Category Archives: fair food movement

Fair Food emerges as a movement

Food is not a sector like any other: it is fundamental to our health and well-being as individuals; to who we are as a culture; and ultimately to our very survival as a species. Recognising the lack of vision and leadership on these profound questions, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance was formed in 2010, consciously linking Australia to the global movement for food sovereignty, with the aim of promoting a different, values-based national conversation on the future of our food and farming systems.

Like most countries, Australia has a long tradition of backyard food growing, yet this dwindled significantly with the rise of the supermarkets and fast food in the post-war era. Now backyard food growing is returning strongly, with recent surveys suggesting over 50% of adults are involved. Many are also involved in community food production, especially community gardens and school kitchen gardens, which have expanded rapidly since the 1990s. The permaculture movement, which began in the late 1970s, has also been influential in the growth of community and backyard gardening, as well as small-scale bio-diverse agriculture. The farmers markets movement in Australia is also experiencing rapid growth, from a very low base in 1999 to over 150 today.

Peoples Food Plan, Fair Food Week, ‘Fair Food’ documentary

In its short life, AFSA has undertaken a series of strategically significant initiatives that are beginning to articulate a coherent ‘fair food movement’ in Australia, based on food sovereignty principles. These include:

  • the Peoples Food Plan, Australia’s first ‘crowd-sourced’ food policy text, which involved over 600 people participating in 40 public forums throughout the country from September to December 2012.
  • Australia’s first Fair Food Week [12] (19-25 August 2013, involving 112 events in every state and territory with an estimated 15,000 people participating
  • Australia’s first food politics documentary, ‘Fair Food’, a joint project with the Locavore Edition in Melbourne
  • The launch of Fair Food Farmers United, a farmer-to-farmer knowledge-and experience-sharing project to promote understanding of food sovereignty principles and practices amongst Australian producers
  • A campaign for a Local Food Act, drawing on the inspiration of the Ontario Local Food Act and mn Local Food Fund (Nov 2013)

Urban and Regional Food Network & Charter

Since September 2013 the Food Alliance (Deakin University) has begun the process of establishing Australia’s first Urban and Regional Food Network, bringing together 20 local governments as well as a wide and expanding cohort of researchers, food businesses, health professionals, planners, community gardeners, not-for-profit organisations, Transition groups, permaculturalists and others. This Network has collaboratively developed as a key strategic priority the development and implementation of an Urban and Regional Food Charter for Victoria, as a systemic and integrated text to drive forward legislative and policy change and shape practice across the state. This will be a model to be replicated in other Australian states and territories and will provide a substantial boost to the movement for urban agriculture and fair food in Australia.

Themes of the Fair Food Movement: [suffusion-categories child_of=184 title_li=0]

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advocate, Democratic food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty

The People’s Food Plan, first appearance

The People’s Food Plan

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 15th September, 2012

I’ve mentioned a number of times previously that the Federal Government is currently working on Australia’s first-ever National Food Plan. The green paper is out for consultation until 30 September, and the white paper is expected to be released in the first few months of 2013.

I’ve also mentioned that the Government’s agenda on food and agriculture, as revealed in the green paper and elsewhere, has provoked a lot of disquiet amongst members of what we might term ‘the fair food movement’ in Australia. This would include non-corporate family farmers, small-to-medium sized food processors and manufacturers, independent and local food retailers and grocers, farmers’ markets, community gardeners and other local food groups, and the many millions of Australians who grow or raise some of their own food.

Yes, there are millions of Australians who grow or raise some of their own food. And it’s a growing trend – pun intended. A national survey carried out for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) – of which I am the national coordinator – by the Australia Institute in July this year, found that more than half (53 %) of the adult population was growing or rearing some of their own food. Two-thirds of those had started doing so in the last five years, and a fifth in the last 12 months.

This trend towards some measure of food self-provisioning cuts across age and gender barriers, as well as the rural-urban and party political divides. It’s truly a national phenomenon. There are any number of reasons to explain why it’s occurring – from a concern about taste, quality and health, to the sheer joys and many benefits of gardening – but we’d also have to include a rising awareness that all is not well with the globalised food system, which the government so heavily promotes.

People's Food Plan Cover
People’s Food Plan Cover

But domestic food growing – and the fair food movement more generally – gets absolutely no recognition whatsoever in the green paper for a National Food Plan.

