I was a lawyer, a specialist legal researcher and writer, a research officer in a charity for whistleblowers, a trade union legal officer, and a founder and director of a human rights organisation in Central America, before I became a food sovereignty researcher, a food activist and an advocate for the necessity of transforming our food system.  It was while living in Guatemala from 2000-2006, where both my children were born, that I really became aware of how deeply unfair our world is; and really felt moved to do something about it.

I returned to Australia at the end of 2006 with my family, determined to make some small contribution to the work that confronts all of us at this time: to strive together for a fairer and more peaceful world, where we understand our place within and as part of nature, rather than as external to it and therefore somehow immune from its processes and laws.

After years of PhD study and activism in local food networks and community gardens in the mid-north coast of NSW, I and some others saw an opportunity and a need in 2010, in the context of discussions about Australia’s first National Food Plan, to engage in a much broader national conversation about the future of food in this country. Thus was born the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, and later, in 2012, the People’s Food Plan process.

This blog supports that work. My first aim is to collect in one place my 60-odd columns that have been published in the Coffs Coast Advocate newspaper since August 2010, with the images that have accompanied them. I will also be adding other comments from time to time. I welcome discussion and feedback.