Tag Archives: Coffs Coast

advocate, Coffs Coast, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Farmers Markets, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms, Resilience, Small-scale farming

Local food production means resilience

Expanding trust horizons in Karangi

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 6th April, 2013

In February last year , Canada-based blogger Nicole Foss (www.automaticearth.com) spoke at the Cavanbagh Centre in Coffs Harbour, as part of her speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand. Nicole is now back in Australia for another speaking tour, though she won’t be visiting Coffs on this occasion.

In Coffs as elsewhere, Nicole offered her perspective on what she terms the unfolding ‘deflationary depression’, caused by the build-up of unsustainable debt levels throughout the global economy, combined with the anticipated impacts of dwindling supplies of cheap energy. Events in many countries in southern Europe would seem to offer early confirmation of her analysis.

Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleigh
Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleigh

Nicole also talked about the shrinking  ‘trust horizon’ that she believes will accompany a prolonged economic contraction. She argues that ‘relationships of trust are the glue that holds societies together’; and while in good times trust expands and the sense of ‘us vs them’ recedes, the opposite is true when hard times fall.

Putting this in a wider historical context, Dr Ben Habib of La Trobe University notes how the Chinese people coped with around 140 years of upheaval, revolution and war from the 1830s to the 1970s by ‘drawing on a cultural practice called guanxi (pronounced “gwan-shee”) which is about maintaining networks of ongoing personal relationships based on mutual benefit through reciprocal ties and obligations.” It was guanxi, according to Dr Habib, that enabled ‘greater social stability at the local level in China than would otherwise have existed during this turbulent period.’

Enter Sam Mihelffy, who migrated to the Coffs Coast with her husband Aaron and young family from Noosa five years ago. They bought a 34-acre property in Karangi, with established stands of citrus, pecans, macadamia, avocado and custard apples. They added some blueberries, apple trees, a vegie garden and most recently dragon fruit; and for the first time in their lives became farmers.

At the start, they weren’t ready for taking on this sort of life project. “It was mind-blowing”, says Sam. “We definitely moved in there with our hearts and not our heads, we didn’t really take on the concept of growing on such a large scale. It’s been a massive learning curve, and we’ve only really scratched the surface. But it’s something you evolve with, it’s really exciting.”

They diversified the farm by fencing it into three paddocks and adding a flock of 30 sheep, three alpacas, six ducks, a shetland pony and a pet pig. So was born the concept of ‘Me-Healthy Farm’ (a play on their name, Mihelffy), a ‘whole farm’ experience. Sam and Aaron opened the farm on Sundays for friends and the public to visit, buy fresh local produce at the farm shop (both from their own farm and nearby properties), and relax with a cup of coffee and some homemade cake, while kids could run around and feed the animals.

Sam Mihelffy at her Coffs Coast Growers Market stall
Sam Mihelffy at her Coffs Coast Growers Market stall

Providing that direct connection with farm animals was a big part of Sam’s motivation. “A lot of kids, even in Coffs Harbour, don’t have that experience, not even with the sheep”, says Sam. “A baby lamb being fed, they have no concept of that, so it’s really that we could show kids, hey look, this is what it’s like to live on a farm, come and have that experience for the day.”

And the concept proved very popular. “The fact that the kids could roam free was a great pull for parents”, Sam says.  “They got excited about the fact that they could chill out, the kids could feed the animals – there were so many different aspects. And get some fresh produce. It was a real experience – and we don’t have that happening any more [in modern society].”

Sadly though Sam and Aaron have had to pause it for the time being, because the amount of work involved in having their farm open every Sunday with a farm shop, was proving to be too much with a young family. But it’s time could come again – and given the need to strengthen our trust horizons – it might be sooner than later.

In Sam’s words, “This is where we should all be going. It’s really what we want to do. It wasn’t just about us – it was about our local community, [about] all the local products of the area. This is what we need to do, get back into that trading idea, someone specialises in garlic, someone specialises in ginger, someone’s doing beef, someone’s doing honey. If anything ever happens, we need to create that community where we can support each other.”

advocate, Coffs Coast, Collaborative cultures and networks, Food sovereignty

The Networked World – The Connected Food System

The networked world is here

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 9th February, 2013

The National Broadband Network has arrived in Coffs Harbour, and soon all of us will have access to super-high speed internet services. Amongst other changes, the NBN is expected to significantly expand the scope for home-based working and tele-commuting, via high-definition and reliable video-conferencing.

