Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized, Urban agriculture

Urban Agriculture: Making Australian Cities Edible

Republished from Matters Journal – original article here Urban Agriculture: Making Australian Cities Edible — Matters Journal

Australia loves to consider itself a foodie destination, but imagine a city where every inch of public space is covered in something you could actually eat. Urban agriculture expert, Dr Nick Rose, believes our cities are ready to feed themselves. Melissa Howard catches up with him only to discover his ideas aren’t that hard to swallow.

Dr Nick Rose, corporate lawyer turned fair-food scholar-activist, has a vision for our cities. He wants us to embrace urban farming to the point that when we walk down the street we’ll be able to spot food everywhere. “You’ll see fruit and nut trees, vegetables in planter boxes and on street verges,” he says. “People will be gardening, kids harvesting fruits and vegetables, and people sitting out in their front gardens sharing food, tips and recipes. Nobody is hungry, we don’t have malnutrition and food is a source of happiness, health and wellbeing.” If that sounds like a crazy pipe dream then, well, you haven’t met Dr Rose.

Rose is the executive director of Sustain: The Australian Food Network, where he sees his role as helping to promote the transition to a better food system. One that feeds all Australians well, cares for our land and ecosystem, and pays farmers fairly. A tall, sometimes-bearded man with a large grin, Rose is today wearing a t-shirt with a cauliflower and an eggplant on it, both holdings placards: “The future is vegetables” reads the cauliflower’s sign and “Occupy lunch” says the eggplant’s. “You can’t work in urban agriculture and not look a bit like a hippy,” I say. “Very true,” he agrees.

Rose is showing me around a huge shared site in the Melbourne suburb of Alphington where Sustain and Melbourne Farmers Market have received funding from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation for a new project. The Alphington Food Hub will grow 500 square metres of food, host a weekly farmers market and a commercial kitchen, co-working offices, a farmers’ depot, and aims to give “everyone dignified access to good food at all times”.

I start by asking him what exactly is urban agriculture? “Urban agriculture, is the raising and growing of food by people in their own homes or shared spaces in, or close to, urban centres,” he says. It is, he tells me, community gardens, it is aquaponics, it is your elderly neighbour with nets over her peach trees and overflowing tomato produce she bottles once a year. It’s pots of herbs on the balcony of apartments, it’s keeping chooks and goats in the suburbs, and it has enormous benefits. “Anyone who walks around the city will know there are lots of empty blocks of lands that have a fence and weed growing out of concrete. Urban agriculture makes those spaces beautiful and makes them productive. It can provide employment opportunities for young people and provide markets to sell the produce to cafes.”

Rose believes that positive mental and psychological health benefits are an untapped benefit of urban agriculture. “When I was in Argentina I visited a mental health hospital where part of their therapy for people suffering from depression was participating in community gardening,” he says. “It certainly made a difference.”

Using food and urban agriculture to benefit our mental health could help confront the health crisis we are facing on a global level. The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) released a report in October 2017, which stated that the current cost of the negative health impact of our current global food system is a staggering US$13 trillion – that’s one sixth of the GDP. If we add on the environmental negative effects, that’s another US$10 trillion.

“Every week we see stories in the media about the dysfunctional nature of our food and agricultural system and the impact it is having on our bodies, our communities, our children’s future, our eco systems and on our climates,” Rose says. “Any of the major challenges that confront humanity right now, so much of it comes back to the way we produce, distribute, consume and dispose of food. It’s a crazy situation when the way we feed ourselves is actually harming ourselves,” says Rose. “The need for change is screamingly obvious and urgent.”

So, if urban agriculture is the way of the future and the solution to so many problems then why are we not doing it? Why isn’t every centimetre of land growing stuff? “The biggest obstacle is easy access to land,” he says. “A lot of our most agriculturally valuable urban land is eaten up by sprawl, add in steep land prices for private land and government reluctance to make Crown- and council- owned land available to community groups as other barriers.”

Rose is critical of something he calls ‘land banking’. “Developers acquire land and then don’t do anything. It’s land that’s left vacant, sometimes for years, and it seems like a huge waste of resources and opportunity. Even if it’s going to be built into apartments or something, there’s no reason why in the meantime, it could be a year, a couple of years, it can’t be made productive.” Rose believes incentives, such as a rates discount, could be used to entice developers to let their land be used temporarily. I suggest, similar to the Daniel Andrew’s Victorian government’s legalisation to tax empty houses to force more homes onto the rental market, we tax blocks of land that sit vacant? “I like the way you’re thinking,” he laughs.

