Category Archives: Food policy

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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, Corporate control of food, Food policy, National Food Plan

More export markets – but who benefits?

Export! Export!

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 18th August, 2012.

A fortnight ago the Australian Grains Industry Conference – ‘the premier industry-hosted conference for grain industry market participants and service providers’ – was held in Melbourne.

Described as a ‘high-level market event that brings together the Australian and global grain industry in a premium networking event’, this Conference was truly a gathering of the great and the good in the world of grains.

Which is why, when I heard that my colleague Fran Murrell, co-ordinator of MADGE (Mothers are Demystifying Genetic Engineering), had scored a ticket, I was fascinated to see what her impressions would be.

Grain Industry Report

She wrote to tell me that she had found the event ‘extremely worrying’. It’s not that anything particularly out of the ordinary happened. What’s shocking is simply the very ‘normality’ of how the large corporate players view the food and agricultural system as an arena purely for speculation and profit, regardless of the destructive social and environmental consequences of their actions.

This was made crystal clear when one speaker said that a significant reduction in the outrageously high levels of food waste – 50% or more of all food produced in developed countries is wasted, by some estimates – would represent a ‘threat’ to the burgeoning ‘investment opportunity’ that large-scale land acquisitions and clearances of rural and indigenous people in Africa and South America represents.

Let me illustrate the sheer, chilling insanity of this perspective by reference to a few facts about food waste, via Stuart Tristram’s excellent Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal:

  • ‘the irrigation water used globally to grow food that is wasted would be enough for the domestic needs (at 200 litres per person per day) of 9 billion people’
  • ‘if we planted trees on land currently used to grow unnecesssary surplus and wasted food, this would offset 100% of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion’
  • ‘all the world’s one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe’

Just let those facts – and there are many, many more – sink in for a minute. And then reflect on the claim, endlessly repeated by the government and most media, that the world ‘must double food production’ by 2050 to meet ‘growing global demand’. There’s a very good case to be made, in my view, that the real challenge we face is how to curb wasteful overproduction.

Yet our federal government, in its wisdom, has placed increased production of commodities for export as the centrepiece of its ‘National Food Plan’, out for public consultation until 30 September. The grains industry, naturally, takes its cue from the urging of the Prime Minister, that Australia, in addition to being Asia’s quarry, also become its ‘food bowl’. It’s focused on supplying meat, wheat and dairy commodities to the Asian middle class, also exporting in the process all the diseases associated with diets based largely on these products.

The financial industry was also well-represented at the grains industry conference. Its spokespeople regard agriculture as the ‘shining sector of the economy for the next five years’. In their worldview, it’s assumed that the sale of Australian land and agricultural assets to sovereign wealth funds, global corporations and foreign investors will benefit Australian farmers and consumers.

Meanwhile US multinational Cargill is positioning itself as the farmers’ friend, as it increases its control of the Australian Wheat Board; as well as domestic grain storage, handling and marketing infrastructure. As Fran pointed out to me, while we’re being asked to trust that this type of foreign investment is in all our interests, we shouldn’t forget that Cargill is currently being prosecuted by the Argentinian government for large-scale tax evasion.

The corporatisation of our food system means that there will be a relentless and constant drive for efficiencies, all in the name of ‘global competitiveness’ and ‘productivity’. Amongst other things, that means far fewer farmers. The numbers of Australian grain farmers have fallen from 40,000 to 22,000 over the past thirty years. We can expect that trend to continue, even accelerate.

But don’t worry – it’s all going to be fine, because we’ll have new export markets!

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A food plan for corporate agribusiness

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A National Food Plan, but not for us

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 20th July, 2012

On 17th July, the Federal Government released its green paper for a National Food Plan. This is the next step in the development of Australia’s first-ever national food policy. The first was the release, in June 2011, of an Issues Paper, followed by a two-month period of consultation and invite-only roundtable discussions. The green paper will also be followed by a two-month period of public consultation, and I’ll provide the relevant link at the end of the article.

During the first phase of public consultation, 279 written submissions were received from Australians, many of them from ordinary members of the public, and from community groups and small farmers. One of them was Graham Brookman, CEO of a permaculture farm (foodforest.com.au) in Hillier, SA, which produces 160 varieties of fruits, nuts and vegetables.

DAFF

The Food Forest is a family farm, run by Graham, his wife Annemarie, and their two children. The family’s aim is to ‘ demonstrate how an ordinary family, with a typical Australian income, can grow its own food and create a productive and diverse landscape’.

