Food Tank recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Nick Rose, Executive Director at Sustain, about the health of Australia’s food system and his view on what are the key factors impacting on a healthy and resilient food system in Australia.
Food Tank (FT): What are some of the biggest opportunities to support Australia’s food system?
Nick Rose (NR): The single biggest opportunity lies in the field of education, with the introduction for 2017 of a paddock-to-plate food literacy curriculum, Food Studies, as an elective for all Grade 11 and 12 students in Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state. As a result, in a few years, as many as 10,000 students could be taking Food Studies. These students will form a growing cohort of capable tertiary graduates who can inform and lead the development of good food policy at the local, state and federal government levels. If other states follow Victoria’s lead and introduce a Food Studies curriculum, the wave of food systems change generated by tens of thousands of highly informed and motivated youth will, I think, be irresistible.
Other significant opportunities include the embrace and resourcing of sustainable and regenerative forms of food production, as well as the expansion of new and fair distribution systems and enterprises, such as farmers markets and food hubs. Legislative and planning protections for Australia’s major food bowl areas close to capital cities are sorely needed. Governments at all levels have a crucial role to play in these and other necessary shifts.
FT: With increasing innovation in the food system and networking technologies, what are you most excited about?
NR: I’m excited about creating a dynamic, multi-layered, and searchable food systems directory that will, for the first time, reveal the scale and breadth of Australia’s growing food systems movement. The development of this directory is a project that Sustain is now working on, with the support of the Myer Foundation, and we’re looking forward to making it a reality in 2017.
FT: From your extensive travels, what are some successful innovations in other countries that could be applied in Australia to improve the food system?
NR: I have a strong personal interest in the great potential of urban agriculture to transform the food system as a whole, and I saw dozens of examples of innovations on my Churchill Fellowship visiting the mid-west United States, Toronto, and Argentina in July–September 2014. Those innovations include: community urban land trusts to make city and peri-urban land available for sustainable and intensive food production, education, and social justice; capturing large organic waste streams to support sustainable and highly productive urban agricultural systems; planning overlays and zoning to facilitate commercial-scale urban agriculture production; the multiplication of inner-city farmers markets with dedicated space for urban farmers; the establishment of small-scale artisanal food processing facilities to incubate food entrepreneurs; the facilitation of city-wide urban agricultural networks; and, the development of comprehensive and inclusive urban agricultural strategies that recognize, value, and support the work of urban farmers and the organizations they are embedded in.
FT: How do organizations and individuals get involved in supporting a healthy and resilient food system in Australia?
NR: There are so many points of entry for individuals, from growing some herbs and vegetables, to supporting a kitchen garden at your local school (as a parent) and, or, your local community garden (more than 500 across Australia). Also, shopping at your local farmers market (now more than 180 in Australia) and, or, fair food enterprise, supporting local and sustainable producers wherever possible. Major change is needed at the level of policy, legislation and regulation, and here organizations can make a difference by joining one of the many local and regional food alliances that are in existence around Australia, or forming one if it doesn’t already exist in your region.
FT: If you could change one thing in Australia to improve its food system, what would it be?
NR: The single biggest obstacle in my view is the concentration of economic and political power represented by the supermarket duopoly—Coles and Woolworths. In the past 40 years, the grocery market share of these two companies has more than doubled to 75 percent. Meanwhile, Australia has lost more than 40 percent of its farmers, with the average age of farmers now approaching 60 years, compared to 42 years for the workforce as a whole. These two trends are deeply connected. As a country, we need to confront our tolerance for oligopolistic concentrations of political-economic power, and the supermarkets present the most urgent task, regarding the long-term sustainability and fairness of our food system.
FT: What personally drives your work to improve Australia’s food system?
NR: My drive stems from years living in Guatemala (2000–2006). It was here my political consciousness was awakened on realizing that the deaths of 200,000 Guatemalans, mostly Mayan indigenous peoples, could be traced to the refusal by the United Fruit Corporation and the then U.S. government of President Eisenhower to countenance even the partial redistribution of its massive landholdings and excessive wealth. This story is all documented in Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the CIA in Guatemala. It was a book that changed my life.
