Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

AFSA’s response to the to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the impact of regulatory burden in Australian agriculture

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Impact of Regulation on Small Farms
AFSA put in a submission to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the impact of regulatory burden in Australian agriculture. (Access the link to download the full response paper at the bottom of the page).

In our submission, we gave evidence of many examples of overly burdensome regulation stifling innovation and the very viability of small-scale farms. One such example is the terrible impact of lack of due process for Elgaar Dairy in Tasmania, who were shut down after 20 years of traditional production of organic milk when the food safety authority decided they needed a new pasteurizer and various upgrades to what they determine are more ‘modern’ standards. Elgaar has no history of food safety issues, and have now been without a license for over a year and a half, during which they crowdfunded over $250,000 to buy a new pasteurizer and meet the new requirements. The Tasmanian authority has yet to grant them another licence in spite of the upgrades and enormous amount of work done in good faith. AFSA condemns such draconian measures and unwillingness by government to support small businesses towards compliance.

Our submission also cites egregious examples from Victoria’s meat regulator PrimeSafe, the huge impact of knee-jerk changes to regulation of raw milk on small-scale dairy farms (many of whom have now gone out of business), and the complicated business of ensuring appropriate labeling of GMO and imported ingredients while not creating an extra burden for small-scale producers who sell directly to the public.

Our recommendations are:

  • that the generic definition of intensive animal husbandry in all states be based on the impacts of the operation, which will be determined on a case by case basis by a metric that takes into account soil type, rainfall, nutrient import, livestock species, stocking density, and pasture coverage.
  • create more flexibility in the regulation for the construction of dwellings built in support of the agricultural purposes on farms, while maintaining and strengthening guards against other non-agricultural development of land in the Farming Zone.
  • a revision of the definition of ‘Intensive Animal Husbandry’ (to no longer include small-scale, low stocking density, free-range farms), that buffer distances are determined in close collaboration with communities on a case-by-case basis where intensive agriculture is proposed.
  • that the overlapping regulations for abattoirs be reviewed and streamlined to support the development of new small-scale abattoirs to better service regional and rural Australia, and include provision for the safe regulation of mobile abattoirs.
  • that there is genuine effort by regulatory agencies to better understand both traditional and innovative production methods. That no technology upgrades are imposed when operations have a clean record and demonstrate alternative methods of ensuring food safety.
  • that compliance costs for food safety be reviewed and testing and auditing requirements be reformed to be fit for purpose and appropriate to scale.
  • that risks associated with raw milk be mitigated through HACCP plans, as they are in fresh vegetable farming, meat, and honey production systems presently. That regulation appropriately reflects the actual risks involved with consumption and aim to ensure a safe supply.
  • that a single food safety standard be adopted nationally to enable equitable competiveness across all state borders of Australia. However, this standard should be fit-for-purpose and scale appropriate, which is not currently the case.

Download AFSA's full response paper HERE.

AFSA’s response to the Animal Industries Advisory Committee Discussion Paper

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The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance has issued its response to the Animal Industries Advisory Committee Discussion Paper.

Issues in relation to agricultural planning schemes continually affect many of our farmer members and we welcome this opportunity to communicate these issues to the relevant authorities. Find our comments below and access the link to download the full response paper at the bottom of the page.

 

  1. Provide stronger strategic guidance by undertaking regional agricultural land capability assessments and identifying appropriate areas for intensive agriculture in local planning policies.

AFSA supports the undertaking of land capability assessments across the state for suitable agricultural enterprises. However, we strongly recommend taking into account community sentiment about intensive agriculture when determining what areas are genuinely to be deemed ‘suitable’.

Recommendation: that local communities are consulted and that where there are significant objections to proposed development of intensive animal agriculture the decision of whether to grant a permit is made democratically with the community’s involvement.

  1. Strengthen the purpose of the Farming Zone to promote agriculture activity as the priority activity and remove reference to encouraging dwellings as a means of promoting population growth.

Two of the purposes of the Farming Zone are:

To ensure that non-agricultural uses, including dwellings, do not adversely affect the use of land for agriculture.

