Page 1 2 3

_{In Fattoria Poggio Alloro, Italy}

^{Cornell Clayton}

As 30 American college students strain to understand his thick Tuscan accent, Amico Fioroni waves his strong, tanned arms dramatically across a patchwork of gray-green olive groves, sunflower fields, and ancient vineyards.

"Every olive, every grape, picked by hand," he says, raising his hands up near his weathered face and rubbing his fingertips together for emphasis. "It's a choice of ours. The machines, they take everything, but with the fingers you can choose. That makes a better wine, because you can throw away the bad grapes. It's natural selection, by us."

Here on these Cyprus-lined hills in the heart of Tuscany, just a few miles outside the medieval-towered hill town of San Gimignano, Fioroni and his family proudly work their "closed cycle" organic farm. Closed cycle, he explains to these Northwest college students and their Washington State University professor, means that everything he produces begins and ends here. That includes 500,000 liters of Vernaccia and Chianti wine annually; an exquisite extra virgin olive oil, vegetables, honey, and saffron; rabbits, chickens, guinea-hens, pigs; and last, but not least, his prized Chianina cattle, an ancient breed once extolled by poets during the Roman Empire. Even the forage, barley, and sunflower flour used as animal feed is grown here.

"We sell directly from producer to consumer," Fioroni explains. The line that runs between those two is very short, and the result he sums up with one simple Italian word: "Bella."

But new European Union policies, expanding global markets, and ever-changing agricultural trade practices are increasingly affecting how farmers like Fioroni do business. As Europe's borders blur, its residents are struggling to reconcile their differing ideas about cuisine, health standards, and agricultural trade protocol. In this country with 3,000 years of gastronomical history, devotion to quality cuisine is akin to a religion, and food and wine have always been political flashpoints. Today, Italy fights to protect its cherished national products-such as parmigiano cheese, prosciutto ham, and Chianti wine, and balks regularly at allowing "lesser quality" products cross its borders. The government recently tried to ban British imports of chocolate made with vegetable oils instead of real cocoa butter, for example, insisting that it be labeled as "chocolate substitute." In the last decade, in response to the emergence of fast-food chains in Italy, producers, restaurateurs, and food lovers founded the burgeoning "slow food" movement, which promotes sustainable agriculture, traditional farm methods, and food that is prepared and enjoyed with time, care, and greater awareness. But despite Italy's complex entanglement of food, wine, culture, and politics, WSU political science professor Cornell Clayton still has trouble convincing friends and colleagues back in Pullman that this academic foray into Tuscany food and politics is more than a great vacation.

Page 1 2 3

Continued