I believe that in working to improve Australia’s food system, I am part of a huge and growing global movement to transform the world’s food system. I dedicate my efforts to the memory of those who died in the struggle for a fair Guatemala.
In June 2013 I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship, to investigate innovative models of urban agriculture in the US mid-west, Toronto, and Argentina. I remember being told that ‘you have travelled, but you have not travelled as a Churchill Fellow.” At the time, I didn’t quite appreciate what that meant. I wasn’t planning to travel until the middle of 2014, so felt pleased with the award and then put the trip to the back of my mind.
As 2013 turned into 2014, I began my planning in earnest, contacting individuals and organisations in the three regions I intended to visit. The trip began to loom larger, and soon enough it was time to board the plane from Sydney to Chicago on 18 July, 2014.
So began two of the most extraordinary two months of my life. Words cannot do justice to the warmth, generosity, passion and inspiration that I encountered every day of those two months. It was truly a privilege to witness the extent and depth of commitment amongst the individuals I met to the cause of co-creating better and fairer communities, from the soil up.
I have now submitted my final report, which is available for download on the Churchill Trust website, and which I am also making available here: Rose_Nicholas_2013_Innovative_models_of_urban_agriculture. Below, I reproduce the Executive summary, and my conclusions and recommendations.
Visiting a family in Nestor Kirchner barrio, Tucuman, standing in front of their small family huerta
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This Report describes a Churchill Fellowship to study innovative models of urban agriculture in the US Midwest, Toronto and five provinces of Argentina. The focus of the study was to explore models of urban agriculture that could generate livelihood opportunities, especially for young people; and / or enhance food security for vulnerable and low-income groups. The study involved visits to over 80 organisations and institutions across the regions visited, and interviews with more than 150 people.
Highlights
Dr Rose was impressed and inspired in every place he visited. The following are examples of outstanding innovation, passion and creativity:
Nicky milking one of her goats, VK Urban Farms, Southside Chicago
Major lessons learnt and conclusions
Urban agriculture is flourishing; and is a source of connectedness, health and well-being, innovation, creativity, sustainable livelihoods, therapeutic benefits and enhanced food security for low-income populations in both North and South America. There are many opportunities for innovative models, enterprises, practices and policies to be adopted and supported in Australia. Commitment and resourcing from state and federal governments, and from the philanthropic and private sectors, would be extremely beneficial in terms of rapidly expanding and scaling up a relatively small but highly capable urban agriculture movement in Australia. Local governments have a critical strategic role in establishing support planning and policy frameworks to enable individuals and organisations to expand the excellent work already underway in Australia’s towns and cities.
Dissemination and implementation plan
Dissemination will be via existing (e.g. Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network) and emerging (‘Fair Food Network’) Australia-wide networks; through speaking engagements at food forums and related events; and through publications and writing. Dr Rose will work with colleagues in these networks, and in local governments around the country, to encourage the development of models, policies and resources to enable the expansion of urban agriculture. Longer-term goals include the recognition of urban agriculture in State planning frameworks; and the recognition of, and support for, urban agriculture in Federal food policy.
Victory Gardens Initiative Executive Director Gretchen Mead, with co-workers Colin and Ellie, Milwaukee
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The principal conclusions from this Fellowship are as follows:
Urban agriculture is multi-functional, multi-dimensional and offers a wide suite of benefits to individuals, communities, local businesses and governments.
Urban agriculture encompasses much more than ‘growing food’, and it should be understood and supported in light of that essential understanding. For example, in Neuquén, Argentina, Dr Rose witnessed its therapeutic benefits in supporting young adults recovering from severe drug addiction; and also its therapeutic benefits for hospital patients suffering from mental health problems.
While urban agriculture is multi-dimensional and multi-beneficial, it also can, and does, make an important contribution to the food security needs of low-income and vulnerable populations. This is especially important in the Australian urban context, where recent indications and trends suggest that food insecurity is a rapidly growing problem for large numbers of people in many of our communities.
Urban agriculture also has significant potential as a means to generative livelihoods and income for its practitioners, who in many places tend to be young. Linking sales from urban farms into local commercial circuits, which include farmers markets, community-supported agriculture box subscriptions, local restaurants, cafes and grocery stores, and the potential for such exchanges to be scaled up over time, means that urban agriculture has an important urban renewal and economic development dimension.
