Abstracts for Session 14

The importance of slow food and what it means for gastro tourism and slow travels

Title: Potatoes: food tourism and beyond

Authors: Andrea Giampiccoli*, Erasmus Mzobanzi Mnguni*, Anna Dłużewska **, Oliver Mtapuri ***

Affiliation: Durban University of Technology*, Maria Curie Sklodowska University**, University of KwaZulu-Natal***

Food tourism includes various activities and possible attractions linked to food. Potatoes can also be linked to tourism or food tourism as testified by special Victorian Potato Industry Tours organized in Melbourne, Australia; Rural Community Tourism in the Potato Park – with daily departure tours around Cusco, Peru; various culinary events dedicated to potatoes in Slovenia and many others. This paper will contribute knowledge on tourism, and specifically food tourism, by ‘opening’/enhancing a new niche of research based on a specific food/ingredients, which seems up to now, to have touched only a very few specific foods (or drinks) and associated ingredients – the case of grape/wine is an exemplar. However, many other specific foods/ingredients could be singularly researched to determine their role in tourism. As such, this paper examines the role of a ‘humble tuber,’ the Potato, in food tourism and tourism in general. This is desktop research based on extant literature comprising publicly available organizational and institutional documents, information, and data, including from museums worldwide. The aim is to collect knowledge from various disciplines linking the Potato to tourism. This rich historicity of the Potato will be explored by tracing its footprints in variegated traditions encompassing migration, nutrition, culinary, ‘potato as a crop,’ and tourism. As such, the article will collect information about the Potato, its history, social history, gastronomy, and tourism/food tourism. 

Title: Ways to map the scope of slow travel slow food supply and spatial variations in the Nordic countries.

Author: Anna Karlsdóttir

Affiliation: Nordregio, University of Iceland 

In last decade, the attention on culinary tourism has increased worldwide, involving promotion of local products and traceability combined with culinary assets and wide range of bringing gourmet prepared foods to the visitor. The Nordic countries are also part of this persistent trend. Various from soil to fork movements have emerged, i.e. Terra Madre and Slow food movements. Local foods interest among consumers has also increased manifesting in various new networks between producer and consumer ranging from initiatives like farm shops, food markets and food communities, i.e. REKO with local food markets co-organised by microenterprises and farmers in Scandinavia, or Beint frá bónda initiative in Iceland. One of the sub-groups of the network of slow food is the Nordic Slow Food Travel and rural development group. It contains numerous volunteers aiming to support biodiversity and local food cultures, hence locally engaged development. Slow travel is fuelled by the wish to reorient to another kind of tourism than that which has emerged with boosterism and economic growth as its main goal. It addresses issues like how can travels be a learning experience and how do we approach the authentic experience in slow travel.  Much has been studied and examined around this topic, not least in relation to the New Nordic food paradigm and its potentials to spur gastro tourism. The scope of the gastro tourism which could fall under slow tourism or slow food has less overview. In this paper we will discuss ways of mapping the scope of slow food-slow tourism, including whether it is feasible to use greenmap to gain a structural overview of the phenomena of slow food supply in the Nordic countries.