We are used to discussing the sad story of agriculture in North America in the 21st century:

• The high ecological costs that come from industrial production;
• The glut of cheap and unhealthy calories;
• Huge food waste yet at the same time tragic food insecurity.

Yet if you read my blog, you might assume that here in Italy, things are different. Aren’t Italians the people who understand and value rural life? And isn’t the quality of food tied to preserving the environment? But is this the real story? Or is this a version of Italy that is fast becoming history?

Part of the reason that I write this blog is to document this side of Italy’s fast disappearing history, making sure that the Italy I know and love, one based on an agricultural and rural life, and full of artisans, is celebrated. Over the course of my career as a journalist, writer and cook I’ve had the great good fortune to come into contact with some truly extraordinary people who share these goals. Happily many of my colleagues  have also become good friends.

It is with great pleasure that I would like to invite you to come listen to two of my most illustrious and well informed friends discuss some of the issues facing Italy today when it comes to the country’s food heritage.

Evan Kleiman, the host of the NPR radio program Good Food, will interview food activist Fabrizia Lanza to discuss some of the most ugrent issues facing Italian food culture today.

Evan will conduct an hour long talk with Fabrizia, asking her about the agricultural scene in in Italy and her farm and school in particular. Among the issues they’ll tackle:

• How do small Italian farms survive in the globalized environment of the EU? 
• What have been the positive and negative results of having a business that relies on international clients. 
• What is the relationship of  the Fabrizia’s farm to the local communities? 

PLEASE JOIN US:

• When: Thursday March 9, 2017, 6pm
• Where: American University of Rome, Via Pietro Roselli 4, Auriana Auditorium
• What: NPR Radio Host and Author Evan Kleiman interviews food activist Fabrizia Lanza

If you would like to attend, please visit this page to register your name. Or,  you can leave your name below or send me an email and I can register for you.

Evan Kleiman first visited Italy at the age of 17 and it changed her life. Food became linked with cultural experience and was to infect every part of her world. She opened her first restaurant,Angeli Caffe in 1984, and by the time her beloved restaurant closed in 2012 it was an L.A. institution known as much for the warmth of the welcome as for the food. Evan is the author of 7 best selling cookbooks and has been the host of NPR’s  KCRW’s Good Food since 1998. She is based in Los Angeles but considers Rome her second home.

Fabrizia Lanza was born in Palermo in 1961 to the renowned Tasca family, the daughter of cooking school founder Anna Tasca Lanza. The family’s 200-year-old agricultural estate and Tasca d’Almerita winery instilled a love of farm-to-table production in Fabrizia from an early age. After a 20 year career as a museum curator, she returned to her family’s estate in 2006 to take over her mother’s hugely successful cooking school. Fabrizia is the author of two books, including her most recent Coming Home to Sicily. She continues to promote Sicilian food practices and slow food traditions through her school, her writing and her video documentation. She has recently extended her School’s teaching program to launch the 10-week Cook the Farm, a program for international chefs to learn about culinary and horticultural production in Sicily and the Mediterranean.

I hope you can make it!!!!

FABRIZIA LANZA

EVAN KLEIMAN

PLEASE JOIN US:

• When: Thursday March 9, 2017, 6pm
• Where: American University of Rome, Via Pietro Roselli 4, Auriana Auditorium