But for now, Rose is co-editing an anthology on Australian urban agriculture and recently held Sustain’s Urban Agriculture Forum in Melbourne. Rose hopes the [work he’s doing with the] forum will put Australian urban agriculture in the public eye and bring farmers, gardeners, researchers, city planners, policy makers and the public together with a united vision to make Australian cities and towns edible. “If we are really serious about a healthy population, if we are serious about climate change we need to support people to do this,” he says. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Backyard Gardening, Collaborative cultures and networks, Democratic food systems, Uncategorized

In the era of Trump

More than a year has passed since I last wrote here. What a year, professionally and in terms of global politics.

Cardinia Food Circles, courtesy of Kirsty Moegerlein

Professional milestones

  • 21 January 2016: Sustain: The Australian Food Network becomes incorporated as a company limited by guarantee
  • March 2016: Sustain secures funding from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation for three years, effectively covering my role as Executive Director for 2 days a week
  • April 2016: Sustain secures funding from the Myer Foundation for capacity building, supporting a) the establishment of an Australian Food Systems Directory b) the holding of an inaugural Urban Agriculture Forum c) the holding of the 21st Symposium of Australian Gastronomy d) the recruitment of a part-time comms officer and e) governance training for our Board and myself
  • May 2016: We complete the Food Hub Feasibility Study for Wangaratta, the second such study after the 2015 Bendigo Food Hub Feasibility Study
  • June 2016: Study trip to Canada to attend the Canadian Food Hubs Conference and meet with food organisations in Quebec
  • June-July 2016: Preparation for the inaugural Australian Community Food Hubs conference and tour
  • August 8-18 2016: Community Food Hubs conference and tour successfully conducted with 170 attending the two-day Bendigo event and a further 800+ attending events around the country
  • September 2016: Planning begins for the national Urban Agriculture Forum and the Symposium of Australian Gastronomy
  • October 2016: Contract signed for a multi-year food system re-design project: Cardinia Food Circles.  The first and most ambitious project of its type attempted so far as we know.
  • November 2016: The Urban Agriculture Forum takes place in Melbourne with 150 attendees, followed by events in Bendigo, Adelaide and Sydney. Cardinia Food Circles project gets underway
  • December 2016: 21st Symposium of Australian Gastronomy takes place in Melbourne, with 140 attendees, over four days of debates and feasting. The background mapping of the Cardinia Food System takes place
  • January 2017: We pause a little for breath…Discussions begin for the Alphington Community Food Hub
  • February 2017: The Australian Food Systems Directory is launched. The Bendigo Local Food Economy pilot report is launched.
  • March 2017: The Sustain / VLGA food governance position paper is finalised, articulating  the role of local government across health and wellbeing, planning, and economic development
  • April 2017: The Cardinia Food Systems profiling workshops are held in Koo Wee Rup, Pakenham and Gembrook, generating debate and passion about the current state and future possibilities of Cardinia’s food system. The Food Hub Feasibility Study for the Wyndham Food Hub is finalised and delivered to the City of Wyndham

Koo Wee Rup food system profile, courtesy of Kirsty Moegerlein

And so much more still to come! Not mentioned above of course is the launch in 2016 of Australia’s first Bachelor of Food Studies at William Angliss Institute, and in 2017 of the first Master of Food Systems and Gastronomy at the same place.

Global politics

The geopolitical tremor came first in June with the Brexit vote, with a slim majority of UK voters taking the historic decision to leave the EU. This rising tide of nationalism crested in November 2016 with the previously unthinkable election of the ultra-narcissist Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, on an openly racist platform of America-first nationalism and xenophobia directed against Muslims, Mexicans, Chinese and non-Americans in general.

Trump’s first 100 days in office have been characterised by gaffes, mis-steps, broken promises and in recent weeks increasingly brazen saber-rattling and uber-militarism. In early April, a volley of cruise missiles was fired at Syria in supposed retaliation for a chemical weapons attack allegedly perpetrated by Bashar Al-Assad against civilians in a rebel-held zone. A week later the US military command in Afghanistan decided to drop the MOAB – Mother of All Bombs – the largest non-nuclear device ever exploded.