That’s why the AFSA has decided that there is a need, and an opportunity, for a more inclusive, and broad-ranging, conversation about our national food system. In launching this week our process for a People’s Food Plan, we’ve been inspired by the dedicated work of hundreds of Canadians who, for more than two years, held 350 kitchen table talks around that country, to produce a People’s Food Policy for Canada. Released during the Canadian federal election of 2011, this document had a major impact, being endorsed by the two principal opposition parties.

Food Sovereignty - Nyeleni Declaration
Food Sovereignty – Nyeleni Declaration

The first of around three dozen public meetings around the country scheduled to be held during September and October was held earlier this week in Bondi. Thirty people spent two hours discussing their concerns about the food system in Australia, and put forward their ideas and proposals for priority policy action. These included ‘education and policy to promote local food’, ‘restrictions on harmful foods like soft drinks’, ‘prevent contamination of farmland by GMOs’, ‘prioritise food production over coal-seam gas’, ‘challenge the power of companies like Monsanto’, and ‘no sponsorship of schools and sporting programs by Coles and Woolworths’.

The AFSA has produced a draft discussion paper for a ‘values, principles and best practice’ document, which will be available online next week. All the ideas we are hearing will feed into a revised document, which we aim to launch before the end of the year.

In his foreword to our discussion paper, SBS garden guru Costa Giorgiadis writes:

“Now is the time to repurpose and refocus as a community. Now is the time to build an economy where growth is valued in annual soil depth and fertility that in turn promotes a health industry, not based on sickness but on living food. Let’s cover the fences and boundaries of a divided world with edible vines and plants that produce new visions and innovations worthy of the potential we have around us. Creativity to drive a world fuelled on regenerative and renewable sources requires new industries, new thinking and less baggage from a world paradigm whose time is passed.

Change requires courage and strength. Changes requires fuel, and food is the fuel of our future. The People’s Food Plan is the fuel of the future. Food Freedom begins in the soil that feeds seed freedom.

Now is the time to plant and nuture the seeds of change. I am excited.”

Public forums and / or kitchen table talks are planned for the Coffs Harbour region. If you are interested in participating, please email nick@foodsovereigntyalliance.org

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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, Backyard Gardening, Resilience, Self-sufficiency, Urban agriculture

Angelo Eliades – Practising Permaculture in Preston

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A version of this article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 9th June, 2012

A little over a month ago I introduced Angelo Eliades, and his permaculture food forest experiment in the Melbourne suburb of Preston. What Angelo has done embodies the wave of food self-sufficiency sweeping the inner north and west of Melbourne. This wave has been generated by individuals and community groups, but it’s increasingly being embraced by local governments, who are integrated policies on community gardening, edible streetscapes and urban orchards into their policies and strategic frameworks.

Angelo is remarkable for the methodical and systematic way he has built his backyard food forest, and in particular for his documentation of everything he’s done, from species selection, plantings, climate events and yields. All of this is available at his blog, deepgreenpermaculture.com.

Angelo built his food forest on the ‘leached and lifeless’ soil of his 80m2 backgarden during the winter of 2008. He calls his method ‘backyard orchard culture’. It’s based around the careful selection and strategic siting of a range of different tree species (Angelo has 30), interspersed with numerous varieties of berries (21, with multiples of several varieties), herbs (90) and other perennials, with some space left for annual vegies. Typically early, mid- and late fruiting varieties will be chosen, because ‘this gives extended seasonal cropping – instead of having one tree produce a glut of fruit all over a few weeks, you can extend your cropping [over several months].’

For Angelo, a key motivator is yield; his aim was to show what’s possible in a small space, the ‘typical suburban backyard’ in inner Melbourne. Remember, he wanted to counter the scepticism of folks in DPI and elsewhere who scoffed (and still scoff) at the idea that permaculture and backyard gardening can actually produce significant amounts of food.

Angelo Eliades in his garden in Preston, Melbourne
Angelo Eliades in his garden in Preston, Melbourne

But he’s also very interested in resilience: in selecting species that can do well in a Melburnian climate that is behaving increasingly erratically, with damp and cool summers, short and mild winters, freak hail storms, and extremely hot days in early spring. Never mind the droughts, the fires and the floods.