Graham took the trouble to write 13 pages in his submission to the National Food Plan consultation. He pointed out that ‘the dogma that internatioanl free trade will solve food insecurity has been proven to be faulty over centuries, billions continue to starve while others die of obesity in a world with relatively free movement of food’.

This would seem to be a simple statement of facts. Close to half the world’s population is malnourished in one form or another, either because they have inadequate intake of key micronutrients, or excessive intake of the wrong types of (highly processed) foods. Free trade, vigorously pursued by Australia and many other countries for the past few decades, has not resolved these issues; indeed there is a good argument that it has made them worse.

But in the green paper, the Federal Government has shown, to quote a(n) (in)famous lady, that ‘it’s not for turning’ when it comes to free trade. On the contrary, it’s full steam ahead on the trade liberalisation agenda, and we can expect increasing amounts of food imports. The Government wants your opinion on free trade – but only for suggestions on how Australia can export more, not whether the free trade agenda itself might require further thought.

Then Graham pointed out that the impacts of climate change, peak oil and geopolitical instability mean that ‘the whole food system needs rethinking and massive effort needs to go into rebuilding the skills of our agricultural producers such that the nation can remain domestically food-secure’.  To the free trade dogma, Graham adds the ‘free market dogma [which] has given Australia the duopoly of Woolworths and Coles who have driven farmers from the land by reducing profit margins for producers to miniscule levels and requiring them to use every technical device available to maximise yields.’ Broccoli crops in the Adelaide Hills, he points out, are ‘sprayed with biocides approximately 30 times to meet the cosmetic standards of the supermarkets.’

But Graham and the Government are inhabiting parallel universes, it seems. According to the green paper, Australia ‘has a strong, safe and stable food system’ and ‘Australians enjoy high levels of food security’; our food industry is ‘resilient and flexible’ and we ‘have one of the best food systems in the world’. A key plank of our national food strategy should be about us becoming ‘the food bowl of Asia’, in the Prime Minister’s words. This is a frankly preposterous example of wishful thinking, given that even on the most optimistic scenarios, Australia would supply food for no more than 1% of Asia’s 3.5 billion people.

So it’s no surprise that Graham, on reading the green paper, wrote to tell me that, ‘in terms of a sustainable food future for Australia there is virtually nothing in the ‘national food plan’ or its structure that is acceptable’.

There’s a simple reason for this: the ‘National Food Plan’ is actually a Plan for corporate agri-business and retailers, not ordinary people. If we want a food plan that meets our needs, we’ll have to work on it ourselves.

occupy_our_food_supply_new

If you want to read the green paper and tell the Government what you think about it, follow this link: http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/green-paper.

Update: 8th November 2013

Following the election of the conservative Liberal-National Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, there is considerable doubt about the future of the National Food Plan. Apparently the new administration is not that happy with it, and the proposed Australian Council on Food has already been abandoned. This is not to suggest that we are likely to see a change of tack on free trade or any other aspects of the big corporate agenda. On the contrary, we are likely to see an intensification of that agenda, via the so-called ‘Northern Foodbowl Plan’, of which more in a later post.

 

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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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Climate madness in Melbourne

Climate madness in Melbourne

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 23rd June, 2012

Last month our Prime Minister spoke of her ambitions to make Australia a ‘food superpower’, so that we can become a ‘food bowl’ for Asia, and not just the region’s mining quarry.

Her lead was followed a couple of weeks later by Victoria’s Agriculture and Food Security Minister, Peter Walsh, who set for his State’s primary producers the ambitious target of doubling their output by 2030. He believes that just as Western Australia and Queensland have becoming mining superpowers, Victoria can take the lead in the push to convert Australia into a food superpower.

I’ve spoken recently with several research scientists in Melbourne, some inside government, some in academic and other institutions. These people are experienced professionals who’ve closely studied, over many years, Victoria’s agricultural sector and its performance. They’ve integrated climate modelling into detailed assessments of the anticipated performances of major crops and livestock in different regions over the coming decades. They spoke to me on a confidential basis, so I’ve not named them to protect their identities.

Regarding Peter Walsh’s target, they told that they ‘have no idea how he’s going to do it, where the best farmland is going to be’. Mid-range climate change forecasts of warming in the 1.5oC – 2.0 oC range, they point out, will see substantial declines in productivity across the northern half of the State. Warming beyond that range, which is looking increasingly likely, given the 40% increase in global greenhouse emissions since 1990, may mean the abandonment of agriculture across entire regions.