The NBN is a further major step in the construction of an increasingly networked world. According to Harvard University’s Cyber Law Centre, ‘ever-evolving and increasingly powerful information and communication technologies have fundamentally changed the nature of global relationships, sources of competitive advantage and opportunities for economic development’ (www.cyber.law.harvard.edu). Humanity is on its way to becoming ‘an increasingly interconnected network of individuals, firms, schools and governments communicating and interacting with each other through a variety of channels’.

While the implications of a globally interconnected humanity are, to put it mildly, mind-boggling and (as yet) barely understood, the value of effective business and community networks are well known. Richard Pirog, a leading thinker and practitioner in the field of local and regional food systems development in Iowa and Michigan in the US, identifies four key roles that food business networks play:

–          Information and knowledge hubs

–          Catalysts for co-operation – building trust and capacity across organisations

–          Magnets – leveraging funding to do the work

–          Scouts – be at the cutting edge of new ideas and innovation

Successful networks don’t just emerge out of the ether. They are consciously designed, created and nurtured by the individuals who comprise them. Pirog uses the acronym TEAMS to capture the components of successful networks as:

–          T: trust and transparency, shared goals, servant leadership

–          E: enjoy work, participate and collaborate, get and give

–          A: achieve goals

–          M: master content, continuous learning

–          S: structure the network, agree on ways to work together, give a clear indication of value to participants, and provide consistent communication

The tradional, long-standing and successful model of business networking in Australia are the Chambers of Commerce. They have done an outstanding job over many decades in providing services to their members, and facilitating relationships.

Coffs Harbour and Bellingen are however about to host a new business network. The Wholistic Business Network (WBN) is, according to its co-founder Frances Amaroux, ‘an international network of highly-inspired people involved in creating a world to which people want to belong’.

The WBN was created  in Sydney  12 years ago, and has since spread to Brisbane, Melbourne, Newcastle, Byron Bay, Perth, Auckland and Ubud, in Bali. Frances told me that she wanted to create a mid-north coast chapter after moving back to Bellingen following several years’ away; and noticing that, while there were many individuals and businesses working in the ‘cultural creative’ spheres (arts, environment, complementary medicine and therapies, etc.), ‘there was no umbrella organisation that brought all these people and businesses together.’

The aim of the WBN is to ‘bring together people doing innovative and leading edge research and practice’, with the longer-term vision of ‘creating vibrant healthy businesses and communities’, in order to ‘make a happier, healthier and more conscious world’. Their four focal areas are creating connections, researching and supporting sustainable lifestyles, informing and raising awareness about health and sustainability, and ‘building an international community of like-minded peoples’.

The WBN functions through holding monthly business networking events, which in our region will alternate between Coffs Harbour and Bellingen, with invited speakers. While these meetings have a business focus, non-business people are very welcome. I am very pleased to be the speaker for the inaugural event in Coffs Harbour this coming Wednesday, on the topic of networks as the ‘wave of the future’.

The first mid-north coast WBN will take place on Wednesday 13 February, at the Coffs Harbour Professional Centre, Level 1, 9 Park Avenue, at 7.00 p.m. Cost is $20, for more information contact Frances Amaroux on 0414 810 148 or Vanessa Lewis on 0414 448 884.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Fruit growing, Land sharing, Permablitzes, Resilience, Self-sufficiency

Community-run edible streetscapes

Community Spirit alive and well in Sawtell

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 24th November, 2012

A quiet revolution is underway in Coffs Harbour and its nearby towns.

Supported by small grants from Coffs Council, first under the Local Food Futures Project and now via the ‘Our Living Coast’ Regional Sustainability Program, several primary schools and child care centres have established productive gardens for their children over the past year.

These intiatives build on longer-established school veggie gardens, such as those at Toormina Primary School and Casuarina Steiner School.