So he and his colleagues are looking abroad and at other cultures and agricultural traditions, trying out species that you wouldn’t think of as forming part of the ‘normal’ Australian diet, if such a thing still exists. The multi-functional and ‘very highly productive’ Peruvian root crop yacón is one. “It’s very sweet, you can eat is straight, or stir fry it; you can also produce a natural, inulin-based sweetener out of it”, says Angelo.

The cold hardy babaco, a member of the paw-paw family, is another tree that features in his food forest. It’s also known as champagne fruit, because it tastes ‘like a lemon-sherbet pineapple-strawberry blend and it’s quite fizzy’. It also has medicinal properties, having four times the bromelain (anti-inflammatory) content of pineapples. And, Angelo told me, it ‘makes great smoothies, too’. Unfortunately none were ripe when I visited. He expects the tree to yield 50kgs per year when it reaches maturity at four years.

Angelo explains the strategic thinking that informs the selection of perennials, not annuals, in this type of orchard design:

“They’re more flavour-intensive, they’re far hardier, and they grow much better. We find all these types of plants, like French sorrel, and perennial spinach, things that are high-yielding and good tasting. And then we propagate them, and distribute them out through the local community, so everyone gets hold of these plants. The more we share them, the more we have of them.”

You can see here the outlines of a vision for a community-based resilient food future, which I’ll flesh out more in a later column. But what about his yields? Angelo has documented approximately 200kgs per year, with a roughly 60-5- 35 split between the trees, the berries and the vegies. All his trees are a few years away from maturity, – a third are not yet producing at all – so he thinks 500kg a year is quite feasible.

Even his current yield equates to 14 tonnes per acres. Average dryland wheat yields in Australia are in the 2 tonne per acre range, even after many many millions of dollars have been spent on research and genetics. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

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advocate, Backyard Gardening, Resilience, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming, Urban agriculture

The rise of the dachniks

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This article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 26th May, 2012

The rise of the dachniks

Last time I began telling the story of Angelo Eliades and his permaculture food forest in his suburban backyard in Preston, Melbourne. In response to that column, a friend sent me a link to some research that was carried out a few years back into the scale and productivity of agro-foresty and bio-intensive small-scale production in Russia. This research formed the substance of a PhD thesis submitted by Leonid Sharashkin in May 2008 at the University of Missouri.

This column will be in parenthesis to Angelo’s story, which after all, has a lot to do with the yields achievable in small-scale food forests. Next time I’ll return to his story proper.

If you’re really keen on the Russian research, you can download the full thesis – a mere 248 pages of text and tables – via ‘soilandhealth.org’. Here’s the (very) short version: Russia is a nation of small-scale gardeners, or dachniks; and they are very, very good at it. Some 35 million households, two-thirds of the country, grow a fairly significant portion of their food on a dacha, a small-scale garden plot with an average size of 600m2, belonging to urban dwellers, either privately or in a co-operative form.

The tens of millions of current-day dachniks are following in the footsteps of a centuries-old tradition of small-scale, self-reliant agrarian communities. As Sharashkin notes, this means that these practices did not suddenly re-emerge en masse in response to the economic collapse in the post-Soviet Russia of the early 1990s, but rather have deep historical and cultural roots that go well beyond the food production and economic dimensions.

Small'scale intensive production in Russia
Small-scale intensive production in Russia

Yet the productivity of the dachniks is impressive. Sharashkin reports that in 2004, they accounted for (conservatively) 51% of total agricultural output by value, around $US14 billion, or 2.3% of Russia’s GDP; a larger contribution than steel manufacturing or electricity generation. And when the focus shifts to staple food crops, as opposed to commercial crops for export, the figures are truly remarkable. Over 90% of Russia’s potatoes, over 80% of its vegetables and fruit, and over 50% of its meat and milk, are produced on small plots, with little or no machinery and minimal energy inputs.

And all this is achieved on a mere 2.9% of the country’s agricultural land, compared to commercial agriculture, which requires the other 97.1% of the agricultural land to produce 49% of total output.

Such extraordinary productivity is explained by two principal reasons. First, the care and attention that comes with labour-intensive gardening for self-provisioning. Secondly, the embrace of polycultures and perennial species, rather than single crop monocultures, characteristic of agro-forestry: plantings that ‘are intentional, intensive, integrated and interactive.’