The most climate-resilient areas are those with the best soils and most secure access to water, including treated and recycled waste water. They are on Melbourne’s peri-urban fringes. But several thousand hectares of that land will soon be growing houses, not food, due to expansions of the city’s urban growth boundary, confirmed last week by Planning Minister Matthew Guy.

Drought in the Murray-Darling
Drought in the Murray-Darling

The people I’ve spoken with shake their heads in dismay at the astonishing incapacity of senior politicians and bureaucrats to grasp the longer-term strategic import of protecting prime peri-urban farmland with secure access to water. But it gets worse.

I was told that there is a strong strain of climate change scepticism and denialism that pervades the current Victorian government and sections of the bureaucracy. According to the research scientists:

“The problem is that a large percentage of [senior] people in [the government] don’t believe in climate change. Their vision of agriculture is large-scale commodity production, outside Melbourne, in areas that will be heavily impacted by climate change.”

Climate change is now, it seems, a dirty phrase in the Victorian Government:

“We started with climate change [under Labor]. Then some people started talking about climate variability…Then, with the change of government, it became ‘climate challenges’, then ‘climate volatility’. And a few months ago they discovered the words ‘climate evolution’. And now we’re basically not talking about it at all, it’s fallen to the wayside. To the point that they have even cut the climate change unit in the Department of Planning.”

There is deep pessimism across much of the scientific fraternity in the wake of these sorts of developments. “To a large extent, the battle for climate change has been lost for a long period, post-Copenhagen”, I was told. The reason? A rigid and doctrinaire attachment to a conservative political ideology which sees the market as holding the solution to all the world’s problems; and which pushes the natural sciences, and systems thinking, and broader and longer-term notions of resilience, outside the boundaries of acceptable political discourse or policy.

Drought in Australia's foodbowl
Drought in Australia’s foodbowl

This ideology dominates across the political spectrum, so changing governments is no answer. So what might bring it down? Perhaps only the ultimate enounter with undeniable physical reality:

“In twenty years, this thing will bite. There will be 50 oC days in Mildura, ten-year droughts, pestilence and so on, as in the Bible. Then there will be such a community reaction that the political parties will be kicked out. It will take a community groundswell through a crisis situation.”

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, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty, National Food Plan

Canadians endorse food sovereignty in public forums

A Food Plan for Industry, or a Plan for the People?

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 17.9.11

Canada’s political parties, and its food movement, have in recent years thoroughly discussed food policy formation. As Australia grapples for the first time with the idea of a National Food Plan, it’s instructive to look at the Canadian experience.

First, the political parties. In Canada’s most recent Federal election, held on 2nd May this year, all the major parties – the Conservatives, the Liberals, the New Democrats (NDP), the Greens and Bloc Québécois – went to the electorate with a platform on food policy. The Conservatives, and to a lesser extent the Liberals, were clearly focused on export agriculture, and opening up new markets. Each of the other three parties, by contrast, spoke of the need to work towards food sovereignty, broadly conceived as the ‘right of peoples and sovereign states to democratically determine their own agricultural and food policies.’

What this translated to in practice in the Canadian context was a need to protect farm incomes, both by reviewing the impacts of trade agreements on Canadian farmers, and by building strong and diverse local food systems so that more value in the food dollar is returned directly to farmers. The NDP identified the need for specific measures to find pathways for new entrants into farming, while the Greens linked climate change and emissions reduction to agriculture.

Of all the parties, only the NDP had carried out an extensive public consultation process of 28 community forums over 18 months in all Canadian provinces. At every forum participants overwhelmingly expressed their agreement that food sovereignty, as summarised above, should form the basis on which the Canadian government approaches its international trade negotiations.

The NDP reported that Canadians wanted a ‘comprehensive food strategy’, with the core objectives of ensuring access to healthy food for all Canadians; helping Canadian farmers deliver such access; and building a sustainable agriculture for the future.

As a matter of interest, the NDP recorded a 13% swing in its favour, nearly trebled its number of seats in the Canadian parliament, and now sits as the official opposition to the Conservatives for the first time in its history.

Also in the lead up to the election, a grass-roots citizen initiative led by Food Secure Canada published its ‘Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada’ report. This was, as I mentioned last time, the outcome of very extensive public discussions over two years, including 350 kitchen-table talks in which 3,500 Canadians participated. The report was embraced by both the NDP and the Greens.