And now school veggie gardens are becoming edible streetscapes, with the planting of around 30 ctirus trees in two locations in Sawtell. First, on Friday 16th November, kindergarted and class 5 students from Sawtell Public School planted trees on the school’s boundary. Then, on Sunday 18th November, over 30 local residents of all ages worked for an hour and a half to plant lemonades, oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, cumquats, grapefruits and blood oranges on the road verge off 18th Avenue, adjacent to the Richardson’s Park sporting oval. Thus was born the very first ‘Sawtell Community Citrus Grove’.

The Sawtell Citrus Orchard team!
The Sawtell Citrus Orchard team!

Both these initiatives were spearheaded by the Sawtell Healthy Homes community group, with the organising energy provided by Peter and Erika van Schellebeck. Advice on species selection and soil preparation came from Juliet Thomas, of the Coffs Harbour Regional Community Garden. Over the past year Juliet has worked with the school principal, Michael Cheers, as well as staff, students and parents, to set up a beautiful fruit and veggie garden inside the school.

 

 

Erika highlighted the social and community-building aspects of the citrus tree plantings. “The project has been a great opportunity for us to get to know our neighbours, and I hope that the grove will become a community space where neighbours meet and walkers and cyclists stop for a rest and some shade”, said Erika. “This pathway is very popular, and so we designed a pathway through the grove to encourage people to move through it and enjoy the space. We also designed a small circular space in the middle that hopefully will one day have a seat and table to encourage neighbours to meet up in the space – maybe for Friday night drinks.”

 

Sawtell Public School kids planting citrus trees
Sawtell Public School kids planting citrus trees

Planting and caring for fruit trees also brings clear health and educational benefits for children. “I hope that the nature strip planting at the school will build on all the work the school is already doing to educate the students about healthy eating, and growing fresh fruit and vegies”, said Erika. This is part of raising levels of food literacy amongst children – an understanding where food comes from, how it’s grown (and raised), what healthy eating involves, and the importance of composting food scraps, so that soil fertility can be maintained and enhanced.

Erika hopes that these initiatives in Sawtell will help inspire other groups of residents in other parts of Coffs Harbour and its surrounds to also get behind the push to make this region ‘edible’ – and for the Council to support them with small grants and making the paperwork easy.

“The grove already looks great – it has turned an unloved and unused piece of swampy land into a space for the whole community to enjoy, and, in a few years, to enjoy a wide variety of free citrus. I hope that the grove and school nature strip planting will encourage Council to consider the merits of growing food in public spaces.”

This work in Sawtell builds on the Bellingen Edible Streetsacpes project begun in 2011, as a collaboration of Northbank Rd Community Garden, the Bellingen Chamber of Commerce, Transition Bellingen, and with funding from the Local Food Futures Project. Bellingen Council has also embraced the spirit, with a raised veggie garden at the entrance to Council Chambers.

Further afield, the trail has been well and truly blazed by Yorkshire café owner Pam Warhurst and her army of volunteers in the market town of Todmorden, with the Incredible Edible Todmorden project.  In Pam’s words, “I wondered if it was possible to take a town like Todmorden and focus on local food to re-engage people with the planet we live on, create the sort of shifts in behaviour we need to live within the resources we have, stop us thinking like disempowered victims and to start taking responsibility for our own futures.”

Amazing things have been achieved in Todmorden, and they’re just getting started. Makes you wonder what’s possible for Coffs Harbour, with our climate, water and soils.

For more info on Incredible Edible Todmorden, search for Pam Warhurst’s TED talk on www.ted.com.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Resilience, Self-sufficiency, Uncategorized

Garden of Eden at Coffs Jetty

Garden of Eden – Garden by the Sea

A version of this article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 13th October, 2012

For the past 21 years, Wayne Kirkland and Mary-Ann Crowther have been living with as low an environmental footprint as it’s possible to have – on a yacht, travelling up and down the east coast of Australia.

For the last few years they’ve been coming back to Coffs, and now they’ve so fallen in love with the place, that they’ve taken over the lease for the Galley café and burger bar at Coffs Harbour jetty.