And beyond their food yields, these spaces also generate a social yield. They are places ‘where a family comes together’ and where they ‘celebrate special occasions’. Dachniks watch over each others’ plots, and they share seeds as well as gardening experiences and tips.

As Prime Minister Gillard boasts of Australia’s potential to be the ‘foodbowl of Asia’, others look to the parlous state of the Murray-Darling basin, the impacts of the coal-seam gas industry on water tables and fertile soils, the growing reality of climate change and the looming shadow of peak oil, and wonder whether we shouldn’t first focus on feeding ourselves. In this debate, the dachniks of Russia have proven that ‘decentralized, small-scale food production is possible on a national scale’.

Which is why we should celebrate the growth of community gardening in this country, and in our region in particular. On Saturday, 2nd June, the Bellingen High School Community Garden will celebrate its first birthday, and everyone is welcome. There will be activities for children from 10.00 a.m., the pizza oven will be fired up for lunch, as well as live music and a photo exhibition. Come along and see what Charlie Brennan, Olivia Bernadini and their many helpers have achieved over the past year. For more details, visit the Facebook page of the Bellingen Community Gardens Association.

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Food Forests – food for the future?

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A food forest in Preston

A version of this article appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 5.5.12

Recently I’ve been travelling to Melbourne a fair bit, as part of a team working on a research project funded by the Federal Government’s National Climate Change A­daptation Research Facility. NCCARF, as it’s known, is funding dozens of research projects over a wide range of social, environmental and economic fields, many of which will be discussed at its annual ‘Adaptation in Action’ Conference to be held in Melbourne from 26-28 June this year.

NCCARF is currently funding three food security projects, examining, respectively, the impacts of climate change for risk management and the preparedness of food industry leaders; creating a climate for food security in terms of business, people and landscapes in food production; and urban food security, urban resilience and climate change.

It’s the last one I’ve been involved with, and in a nutshell the aim is to better understand how urban and peri-urban agriculture can help meet the challenges of climate change and food security, and build more resilient towns and cities in Australia. Two case study areas have been chosen for this research, Melbourne and the Gold Coast, hence my recent travels.

I’ve met and interviewed  over 30 people from different walks of life, from local government planners, to health and nutrition professionals, community gardeners, market gardeners, backyard gardeners and food security advocates. I’ve been left with lots of impressions, not the least of which is that there’s an extraordinary  amount of activity and enthusiasm for urban agriculture and local food in Melbourne.

I’ve also been struck by the disconnect between this level of activity and enthusiasm, and the low value that the State government (both the current Victorian government and the previous one) has placed on prime agricultural land close to the city. According to the Planning Institute of Australia, on current trends regarding the constant expansion of Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary, 25,000 hectares of quality farmland will be lost to residential development by 2020. Doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s coal-seam gas or new McMansions, it seems pretty clear that food growing rates way down the list of priorities of State government planners and political leaders.

Many people, myself included, are firmly of the opinion that we – and most certainly our children – will rue these choices to chase the short-term buck over long-term sustainability and resilience.

The Melbourne urban food and agriculture movement, which seems to be geographically concentrated in an arc of suburbs heading north and north-west of the city, such as Fitzroy, Clifton Hill, Brunswick, Northcote, Thornbury, Coburg and Preston, is full of people and groups who see some sort of breakdown in the ‘Big Food’ system as likely. Here, and over the next few weeks, I’m going to introduce you to one of them: Angelo Eliades.

Angelo is a life-long resident of Preston, and has been a keen organic gardener since 2002. A few years ago Angelo taught himself the principles of permaculture – he subsequently did his PDC with Bill Mollison – and decided to put them into practice by taking three months off work and transforming his small suburban backyard into a permaculture food forest.

Angelo Eliades in his garden in Preston, Melbourne
Angelo Eliades in his garden in Preston, Melbourne

He was motivated to do this, he said, by the ‘scepticism towards permaculture’ he saw amongst horticulturalists. ‘There was just too much doubt, too much dissenting opinion, about whether it can really work’, he told me. ‘So I said, enough’s enough, it’s time to call their bluff, and build something that shows it really does work.’