MOAB Bomb dropped on Afghanistan, 14 April 2017

At the same time Trump has effectively put the North Korean regime on notice that it’s next, and can expect a pre-emptive strike in the near future. North Korea has responded by threatening the US with annihilation. I can only imagine what it must be like for the residents of Seoul at this time, who will be first in the firing line should Trump carry through with his threats.

Meanwhile the rhetoric against Russia and Iran has ramped up considerably, and the US has them in its sights also. France is on the brink of electing the openly fascist National Front, as the forces of fear, xenophobia, racism and nationalism seem to be in the ascendancy.

The danger of war – and hugely destructive, nuclear war – feels very great indeed. I retain my optimism and belief that we are also on the cusp of some wonderful, transformative changes, but there are days when my optimism is sorely tested.

Still, this is the sort of thing that keeps me feeling hopeful:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate control of food, Food sovereignty, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

The Food System Isn’t Just Broken. It’s killing us.

This is the text of the speech delivered by AFSA National Coordinator Dr Nick Rose to the sell-out audience of 200 people, at the premiere of the Fair Food documentary at the National Gallery of Victoria on Tuesday 2nd December, 2014. 

 

AFSA National Coordinator, Dr Nick Rose

Why did we make this film? Because the Food System is broken.

Why is it broken?

Because we have fully applied the technologies and the mindset of industrialisation to food and farming. And because we have combined industrialisation with the logic and the imperative of endlessly increasing production, regardless of the consequences.

What does that mean? It means we have over-exploited our land, degraded our soils, and damaged our river systems. It means we have one of the highest rates of deforestation, biodiversity loss and species extinction on the planet. It means, globally, that the food system contributes as much as 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

It means that we have a supermarket duopoly which controls 70-80 percent of the grocery market, forcing farmers and food processors into price-taker relationships. 100 years ago farmers received 90 cents of every dollar’s worth of food they produced; today it’s around 10 cents.

 

Farming has become de-valued in our highly urbanized culture; and not just economically. So it’s shocking, but not surprising, that 7 farmers leave the land every day, and that rates of suicide and depression amongst farmers are twice the national average.

Our industrialised food system produces too much food of the wrong type. So we’re subjected to an endless barrage of advertising, urging us to buy food products laced with excess sugars and salt. Dietary-related diseases are already amongst the biggest public health issues we face.

 Our food system is not merely broken. It’s killing us, and ruining any chance that future generations have for a decent and liveable future. Yet the industrialised food system persists, and is expanding. Why? Because there are very powerful economic and financial interests that make a lot of money from the status quo. Because we are so disconnected from our food system. Because food is apparently abundant and cheap, and because we don’t join these dots.

We made this film, and we formed the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, because we can no longer tolerate this state of affairs. Because it’s no longer enough just to talk or think in terms of reforms. We need a transformation; we need a revolution.

And that revolution begins in our own minds, in our hearts, in our consciousness. We need to see ourselves as part of the story of the Great Work, the work that matters. As philosopher Thomas Berry puts it:

The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

This is the challenge to every one of you here in this room. This is the choice facing every one of us alive today. Do we continue to allow our culture and our society to become ever-more destructive, and ever-more violent? Do we choose to remain in a paradigm which says that the Earth, and indeed ourselves, only exist for endless exploitation so that a tiny fraction of humanity can enjoy obscene levels of wealth?

Or do we choose to be part of the great challenge of our times – the greatest challenge of all times? To create a shared vision of a wonderful, bountiful world, where there is no hunger and no poverty; where soils are thriving, rivers are healthy and forests are abundant; where animals roam freely; and where all of us are healthy and flourishing.

Do we choose to see ourselves as victims of processes and powers beyond our control, and simply walk away and do nothing, resigned to our fate? Or do we choose to see ourselves as subjects and shapers of our own history, as creators and narrators of our own story, as powerful beings with the capacity to effect great changes?

Because I’m here to tell you, that’s who we are. We are powerful.

We made this film because these are messages that need to be heard. This is the story that needs to be told; that we need to tell ourselves, and each other. We made this film because we know that there are women and men all over this state, and all around this country, who have embraced this new paradigm, who are blazing a trail towards the decent, fair and liveable future that all of us want.

We’re here tonight to recognize and celebrate them.

They are our Fair Food Pioneers.

And this is the story of Fair Food.