This multi-functionality of urban agriculture, and in particular its economic development potential, is increasingly well understood by local governments in the US, Toronto and Argentina; and by provincial governments (Ontario, Neuquén). Hence these various levels of government have established enabling frameworks, policies and resource allocations to support the expansion of urban agriculture in diverse opportunities. When combined with injections of philanthropic funding, such frameworks and resourcing can lead to impressive results.
The potential of urban agriculture is best realised through creative and authentic collaborations, which can and does happen at different scales and with differing combinations of actors and organisations. Well-functioning networks, coalitions and alliances are very important to the success of urban agriculture.
Urban agriculture forms one element of a local, sustainable and fair food system. Such systems are being created by innovative and passionate individuals and organisations in civil society; and in many places their efforts in turn are being supported and enabled by policy frameworks and resources from local, state, provincial and federal governments; and through philanthropic and community financing.
Dr Emmanuel Pratt, Harvesting silverbeet at the Perry St Farm, Englewood, Southside Chicago
The principal recommendations from this Fellowship are as follows:
Individuals and organisations directly involved in urban agriculture should actively explore ways to expand its current scope, which is largely confined to non-commercial and self-provisioning community gardening. Urban agriculture as a potentially viable commercial activity should be actively explored and promoted; as should urban agriculture as a means to enhance the food security of low-income and vulnerable groups.
Individuals and organisations directly and indirectly involved in urban agriculture should examine ways in which they can effectively form part of a network that supports the achievement of their respective organisational, financial and advocacy goals.
All local governments should work collaboratively with community organisations and other stakeholders to audit all land potentially available within their LGA area that could be suitable for food production, and then classify the sites according to levels of suitability and types of urban agriculture activity that potentially could take place on them.
All State governments should review their planning provisions and legislation to ensure that urban agriculture is included as a permitted and encouraged use across a range of zones, to indicate to local government that the policy approach in this area is one of enablement and encouragement, rather than risk aversion. In other words, the presumption with urban agriculture should be ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’.
The Federal Government should acknowledge the value and importance of urban agriculture, and indeed of local food systems and economies, as a matter of public health, local economic development, environmental sustainability and community well-being, as well as enhanced social capital.
This acknowledgement and recognition should come in the form of a dedicated Federal Urban Agriculture and Local Food Fund, to be disbursed via an application process that encourages regional and collaborative initiatives with high and long-term impact, to scale up and expand initiatives already existing, and enable the flourishing of multiple new projects and models. Funding should be provided to research partnerships to document changes achieved by the projects and create the evidence base to justify further and ongoing public and private investment. The amount should be reviewed annually to take account of increasing need and capacity, however the suggested starting figure, based on the Ontario Local Food Fund (see above), is $20 mn.
State governments should support this Federal Urban Agriculture and Local Food Fund through their own co-financing mechanisms, according to an assessment of the needs and capacity of the urban agriculture and local food sectors in their own states. For the more populous states (Victoria, NSW, Qld) this co-financing mechanism should be in the order of $5 mn – $10 mn, to be reviewed annually in consultation with the sector. Different financing mechanisms can also be explored, such as a levy on developers, supermarkets, insurance companies, and other relevant private sector stakeholders.
A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, Saturday 30th August, 2014
Before I left Australia I thought our food and agriculture systems had some serious issues. Increasing rates of dietary-related ill-health. Decreasing numbers of farmers. Increasing power of the supermarket duopoly, to the detriment of most other players in the food system. Increasing rates of biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and loss of farmland due to urban sprawl and mining.
And so on.
After nearly six weeks travelling through the US Mid-West, Toronto and three cities of Argentina’s interior, I’ve realised – or rather been reminded – that everything is relative. The challenges that Australia faces, grave as they are, need to be put into perspective. As a country, we are at one point of a curve of a global food system crisis that is much, much more acute in other places.