And that’s what Angelo did with his backyard food forest. But Angelo is no starry-eyed idealist, he’s a working scientist. Which is what makes him, and his project, so unique. He set out quite explicitly to use his backyard as an experiment, to rigourously document everything he did, and all his yields, in order to establish that bio-intensive gardening of this sort can indeed be highly productive.

‘I have no time or space for wild speculation’, he said. ‘For me, my food forest was really to prove that the concept worked. As a scientist, if something’s scientific, that means it’s repeatable.’

In the next few columns, we’ll look at how he did it, what he’s achieved, and what his plans are for the future.

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advocate, Co-operatives, Fair Food systems, Food Hubs, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms

Food Hubs – essential infrastructure for a Fair Food System

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Food Hubs

A version of this article appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 21.4.12.

Last time I wrote about the efforts underway in Girgarre to turn a new page in the history of the Australian co-operative movement, by launching a ‘Food Hub’ manufacturing centre that is co-operatively owned and run by workers, growers and the broader community.

I’m happy to report that while Heinz has now sold its Girgarre site to another buyer, the Goulburn Valley Food Action Committee has found an alternative greenfield site in Kyabram, and are planning to launch the first of their new products, designed by Peter Russell-Clark, by the middle of May. The results of their feasibility study have now come in, and they show, according to Chairperson Les Cameron, that ‘demand for Australian product is greater than ever before…the Heinz approach of creating a product, marketing it and then trying to sell it through the major supermarkets is no longer the way to go. [The study] is showing a number of significant, medium-size companies are looking for Australian product; and sub groups who will not buy anything else.’

So far, so good. I’m following these developments with great interest. When their products are available in Coffs Harbour, I’ll be sure to let you know!

But back to the question: what is a Food Hub? In essence, it’s a conscious attempt to scale up local and regional food economies. If there’s been a single persistent and fairly persuasive criticism of the local food movement over the years, it’s this: that while its aims and principles might be great, and while farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture might work quite well for smaller producers, local food as a whole actually fails to deliver the goods in terms of offering reliable markets with sufficient throughput and volumes for commercial-scale farmers.

That function, so this reasoning goes, can only be filled by central wholesale markets; or, in this country, by supermarket distribution centres.

The Food Hub is an attempt to tackle this criticism head-on.  Originating in the United States in the 1990s, Food Hubs have expanded across that country, with more than 100 in operation, and many experiencing strong growth and expansion. Their primary functions are typically the aggregation, marketing and distribution of local fresh and processed produce. In some ways they resemble a wholesaler, but with the key difference that their mandate is to source as much local produce as possible, and channel it into local businesses, institutions and households. In the process they create more demand for local food, help build the capacity of local producers, and get much better returns for farmers than they receive in the central market system.

All the things a Local Food Hub can do
All the things a Local Food Hub can do

Government purchasing power seems to have played a big role in fostering the growth of Food Hubs, with 40% counting among their clients public institutions such as schools and hospitals.

According to a recent survey of Food Hubs by the US Department of Agriculture, some of the longer-running hubs have become significant local businesses. One has 100 suppliers, including many small and mid-sized producers, and offers over 7,000 products. This Hub owns a 30,000 sq.ft. warehouse and 11 trucks, with 34 full-time employees and over US$6 million in sales in 2010.

But Food Hubs can do much more than aggregation, marketing and distribution. As in the Goulburn Valley, they can combine manufacturing and processing with innovative product development and multiple traineeships. The Local Food Hub in Charlottesville has a five-acre demonstration farm, where they run training days for local growers and offer apprenticeships and internships for the next generation of farmers. 20% of the food grown on this farm is donated to local food banks and anti-hunger organisations.

And so on. Because there’s no single business model, and because these hubs are locally-owned and controlled, responding to local needs and priorities, the forms they take will vary widely. That they are emerging and expanding at this point in time, when the existing food system is plagued by so many profound dysfunctionalities, is a cause for great optimism.

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Food for Thought – Growing, Sharing + Eating Local Food

And another great read from Suzette Jackson – fond memories for me of Australia’s first Fair Food Week!

Food for Thought – Growing, Sharing + Eating Local Food.

advocate, Fair Food systems, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies

La Vida Locavore: Food Sovereignty as Government Intervention: The View of Via Campesina and US Family Farmers

Republished with the permission of Brad Wilson – an ‘Iowa farmer in organic transition. Former farm organizer and farm policy staff for Iowa CCI and rep to regional Sustainable Ag Working Group. Wrote staff manuals on commodity title in 1990s. National Family Farm Coalition board.’