Argentina, Uncategorized

The complexities of Argentina

Last time I wrote about the harsh poverty endured by millions of Argentines in the so-called villas de miseria that are found out on the outskirts of every large city in country. And the role that urban agriculture is playing in terms of enhancing life satisfaction and quality to many thousands of families, as well as contributing in a very tangible sense to household food security.

As I near the end of a month in the country, having visited five provinces and had dozens of conversations with government officials at all levels, as well as many urban gardeners and small-scale producers, I am constantly struck by the layers of complexity and difficulty that people here are grappling with.

Every country is complex, of course, and has its own particular history and development trajectory. In the case of Argentina, its history casts a very long shadow, which makes the task of change especially challenging.

Many of my conversations centre around la crisis of December 2001 as the period when the urban agriculture movement in this country went to an entirely new level. The Municipality of Rosario, which I mentioned last time, launched its Urban Agriculture program in 2001. The Province of Neuquén, where I visited last week, launched PRODA (Agro-Food Development Program) in 2003, as the country was exiting the worst of the crisis.

La crisis consisted in a localised ‘Great Depression’, starting in 1998 and continuing through to the end of 2002: during those years the Argentine economy shrank by 20%; 50% of Argentines were plunged into poverty and 25% into extreme poverty. By November 2001 Argentines had lost confidence in the banking system and were withdrawing cash en masse. The freeze of withdrawals led to the riots of 19-21 December, 2001, and an intense political turbulence which forced the President to resign and flee Government House in a helicopter.

A 'ticket trueque', used for exchange during the Club de Trueque that at one point included millions of Argentines
A ‘ticket trueque’, used for exchange during the Club de Trueque that at one point included millions of Argentines

Waves of bankruptcies and job losses followed, with the emergence of club de trueques, or swap-meets, not as something nice to do on a Sunday afternoon, but as a basic survival strategy. Another feature of the crisis were the so-called tomas – takeovers of bankrupt factories by workers, desperate to maintain their livelihoods.

As if such a crisis were not enough for the current generation to have to cope with, the country lived through an even more horrendous experience 25 years previously. This was the infamous ‘Dirty War‘ waged by a military dictatorship against its own people, from 1976-1983. Under the guise of ‘fighting’ small groups of leftist insurgents, the dictatorship established a national network of secret detention centres where tens of thousands of students, lawyers, doctors, teachers, trade unionists, social workers – in effect, anyone who was trying to work with poor people to help them assert their rights to a better life – were tortured and then ‘disappeared’, many thrown alive out of planes into the sea.

Some of the tens of thousands of disappeared Argentines, victims of state terror during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship
Some of the tens of thousands of disappeared Argentines, victims of state terror during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship

Most have never been found, and the psychosocial scars of this national trauma – now officially recognised and publicly described as ‘State terrorism’ – run deep indeed.

Over 500 children were born to pregnant women held in the detention centres. These babies were taken at birth from their mothers and placed with military families or their sympathisers. 116 have now been reunited with their birth families, in an ongoing process of national catharsis.

And for twenty years, the country’s economic fortunes have become hitched to the continued expansion of la sojera, a multi-million hectare swathe of territory – two-thirds or more of all arable land in the country – dedicated to one crop: chemical-hungry GM soy, destined for export to feed the pigs and chickens in the factory farms of Europe and China. It is a social and environmental catastrophe, but it brings in foreign currency for the government.

Soy today, hunger tomorrow
Soy today, hunger tomorrow

This is a tragic and troubled history, that would make many despair; yet countless thousands of Argentines are working hard to achieve a better future for their communities. I have been privileged to meet some of those people.

agroecology, Churchill Trip 2014, Self-sufficiency, Uncategorized, Urban agriculture

Urban agriculture as a path to a measure of dignity…

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
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.
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
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.

Uncategorized, Urban agriculture

Urban agriculture is key to a sustainable future for our cities

 

‘We are today part of a new revolution, The Urban Revolution. Cities that housed 200 million people, or ten percent of the world’s population in 1900 now accommodate 3.5 billion people, or fifty percent of the world’s population, and will, by 2050, accommodate 64 billion people or seventy percent of the world’s population… More than 80% of Australians already live in cities that are projected to double their size in the next 40 years.’