To encourage the retention of employment and population to support rural communities.

While the Committee has suggested that these purposes are contradictory, AFSA respectfully submits that the regenerative, agroecological farming movement offers an alternative in which increased population on farms is desirable and supports the purpose of farming as the priority activity. Agrarian intellectual Wendell Berry famously called for a better ratio of ‘eyes to acres’ – that is, more people watching and working the land to ensure it is cared for attentively and sustainably.

Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter has also pointed out that agroecology is ‘knowledge and labour intensive’ – surely a welcome thing when seeking greater employment opportunities in rural Australia, and aiding in slowing rural-urban migration.

Allowing for multiple dwellings on what would be classified a single farm, will aid farmers wishing to practice multigenerational farming. This could allow a smoother transition in the farming population as younger farmers will have the opportunity to live on farm with their own families while they learn by doing. Furthermore, holistic farming on a single plot of land has the potential to support several families making their living from various farming enterprises that support each other socially and ecologically.

So while AFSA strongly supports the need to recognize agriculture as the priority activity in the Farming Zone, we see a need to offer more flexibility to enable farms to construct suitable dwellings for the rich community of workers needed to manage these systems, where those dwellings are genuinely built in support of agricultural purposes.

Recommendation: create more flexibility for the construction of dwellings built in support of the agricultural purposes on farms, while maintaining and strengthening guards against converting farms to purely residential, lifestyle properties.

 

  1. Identify in planning schemes defined buffer distances for different types and scales of intensive animal industries.

Under the current inadequate definition of ‘Intensive Animal Husbandry’ the application of buffers can be highly inappropriate to scale. For example, in the case of Jonai Farms where there are just 12 sows (so a total herd of around 110 pigs at any given time) on 9ha of paddocks, the 250m buffer zone from rural dwellings recommended by Australia Pork Limited (APL) is actually wider than the pig paddocks in their entirety, and yet at times there are no pigs visible in a one-acre paddock due to low stocking densities. When applied, however, to a large intensive piggery with the attendant odour issues, most people would object to living downwind of such a structure within 250m.

Recommendation: that after the definition of ‘Intensive Animal Husbandry’ is revised to no longer include small-scale, low stocking density, free-range farms, that buffer distances are determined in close collaboration with communities on a case-by-case basis where intensive agriculture is proposed.

  1. Require a permit in the farming zones for new dwellings within the buffer distance of intensive animal operations.

As proposed in point 3, the definition of ‘Intensive Animal Husbandry’ must exclude small-scale, low stocking density, free-range farms, and any buffers should be developed in collaboration with the local community on a case-by-case basis.

 

  1. Base the generic definition of intensive animal husbandry on the impacts of the operation.

The current definition based on importing 50% of animals’ nutritional needs is clearly inadequate, and does not helpfully distinguish between different systems and their impacts, be they environmental, social or welfare impacts.

Importing 50% of the feed for 200 chickens foraging in rotations on 10 ha is a very different proposition to importing 100% of the feed for 10,000 broilers housed in a shed. Whereas the manure in the pastured operation fertilizes paddocks directly with no need for treatment and removal, in the actually intensive operation, effluent must be carefully managed to ensure nearby catchments and waterways are not polluted.

APL funded research in 2014 that found that pigs in its rotational outdoor piggery study were ‘adding some 300-600kg N/ha/yr and 100-200kg P/ha/yr […] presenting environmental risks to both surface water and groundwater.’ The research is included in APL’s publication ‘Rotational Outdoor Piggeries and the Environment’, which cites cases of pigs being rotated after 6-24 months on paddocks. The citation does not include the stocking density that created this nutrient load.

Using the Nutrient Balance Calculator available on the APL website, we were able to calculate that a system like Jonai Farms (12 sows, 2 boars – total herd size of approximately 110 pigs at any given time on 9ha) where pigs are rotated anywhere from fortnightly to up to two months adds 15kg N/ha/yr and 6 P/ha/yr, and that just one season of lupins would actually deplete the overall available nitrogen and balance the phosphorous and potassium.