Originally published at the link below on 21st February, 2012:

La Vida Locavore:: Food Sovereignty as Government Intervention: The View of Via Campesina and US Family Farmers

Dominant Interpretations of Food Sovereignty

I find that, in the US, “food sovereignty” is often defined as having increased local and regional control over food systems, and politically this often includes national control for small countries, such as Least Developed Countries.  Along with this, small-scaled, even pre-industrial systems are often praised for having features of ecological, social and economic sustainability.  These virtues then compare favorably to the mega-industrial farm and food systems that are pushed by mega-corporations and the major mega-industrialized countries (that these corporations dominate) and the major international institutions (ie. WTO, IMF). This praise has been confirmed by recent international studies.Second, I find that advocacy for this view is typically represented in advocacy for general “principles.”  I have seen little in the way of specific policies and programs for specific decisions made by specific decision-makers  (ie. geared to US activists, with specific US decisions and decision makers to be influenced).In this view, then, the essence of food sovereignty is defined by general principles of local sustainability.
Alternate Views of Via Campesina and the US National Family Farm Coalition

While the dominant view is big on general principles and local, self-initiated sustainability, I find it to be weak on justice, especially farm justice, and weak on the kind of “issue” specificity that is needed for authentic organizing.In contrast, Via Campesina and the National Family Farm Coalition focus on farm justice (“farm sovereignty”?) in ways that focus directly on key, macro level decisions and decision-makers.  A good illustration of this can be found in the 2003 Via Campesina document, “It is urgent to re-orient the debate on agriculture and initiate a policy of food sovereignty,” which was a “Post-Cancún Release.”1This document emphasizes that food sovereignty is “urgent” and states:  “The first important step: we must centre the debate on food sovereignty and production rather than trade.”  General principles are then given:  “To engage in agricultural production that ensures food needs, respects the environment and provides peasants with a life of dignity, . . .”

Significantly, the principles sentence ends as follows:  “an active intervention by the government is indispensable.”  In other words “the first important step” is not about local things that we, or peasants or farmers, do ourselves.  It’s about government action at the macro level to achieve the principles of “food sovereignty.”  For the sake of US farmers and Via Campesina, it is crucial that this emphasis is not missed in discussions of food sovereignty inside the US as the US government is the most important one where “active intervention” is needed.  The next words are:  “This intervention must ensure:” which is followed by a list of 6 items.  Items 2-4 (half) are:

” • control of imports in order to stabilize the internal price to a level that covers the costs of production,
• control of production (i.e. supply management) in order to avoid surpluses,
• international commodity agreements to control supply and guarantee fair prices to peasant producers for export products such as coffee, cotton, etc.”

We see then that Via Campesina quickly moves from the general principles a list of specific actions that are needed by various government decision makers (ie. “supply management” and “fair prices”).

Though not specified, the specific decision-makers (for US advocates) behind these decisions include the following:

• US Congress and presidents, who decide whether or not we have price floors (and whether they’re set at fair trade levels,) plus supply management in the farm bill

• US presidential administrations and their trade negotiators, to favor allowing countries to prevent the dumping of imports and to develop methods of international supply management and price support.

The peasants of Via Campesina know the importance of farm prices, and of managing supply to help obtain them, but they have very little influence on the US Congress and President.  It’s essential that we properly understand Via Campesina on these specifics of what food sovereignty means, and mobilize the rest of the new US food movement, and bring in the broader (beyond family farm justice advocates) farm movement.

The US is the dominant global exporter of major farm commodities, and has often been about as big as OPEC in oil (cotton, wheat), or much bigger, (corn, soybeans), or otherwise the dominant price-setting force (rice).  Food Sovereignty advocates here must lead on these issues.  Via Campesina members who live in other countries must rely on US organizing to win justice in the US farm bill and in our highly influencial approach to trade.

A key place to start is with the Food from Family Farms Act of the US National Family Farm Coalition.2  This is the key farm bill policy alternative in the US that supports the kind of farm justice described by Via Campesina above.  My web sites are designed to do support these policies of justice.  I’ve collected the key resources to bridge the gap between farm justice peasants and farmers, on one hand, and those who think food sovereignty doesn’t emphasize government intervention, or who think farm justice is about subsidies, on the other.  (Note:  peasants from the global South often also do accurately understand US farm bill issues.)