People's Food Policy Project: Resetting the Table
People’s Food Policy Project: Resetting the Table

The report pointed out its unique status as ‘the first-ever national food policy to be developed by the food movement itself – a diverse and dynamic network of organizations and individuals working to build a healthy, ecological and just food system for Canada.’ As the authors state, those involved in this movement ‘are taking actions daily that are transforming our food system from the ground up’, and the challenge is to ‘translate [these actions] into policy’.

The Policy itself draws on comprehensive recommendations and guidelines developed in ten detailed discussion papers generated by the engagement process with the public. The key recommendations are as follows:

  • ‘Ensure food is eaten as close as possible to where it is produced’ (e.g. mandatory local procurement policies for private and public organisations, and support for local food initiatives such as farmers markets)
  • Support producers in the transition to ecological production, including entry pathways for new farmers
  • ‘Enact a strong poverty elimination program with measurable targets and timelines’
  • ‘Create a nationally-funded Children and Food Strategy (e.g. school meals, school gardens, food literacy programs) to ensure that all children at all times have access to the food required for healthy lives’
  • ‘Ensure that the public, especially the most marginalised, are actively involved in decisions that affect the food system.’

You won’t find any of this in the Australian Government’s Issues Paper for a National Food Plan, which more closely resembles the food policy platform of the Canadian Conservative Party.

advocate, Food policy, Food sovereignty, National Food Plan

The National Food Plan – Take 1

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The National Food Plan – What prospects for change?

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 3.9.11

Yesterday (2nd September, 2011) the deadline passed for submissions to the Federal Government’s Issues Paper on its proposed National Food Plan. In recent days, the Government has also been holding a series of ‘invitation-only’ Roundtables during which stakeholders in our country’s food and farming systems can directly present their views on the purpose and content of the Plan.

Federal Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Hon Senator Joe Ludwig
Federal Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Hon Senator Joe Ludwig

Colleagues of mine, affiliated with the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, have attended some of these Roundtables. What’s emerging so far is that the Government will have its hands full in meeting the expectations that the idea of a National Food Plan has generated.

The general consensus is that Australian farmers are not being paid enough for their produce. This means, going forward, that we as a country won’t have the necessary skills, nor the strategies in place for skills retention, in order to grow the food we need to feed Australia in an increasingly uncertain future.

Representatives of peak producer bodies are looking for substantive change in this Plan. They support boosting production for domestic consumption, as well as measures to address the inequities Australian producers face vis-à-vis cheaper and lower quality imports.

The Government’s answer, however, is in essence to insist that farmers must ‘increase their productivity’, be fully exposed to the rigours of ‘free trade’, and ‘become more competitive’. As if they haven’t been doing this for decades! Volumes and yields have risen four-fold since 1950, but ‘normal’ market operations means that most Australian farms are not financially viable in their own right, and are dependent on off-farm income.

 60% of all Australian farmers are expected to retire in the next decade. Who will replace them, and just as importantly, what will become of their farms? How many will be subdivided for development, or handed over for minerals extraction?

Health and nutrition analyses reveal that most Australians are not eating enough fruit and veg, and the country is facing a full-blown obesity epidemic that is collectively costing us $56 billion a year and leaving our children with a reduced quality of life and life expectancy. As many as 2 million Australians can’t regularly afford to eat healthily, and at the same time up to 40-50% of all our food ends up in landfill.

The current food system, in summary, is producing a multitude of perverse outcomes, and I haven’t yet mentioned soil degradation, groundwater depletion, fossil fuel dependency and climate change. Some would even say that It’s broken. The case for fairly profound change is overwhelming.

 Yet Minister Ludwig and his department insist that ‘our nation’s food supply is secure’. The Issues Paper is very much a product of ‘business as usual’ thinking. Which is why many of those attending the Roundtables are sceptical as to what, if anything, the National Food Plan will achieve.

There are of course different approaches. One example is the Canadian People’s Food Policy, which was produced after a two-year process with the participation of 3500 Canadians in 350 kitchen table talks, as well as ‘dozens of tele-conferences, ongoing online discussions, and three cross-Canada conferences’. The outcome was a series of ten policy discussion papers, covering topics such as Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Environment and Agriculture, Access to Food in Urban Communities, Healthy and Safe Food for All, and Food Democracy and Governance.

