Alana Mann, Author at Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Farmer, activist & chef to join forces for Fair Food Campaign

January 23, 2016 by Alana Mann

Chef Guy Grossi, farmer and president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance Tammi Jonas, farmers market founder Miranda Sharp and Fair Food editor and campaigner Dr Nick Rose will join forces on February 13 for a live forum in Melbourne titled “Beyond the Supermarket: fair food in a disconnected system”.

The forum is being presented as part of the Sustainable Living Festival’s Big Weekend to celebrate the launch of Pip Permaculture Magazine’s “Fair Food” issue which explores the campaign for food sovereignty in Australia and beyond.

“We live in the age of the supermarket duopoly and yet we see people flocking to farmers markets and community gardens, yearning for a stronger connection to their food,” said Dr Rose.

“We’re seeing our movement gaining momentum each year, and this forum will bring together some really fantastic people, with a wide variety of perspectives to discuss how we can transform our food systems into a fair one for eaters, growers, processors and makers.”

“We have chef Guy Grossi, who will bring us the perspective of business and the food industry, which is huge in Melbourne. We’ll have Tammi Jonas, from her crowd-funded farm just outside of Daylesford bringing her perspective as a producer and Miranda Sharp from Melbourne Farmers Market will bring us perspectives from the consumers and growers who frequent her events.”

“We’re really excited to be devoting an issue of our magazine to the campaign for fair food championed by Nick Rose and the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance,” said Pip Permaculture founding publisher Robyn Rosenfeldt.

“Fair food is integral to what Permaculture is all about. Our three central permaculture ethics of fair share for everyone, earth care for our environment and people care for our society as a whole are really embodied by the fair food campaign.”

“Our fair food edition explores in depth the issues within the food system as well as larger systemic solutions, and down-to-earth change you can make in your own backyard by growing your own food, all of which will be really intresting to discuss at the forum,” she said.

Beyond the Supermarket: fair food in a disconnected system will be presented by Pip Permaculture Magazine and the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance to celebrate the launch of the Pip #5 Fair Food issue and will be held at the Sustainable Living Festival in “The Shed”, Birrung Mar, 13 February 2016, 3pm.

For media enquiries contact: Maude Farrugia maude@pipmagazine.com.au 0417303389

Fair Food Week – in your backyard this October!

July 29, 2015 by Alana Mann

Food producers, eaters and community-based food organisations across Australia will celebrate Fair Food Week this year from October 16 to 25, led by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA).

In 2015, the International Year of Soils, nationwide activities will have a strong focus on healthy and regenerative agriculture in both rural and urban areas, with community gardens playing a key role.

AFSA President Tammi Jonas announced this week that the Australian City Farms and Community Garden Network would be contributing its support to Fair Food Week 2015.

“Community gardeners are at the forefront of the connected food system – the Fair Food system – that millions of Australians want and are embracing” said Tammi.

“Fair Food is fundamentally about people connecting with where their food comes from. And one of the best ways of doing that is by growing or raising some of your own food.”

Many community gardens and city farms have taken part in Fair Food Week for the past two years with garden lunches, workshops, seed swaps and movie nights.

This year Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network (ACFCGN) President Jane Mowbray is urging even more members to participate.

“Community gardeners and city farmers form a large part of the Fair Food Movement across Australia. They enthusiastically choose to grow and eat fresh, local fruit, vegetables and herbs and are keen to share their skills, and knowledge, making many community gardens and city farms vital centres of community education.”

For Jane and other members of the ACFCGN Fair Food Week is a welcome opportunity to applaud those who are offering local, socially and environmentally just alternatives to unhealthy food produced through industrial methods.

“Ethical farmers and the markets and businesses that supply and use their sustainable products provide us all with more choice about the production of the food we eat.”

Established in 2013, Fair Food Week provides an opportunity for local communities in every state and territory to showcase how farmers, gardeners, chefs and community-based food enterprises are working hard to ensure access to fresh, local and affordable produce to all Australians.

Communities are encouraged to organise events according to local priorities. In previous years events have ranged from slow cooking and underground restaurants to free training in skills such as making sourdough bread and butchering.

AFSA President Tammi Jonas sees Fair Food Week 2015 as a “unique opportunity for the food movement to come together, recognise and celebrate each other and our many achievements”.

“And this year we look forward to working closely with the ACFCGN to make Fair Food Week 2015 a particularly outstanding success” she adds.

Media contact: AFSA President, Tammi Jonas, 0422 429 362, tammois@gmail.com

To promote your event contact: AFSA Communications Officer, Alana Mann, alana.mann@sydney.edu.au

Photo credit: © Russ Grayson www.pacific-edge.info
ACFCGN President Jane Mowbray and friend during national meeting of Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network in Adelaide, 2015.

The story of Fair Food — coming to a bookstore near you!

July 23, 2015 by Alana Mann

IN VERY EXCITING NEWS, University of Queensland Press will be publishing in September Australia’s first anthology of the Fair Food movement, which in important respects is also a history of AFSA. The book’s synopsis follows – stay tuned for launch events and updates over the next few months!