Wayne and Mary-Ann are passionate about sustainability and treading lightly on the earth, but it’s not about preaching to people. As Wayne told me, ‘I live by the philosophy of just show people how to do it’.

And now, with the help of Steve McGrane, Matt Downie and some willing volunteers from the Combine St community garden, Wayne and Mary-Ann are showing their customers, and the people who work, live near and visit the Jetty, just how amazingly productive a 6m2 veggie garden can be.

Steve McGrane (left) and Wayne Kirkland

 

This wasn’t a case of turning the first sod. Rather, it involved clearing out some pretty massive rocks, on the café side of the breakwater. Underneath was some gravel and fairly barren soil, laced with salt spray.

But Wayne wasn’t deterred, because he knew Steve had a very cunning plan. After years of research and trial and error in his own gardens, Steve has developed a special no-dig garden, layered lasagne-like with ’17 secret herbs and spices’, as he likes to say.

Actually, they’re not so secret. They include lucerne; sugar cane mulch; blood and bone; bags of comfrey, tansy and other leaves;  various manures; molasses (‘very important for the microbial action’); wood chip; and mineral rocks (calcium and phosphate). With the exception of the lucerne, everything’s organic.

The Garden by the Sea – early stages

The results are truly impressive. The garden is barely six weeks old, and Wayne and Mary-Ann have been eating out of it for three weeks. As Steve explains, the porosity of the mix, and the rapid action of the microbes in breaking everything down and making the nutrients available, allows the roots to grow very fast, producing very rapid growth above the ground. More than that,  the nutrients ‘aren’t leached out of the system, because the microbes hold them in suspension’.

The end result is both a super-healthy and productive garden right now; and even better, it ‘will be more fertile at the end of this growing season that it was at the beginning.’ That’s something, because what’s already growing is impressive enough: rows of broccoli, beetroot, kolrabi, lebanese cress, leeks, onions, chillies, tomatoes, a pumpkin vine, two varieties of sweet potato, several types of basil, parsley, lettuce, chinese greens, choko, taro, kumara, and flowers for companions.

The Garden - up close and personal!
The Garden – up close and personal!

The food tastes sensational, and because it’s so rich in minerals, it is very nutrient-dense.

In the next phase, Wayne will put in native wildflowers and grasses, ‘to attract the birds and bees’. He’s already got a resident blue tongue.

As for the salt, everyone told Wayne he could never have a veggie garden by the sea. He’s proved the doubters wrong, through ‘a bit of love and care, and keeping the salt spray off it – I just come and gently hose the plants down when there’s been a bit of spray, and that keeps them fresh.’

Wayne and Mary-Ann are delighted with the garden, and so are their customers. ‘People love it, they sit here and look at the plants, and talk about it.’ Some people have even anonymously put in plants after closing time: Wayne has arrived in the morning to find chillies and tomatoes that weren’t there before. And in the few short weeks of its existence, it’s already creating a web of relationships, so that it can truly be regarded as a ‘community garden’ in its own right.

One of the most satisfying things for Wayne is that he can now send all the green waste from the café to the community garden, where Matt has established an extra worm farm to cope with it all. In return, Matt takes plants to the ‘garden by the sea’, and Wayne now gives him extra seedlings. Community garden volunteers will help out with extensions to the café garden. And Wayne is even getting donations of plants from other yacht owners; and encouraging people to pick parsley.

For Wayne and Steve, this garden is about living their vision: ‘We both have the philosophy that we should be planting every square inch that’s available. Food is essential to life, and if people got more involved in the backyard garden…That’s what stitched communities together, a generation ago. But today, you buy everything from the supermarket. A lot of young people don’t know what fresh food is, they’ve never seen it”, says Wayne.

“This is trying to show people that fast food doesn’t come from MacDonalds. This is fast food. I can take this out of the garden and put it on your plate in five minutes. That was the essence of the project, to shift people’s understanding, and thinking, of what you can do with a garden.”

If the last few weeks are anything to go by, Wayne and the team behind this garden have already achieved a lot.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Permablitzes, Self-sufficiency

Kids and vegies

Permablitz in Perry St

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday  1st September, 2012

Last month, the Coffs Coast Local Food Futures Project, funded by the NSW Environmental Trust, concluded after three years.