The iconic Packard Car Plant in Detroit – which employed 15,000 workers at its peak, now a collection of abandoned and ruined buildings. The post-industrial future has arrived in Detroit
One such place is Detroit, where I was three weeks ago. What was once one of America’s richest cities, has long since become a by-word for poverty, violence, unemployment, crime and urban blight. As the auto industry crashed and burned, it took the city with it. From a population high of 1.8 million in the early 1950s, Detroit now has 750,000 people. Unemployment and poverty rates exceed 50%. Diabetes has reached pandemic proportions.
Yet even Detroit seems to be in less desperate straights than the thousands of people who live in the cinturones de pobreza (poverty belts) that ring the cities that I have visited, Tucuman and Rosario especially. The conditions in the so-called villas de emergencia (emergency towns) or asentamientos (settlements) are confronting and shocking. Many of the dwellings are shacks, not anything Australians would recognise as ‘houses’, with plastic covering to keep out rain and provide some modicum of insulation against sub-zero temperatures.
Casas precarias in the so-called Villas de Miserias, this photo taken in Barrio Nestor Kirchner, part of the Cinturon de Pobreza that encircles a significant portion of Tucuman, in the north-east of Argentina. Similar ‘poverty belts’ and ‘misery towns’ can be found in many mid-to-large sized Argentina towns and cities.
Domestic violence is endemic, and child abuse is frequent. Teenage pregancies are common. Unsurprisingly, drug taking – which often assumes the most destructive forms, such as glue sniffing – is rampant amongst adolescents. I am reminded of the early 1970s song by the Venezuelan band Los Guaraguao, about the conditions in the slums of Caracas:
Que triste, vive mi gente,
En las casas de carton
Que triste, vive los niños
En las casas de carton
(How sad my people live
In their cardboard houses
How sad do the children live
In their cardboard houses)
Life is hard. Very hard. And yet life goes on. And a key way in which members of these communities are achieving a measure of dignity – and improving their quality of life – is through having access to garden spaces – either in their own yards or in a public space.
The Pro Huerta (Pro Veggie Garden) program, which was established 25 years ago by the Argentina national government, helps 600,000 families throughout the country establish and maintain their own veggie gardens. It does this through the provision of high quality organic seed (the only provider of such seed in Argentina), workshops, and technical support through a national workforce numbering over 800 and a network of volunteer promotores numbering close to 20,000.
Visiting a family in Nestor Kirchner barrio, Tucuman, standing in front of their small family huerta
This is what I have come to Argentina to observe, to see what difference a national program of such magnitude makes to people facing conditions of extreme poverty. In Rosario, where I will be for the next few days, the local government has taken this concept to the next level. They have a workforce of 40 full-time staff dedicated to support urban agriculturalists scale up their production to a commercial level. The local government has made 22 hectares available to dozens of families to cultivate on an agro-ecological basis, and crucially provided infrastructure and marketing support, in the form of 10 producers’ markets that take place throughout the city on nearly every day of the week. 250 producers sell at these local markets. They can’t meet the demand.
From a cauldron of misery, good things are emerging. It’s humbling and inspiring to witness.
A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 16.8.14
My travels continue at what at times feels like a break-neck pace. I have spent a week in each of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and Toronto, and have just arrived in Argentina. Last night I stayed in Buenos Aires, then flew this morning to the northern province of Tucumán, where I will be till Friday night, when I take a bus to Córdoba. This week – and indeed the whole month – promises to be one of intense learning, as I immerse myself in coming to an understanding of the scope, scale and importance of the national Pro Huerta program, that reaches 500,000 families across the country, including 45,000 in Tucumán. Every day has brought so many new people, projects and places into my life that I will need a considerable amount of time to process it all. My commitment is to write a brief report for the Churchill Trust (minimum 10 pages), but it feels like a book. Or a number of books. There are just so many wonderful stories. And I already have in the order of 100 hours of recorded interviews. So I’m actually going back to Chicago this time, to share some observations from one of the most remarkable people I have met so far. Someone who has been practising urban agriculture for more than 15 years, making her one of the ‘elders’ of the movement in North America. And someone who has embraced it with a passion and dedication that has to be seen to be believed.
