When people hear the expression Slow Food Presìdi, they often picture a label or a logo attached to a product. In practice, however, Presìdi are something much more concrete: they are groups of people working together to keep specific foods from disappearing, along with the landscapes, skills, and communities that make those foods possible. In Italy, they have become one of the most convincing expressions of a Made in Italy built on protection rather than scale and trends.
The Presìdi project was launched by Slow Food at the end of the 1990s, between 1999 and 2000, as a response to a growing and very real problem: the erosion of food biodiversity. Industrial agriculture, standardized production, and global supply chains were steadily pushing many local foods to the margins and, while some survived in tiny quantities, others sadly existed only in the memories of older producers. Slow Food’s answer was to help them remain part of everyday life by restoring value to their production.