The centrepiece of this project was the establishment of two wonderful community gardens, in Coffs Habour (Combine St) and Bellingen (Bellingen High School). Both very different, each of these gardens has already made an important contribution to community education and cohesion in their respective localities, and will continue to do so for years to come.

The Local Food Futures Project has left many other legacies, and many great stories to tell. One of the most recent is the holding of a permablitz at the Gumnut Cottage Child Care Centre in Perry Drive, Coffs Harbour.

Gumnut Cottage is a community-based, not-for-profit centre, run by the parents of the approximately 70 families who use it.

Recently a key focus for centre has been the promotion of sustainability, says Director, Donna Easey, with the installation of water tanks and a solar system.

Because the Centre supplies all the childrens’ meals and cooks for them, they have been wanting to to ‘get the kids a lot more involved, by growing [their own food], and getting them to pick and eat it themselves’, says Donna.

‘So that’s why we applied for the green grant from the Council. We’ve had gardens before, but they didn’t work, so we thought, how can we improve on this. When the grant became available, we thought, this is an opportunity to do it bigger and better, to optimise our resources, get more garden space up and running.

With a $1600 green grant from Coffs Council, and a further $1000 of their own funds, they decided that the time was right to build a great edible garden for the kids in their care.

The key ingredient  was knowledge and expertise, and that was provided by the Local Food Futures grant, in the form of a stipend for permaculture designer Matt Downie, who is an active member of both the Combine St and Bellingen High School community gardens.

Matt’s design was put out to consultation amongst the Centre’s families, and attracted a lot of interest and enthusiastic comment. Not only did it involve the construction of a highly diverse edible garden, but it also addressed some long-term structural problems the Centre had been experiencing, such as the formation of mudpits due to the slope and heavy rain.

Donna was surprised by Matt’s knowledge of species and varieties, like chocolate sapote, ice cream bean and taro, that now form part of the edible garden for the Centre.

Twenty people rolled their sleeves up and worked from 9 am to 3 pm to build six 2.2m x 1.3m corrugated steel beds, as well as extensive trellising and a further railway sleeper raised bed.

 

Vegie bed construction at Gumnut childcare centre
Vegie bed construction at Gumnut childcare centre

 

 The garden has already got the children inspired and engaged. ‘On a daily basis, the children can’t wait to come in and water the plants, and see how they’re going. It’s very exciting.

Many parents who weren’t able to attend the blitz itself have been coming in to help out. ‘The kids are very excited when mum or dad comes to pick them up in the afternoon, and they say, come and look at the garden, look at what we’ve planted’, says Donna.

There have been many donations of plants from families, and grandparents have come in to share their gardening skills with the children.

Donna is very excited about the potential the garden brings to the Centre: ‘I think it’s going to be great, for children to go and pick things for themselves. But also looking at what’s in our garden, and how we can use it – for older kids, thinking about recipes, and then cooking and eating the food themselves.’  

As well as healthy eating, just being involved in the garden has a calming effect, especially for those children who are quite active.

And it’s inspired several families to start growing food in their own homes.

Donna sees a return to previous values and practices with this sort of local food growing. ‘When I grew up, we had big vegie gardens, and you had things that you don’t see anymore, like marrows, and big squashes. They’re hard to come by these days, but we had them on our table every night’, she says.

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advocate, Chefs and restaurants, Coffs Coast, Local and regional food economies, Resilience

Local Food Film Festival 2012

Local Food Film Festival returns to the Coffs Coast

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 4th August, 2012

“The reality is, if we don’t relocalize our food system over the next decade, you or your children will be lining up with your ration ticket at Coles, with your government allocation of what you can get through the centralised food system. Because that food system is going down. All of that system is extremely dependent on cheap energy, and the era of cheap energy is coming to an end.”

Food Inc - one of the seminal food politics films
Food Inc – one of the seminal food politics films

These are the words of permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, speaking in prophetic tones at the start of the challenging documentary Anima Mundi, which is one of two feature films in the 2012 Coffs Coast Local Food Film Festival. Also featuring leading thinkers and writers from Australia and abroad such as John Seed, Vandana Shiva, Stephen Harding, Noam Chomsky and Michael Ruppert, Anima Mundi shines an uncompromosing lens on our current trajectory, and then focuses on the myriad community-driven initiatives that are directly raising levels of sustainability and resilience.