With Vicky and Eric, of VK Urban Farms
I am talking about Nicky, of VK Urban Farms, in East Caufield Park, Westside Chicago. She and her husband Eric, a policeman and trained chef, are working two vacant lots adjacent to their home, where houses formerly stood. Their focus is animals, rather than fruit and veg, and Nicky explains why: “When I had my children, that’s when I decided to get the chickens. I come from the city and I want my children to have culture, but I think there is an irreparable disconnect when you don’t have the space to put your hands in dirt, and land to live and look, and grow your own food. You can theoretically learn about it, and think about it, but when you have a tangible connection to your environment, it does something that connects you to your universe and your environment that you can’t just do in a book.
Some of the 15 chickens, VK Urban Farms, Southside Chicago
You can grow fruit and veg, and you can know to take care of your environment, theoretically. But when you have a live animal that eats up that ground, and then you’re going to eat off of what it gives you, it’s a different conceptual reality. So that was why I got the chickens. .” Nicky refers jokingly to her chickens as a ‘gateway drug’, because goats followed in their wake, and this year two pigs were added. Now their urban homestead includes 15 chickens (10 eggs per day), eight goats, and two beehives in addition to the two pigs. Nicky told me how wonderful it is to have goats: “ I love the fact that we milk every day, and we make cheese every third day. So I make feta and chevre, and farmhouse cheddar. I get a gallon and a half of milk each day.” “A gallon of milk yields about a pound a half of cheese [so that’s about 20 pounds of cheese per week – somewhere in the order of 8 kilos]. We work together with a remarkable woman in Austin, Carolyn Yoder, a remarkable human being. We ship in the hay together for the goats and split the freight charges. We care for each other’s goats when we go on vacation. She had a birthing crisis and I had to help her with the midwifery of her goat, which was ridiculously fantastic. We had to reach in and turn the kids, we had a 2% chance of birth and we did it, it was quite lovely.
Nicky milking one of her goats, VK Urban Farms, Southside Chicago
“Urban ag people – we have to do everything, we have to midwife, we have to castrate, we have to disbud (burning off the horns), it’s a high calling that you have a responsibility for these animals, and you better educate yourself, because there’s no-one to call for help.” Nicky speaks lovingly of how the animals work together, in harmony with the land and the growing of vegetables and fruits: “There’s a beautiful symbiosis with all of the animals and the farm. The goats produce a ton of manure, and that’s direct feed for the soil, you don’t have to age it. It’s enough for all of my gardens and a lot of community gardens in the neighborhood. It’s the difference between a few tomatoes, and a LOT of tomatoes, and they’re delicious! Especially in this table city soil. It’s exactly what you need to amend your soil. There’s a place for the goat poop to go, which is necessary.
Nicky with her chickens
“So they feed the garden, the garden feeds us, and the compost goes right back into the composter. They give me all this beautiful milk. I make cheese, and there’s a by-product of cheese – whey – which is the most magical thing in the world. You can wash your face with it, it cures acne…what we don’t use here, we feed back to the goats and the chickens and the pigs. Between all of the animals there’s no waste at all. We have no food waste at all. Everything gets eaten, between the goats, the chickens, and the pigs will eat whatever’s left over.
The daily haul of eggs…
“If you just have chickens, you’re going to have more waste – but the goats, the chickens and the pigs create a beautiful balance. 8 goats, 2 pigs, 15 chickens, 2 beehives, and a mass of gardens.
Nicky with her 2 pigs, VK Urban Farms, Westside Chicago
I asked her what it was like when she first moved to Chicago, and to the west side: “20 years ago it was very different here. Culturally. I was told I was crazy. I was the only white girl here, for years. We were raised, in Maine, that everyone is the same, doesn’t matter if you’re poor, or white, or black. But it’s easy to be raised like that when you live in a homogenous area. It’s easy not to be racist when everyone’s white. So people thought I was crazy when I moved here, to an all-black ghetto. They told me I was going to be cut up into little pieces, and raped every day.” Yet her experience of hostility came not from the westside of Chicago, but from its predominantly white north: “I lived in the north side of Chicago for a little while, but I found it very hostile. Nobody spoke to each other when you walked in the streets. You had to look down at the pavement, because God forbid you smiled at each other. They would recoil from me if I said ‘Good morning.’ The white people were just not friendly, whereas the black people are. I felt so lonely and isolated. The rent was very high. I looked into buying a place, here, on the Westside. I paid $30,000, and my mortgage was $234 a month, as opposed to $1600 a month, to rent a place with no backyard.