What this comparison seeks to demonstrate is the inappropriateness of comparing high-density intensive animal systems with low-intensity extensive animal farms through total nutrient imported alone. A combination of nutrient import and stocking density may serve better to determine the potential impact of livestock agriculture.

Recommendation: that the generic definition of intensive animal husbandry be based on the impacts of the operation, which will be determined on a case by case basis by a metric that takes into account soil type, rainfall, nutrient import, livestock species, stocking density, and pasture coverage.

  1. Base the requirement for a permit for animal industries on the potential environmental and amenity impacts of the operation derived from an assessment with an online tool.

In principle, AFSA supports the development of an online tool to enable a simple assessment of the potential impacts of animal industries to determine permit requirements, acknowledging the complexity of information needed to make such an assessment (water supply catchments, significant native vegetation, soil type, rainfall, proximity to settlements…).

Such a tool would best be developed through collaboration between government and industry, including both intensive and extensive, large-scale and small- to medium-scale farms.

  1. Create specific land use terms for poultry farms (broiler, egg and hatcheries), cattle and sheep feedlots and piggeries and other clearly intensive uses, to avoid reliance on a generic intensive animal husbandry definition where possible.

The current Nesting Diagram for Agricultural Land Use Terms (Fig 3) does not accurately reflect contemporary farming practices, however, the nesting of ‘Cattle feedlot’ and ‘Broiler farm’ under ‘Intensive animal husbandry’ does seem to indicate that the current interpretation that has seen issues arise for small-scale free-range farms is not what was originally intended in the scheme.

This highlights the risk in creating specific land use terms that may quickly become outdated as farmers innovate and develop new, regenerative models that don’t fit neatly into the terms dictated by the scheme.

For these reasons, AFSA does not support the creation of specific land use terms for different intensive operations, and instead reiterates the recommendation under point 5 to clarify the generic definition of ‘intensive animal husbandry’.

 

  1. Strengthen permit triggers, application requirements and referral arrangements for animal industry applications.

While in principle AFSA supports strengthening permit triggers, application requirements and referral arrangements for genuine intensive animal industry applications (as per a new definition that excludes genuine small-scale free range farms), caution must be applied when increasing regulatory burden on the farming sector, which is already subject to a high regulatory burden. Such strengthening should focus on potential high impact operations, such as large-scale feedlots, broiler sheds, and indoor piggeries.

  1. Limit the ‘right to object’ in the Farming Zone when standards prescribed for an animal husbandry enterprise type are met.

While we appreciate the impulse to protect agricultural enterprises from the objections that may sometimes arise when ‘tree changers’ or inhabitants of non-farming lifestyle blocks lack sufficient knowledge of normal or innovative farming practices, it is our view that limiting the ‘right to object’ in a democratic society is deeply problematic.

There is a need to balance the importance of community sentiment with evidence-based planning policy that supports agriculture, and AFSA would suggest that another way forward may be in the assessment of objections, rather than in limiting the right to object.

AFSA does not support limiting the ‘right to object’ in the Farming Zone.

  1. Clarify when farming operations have existing use rights.

AFSA supports clarifying existing use rights to ensure balance is maintained between protecting legitimate existing use rights and not allowing inappropriate new uses to pass undetected, e.g. intensifying animal industries on inappropriate sites.

  1. Create a single point of contact for all enforcement actions whose role it is to oversee enforcement activities.

AFSA has long campaigned for the creation of an inter-departmental Ministerial Food Forum to ensure strategic and coherent policy development and integration of planning in and across departments managing local food and food systems, population health, transport, land use, education, environmental sustainability, natural resources, infrastructure and economic development. We suggest that a single point of contact only for enforcement carries the risk of a punitive approach rather than coherent policy and planning support for agriculture.

Recommendation: create a Ministerial Food Forum to ensure strategic and coherent policy development across all agriculture and food system activities.

  1. Increase the role of the EPA as an enforcement body.

See our response to point 11.

  1. Set clearer prescribed standards and conditions for intensive animal industries in planning schemes using the Codes of Practice approach.

Codes of Practice are unnecessarily prescriptive and quickly outdated. They rarely support innovation and industry best practice. The Committee admits in this very discussion paper that the current Codes of Practice are out of date.

