Food Hub, a producer-led, non-profit social enterprise focused on food sovereignty. Driven by an ethos of community resilience and low climate impact, it connects local people with ethical, nature-friendly food.

🦞Before heading to the Oyster Festival, Diana, Scottish Blue Badge Tourist Guide specialised in sustainable tourism, showed us a range of sustainable tourism gems — castles and nature at their finest. And finally, the Oyster Festival itself: an event built around Europe's most important native oyster bed, held in Stranraer every September. During the opening ceremony, the oysters were brought ashore as part of a celebration that draws in the whole local community.

14/09/2026

🌎Terra Madre 2026 🌍

For the 4th edition in a row we'll be representing Glasgow at Terra Madre.

Cam, Dinara and Fede will be joining activists, farmers, fishers and researchers to help define our actions for the next two years. Our focus: an action plan centred on food culture and heritage, to boost local food resilience and regional sustainable development.

A vital opportunity to unite grassroots changemakers, protect biodiversity, and shape the future of sustainable food policy.

Connecting grassroots actors: Sharing local stories, agroecological practices, and food traditions builds powerful bridges between diverse territories across Europe.

Reshaping food systems: Small-scale farmers, fishers, and organic producers are uniting to push for fair pricing, climate resilience, and equitable agricultural policies.

Celebrating food culture: Culinary heritage as an active resistance move against growing social division and industrial homogenisation.

Defining the movement's future: A critical mechanism for local chapters to bring ground-level experience directly into international decision-making and governance.

Food is never just food. It's culture, community, and the future we choose to grow. 🌱

20/08/2026

🍲 What's on our plate says a lot about who we are and where we're headed.

After Monday's AGM, we set up our new action plan and we're doubling down on something we think deserves way more attention: food culture and heritage. Not just old recipes but also how we influence the environment and people's health through what we eat, from the way we grow things, to how we cook, share and celebrate food together.

🔎 Interesting fact: Scotland has incredible food heritage hiding in plain sight. Around a third of the whole UK's edible heritage that we protect is right here.

When we understand where our food comes from and why it matters to our community, sustainable choices stop feeling like a chore and start feeling like second nature.
How do we get there? One action after the other, one shared meal at a time.

Food connects our city to the countryside, strengthens local economies, and brings people together across generations and backgrounds.

We can't do it without you.

Whether you love policy chats, event planning or sharing what you know - there's a hub for you. 💚

📩 Thinking of getting involved? Send us a DM and we'll point you the right way.

21/07/2026

These past months, our thinking has moved in loops: from what's happening on our own streets to national and international frameworks, then back again — from the big picture to the granular, local detail. We've helped kickstart new initiatives, while consolidating and sharing the ones already finding their feet. It's been a season of scale-shifting, of holding the local, the national and the global in the same hand.

And this September, that global thread comes into full focus.

From 24–27 September 2026, Terra Madre returns to Turin, uniting 1,500 farmers, fishers, cooks, Indigenous leaders, activists and young changemakers from over 120 countries. This year's theme, "Biodiversity, Be Diversity," celebrates the differences, cultures and communities that build resilient food systems.

More info here: https://mailchi.mp/slowfood.org.uk/sfuk125mem-8341522

28/06/2026

Food changes everything.

Mid-June: three days in Perugia. Innovative research, passionate dialogue, and conversations that kept going long after the panels ended, over coffees and meals deeply rooted in the territory. This is what it looks like when people who care about real food systems get in the same room. 🍷🫒

Slow Food Glasgow was proud to be part of the 7th biennial Food Conference by The Umbra Institute , where our chair Federico presented a talk on how Glasgow's neighbourhoods are lenses to explore how cities eat, how communities organise, and how the places we inhabit shape the food cultures we build. Sharing the floor with researchers and practitioners from across the globe, each challenging how we think about agriculture, culture, heritage, and sustainability, felt like exactly the kind of exchange the food movement needs. 🌿

This event was set against the backdrop of the mediaeval town, separated from a vast rural countryside by its ancient walls (check the pictures!)