These are the opening words of the City of Melbourne’s, Transforming Australian Cities For a More Financially Viable and Sustainable Future, first published in May 2009 and updated in March 2010. For anyone who has spent time in Sydney or Melbourne recently, the prospect of these megalopolises doubling their size by 2050 is rather alarming, to put it mildly. Which no doubt explains the steady flow of urban refugees, the tree changers and sea changers, only too happy to exchange peak hour on Hogbin Drive for the daily grind of the M4 or the South-eastern freeway.

From my perspective, it was doubly surprising that the word ‘food’ did not appear once in the Transforming Australian Cities strategic document. At the heart of the strategy for ‘sustainable growth’ (an oxymoron, arguably) of our big cities was the concept of ‘productive suburbs’, with the iconic ¼ acre blocks forming corridors to become the new ‘green wedge’ zones of Sydney and Melbourne. There was discussion of ‘making backyards productive’ through installation of rainwater tanks and greywater recycling systems. This, combined with the rollout of solar PV panels and other forms of domestic-scale renewable energy generation would, it was claimed, help Australian households move closer to ‘self-sufficiency’ and therefore ‘sustainability’.

But what about food? Given that some of the projections of climate change anticipate a reduction in productivity of our major foodbowl regions – the Murray-Darling in particular – of as much as 60% by 2050 – surely any strategy for the sustainability of our cities must integrate as a matter of highest priority how the residents are going to be fed?

Or perhaps, more to the point, how they are going to start feeding themselves, if we are serious in talking about ‘self-sufficiency’.

This conundrum of feeding growing cities is not of course a uniquely Australian issue. Indeed it is driving the burgeoning urban agriculture movement in North America. New York City now has an estimated 700 urban farms. Some of these are familiar community gardens, where groups of residents work small plots to produce food for themselves and their families.

Increasingly, many others are commercial-scale operations that have negotiated supply contracts with restaurants, grocery stores and supermarkets. And one of the recent trends is for commercial-scale farming to take place on the flat roofs of high-rise office and apartment blocks.

rooftop farms

One of these is the 555 m2 Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, based on a warehouse on the East River in Brooklyn. Eagle Street is an open-air intensive market garden which supplies organic vegetables to nearby restaurants by bicycle, and operates a farmers’ market onsite during the growing season.

Other rooftop farms operate year-round, by erecting greenhouses and using aquaponic and hydroponic growing techniques.

Office and apartment blocks in a city like New York are inherently more suited for this type of production than similar buildings in Australia, because their roofs are already built to a higher load-bearing capacity because of snowfall. But that’s not to say that this type of ‘farming’ can’t happen in Australia. In fact recently I was lucky enough to visit what is one of the very first attempts to do it, at the Mesa Verde rooftop bar and cinema at 252 Swanston St, Melbourne. It’s the brainchild of Mr ‘WormLover’, Richard Thomas, and I’ll tell that story next time.

 

 

advocate, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

COMMUNITY FUNDED FOOD

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 31st May, 2014

About nine months ago I first wrote a column about the emergence of crowd-funding as an alternative means by which direct-marketing farmers could raise finance to invest in capital enhancements and equipment purchases. Those investments in turn would enable on-farm value-adding and diversification that could make the critical difference between going under and going from strength-to-strength.

Judging by the numbers of farm-based crowd-funding campaigns in the past few weeks and months, there is a growing community appetite around the country to get behind local producers. On platforms such as Pozible, fundraising is structured around a rewards system, so for every pledge, you receive a specified ‘reward’ of goods produced on the farm. The higher your pledge, the greater your reward.

Producers like it because, if well structured and well promoted, these campaigns help raise their profile as an innovative supplier of good food to local communities. And of course because, unlike a loan or mortgage from a bank, there is no obligation to pay any interest. Repayment is in farm produce.

As my friend and fellow Committee member of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, Tammi Jonas, puts it:

“Your support helps us reach our goals to be ethically viable without taking on debt from the banks to line shareholders’ pockets. Instead of feeding the banks, let us feed you with our range of tasty rewards in return for your pledge to help us reach our goal!”

Tammi Pigs

 

Tammi and her husband Stuart (Jonai Farms, rare breed pigs) have just launched a campaign to raise $30,000 to build on an on-farm curing room and commercial kitchen, following the success of their campaign last year to build an on-farm butchery. Another free range pig farmer, Lauren Mathers, has just successfully raised $15,000 to build an on-farm charcuterie to make pork small goods.