Contrast this with the Australian Government’s Issues Paper, the bulk of which was devoted to steps to ensure a ‘Competitive, productive and efficient food industry’. 23 of the Issue Paper’s 35 specific questions were directed to this theme, compared with just 4 diet and health, and not on environmental issues.

The Canadian document contains important lessons for Australia, and next time I will look at some of its key recommendations.

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The Free Trade Taliban

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Apples, pears and free trade

Nick Rose

This article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 20.8.11

On Thursday, the Federal Government made the historic announcement that henceforth New Zealand apples will be imported into this country.

NZ Apples

This decision had been resisted by Australian apple and pear growers since 1919, both for biosecurity reasons, i.e. the risk of diseases such as fire-blight and European canker devastating apple and pear orchards in this country, and for economic reasons. The Australian Apple and Pear Growers’ Association estimates that on average its members will see a 30% drop in their incomes as a result of being exposed to large volumes entering the country from New Zealand and, subsequently, from China.

The decision to end the import ban was made at the behest of the World Trade Organisation, which ruled that it could no longer be justified for scientific reasons, and was therefore contrary to Australia’s trade liberalisation obligations.

Apple tree with fire blight
Apple tree with fire blight

In theory, free trade sounds wonderful, an idea that no-one in their right minds would disagree with. Each country specialises in doing what it does best; domestic producers are exposed to international competition, and so must innovate to stay competitive; new businesses, jobs and products are created as a result; and consumers get progressively better prices. In turn, new markets overseas become available for Australian products, and so a virtuous cycle of wealth creation comes into being.

The trouble with theory is that all too often it fails to take into account the messy complexities of real world practice. Speaking about this issue a few weeks ago, independent Senator Nick Xenophon recalled how he had been told earlier this year by a union official that Australian trade negotiators are commonly referred to in international trade talks as ‘the free trade Taliban’. Trade liberalisation, in all sectors and all circumstances, has virtually become a religious catechism for them.

Leaving aside its merits or otherwise in sectors such as manufacturing, the question here is whether untrammelled free trade is an axiomatic good in the case of agriculture. The evidence to date, frankly, is not persuasive. Some farmers and growers have undoubtedly benefited from lucrative and growing niche markets: blueberries and pecans are two that come to mind. Whether WTO rules and free trade dogma were required for such markets to become available is debatable.

By far the biggest beneficiaries of greater trade liberalisation of agricultural commodities have however been the handful of multinational corporations that dominate grain trading, meat packing, proprietary seeds and agro-chemicals. Farmers in general have been the biggest losers. Their terms of trade, their standard of living and their numbers have declined worldwide. It’s been estimated that over the past 40 years, Australia has lost an average of five farmers every single day.

As the spectre and reality of famine returns in an increasingly uncertain world, more and more people are waking up to the reality that, at the end of the day, none of us can eat, drink or breathe money. The food system in all its aspects isn’t just a sector of the economy like any other: it’s the very stuff of life. It deserves special consideration and, yes, protection. Using that word as a term of abuse, as the free trade Taliban are wont to do, simply reveals the shallowness, not the sophistication, of their thinking; and the depth of their adherence to dogma.

* * * * * *

The Federal Department of Agriculture recently announced that, following requests from many groups and individuals, it has extended the deadline for submissions on its Issues Paper for a National Food Plan to COB Friday, 2nd September. If you feel strongly about the future of food and farming in this country, and what role government has in supporting it, then make your views known by visiting the DAFF website: http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/national-food-plan.

* * * * * *

Update – 6th June 2013

The Federal Government has now published the final version of the National Food Plan – you can download it in all its glory at the DAFF website. Over the two years of ‘consultation’, the writers of the NFP were little moved to make concessions in the direction of a more fair and sustainable food system. Their mantra of export more commodities, increase agricultural productivity, sign more free trade agreements and force open new markets, remains unshakeable. Personally I foresee their neoliberal dogma crashing hard against the shores of biophysical reality; indeed it already is. In the meantime, Australia continues to lose farmers and farmland at an alarming pace; and the obesity pandemic continues to gather momentum. Why is why I and my colleagues at the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance will continue to campaign for the People’s Food Plan for Australia.

Collaborative cultures and networks, Corporate control of food, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty, Global hunger

Fair food from field to fork: food sovereignty

Reflections on the work of the People’s Food Plan process to date in Australia.

It’s a small beginning, there is a long way to go and the work seems daunting in its ambition and its urgency.

But we have to make a start.

Fair food from field to fork: food sovereignty.