A New Agora for food distribution || Terroirs d’Avenir
/Rue du Nil, Paris, France
Terroirs d'Avenir rebuilds the relationship between peasants, small producers, chefs and communities.
Information Artwork, Future Food LexiconLab | http://www.thelexicon.org/lexiconlab/
Over the last weeks, I have been working on a very special project for the G7 Agriculture in Bergamo, on storytelling and food advocacy. It is the Future Food LexiconLab, a bootcamp of food for good advocates, designers, chefs, researchers and storytellers that culminates in an exhibition of food heroes from all around the world that has been inaugurated today in Bergamo, where the G7 Summit on agriculture is taking place.
Paris is my home since 2011. I have been exploring the French food and sustainability scene for Fork Power project and I chose Terroirs d’Avenir for the exhibition because it is an impressive example of an alternative to the food distribution system.
Food biodiversity and artisanal know-how (“savoir-faire”) are endangered by the conventional food system. Terroirs d’Avenir is a “new agora”, bringing together the needs of the city and the soil. It creates alternate avenues for food distribution in Paris by helping small producers bypass the usual intermediaries to create a direct model that guarantees a fair price to everyone in the food system, from growers, to chefs, to citizens, while providing everyone with a direct source of authentic, value-driven ingredients.
“There was a time where we use to know our butcher, our baker, the farmer who grew our vegetables. There is a tiny street in Paris where this is once again possible.”
Terroirs d’Avenir has been founded by Alexandre Drouard and Samuel Nahon, two Slow Food passionate young men, in 2008. They operate a marketplace where producers come together to provide tips and advice to their customers and reconnect them with sustainable ethics as well as traditional culinary practices. The aim is for everyone in the food system to get a fair deal.
I met them a few weeks ago in the historic site of Rue du Nil, in central Paris. The atmosphere is magical: half village-half typically parisian, the tiny road has been colonized by a colorful, gourmand crew. There is a grocery store where you can find all sorts of delicious plants from France et Navarre and good cheeses, a boulangerie working with ancient grains and sourdough, a fish shop (poissonnerie) where you can learn about fish seasonality and taste incredible fishes from sustainable fishery (as they say, you can rarely find “classic” fishes such as seabass or tuna) and a nose-to-tail butcher. Another parisian road has been invested by the project last year and is soon to become the sister of the first site, in the eleventh arrondissement, Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud.
Terroirs d’Avenir works with 200 different producers, small farmers, fishermen from France, Italy and Spain and about 100 restaurants and chefs in Paris.
About the LexiconLab project:
http://www.thelexicon.org/lexiconlab/
More information on Terroirs d'Avenir:
http://www.terroirs-avenir.fr/
3, 6, 7 et 8 rue du Nil - 75002 Paris
71 et 84 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud - 75011 Paris