And a truly enterprising young poultry farmer, Madelaine, raised a record-breaking $67,986 to purchase an egg cleaning and grading machine so she could increase her sales of organic and free range eggs direct to customers in Melbourne.

Crowd-funding in NSW 

In northern NSW, I’m happy to report that there is an exciting new food social enterprise initiative just starting in Mullumbimby. Future Feeders is a project launched by a small group of local young people, aiming to create pathways for young people to enter agriculture and be supported in developing their skills and capacities to have viable and long-term careers in sustainable food production.

As I’ve written in this column several times previously, Australia is facing an agrarian demographic crisis. According to ABS data, the percentage of Australian farmers under 35 had fallen to 13% by 2011, from 28% thirty years previously. A quarter of all our farmers are over 65. We are quite literally relying on a workforce of pensioners to do a lot of the heavy 2014-01-12 16.59.45lifting in feeding us. This is both grossly unfair and dangerously non-resilient.

 

That is why it is so encouraging when groups of young people are motivated, enthusiastic and committed to enter agriculture. Future Feeders have a 2 acre urban farm operational in Mullumbimby, on which they have secured a five-year community land lease. They are looking to partner with retiring farmers on a land-share basis, to turn disused or under-utilised parcels of land into thriving centres of sustainable and diverse production for local and regional markets.

 

2014-03-14 08.55.43

They are seeking support to raise start-up capital to purchase necessary irrigation, transport, fencing and storage equipment so they can hit the ground running. And they want to share their knowledge, expertise and resources widely through a co-operative farm management and community-supported agriculture model.

Simon Richardson, Mayor of Byron Shire Council, has this to say about Future Feeders:

“This group walks their talk: they get their hands into the soil and do so cooperatively, intelligently ad passionately. They are the future of the next generation of farmers.”

2014-03-14 13.05.02

For more information, contact Joel Orchard, Project Manager, joel@futurefeeders.org

To support their crowd-funding campaign, visit www.chuffed.org/project/future-feeders

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

National Food Plan and March Against Monsanto

1 Comment

25 May 2013 – a significant Saturday

Two important events are taking place this Saturday, both emblematic of different visions for food and agriculture for food and agriculture in this country and globally.

First, at 8.30 a.m., the Federal Government is launching the final version of the country’s first-ever National Food Plan. This Plan was first mooted in 2010, in the run-up to the previous federal election.

As I have written previously in this column, the Plan has been widely criticised, both for its content and for the process of its development. While a full analysis will have to wait until we’ve had a chance to read through some of the detail, early indications are that not much has changed from the Green paper, released in July 2012.

In other words, the overwhelming priority and focus of the Plan is on pumping the land and farmers of Australia harder so that we can reach the supposed nirvana of becoming ‘the food bowl of Asia’. Never mind that even if we double production and export every last calorie we will only ever feed at best 4% of Asia’s population. Never mind that the land clearing and additional irrigation required will place severe additional stress on our already fragile and depleted soils, water tables and ecosystems.

And never mind that we have a major health crisis in this country that needs strong and effective action, not wishy-washy calls for ‘industry self-regulation’. Let’s say it plainly: our children need to be protected from the sophisticated and multi-billion dollar advertising of the junk food industry which pushes its products on them at every opportunity. But our Federal government is well and truly asleep at the wheel on this issue. As is the Opposition, for that matter.

We have heard one positive announcement coming out of the National Food Plan: the establishment of a $1.5mn small grants program for Community Food Initiatives. Grants of up to $25,000 will be available for farmers’ markets and food rescue operations; and grants of up to $10,000 for community gardens and city farms. We welcome this, as a small step in the right direction.

But on the whole, the National Food Plan is really a Plan for big business. For supporting and expanding the corporate control of the food system.

This is evident through its warm endorsement of genetically modified crops. The prime beneficiary of the further commercialisation of GM in Australia will be the company that owns an estimated 90% of all GM seed globally: Monsanto.

So perhaps it’s no coincidence that at 9 a.m. on this Saturday, an estimated 250 people will congregate in Bellingen’s Maam Gaduying Park (outside Council chambers) to take their part in a global day of protest against Monsanto. The Bellingen event is one of 10 across Australia, and 470 worldwide in 38 countries.

Whatever view one takes about GM organisms – and there are many legitimate and documented concerns about the impacts on human and environmental health – for me the principal issue is one of the excessive concentration of power and control. It is dangerous to allow one company to have large and growing control over the basis of our very existence.