Informed by the principles and practices of permaculture and Gaian philosophy, Anima Mundi tells the stories of ordinary people educating themselves, and working together to create their vision of a better and more sustainable future. At the same time, it doesn’t pretend that there are any ‘easy solutions’ to the challenges we face.

“Eating food that’s locally grown, sustainably farmed, buying it in a farmers’ market, eating it with your family and friends – this isn’t a fad. This is what people have been doing since the beginning of time. It’s about our humanity. It’s a civilising ritual, it gives meaning to life. Food is part of everybody’s experience. It’s the pause in the day, when it’s possible to reflect, and share.”

This is US chef Alice Walker speaking in the Festival’s second feature film, Ingredients. This documentary tells the story of the partnerships between chefs and farmers that, over the past three decades, have given rise to the burgeoning local food movement in the US, which, as we now know, has now spread rapidly across the English-speaking world. For those who want to know where the local food movement came from, what it’s become, and where it’s going, this is the film to watch.

Alongside these feature films, the Local Food Film Festival will also screen a selection of locally-made films from budding documentary makers on the Coffs Coast. Last year six outstanding entries were submitted, telling stories of food-based sustainability from around the Coffs Coast. The winner, The Bushman of Tamban, made by Fil Baker, narrated the recovery of knowledge of bush tucker and native foods in the Nambucca region. “This film has gone on to be shown at many venues, and is featuring at Adelaide’s From Plains to Plate’s Feast of Film this year”, festival coordinator Jocelyn Edge of the Nambucca Valley Local Food Network told me.

The Festival is now calling for entries into this year’s short film competition, along the theme of ‘local food creates healthy communities’. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Coffs Coast Growers Market, Nambucca Valley Council, Bellbottom Media and Kombu Wholefoods, a $1,000 first prize is offered for the best entry, and the top three short films will be screened at the Festival. All entries will be published online.

“Through the short film competition we are asking people to find inspiring local food stories and projects that are happening up and down the Mid North Coast, and we want to be able to bring these to a wider audience,” said Jocelyn. “We particularly encourage primary or high school students to submit entries.”

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advocate, Coffs Coast, Food policy

Food Policy Leadership at the Local Level

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Local leadership on food – or lack of it

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 7th July, 2012

A few weeks ago the City of Melbourne endorsed its inaugural Food Policy, following two rounds of extensive community consultation that took place from October 2011 to April 2012.

Motivated by concerns of individual and community health and well-being, social inclusion and environmental sustainability, this policy is a landmark initiative at the local government level in Australia. It marks another stage in the embrace by growing numbers of councils of food as core business.

Local governments such as the Cities of Melbourne, Maribyrnong, Darebin, Yarra and Port Phillip are now the trendsetters in progressive and integrated policy development on food in Australia. For them, gone are the days when all councils dealt with were ‘roads, rates and rubbish’.

The City of Melbourne’s Food Policy starts from the recognition that there are key drivers – a changing climate, and growing constraints on the availability of key resources (oil, land and water) – which, combined with increasing demand for food with a growing population, ‘mean that we can no longer take our food supply for granted’.

city of melb logo

Contrast this acknowledgement of the facts of basic physical reality, with the comfortable assumption underpinning the Federal Government’s development of the country’s first National Food Plan: ‘Australia is food secure’.  Why? Simply because, in gross volumes, we export three-fifths of what we produce. But we don’t produce enough fruit and veg for a healthy diet for the whole population, so already we have a food import-dependency.

Like other pioneering local governments in this area, the City of Melbourne’s Food Policy recognises the multifunctionality of food and agriculture; and not simply as a set of numbers on a trade balance sheet. The policy identifies the many groups – low income households, older adults, people with a disability, refugees and migrants, and the homeless – who struggle each day to eat well. It recognises that these disadvantaged groups will likely face further ‘food stress’ if, as expected, climate change and resource constraints cause food prices to rise.