AFSA does not support the implementation of more codes of practice. Instead, we recommend that permits are only granted where impacts have been demonstrated to be acceptable under the requirements, and where deemed acceptable by local communities.

  1. Develop and maintain a contemporary Codes of Practice for all intensively farmed livestock (as a minimum for poultry (broiler, egg and hatchery), piggeries, cattle feedlots, sheep feedlots, and feedlot dairies).

See point 13.

  1. Introduce a fast track process for applications that meet defined standards.

While streamlining regulatory burden is desirable to support innovation in agriculture, it must be balanced with appropriate community and environmental protections. Were a fast track process to be introduced, a risk-based assessment should be applied and only low-risk applications (e.g. small, extensive operations not on sensitive sites) be made eligible for streamlining.

  1. Formally recognise participation in compliant industry assurance programs in the planning process. Some examples include APIQ, NFAS, Chicken Care and Egg Corp Assured.

Industry-based assurance programs are not necessarily aligned with community values, and must be independently assessed before government relies on them to streamline the planning process. While industry bodies have a fiduciary duty to serve the interests of their members, government’s duty is to the public.

At this time, AFSA does not support formal recognition of participation in industry assurance programs as part of the planning process.

 

Download AFSA's full response paper here

‘Folks, This Ain’t Normal’ – the fight for free-range farming

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I met a beautiful farmer yesterday whose story I’ve been following with dismay for the last couple months. We walked around her paddocks admiring groups of healthy, happy pigs as she described her system for breeding, weaning, and feeding.

Jo’s farm smells of nothing but fresh air, sounds of birdsong and the occasional curious grunt from a well-fed pig with nothing to fear, and is in a rolling green valley well covered in lush spring grass.

In 2014, Jo Stritch of Happy Valley Free Range won Livestock Farmer of the Year.

In 2015, Jo was ordered by her local council to cease farming.

How could this happen? Because the Victorian planning scheme deems her operation ‘intensive’ due to more than 50% of the pigs’ nutritional needs being met by feed Jo imports onto the farm, and the Yarra Ranges has a ban on intensive production.

A ban on intensive agriculture is surely a welcome reflection of community sentiments that are turning against intensive animal agriculture. But when a small pastured pig farm is defined as intensive, something is wrong.

Let me unpack the issues.

‘Intensive animal husbandry’ is defined in the Victorian planning scheme as ‘Land used to keep or breed farm animals, including birds, by importing most food from outside the enclosures.’

Clearly this applies to nearly all pig and poultry operations, no matter whether the animals are confined in sheds or out on the pastures. No matter whether the pastured pigs are on bare dirt or well-covered paddocks. It therefore also applies to many equestrian and dairy farms that import a lot of their animals’ feed. Oh, and cattle farms, even just those who feed hay to their cattle in the leanest months of winter and the dry end of summer.

And to what purpose do we want to define these operations as ‘intensive’? In common parlance, most people consider animals that are confined and quite restricted in the extent to which they can move to be raised ‘intensively’. Pigs like Jo grows are not what the public thinks of as ‘intensive’.

What does bringing in feed do in reality? It builds fertility. What happens if you bring in feed for more animals than the land can sustain? It sours. If you concentrate stock numbers, such as in intensive animal agriculture, you can overly nutrify and indeed toxify the soils.

The ‘outdoor bred: raised indoors on straw’ production system for pigs have a practice of moving the ‘eco-sheds’ every two years and then not returning to that same spot for another two years to deal with the issues of souring.

A system like Jo’s, where the pigs are rotated regularly and stocking densities are vastly lower, shouldn’t actually encounter this souring of the soil. The regenerative farming movement is constantly grappling not with letting soured soil recover, but rather how to continually regenerate and build fertility in the soil.

One thing the neighbours who testified against Happy Valley commented on was ‘the condition of the paddocks’, which had improved since Jo decreased her stock numbers in November 2014. Free-range pig farmers talk a lot amongst ourselves about soil health and good coverage. And yet in the potato-growing region I’m in the paddocks are bare for months at a time, sprayed heavily with herbicide and fungicide so that nothing grows while they lay fallow.

