The Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity came into being in 2000 to spotlight activities of research, production, marketing, popularization and documentation which benefit biodiversity in the agroindustrial field. From researchers to farmers, from distributors to teachers, from trade associations to entrepreneurs - all those who help check the impoverishment of the vegetable and animal heritage which helps form a country's gastronomic culture and conserve the global ecological balance are ideal candidates for the Slow Food Award. Nominations for the Award are submitted by an international jury made up of hundreds and hundreds of observers and experts in every corner of the world. For all those who see the agroindustrial sector as an expression of the culture and identity of a people, a bridge with its past and an opportunity for future development , the award candidates stand as the true heroes of our time. These men and women often work anonymously and alone, cultivating the soil, raising livestock, selling their produce at markets, conducting research and running businesses, teaching and remembering and inventing new ways so as not to forget. Slow Food will reward them with a cash prize, but, above all, will offer them recognition by promoting and disseminating their activities through its publications and the events it organizes in the course of the year. The Slow Food Award is a tangible acknowledgment of their labors - as well as the fruit of their labors. It is our way of saying thanks to all those who defend a heritage which still exists, but is often ignored and risks being forgotten and vanishing for good, unless such people receive the support they deserve. After Bologna, Porto and Turin, the city of Naples will be the venue for the fourth Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity. In the city's magnificent Teatro San Carlo, the Slow Food Awards for 2003 and the Special Jury Prizes will be presented on November 9 next.