The aim of the policy is ambitious: ‘to improve people’s health and well-being by promoting a food system that is secure, healthy, sustainable, thriving and socially inclusive’. The Council recognises that achieving this goal is the work of everyone, and identifies its own role in five areas: education and community development; leadership and advocacy; building and strengthening partnerships; regulation and infrastructure management; and research.

The City of Melbourne is now starting work on an Action Plan to implement the policy. It will be interesting to see what it comes up with; and I will be following this closely.

Coffs Harbour has had, as some people know, a Local Food Alliance (LFA) for the past four years. In 2009, the LFA released a draft Local Food Futures Framework, intended to guide inform and guide council and community action in this field over the coming years. This Framework identified many of the same drivers of change, and vulnerabilities in the regional food system, as the City of Melbourne’s Food Policy. Its vision was of ‘the Coffs Coast region as a showcase sustinable local food economy that supports and sustains healthy, connected, strong and resilient communities, who activiely care for each other and their environment.’

It set out a ‘road map’ for action, and identified a number of strategic priorities. Many education and awareness-raising actions at a grass-roots level have been carried out by the community gardening groups affiliated with the LFA in Coffs and Bellingen.

What’s lacking, however, has been a strong strategic commitment to the LFA and the Food Futures Framework from the elected officials and upper echelons in Coffs Council. Unlike the City of Melbourne, Coffs Council has no Food Policy, despite all the groundwork – and the paperwork – being laid some years ago by the LFA. Unlike the City of Melbourne, Coffs Council has not assumed any leadership or advocacy role in this area, preferring to devolve those responsibilities to time-poor community volunteers. This lack of commitment is disappointing, to say the least; and we’d hope for more strategic vision and leadership in this vital area from the new Council.

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advocate, Alternatives, Coffs Coast, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

Local Food Film Festival, 2011

LOCAL FOOD FILM FESTIVAL

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 29.10.11.

Last Sunday the Coffs Coast Local Food Film Festival was launched at Bellingen’s Memorial Hall. In previous years the Festival has featured documentaries and short films from overseas, covering topics such as the collapse of global fisheries due to over-fishing, the inequities of the global coffee trade, the multi-functionality and vibrancy of community gardens, and the fundamental role that healthy soil plays in human well-being.

We continue that tradition this year, with two excellent feature documentaries. The first, Vanishing of the Bees, tells the story of the not-so-mysterious reasons for the collapse in bee populations worldwide, and the dangers this poses for food production. The second, The Economics of Happiness, argues that humanity must urgently find ways to transition away from the narrow focus on economic growth, and towards economic systems that place human and environmental well-being at their centre.

A big change this year is that, having successfully run the first-ever local food film competition, we are able to present some excellent short films made by residents of the Coffs Coast, telling local stories about the challenges and joys around growing, preparing and eating food. Entries came from Nambucca, Sawtell, Coffs Harbour and Bellingen.

The winning entry – The Bushman of Tamban – tells the story of Damien Mibornborngnamabarra Calhoun, as he provides the audience with a tour of his property outside of Eungai Creek, showing the abundance of tasty and healthy bush tucker that is seemingly everywhere he turns. Damien laments the widespread loss of knowledge about these sources of food, especially amongst indigenous people, who as a result suffer disproportionately high rates of diseases linked to poor diets.

Sharing this knowledge is very important, both to pass on this culture and keep it alive, and for food security. As Damien says, nearly all of us take our food for granted, but what will we do if the systems and shops that we have come to depend on so heavily should break down, for any reason?

Damien, and the winning film maker, Fil Baker, were at the Festival’s launch on Sunday; and Fil was happy to receive his winner’s cheque of $1000. Another surprise guest at the Festival was ‘the grandfather of Australian cuisine’, celebrity chef and owner of the newly re-launched Number One Wine Bar and Bistro at Circular Quay, Tony Bilson.

Chef Tony Bilson
Chef Tony Bilson

Tony and his wife Amanda, who were holidaying with a friend in the Bellingen area, prepared a special local snack for film goers: steamed garlic flowers with a rich avocado mayonnaise. If you can find these flowers (try the Coffs Growers Market) I thoroughly recommend this way of preparing them: it was absolutely delicious.