If food, sustainability, and community resonate with you, we'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment, share your thoughts, or DM us to connect, collaborate, or just geek out about food systems together. Real change starts with the right conversations. 🌱

📸 The Umbra Institute

📍 Perugia, Italy

08/06/2026

🌿Farmers, chefs, scientists, and policymakers walked into a garden. What came out was a vision for food's future.

On 6 and 7 June, Slow Food Glasgow joined two extraordinary days at the Rome's Botanic Garden - a landmark conversation about what food truly costs: not just at the till, but in soil health, water quality, biodiversity loss, and rural livelihoods. Conventional agriculture externalises those costs onto ecosystems and communities.
Organised by FederBio , , and Rome's Department for Agriculture, in collaboration with and , the event brought together voices that rarely share the same table.

🏔️ Cities and rural areas need each other. Organic farming and agroecological practices aren't niche ideals: they're practical tools for food security, biodiversity, and mountain community resilience.
🥗 The science linking organic food, microbiota health, and reduced pesticide exposure is clearer than ever.
👩‍🌾 Women are leading the agroecological transition: from fields to kitchens to local government chambers.
🍽️ Food education doesn't begin with a lesson, it begins with a meal. School canteens have to lead the way, introducing organic ingredients and short supply chains, proving that what children eat shapes how they think about food for life. The responsibility must extend further: to private catering companies, to hotel breakfast buffets, to tourist menus. Every dining experience is a chance to build food literacy, challenge misinformation, and tackle food poverty.
⚖️ Fair food means fair pay. Tackling human trafficking in agriculture, valuing ecosystem services, and building honest agri-food policies aren't separate conversations.

The good food movement isn't waiting.


Image credits for some of the pictures

22/05/2026

Thousands of people around the world woke up today realising that Carlo Petrini is no longer with us. Together with our friends, we reflect on his legacy and his sharp, unflinching way of linking food — and the societies that produce it — to the wider world around us.

We feel moved when we think of his empathy, and of the profound respect he held for every chance of progress that human beings are entitled to. He could speak with a king, a pope, a farmer, a shepherd, or a student without ever changing his tone, because he spoke a universal language: the language of humanity.

His legacy is one of rare intellectual courage. He was credited with establishing food and gastronomy as a valid, multi-disciplinary field of inquiry — integrating the language of the table with broader movements for fair trade, social justice, and ecological responsibility, long before these connections became commonplace. A food rebel and a prescient pioneer, he saw what others could not yet see, and built institutions, networks, and communities to make that vision tangible.

We want to honour him with this picture, taken during the opening ceremony at Cheese 2025. After a quiet start, he did what only he could do — with sheer passion, he moved an entire square. That was Carlo.

His words will stay with us as guidance for the future, like a lighthouse in the night. "Those who sow utopia, reap reality." He firmly believed it. He lived it.

Grazie Carlo.

19/05/2026

"We are constantly told that ending hunger, making healthy food accessible, or supporting sustainable agriculture is too expensive. And yet, the money already exists.
What is missing is political will.

Today, food systems are shaped by policies that too often prioritize profit over public health, industrial scale over biodiversity, and short-term economic interests over long-term well-being. The result is visible everywhere: rising food insecurity, growing diet-related diseases, exhausted soils, struggling farmers, and communities disconnected from good food.

But these systems are not inevitable. They are political choices, which means they can also be changed through political action.

The European Citizens’ Initiative for the Right to Food is calling for exactly that: a food system that treats healthy food as a right, supports agroecology and fair farming, and gives citizens a stronger voice in shaping the policies that affect what we eat and how it is produced.
If enough people sign, the European Commission is legally required to respond.

Co-Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Creative Europe Media Program. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them."

GoodFood4All +

27/04/2026

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What began as a conversation in a brewery has quietly grown into something we didn't quite dare hope for: a b**r with its own life, its own season, its own faithful following.