Jo admits that in the first couple years of farming pigs her paddocks had less coverage than they do now. She says, ‘I did have stocking issues last winter with the grower pigs and I did lease extra land to solve that problem. I keep banging my head against the wall in wondering why they don’t see our business just like any other business, that has to bend and manoeuvre and restructure to suit its operating and functioning challenges!’

The so-called expert who gave evidence in the VCAT case against Happy Valley is an expert in intensive agriculture. ‘APL submitted that based on science it is not feasible for pigs to obtain most of their dietary requirements from pasture/forages alone.’ Right. Except for in nature.

Pigs also don’t build houses anywhere except in fairy tales but the intensive industry would have you believe that it is difficult for pigs to survive outdoors.

We’re not on a level playing field. While the government endorses high chemical inputs, barren vegetable-growing paddocks, thousands of animals confined in the stench of industrial sheds, and an increasing focus on exporting Australia’s bounty, Jo Stritch and other small-scale farmers are facing a fight to raise happy animals out on the paddocks to feed our communities. As one of our farming heroes Joel Salatin says, ‘folks, this ain’t normal.’

AFSA forges links with US Food Sovereignty movement

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In this inspirational President's Report AFSA President Tammi Jonas shares with us the results of her fact-finding mission to the US. In doing so she contextualises the many achievements of Fair Food advocates in Australia, and highlights the strong international ties that exist between supporters of the food sovereignty movement. We are not alone!

I’ve been home five days from my three-week Epic Fair Food Tour of America and my mind has only just stopped spinning long enough to let the pieces fall into place. The trip spanned coast-to-coast – eight states in three weeks – and included daily conversations with some of America’s leading thinkers and daily creators of alternative food systems.

 

Tammi with best-selling US food writer Michael Pollan
Tammi with best-selling US food writer Michael Pollan

I was delighted to spend time with farmers such as the irascible Joel Salatin of Polyface, the fiery and generous Mike Callicrate of Ranch Foods Direct, the irreverent and determined Greg Gunthorp of Gunthorp Farms, the earnest and warm Guido Frosini of True Grass Farms, the focused and incisive Marina of Circle B Ranch, and the fierce and friendly Julia Smith of Urban Digs Farm.

I was also privileged to break bread and talk food ethics with many of those I think of as the connectors in our food system – the butchers, providores, and chefs – such as Kate & Josh at Western Daughters butcher shop in Denver, Rachael of Brooklyn Bouillon, Jake of Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, Ryan of Fleisher’s Pasture-Raised Meats, and Dan Barber of Blue Hill in New York (whose book The Third Plate is a must read).

And of course I was also fortunate to spend time and learn from others who write, speak, teach, and lobby to transform the system, including John Moody of Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund; Bob Perry of the University of Kentucky; Temple Grandin, Jahi Chappell of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Michael Pollan, and Neil Thapar of the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

So after spending time with that line up, surely I’ve got all the answers now, right? No, but I do have a clearer picture of where the food sovereignty movement is up to in the States, some ideas about how best to focus our efforts together, and what seem to me some of the weaknesses and gaps in the current movement.

What remains clear is that we must support the farmers who are building an alternative food system.

And we must also support the connectors who help them get their produce to market in a way that doesn’t simply build a new system that looks exactly like the old one. But I’ll return to that dilemma in a moment.

As for the farmers building the new system like those listed above and across Australia and the rest of the world – we need these fair food farms to be ready as the old system crumbles.

The combined pressures of climate change and epidemics sweeping through intensive animal agriculture such as H5N2 avian flu and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) are growing challenges for industrial agriculture, and workers organizing to demand fair pay and conditions combined with increasing consumer pressure for greater transparency and better treatment of land, animals, and workers, are having an effect.

Promising signs include popular American fast food chain Chipotle’s animal welfare sourcing policy and recent announcement that it would no longer use GMO ingredients in its products, while McDonalds announced the closure of hundreds of its outlets amidst major drops in profits.