VK Urban Farms, Southside Chicago
“So I came to this block and I asked the neighbors, what would people think if I moved in, and they said ‘Oh honey, you’ll be fine’. And I felt so much more at home, among black people. They don’t look at you funny if you look them in the eye. People would come and knock on the door if it was street cleaning and I hadn’t moved my car. It’s so much more – it’s southern hospitality, and I felt embraced, even though I was the anomaly.” Nicky and Eric also tapped 66 maple trees from the streets surrounding their property, and boiled up 7 gallons of home-made maple syrup – possibly the first such product from an urban farm in North America. This was a great bonding experience for the community, Nicky says, because it ‘started so many wonderful conversations, because people didn’t know what maple syrup was. People have conversations that they never would have had otherwise. It really unites people.” At the end of the process, which lasted a couple of weeks, they had a big community pancake breakfast.
Products of VK Urban Farms, Westside, Chicago
Nicky is unsure about the future of her urban homestead, because the neighborhood is slowly becoming gentrified, and that could lead to tax rises. It could also lead to the City wanting to sell the vacant lots, which Nicky and Eric are trying to buy, so far without success, to a developer. A main issue for her are the constraints the current rules place on the ability of urban farmers like her to commercialise their produce, when it’s mainly derived from animals. So she and Eric are looking for creative ways to monetise some of their labour: “Our plan is farm to table dinners – we started this year with an urban wedding, a 100-person wedding, and those you are allowed to do. You are allowed to feed people with the food we produce here. So that’s why we’ve added the pergola, and why we’re doing the landscaping. We’re going to put down old pavers from the old City of Chicago streets. We can do events here, and there’s a lot of money doing that. That is an idea that we’re going to hope to keep things going. And maybe if we make enough money, the City will sell us this land. Having spent over an hour with Nicky, I asked her what the urban farming meant to her:
“For me it’s like the core of my happiness. Being out here and digging in the dirt, it connects me to the most fundamental space in my heart, which is nature. It gives me peace, and it calms me down, I’m not listening to podcasts, or news, or music, or looking at my cell phone. It’s just connecting with my environment. And it gives me back something for doing this!”
With one of VK Urban Farm’s 8 goats, Westside Chicago
Urban agriculture is becoming a movement, she says, because it speaks to a deep yearning amongst many people for (re-)connection: “ A lot of people involved in this are younger than me, they’re in their 20s and 30s. I think there’s a way in which we’re so disconnected – we have Facebook instead of actual friends, we have screens instead of human interactions, that people, especially in that age demographic, are starving for a real experience, in the world.” These words chime very much with my own feelings about urban agriculture, and the fair food and food sovereignty movement more broadly. Whereas the big, globalised and industrialised food system is premised on a series of disconnections and separations, everything about urban agriculture speaks of connection and healing: communities, minds, bodies and souls. Often this is also expressed through cooking and food preparation, as Nicky notes in relation to Eric: “My husband is a city boy, never grown anything in his life. When he first moved here he mowed over my herb garden. He’s like if it’s green it’s grass…No! Watching the transformation in him has been miraculous. Now he loves the gardens, he loves the animals, he’s proud to tell people about it. As a trained chef, it woke something up in him, that was even more than I have. For me, it connects me to my universe and myself, but for Eric, cooking for people is his connection to his world. To be able to have it be so real for him, is pretty beautiful.” Nicky says that urban agriculture is a diverse and grassroots movement and phenomenon, but it’s the basic desire for connection that unifies all those who are involved in it: “I think the people who stumble upon urban agriculture – because everybody does it for different reasons – and it does seem like a ‘stumble upon’ thing – you had a neighbor, who had bees, and you got into it; or you took a class in college, on agriculture, and got into it. But it’s not being passed down, it’s not like a farming technique, so everybody’s coming at it from all these crazy different directions. Some people like to brew beer, so they ask, well, where do my hops come from? And you grow your own hops, and then you start growing everything. “But I think it all stems from that same place of just been starving for an actual interaction with your universe.