The Farm Subsidy Myth

Food sovereignty advocates and potential advocates in the US especially need to understand that farm subsidies, though part of WTO are not the relevant policies that need to be addressed here.  It is very widely believed that farm subsidies are the key policies (in the farm bill and in trade agreements) that help to achieve the price goals of Via Campesina.  WTO documents strongly affirms that perception.  Unfortunately at least 4 kinds of data prove this hypothesis is false.4  WTO and  most US conservatives and progressives are wrong.  The subsidy hypothesis is not supported by the relevant data.

Again, the US farm bill achieves Via Campesina’s global goals of food sovereignty only when it includes supply management and price floors set at fair trade levels, as we had 1942-1952.  With these policies there is no need for any farm commodity subsidies, and there were none when we had fair trade price floors in the past.

Issue Specificity and Authentic Organizing

The specific US farm bill decisions and decision makers related to the Via Campesina document (described above) lend themselves well to authentic grassroots organizing inside of the US on behalf of Via Campesina and US family farmers.

At the recent “Assembly” of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, in Oakland California, the family farm sub-group (ie. representatives of member organizations of the National Family Farm Coalition,) emphasized their direct experiences of injustice, with terms like “survival,” “despair” and “divorce.”  Another popular term heard from this group at the accompanying conference in California is “suicide.”  This emphasis reflects their long history of concretely fighting agribusiness and the current severe “dairy crisis” These terms were also big themes during the 1980s farm crisis, when large numbers of farms went quickly out of business, or were threatened with foreclosure.   The same applied during the CAFO crisis that was raging during 1990s, for example, as most diversified US farms lost their livestock value-added to CAFOs, due to huge, even multibillion dollar “implicit” (off the government books) subsidies from cheap feed (low grain prices,) to individual CAFO corporations.

US food and food sovereignty advocates wanting to focus on justice can learn from these groups to move quickly into pragmatic action.

Supply management and price floors are key food sovereignty issueds as define in grassroots organizing.  The late organizer behind National Peoples’ Action, Shel Trapp, for example, approaches the question of issues as follows:4

“When you find what appears to be an issue, three questions must be asked:

1. Can people be mobilized around this?
2. Is it specific?
3. Can something be done to change this situation?

If people cannot be mobilized around an issue, then you do not have an issue. A good way to “test” an issue is to call several people in your organization, talk about the situation and then ask:

Would you be interested in getting a few folks together to talk about this and see what can be done?”

An issue is something that people can get right to work on, with a potential to win concrete changes.  It involves a specific decision from specific decision makers. As we approach the 2012 farm bill, it is essential that food sovereignty advocates inside the US focus directly on the key “issues” of justice,  identified by Via Campesina, for example, in the 2003 document identied above.

Notes

1. Via Campesina, “It is urgent to re-orient the debate on agriculture and initiate a policy of food sovereignty,” 9/2/03, http://viacampesina.org/en/ind…

2. “Food from Family Farms Act:  A Proposal for the 2007 U.S. Farm Bill,” National Family Farm Coalition, http://www.nffc.net/Learn/Fact…

3. See my “Michael Pollan Rebuttal,” (including 2 linked videos at YouTube) for the 4 proofs:  http://www.zcommunications.org…

4.  Shel Trapp, Basics of Organizing, NTIC, 1986, http://www.tenant.net/Organize…

For further reading:

Brad’s “Farm Bill Primer,” “Food Crisis Primer” and “Issue Organizing” content boxes (lists of links), zspace, (http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/bradwilson);

Brad’s YouTube Channel & “Farm Bill & Food Bill” playlist: (http://www.youtube.com/user/FireweedFarm#p/c/A1E706EFA90D1767).

Brad Wilson, “Via Campesina with NFFC: Support for Fair Farm Prices,” zspace, http://www.zcommunications.org…

Brad Wilson, “WTO Africa Group with NFFC, Not EWG,” zspace, http://www.zcommunications.org…

Brad Wilson, “Most EWG Subsidy ‘Recipients’ Are Too Tiny to Be ‘Farmers,'” zspace, http://www.zcommunications.org…