In less promising news, Chinese giant Shuanghui purchased America’s biggest pork producer Smithfield in 2013, narrowing control of the global meat industry even further. (For more on the meat industry, see my earlier post on my time at Slow Meat in Denver.)

And so as the Polyfaces, White Oaks, Gunthorps, Jonai, Buena Vistas, and Old Mill farms of the world toil to grow food deeply embedded in our local communities and imbued with their values of respect for people and animals and care for the land, we must support them/us, just as we must find ways to help others get onto the land to grow more food in small-scale agroecological systems.

As we say at Jonai Farms, we don’t need to scale, we need to multiply.

One of the most obvious issues the movement must grapple with is the question of scale. What’s the right size to be viable, and when is big too big? There are no easy answers to these questions, but viability must always be considered holistically – as well as being financially viable, are we maintaining viable soils, viable animals grown in healthy systems resilient to disease without constant application of antibiotics?

On size and sovereignty, I would argue that it’s a question of connectedness. Scale typically decreases the connectedness of the producer to the eater. Polyface challenged my thinking on scale as I saw that Joel has fostered the growth of new farmers in his area by taking them on as sub-contractors while mentoring them on their journey. Ultimately most move onto their own independent farms, which can be a tricky model for the Salatins as they must regularly train up new farmers to maintain their production, but Joel is committed to it. He says he never intended to grow to the size they are now, ‘it just happened’, but he’s unapologetic about it, and I could see why. What I witnessed was a healthy example of a bigger scale, employing dozens of people in a thriving regenerative system.

But if the Salatins, like the Tysons before them, opted to continue to scale and to buy up every feed operation, every hatchery, and every slaughterhouse their profits enabled them to, we’d be back to what we’re trying to end. None of today’s fair food farmers would seek to reproduce the horrendous production model of intensive poultry that Tyson introduced back in the 1930s. But vertical integration is increasingly common in this movement – Polyface, Gunthorp, and we Jonai are all working to control more of the supply chain to ensure our own viability as well as control and connectedness.

And we must be vigilant against our own cultural impulse to grow grow grow simply because we can, and because there’s demand for our product. We must know when to stop and hand over surplus demand to our comrades on the farms multiplying all around us.

If we command (and pay our workers) a fair price to start with, we need not continue to grow. We can grow less for more rather than more for less, which will grow more farmers.

So that’s production sorted.

What about the connectors? How do we ensure they do their important work to process and package primary produce and get it to market in the many instances where it still won’t be suitable or possible for the farmers to do that work themselves without re-creating the old system where the middleman takes all (or too much anyway)? And in a way where they are paid fairly as well – think of abattoir workers, food manufacturing workers, and all the other workers in the food chain. (And then think of the companies who own abattoirs, and companies like Kraft or Coles or Woolworths and what their shareholders and executives earn…)

What’s the right organizational structure for these connectors? Surely the many independent butchers I spent time with overseas and that many Australians frequent here are a good example of a fair business model, as are the small, independent grocers (who are pretty rare these days as the supermarkets drive them out), though many struggle to remain viable in a world where food’s cheapness is valued well above its fairness.

Those sorts of businesses that have direct relationships with their producers are clearly going to be better for the eaters as they serve as a kind of conduit between the two, rather than a brick wall like the current system (I’m looking at you, ColesWorths).

Shareholders, sales targets, and growth models should probably be eschewed in favour of cooperatives, not-for-profits, and mindfully remaining small and local. And connectedness, one would hope, will help the average eater understand better why they must value food more highly and pay its real cost.

The last pillars of food system reform I’d like to briefly address are regulation, policy, and the role of lobbying and advocacy.

Current regulatory frameworks were developed over time to protect the public from things it cannot see, as well as from visible unscrupulous or negligent practices. They regulate long, industrial supply chains in a world where a frozen pizza product can contain 35 different ingredients that have passed through 60 countries and carry the label ‘country of origin Ireland’, and a packet of mince can contain meat from 17 animals from an unknown number of farms. (See Swallow This for a detailed exploration of the global processed food industry.)

Regulation is in many cases inappropriate to the scale and connectedness of small production systems, and we must seek to redress this if we are to support the growth of small farms with greater control of their supply chains.