Australia’s food system is more than just broken: it’s killing us. Now is the time to act, to make a difference – to change the world.

The groundbreaking Fair Food tells the new story of food – how food and farming in Australia are dramatically transforming at the grassroots towards reconnection, towards healing – of the land, of each other. It offers a compelling and coherent vision of how our future can be so much better than our present and our past, and how each of us can act to hasten the process of change.

Told through the experiences of several of the leading figures in Australia’s Fair Food movement, this book tells stories of personal change, courage, innovation and food activism, from local food hubs and backyard food-forests, to the GE-free movement, urban agriculture, radical homemaking and regenerative agriculture.

In a time of bullying corporations, supermarket monopolies and environmental degradation, Fair Food offers compelling and inspiring stories of personal transformation from everyday people, showing us that we, too, can be powerful agents of change in this time of need.

Edited by Fair Food pioneer Nick Rose, and with forewords by David Pocock and Guy Grossi, the book includes contributions from:

Michael Croft
Angelo Eliades
Cat Green
Tammi Jonas
Kirsten Larsen
Charles Massy
Fran Murrell
Robert Pekin
Carol Richards
Emma-Kate Rose.

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Towards increased diversity in our food supply

July 5, 2015 by Alana Mann

By Merran Laver. First published on www.southernharvest.net.au

Diversity in food production and supply is important in creating a resilient local food system.

There are many reasons to increase diversity in our food supply at a local level. One is to promote access to fresh, seasonal foods that consumers will choose to eat. Foods available locally have a reduced ecological footprint compared with those from the large-scale, conventional system upon which we’re all at least partly dependent. Another is our vulnerability due to reliance upon only a few crops.

This is a local as well as a global issue.

Simran Sethi, an environmental journalist from the US, discussed the recent global decrease in food diversity in an ABC Lateline interview. She talked about the vulnerability we’ve placed ourselves in by relying on a reduced number of crops: 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants. This, Sethi believes, fits in with dominating agricultural enterprises that are based on crop monocultures. She stated that we need to increase diversity in our farming and that consumers also have a critical role by choosing to diversify their diets.

“Eating locally is a revolutionary act and I really don’t want to sound trite about that but you know, this globalisation has happened in our lifetime. In 20 years we’ve seen the entire food system kind of upended and I think really the solution to this challenge is to start to think differently about how we grow food and how we consume and purchase food.”

“It makes very little sense in some instances to procure food from faraway places. It increases the ecological footprint of that food, it increases greenhouse gas emissions of that particular food.”

Many regions throughout Australia are undergoing fundamental shifts in diversifying their food supply and promoting local production to consumers. This is happening both in cities and in rural areas, and where these overlap, such as in the Southern Harvest Region, which incorporates the growing city of Canberra as well as smaller towns and communities surrounding the ACT.

Examples of how diversity in local food supply systems is increasing include: the growth of farmers markets and community gardens; promotion of encouraging people to grow their own produce; value-adding enterprises (eg small businesses, such as baked goods, juices, smoked meats/fish); farmers trying out new products for sale (cheeses/milk, different varieties of apple/pork/etc.).

These examples involve those who currently work to supply food to the population as well as the consumers who ultimately determine demand. As Sethi says,we need to “recultivate our relationships with local farmers and ensure that those relationships are strong and supported and in place, and the only way to do that is through consumer support”.

Our diverse seasonal produce is sometimes showcased at local annual food festivals that are mushrooming all over the country; including the pumpkin festival at Collector, chestnut festival at Hoskinstown and cherry festival at Young, to name a few. These highlight and celebrate the production of particular foods during their harvest season, while bringing communities of producers and consumers together for a day each year. A quick scan of food annual festivals everywhere shows that diversity is one aspect that is also celebrated – both cultural and in relation to the produce.

Sustainable food initiatives that encompass this diversity are increasingly of interest to people who care about how and where their food is produced, and the increased security or resilience of their food supply. It is also of great interest to the producers of our food, some of whom are successfully venturing into products not traditionally grown in the region but suited to the climate – such as nuts, olives, herbs, truffles, saffron etc.

A current food production strategy for urban Victoria outlines how “Council and the community will work together on local food initiatives which enhance health, wellbeing and community connectedness, improve the environment and regenerate natural resources”.

“An integrated response is called for to deliver better and more resilient food production models. This requires Council to form innovative partnerships with the community, local business, professional stakeholders and all levels of government.”

The strategy also points to its community’s ‘rich diversity of food cultures’ and the increased biodiversity that can come from promoting local food growing.

TPP: Time for Abbott to rethink this ‘preferential’ and ‘dangerous’ agreement

July 3, 2015 by Alana Mann

By Bill Davis and Dr Matthew Mitchell. First published by Independent Australia.

On June 24, as the US Senate resolved to ‘fast- track’ the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Australian Productivity Commission declared the ‘free’ trade agreement ‘preferential’ and ‘dangerous’. These two events occurring on opposite sides of the Pacific should ring alarm bells with the Australian public. They warn that Abbott government is on the brink of signing away our sovereign rights.