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Power corrupts, so it is said. Monsanto wields its power with arrogance, pursuing 80-year old farmers to the point of bankruptcy through the US courts in order to enforce its patent rights, and prevent them saving seeds. WA canola farmer Steve Marsh lost his organic certification in 2010 when his neighbour’s GM canola contaminated two-thirds of his 478 ha farm, yet his claim to compensation for his losses through the WA courts is being vigorously contested. While supporting the GM grower, Monsanto has washed its hands of any legal responsibility via a ‘no liability’ clause attached to the sale of the seed.

And earlier this year, Monsanto made the most of its considerable political connections in the US, to secure the passage of what has become known as the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’, a provision anonymously inserted into an appropriations bill which grants biotech firms immunity from successful legal challenges to the safety of their seeds. In other words, it places them above the courts: a dangerous precedent indeed.

Anyone wanting to know more should make their way to Bellingen on Saturday morning.

advocate, Uncategorized

Communal gardening in aged-care homes

Project Eden spreads its wings

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 8th December, 2012

“I love to see things grow, and to eat what grows. We’ve eaten radishes and lettuces, that’s all we’ve got so far. But we’ve planted beetroots, shallots, garlic, lots of herbs, and lots of tomatoes – they’re beautiful.”

These are the words of Joan, a resident at St Joseph’s Aged Care residential facility, operated by Catholic Healthcare Limited, in Azalea Avenue, Coffs Harbour. Joan is one of a dozen residents participating in a new initiative, launched in September this year, to establish a raised vegie garden in one of the facility’s interior courtyards. It’s a collaboration between the staff and management of St Joseph’s, and local permaculturalist Steve McGrane, who is also the President of the Coffs Community Garden at Combine St.

Joan and a fellow gardener
Joan and a fellow gardener

“[All the members of the gardening group] had vegie gardens in our own homes. I’ve grown vegies since I was about 10, and I’m nearly 80 now. I loved growing cabbages, I always had a good crop of them”, Joan told me.

Once a week for the past 10 weeks, Steve has spent a couple of hours with the gardening group, working with them using his special layered method of raised bed edible garden design, planting the garden with 20 different species, discussing the techniques and practice of companion planting and pest control, making compost teas, and trialling seed germination and seed saving.

The project is very multifunctional. It’s highly educational, with Steve sharing his deep and growing knowledge of organic gardening principles and techniques with the group. When I visited, for example, he was putting together a compost mix, including some active compost and many worms. I learned that compost worms, once put in the soil, ‘can travel up to a kilometre or two each night. So if you don’t have compost, and your neighbour does, they’ll do and find it”, said Steve. And the big garden worms, he told us, can live for up to an amazing five years.

The St Joseph's garden group
The St Joseph’s garden group

They’re having a few minor issues with cabbage moths at St Joseph’s, which they’re treating with a homemade garlic and chilli spray. But the main method of pest control is Joan herself.

“Joan has been exceptionally vigilant in seeing what pests are around and taking them off. It goes back to the older processes – more observation”, said Steve.  “With Joan doing individual removal of pests here, that’s the perfect solution. It’s always important to have a good custodian of a garden, especially one like this”, he added.

The main pests, says Joan, are slugs. And how does she deal with them? Simple. “Drop them on the ground and stomp on them!”

After 10 weeks of intensive love and care, and Steve’s specially activated raised bed mix, the garden is thriving, and residents – both gardeners and non-gardeners – are enjoying its fruits.

“The residents and picking and eating the vegies”, said Meredith David, Leisure and Health Manager. “There’s no problem with them doing that, it’s out of our jurisdiction. To use the produce in the kitchen  – which we are doing as well – all of it has to be sterilised first.”

And the garden has brought wider benefits to St Joseph’s, in addition to the direct enjoyment and educational aspects of the gardening group, and the satisfaction of those nibbling on the lettuce leaves, tomatoes and basil.

“It’s been a very positive addition to our facility”, said Meredith. “It’s a real point of interest – even if someone isn’t actually a gardener, they can see that it’s happening, and they’re taking an interest in it.”

“We’ve got one person who used to sit out in the carpark to sun himself. Now he much rather sits in that courtyard, because he loves gardens. He can’t do gardening anymore, but he gets the benefits of enjoying this garden. It gives him a lot of pleasure”, Meredith said.