The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund in America is one body doing that, initially through a focus on litigation, but increasingly on support for compliance and lobbying for legal reform. AFSA is working with the Regrarians and others to establish something similar here to support farmers working to build regenerative and fair local food economies.

The Sustainable Economies Law Centre in Oakland, California is another example of an organization committed to supporting producers, consumers and everyone in between in developing sustainable models through independent advice as well as their regular ‘Resilient Communities Legal Café’, freely available to all. As they help their clients develop new templates for innovative models of people trying to build more resilient local economies, they make them available to others to grow this movement. I love these people.

On policy, Michael Pollan collaborated with Ricardo Salvador, Olivier de Schutter, and Mark Bittman recently on a column calling for a National Food Policy in the US. I shared AFSA’s People’s Food Plan that was the genesis of our Alliance with Michael to show what can be done when the people take the lead.

Of course North America has a flourishing movement of Food Policy Councils, but these are predominantly local movements. Nick Rose, Secretary and National Coordinator for AFSA, is currently establishing a new body in Australia called Sustain: The Australian Food Network, which aims to do similar work to support and connect local government authorities and other food systems stakeholders across the country. He will provide more detail on Sustain’s aims and progress as it develops, with the strong support of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance.

I can’t write a post about major food systems reform without addressing access to not just fair food, but all food.

It’s an essential question for our society to address – how do we ensure the most basic human right of access to (safe, nutritious) food is secured for everyone, everywhere?

And when people like me say we need to pay more for food to be fair to producers and chain workers and animals, what about those who can’t even afford the food when it’s not fair to the rest?

The short answer to that is that the food movement alone cannot possibly solve structural and systemic poverty, whether here or in the US or elsewhere. We can apply loads of bandaids – I’m grateful for the work of excellent bodies like Foodbank, Secondbite, Spade & Barrow, and local food rescues everywhere. And little farms like ours can offer discounts to provide better access to our community periodically. But that won’t solve poverty – egalitarian, living wages and strong social support systems will.

AFSA Communications Officer Alana Mann has addressed the problem of hunger in a recent post where she reminded us that ‘hidden hunger is a public problem for which we are all responsible.’

In the US this problem is so entrenched it’s hard to fully grasp in Australia. I know of waiters in the US earning $US2.50/hour because their tips are expected to bring them up to the minimum wage (which may be as low as $7.50/hour). And in America this is legal. The cities of Los Angeles and Seattle have recently introduced $15/hour minimum wages – a major breakthrough in that country. As Jose Oliva of the Food Chain Workers Alliance told us at the Slow Meat symposium in Denver, the food chain sector is both the largest and the lowest paid sector of the US economy. That is a national disgrace.

The context in Australia is certainly different to that of the US, but as the Four Corners expose on the pay and conditions for itinerant farm workers here demonstrated, we are not innocent of treating workers unfairly, and the food movement must work in solidarity to remedy these wrongs.

And yet we must also acknowledge that systemic poverty is simply much bigger than the food movement. We can be part of the solution, but we cannot solve poverty here or in the US on our own, and we cannot ask farmers to bear the brunt of the cost equation to solve this serious social problem.

An important thing I learned during my time in America is that although the movement there gained momentum earlier than it did here, we are not behind.

Our smallness is a strength, and provides a capacity for more rapid meaningful change that the monolith of America can only dream of.

And the movement there seems to have already progressed to levels of co-option and greenwashing that we are just beginning to get glimmers of, and once again, our smallness will serve us well in combating those who would deceive the ever-awakening public who want a fair food system.

Three weeks of bearing witness to America’s movement gave me hope, and strengthened AFSA’s links to those really making a difference for food sovereignty, the growers, connectors, eaters, teachers, and amplifiers. Together with our comrades in the US and across the globe I believe we can stand and demand our right to collectively determine our own food and agriculture systems, because you only have to look around you to see that we are legion.