The US trade representative’s describes the TPP as “an ambitious,21st-century agreement that will enhance trade and investment among the partner countries, promote innovation, economic growth and development, and support the creation and retention of jobs”.

The economic growth claims have already been debunked by a study conducted by the US Department of Agriculture. But if it does not deliver GDP growth, then what is the purpose of the TPP?

Professor Jane Kelsey from the University of Auckland explains the real intention of the TPP to “revive US geopolitical, strategic and economic influence in the Asian region to counter the ascent of China, in part through constructing a region-wide legal regime that serves the interests of, and is enforceable by, the US and its corporations”.

The proposed TPP “agreement” involves Australia as well as a host of other potential member nations including Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and the United States. South Korea has also indicated it may sign up.

The deal could be signed by end of the year.

‘Fast-tracking’ the TPP has removed a major impediment in the United States. Fast-tracking, according to journalist Dave Johnson enables Congress to agree “to set aside its duties under Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution and vote on TPP within 90 days of it being signed, to severely limit discussion and debate, not to filibuster the agreement in the Senate and not to amend it not matter what problems turn up after the agreement is revealed”.

“Fast track essentially pre-approves the TPP agreement (and future trade bills) before the public gets a chance to know what is in it.”

Reuters report that the Senate voted 60 to 38 giving Obama the power to negotiate the TPP and other trade deals and fast track them through Congress. The bill goes next to President Obama for his signature.

Australia’s process for approving trade agreements is not so different from the US fast-track process.

The Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) explains that our own process begins when the Trade Minister presents the text to the Cabinet, which is made up of the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers. The decision to sign the text is made by Cabinet, not the whole Parliament.

The text cannot be changed after it is signed. Parliament only votes on the implementing legislation, not on the whole text of the agreement.

Only a few of the TPP’s 29 chapters will require changes to legislation. However many other chapters will restrict the ways in which current and future Australian governments can legislate, but will not require legislation. For example, the inclusion of the right of foreign investors to sue governments over domestic legislation (investor-state dispute settlement or ISDS) does not require a change to Australian legislation. Other changes, like changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), could be made by changing regulation rather than through legislation.

As many journalists and commentators have argued, agreements like the TPP have dubious benefits for citizens of the countries involved.ISDS provisions have been criticised by U.S. Constitutional lawyer Lori Wallach for “empowering corporations to sue governments—outside their domestic court systems—over any action the corporations believe undermines their expected future profits or rights under the pact by reporting breaches, removing online content and even denying access to Internet users”.

ISDS is the controversial mechanism by which Philip Morris is suing the Australian Government over tobacco advertising under an obscure Hong Kong trade treaty. ISDS is becoming a standard request in trade agreements, including our recently announced FTA with China and Korea — but not Japan.
In an article entitled “ISDS: The trap Australia-Japan Free Trade Agreement escaped’, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that “the United States loves investor state dispute settlement procedures. It has insisted on them in every one of the 14 free trade agreements it has signed and the 17 it wants to sign. Its companies use them to browbeat and potentially bankrupt governments that introduce environmental or health-related laws they don’t like, a practice Australia’s productivity Commission refers to as ‘regulatory chill'”.

One of the serious ramifications of ISDS is this chilling effect on the local legislature.
For instance, in February 2013, New Zealand’s Ministry of Health announced that the government planned to introduce plain packaging legislation, but indicated that it intended to wait until the ISDS case by Phillip Morris was decided. The legislation has been introduced since then, but has not been enacted.

It is noteworthy that former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was strongly against ISDS and refused to allow it to be included in the 2004 US-Australian Free Trade Agreement. Our own conservative Productivity Commission examined ISDS procedures in 2010 and found no evidence that they boosted investment in nations likely to be sued. It recommended the Government “seek to avoid” them in the future.

The TPP negotiations have been going on since 2008. Like the Howard government, the Gillard government ‘flatly refused’ to support the inclusion of an ISDS clause. But not so the Abbott government, which appears reckless in its rush to finalise trade agreements by agreeing to provisions it has been warned against.

In 2014 Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, negotiated the Japan FTA without the ISDS provisions, but included them in the Chinese and Korean agreements.

We know the Abbott Government can respect Australian sovereignty if it so chooses.

The government’s inclusion of ISDS provisions in FTAs prompted a blistering rebuke from the Productivity Commission, which re-entered the debate following the US fast-track announcement.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Commission “launched a scathing attack on Australia’s latest series of free trade agreements, saying they grant legal rights to foreign investors not available to Australians, expose the government to potentially large unfunded liabilities, and add extra costs on businesses attempting to comply with them”.

The Commission first issued warnings the TPP negotiation process in 2010, stating ‘a more transparent and strategic approach is required to ensure that there is an appropriate focus on policies that are most in Australia’s interests’.

The TPP is being negotiated in complete secrecy. Our only access, so far, is via leaks published by WikiLeaks. Australian politicians who asked to see the text were told if they did, they could not talk about the text for four years.

It seems no-one thinks that trade agreements like the TPP are a good idea — except the Abbott Government (alone among Australian politicians and former federal governments), the U.S. and multi-national corporations.

The question is: “What are we going to do about it?”