You can literally touch living nature in the Biodiversity Park which is situated at the EXPO 2015 in Milan. You can caress flowers and vegetables planted in flowerbeds between the pavilions of the Park. When you enter the Slow Food Pavilion, you are invited to guess what seeds are put in the big wooden boxes with covers of opaque cloth. You push your hand under the cover, without looking at what is below, touch the contents and have to guess what it is only with your fingers. To check whether your answer is right, you open a slam side door in the box and read the name of the plant written on a paper on the inside. In this way you can not only assess whether you know the various types of seeds but you will also understand to what extent modern way of life has removed us from the natural products which used to feed our forefathers. The most important thing, however, is the touch of these products: you don’t observe them from aside like in a museum but you can feel them in your hands. In the same pavilion you can write or draw with seeds whatever you like on big tables that are at anybody’s disposal. Maize is an object of worship at the Slow Food Pavilion. It is embodied by a giant figure covered with maize grains.

Other senses, too, are included in the re-discovery of Nature. You can try to guess a spice only by its scent. But has our sense of smell stopped discerning some natural aroma?

In the week between August 24 and 30, the Biodiversity Park offers a rich and interesting programme every day. There are tastings of organic products, and games for children and adults in which the Earth’s biodiversity can be learned in an entertaining way. You can even attend concerts dedicated to ‘the biodiversity of music’, as it is written in the programme (the full version is only in Italian).

This part of EXPO 2015 was the venue of an international conference on the role of biological agriculture in the fight against climate change, too.

See more:

Farming against global warming

 

 

Source: www.evropaworld.eu