Countering industrial orthodoxy

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Story by Tammi Jonas, AFSA President, May 2015

farm-to-consumerOn Monday the 27th of April, over 40 Australian farmers, chefs, providores and assorted supporters, journalists and academics came together to discuss the potential for an Australian organisation similar to the American Farm to Consumer Defence Fund.

logo_textTogether with the support of Lisa Heenan and Darren Doherty of Regrarians and Guy and Liz Grossi, AFSA welcomed Joel Salatin of Polyface fame to address the group on the topic of ‘A Fair & Regenerative Food System’. Over the course of a very full day punctuated by some very delicious food graciously provided by the Grossis, we worked through the issues as we see them and what Australian growers and eaters can do about them.

Joel’s talk was (predictably) equal parts inspiring and entertaining. He commenced with a quick history of the industrialization of agriculture, and how with industrialization came long supply chains and decreasing transparency. As industrialization led to a fear of what we couldn’t see, we ended up with an industrial food regulation system.

Joel then gave us some trademark pearls of wisdom:

  • industrial orthodoxy is scale prejudicial – it’s easy to scale up, but can’t scale down
  • industrial orthodoxy is extremely subjective – one day the regulators expect your boning room to be blue, the next pink, the next green (and I’ll add that some of them might be colourblind)
  • industrial orthodoxy is adversarial – it sets regulators and regulated up as adversaries from the outset
  • industrial orthodoxy is efficiency-prejudiced – eg. increased throughput at an abattoir is cause for celebration, instead of increased welfare at that same abattoir
  • industrial orthodoxy doesn’t inform, it just codifies.

Joel asked the provocative question, “what will our children think of the current orthodoxy that safe food is sterile?”

This culture of sterility says:

  • Coca Cola is safe but raw milk is dangerous;
  • spreadable cheese product is safe but Roquefort is dangerous; and
  • petroleum-based fertilizer is safe but compost is dangerous.

While some of us are engaged in re-building a food system outside of contemporary industrial orthodoxies, Joel points out that there are new areas of conflict ahead. The re-zoning and claiming of agricultural land for urban development is just one planning problem we face, and it’s a big one. He’s also concerned about insurance policies written for an industrial society rather than your small, local farmer who just needs a farm hand, and the restrictions on housing more than one nuclear family when regenerative farming takes many hands – we need ‘more eyes per acre’, not less.

While some of the issues Joel raised may be more specific to the United States, his remedies resonate. First and foremost, we need food sovereignty laws to establish the people’s right to collectively determine our own food and agriculture systems.

Such laws could, as Wyoming has recently done, exempt all direct producer to consumer transactions from the usual regulatory framework (meat and dairy are excluded). Or they could be exempt based on numerical scale – this sort of exemption already exists in many examples of legislation. Exemptions could be based on location, description, empirical testing, or, Joel suggests, complete circumvention.

In the US, they have the Farm to Consumer Legal Defence Fund, which was established in the mid-2000s to protect people’s right to sell or acquire the food of their choice, and to protect against harassment by regulating authorities. The Fund operates a 24/7 hotline for producers to ring for immediate advice when the ‘food police’ roll up their driveway.

Joel says he’s used it three times, and the last time was when authorities destroyed some of his eggs in a restaurant for not being stamped – the chef rang Joel, who rang the hotline, who rang the authority, who withdrew their claim against Joel within 24 hours. As Joel says, if he’d been left on his own to fight the regulator, he’d still be trying.

Joel finished off by asking how can we embrace live food again? The current system has centralized risk and removed responsibility and with it, choice. What we need to do is de-centralise risk and distribute responsibility.

The rest of the day was spent working through the issues producers, providores, chefs and eaters are facing in our attempts to grow, buy and eat the food of our choice, and commencing the discussion of what an organization like the Farm to Consumer Legal Defence Fund in Australia might look like.

Do we need a hotline? Templates to assist producers in complying with regulations? Templates to assist council in understanding how they can support flourishing local food economies? Advocacy for legal reform?

We’re interested in your views.

If you want to learn more or support our work with the Regrarians and the Grossis to establish an organization like America’s Farm to Consumer Legal Defence Fund, drop us a line at admin@afsa.org.au.au. Or even better, join AFSA today – every voice makes us stronger and helps us build a fair food future for Australia.

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