“It’s been great for the morale of the residents”, added Elaine, who has also been inspired to build her own no-dig vegie garden after being so impressed with what’s happened at St Joseph’s.

If permissions and funding are available, there are plans to expand the project next year, involving residents from the dementia wing and elsewhere in the facility. The first step will be a rockmelon rack, and there is talk of citrus tree plantings and some berries.

Steve sees this as a model that can be embraced by other aged care facilities and similar institutions. “It will only work provided the benefits can be realised, and the organisation supports it”, he said.

advocate, Co-operatives, Uncategorized

The ‘flight to trust’

Co-operatives on the march

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 27th October

2012 has been the International Year of Co-operatives, the first time that the United Nations has designated a year especially for this sector. According to Dame Pauline Green, President of the Internationa Co-operative Alliance, this decision was made in recognition of the ‘relevance of co-operatives as a sustainable and recession-resistant [business] model in times of continued international economic turbulence.’

So 2012 has been the year for ‘co-operatives to shine’, and that was the theme of the inaugural National Conference of Australian co-operatives, which took place this week in Port Macquarie’s Glasshouse centre. Over 300 delegates, representing co-operatives of all shapes and sizes from around Australia, some over 100 years old, some newly forming, participates in two days of talks and business clinics, celebrating the successes of co-operatives and the challenges ahead. I was lucky enough to be among them.

The co-operative story is indeed an impressive one. As it’s usually told, the story dates from 1844, when the famous ‘Rochdale pioneers’ agreed to work together, on a set of core principles and for their own mutual benefit, with the goal of providing unadulterated and fairly-priced food to their communities.

The co-operative revolution
The co-operative revolution

However, as Dr Chris Cooper, of the Co-operative College in the UK told us (quoting historian AM Carr-Saunders), ‘the co-operative ideal is as old as human society’. It is, rather, ‘the idea of conflict and competition as a principle of economic progress that is new’, with the foundational co-operative principles being ‘forgotten in the turmoil and disintegration of rapid economic change’.

Those words were written in 1938, but they are hardly less relevant today. In his closing address Professor Bob Morgan, Executive Director of Tranby Aboriginal College, observed that ‘we live in a society where common good and decency has been replaced by common greed and indecency.’ Professor Morgan reminded us that many of the core co-operative principles and values – self-help, self responsibility, equity, respect, concern for community, education and training, autonomy and independence, solidarity (co-operation among co-operatives)  – had been practiced by Aboriginal nations for tens of thousands of years, prior to the European colonisation of Australia.

The last forty years have not been easy for the co-operative sector, but there was a palpable sense at the conference that we may be on the cusp of a revival and renewal of co-ops in Australia. If the experience in the UK over the last few years is anything to go by, we can expect dramatic results.

Dr Cooper documented what he termed a ‘flight to trust’ that had taken place in the wake of two key events: the GFC (which started in the UK in 2006-7), and a sophisticated re-branding and re-launching of the Co-operative group of affiliated businesses (banking, retail, housing, manufacturing, travel, legal services, agriculture, funerals, schools and child care centres) in 2005. This re-launch followed an extended period of reflection in which the movement achieved real internal clarity about its own identity and its core message.

The Co-operative group alone now has 6 million members and 6000 retail outlets across the UK. The sector as a whole has 10.5 million members, a phenomenal increase on the 3.5 million members it had in 2007 ; and has set itself the ambitious target of reaching 20 million members by 2020. Its turnover rose by 20% in 2011 alone. In a stunning reversal of fortunes, and of the pattern in Australia in recent decades, the movement is growing via the acquisition of non-co-operative, or de-mutualised, businesses.

For example, the Co-operative Bank, which had 109 branches in 2009, now has nearly 1100. Two-thirds of the new branches are formerly de-mutualised branches that belonged to Lloyd’s Bank. In the 10 months since January this year, the Co-op Bank has 61% more personal accounts, and 21% more business accounts.

In a very important lesson for Australian co-operatives, Dr Cooper said that what has driven this extraordinary business success is the return to core values and principles, and their effective communication amongst members and the wider public. The co-op movement in the UK is aiming at nothing less than ‘transforming the economic system’, because ‘it’s a very old idea whose time has come once more.’

Next time I’ll look at some new research mapping the sector in Australia, the challenges it faces, and the opportunities before it.