Tony was also there to tell the 70-strong audience about the publication of his new book, Insatiable, an ‘autobiographical review of contemporary Australian cuisine’.  Tony says that ‘a lot of people don’t understand contemporary Australian food, so what I’ve done is give it a context and a narrative’. ‘The biggest change’, he says, is that now ‘food doesn’t need geographical references, such as beef bourguignon, or chicken provençal. Now food is much more individual, and people are much more interested in texture.’

In partnership with the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, the Northern Territory Education Department and the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Tony recently launched a 10-year horticulture, healthy eating and educational project. By creating communal and market gardens, and combining this with cooking and nutrition classes, the project aims to address health inequalities, improve community self-reliance and create jobs.

Local food, says Tony, is ‘one of the things that give food its true character’; and in his view, the movement for local food is ‘very significant’.

Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty, Global hunger, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, National Food Plan, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

Interview: Nick Rose

Thanks to Juliette Anich for the opportunity to create this portrait. Being able to explain at length my motivations is a rare opportunity and much appreciated.

advocate, Backyard Gardening, Coffs Coast, Self-sufficiency

Native bees and food security in Korora

A native bee hive in every garden…

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 6.8.11

There is in many people’s minds a link between, on the one hand, food security, and, on the other, sustainable, resilient and fair food systems: building greater levels of self-sufficiency amongst growing numbers of people. In other words, raising our individual and collective capacities to meet at least some of our own food needs, and so reducing our levels of dependence on external market actors and systems.

A few weeks ago I profiled Steve McGrane, newly appointed coordinator of the 5000m2 Coffs Harbour Community Garden in Combine Street. His vision is of a growing network of thriving, diverse and self-sustaining food gardens across Coffs Harbour’s suburbs, and he’s putting this vision into practice with his own garden in Korora.

Steve doesn’t do it all alone. He’s working closely with his neighbours, and a small army of tiny helpers, in the form of a hive of native bees.

The bees’ main job is not to produce honey. It’s to pollinate the many species in Steve’s expanding fruit and nut orchard. As Steve explains, the bees only have a range of about 500 metres, and ‘the further they have to fly, the greater the amount of energy they use, so the more food you can provide locally [for them], the better.’

Because of their small size, relative to the European honey bee, native bees have a high commercial value in pollinating fruit and vegetable species with small flowers, such as tomatoes and blueberries. And they’re actually much more efficient and productive workers than the European bee, which, says Steve, ‘pollinate only about 30% of plants’, compared to a pollination rate of around 70-80% for the native bee.

Native bee hives, Steve McGrane's garden, Korora, mid-north coast NSW
Native bee hives, Steve McGrane’s garden, Korora, mid-north coast NSW

While the native bee has not, so far as Steve is aware, suffered the colony collapse disorder that is decimating many populations of European bees, it is under threat from its larger cousin. Steve explains why:

“European bees are very messy in the way they obtain the pollen – they buzz and they just destroy the flower. Whereas when the native bee comes along, it’s very delicate, and there’s no pollen left for it, so they’re actually killing the food sources of the native bees.”

European bees can also out-compete native bees for food because they can tolerate much lower temperatures. In our region, they remain active for most of the year, whereas native bees go dormant during the colder months.

But with European bee populations in decline, native bees may well have an increasingly vital role to play in ensuring our future food security. All the more reason for backyard gardeners to take the plunge and get a hive, in Steve’s view.

And while their main job may be pollination, they do, as Aboriginal people have long known, provide small amounts of delicious ‘sugar bag’ honey. This honey, because of its comparative scarcity, can retail for as much as $100 a kilo. Steve and his neighbour Peter are prototyping a way of extracting the honey in small plastic containers. This avoids the need to split open the whole hive, which can be a very messy process.

Native Bee Hive Honey Container
Native Bee Hive Honey Container

If keeping native bees takes your fancy, the cost is a reasonable $450-$500 for a hive, and ‘it takes zilch knowledge’, says Steve. The most important thing is to have a diversity of flowering plants in close proximity, so your bees have a reliable food supply.