President's report Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

New team will take food movement forward, says President

November 26, 2014 by Tammi Jonas

It's going to be a great year for food sovereignty in Australia with an exciting new national team elected to lead the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA). Along with our members and supporters we have the opportunity to move towards a more diverse, ecological, and egalitarian food system in this country… one that delivers delicious, ethical food to Australia's eaters… a food system that is fair to all, from soil to stomach.

And so it is with great pleasure as the newly elected President of AFSA to welcome the new and returning members National Committee for 2015. I am delighted to be surrounded by a fantastic team of talented, knowledgeable, skilled & committed people all united in our desire to make Australia’s food systems fairer for everyone.

Welcome to:

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Vice President Jeff Pow (WA)
National Secretary Nick Rose (VIC)
Treasurer Nadine Ponomarenko (VIC)
Communications Officer Alana Mann (NSW)
Clare Richards (far north QLD), and
Michele Lally (SA).

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[button_link url="http://afsa.org.au/about/our-team/management-committee-2014-15/" target="" style="" title="" class="" id="" onclick=""] You can see all their amazing bios here... [/button_link]

I’d also like to thank Lorraine Gordon, Annie Richmond, and Louise Abson for their nominations, and look forward to having them actively involved in supporting the Committee through working teams and sub-committees. On that note, I would encourage any AFSA member who wants to contribute time to the organisation to get in touch, because there will be plenty of opportunities going forward.

Thank you to the equally talented and passionate outgoing committee members for your work over the previous year (or years in the case of most!) – Michael Croft, Carol Richards, Nick Staniforth, Cat Green, Alice Blackwood, Kali Madden, Sandy Murray, Sonya Pryor, Harry Wykman and Lauren Mathers.

And a special thank you to members Fiona Campbell, Russ Grayson for their tireless and ongoing efforts to help AFSA communicate the many and complicated issues we face in progressing a fair food agenda, and to Jennifer Richards, Marie Kelly-Davies, and Amory Starr, each of whom have made significant contributions during the year.

As retailer power in Australia continues with just two major supermarkets controlling nearly 80% of market share, a new free trade agreement with China that allows Chinese corporations to sue Australian government if there is a change in Australian environmental protections or animal welfare, and the significant threats of coal seam gas extraction from productive agricultural land, food sovereignty is an ever more critical issue for our time.

We need regulatory reform to support the growing agroecological farming movement in Australia. The current regulatory framework was designed for the old industrial model of long supply chains and total lack of transparency. The new way is the old way where eaters are reconnecting to growers and can judge the fairness in the food system firsthand.

The right to grow food instead of grass on your nature strip, the right to know what’s in the food you buy, and the right of everyone to access clean, safe, locally grown food are all central to the mission of AFSA and the thousands of fair food activists working in local communities across the country.

These and many other issues are vital reasons why we need a strong, committed and national movement working for food sovereignty in Australia. AFSA is a volunteer, member-based organisation. Our capacity and our strength is drawn from and depends on our members.

If you’re not already a member of AFSA, sign up today and be part of the solution. We need your voice.

Tammi Jonas
President

AFSA President’s Report, 2013-14

November 15, 2014 by Nick Rose

This is the report to be delivered by outgoing AFSA President, Michael Croft, at the AGM to be held on 18 November 2014, at Byron Bay Community Centre...

Dear AFSA members,

It is with great pleasure and humility that I present this years abridged account of our activities and achievements as a social movement. We have achieved much in the last year, which has been a consolidation and advancement of projects and aims that we collectively started some 4 short years ago. The list of activities presented by our extraordinary and indefatigable coordinator Nick Rose is impressive for an all-volunteer organisation running on less than a shoe string budget.

AFSA, as an alliance promoting food sovereignty in Australia, has I believe shifted the debate on food and food systems in this country. Food sovereignty was a virtually unknown concept or idea 4 years ago, save for a few academics and front line food activists. Now food sovereignty has entered the vernacular and is being used by reporters, politicians, agriculture and food leaders and advocates all over the country. This is some achievement and one that is proof of the power of alliances and allies.

We, AFSA and our alliance partners, are much more powerful than we realise. We hold the ethical high ground of working for the common good, AND we have practical plans and road maps of how to get there. This is especially obvious with our People's Food Plan and our support for and understanding of agroecology. Incidentally, there are moves afoot for Australia to have its first tertiary agroecology course, which is great news.

A word of caution, though. As food sovereignty enters the mainstream language in Australia, it is important that we collectively guard against food sovereignty and agroecology being co-opted by those who wish to use it for personal gain and profit. We need to hold those who would do so to account and correct them - and I am thinking of politicians and mainstream agriculture and food organisations. Both these groups would love to harness the power of a social movement and alliance such as ours, as it would give them the credibility that most so obviously lack.

As I write, the Fair Food documentary has been completed and is due for release in Sydney and Melbourne in the first week of December. As you will appreciated AFSA are very excited about this and we all look forward to see it - yes that's right, your AFSA committee haven't seen the finished doco yet either, even though we have been very involved in the entire process, and we can't wait! There will be a full national release scheduled early in the new year, complete with community screening options. In short we want to get this out and seen as far and wide as possible.

Fair Food Farmers United is a new farmer only organisation launched this year by AFSA. As a farmer this is a project close to my heart, as the lack of genuine national farmer representation is a glaring omission. It is early days of this exciting development and we encourage you to ask all the farmers you know to be a part of this, and help develop the organisations goals and objectives - obviously this will be within a food sovereignty and agroecology framework and principles.

Thanks, too, to the Alliance's Communciations Group who maintain our connections to other networks. They also keep information flowing to Alliance members through our nine eNewsletters over the year.

To keep people coming back to our website and to attract new visitors, it's important to post new material online regularly. So it's heartening that over the past 12 months, something like 50 blogs as well as a media releases have been posted to our website. It's also heartening to look at the stats and find that we've had an average of 115 visits a day to our site, making a total of 34,000 website visits this year.

fair food week 2014 — Fair Food Week 2014

Using the Alliance's website and through deft use of social media, the Communciations Group produced the graphics and text and tweaked the website's coding to get out the news of Fair Food Week 2014. With 97 events run over the week of 10-19 October, this year's was the second Fair Food Week and the event shows promise so long as we can keep it interesting and attractive to people out there who are actually creating the type of fair food system we want.

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This year AFSA also became internationally active and recognised as a movement leader for food sovereignty in Australia. We are now a part of the International Planning Committee for food sovereignty and have attended several meetings to advance the global cause. We, or more specifically Fair Food Farmers, have also been invited as observers to La Via Campesina, and this is an important first step in a long process of potentially joining the world's largest peasant farmer organisation. Our voice was also heard at the UN's Committee on world Food Security in Rome as Australasian delegate.

And last but not least, Nick Rose carried the AFSA flag to Canada, the USA and Latin America as part of his Churchill Fellowship studying food sovereignty.

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Dr Charlie Massy, sheep farmer and author, contributor to Fair Food: A movement with a mission

All great news as Australia is no longer known as 'the lost continent' in global food sovereignty circles. AFSA members are also currently writing a book on the emergence of food sovereignty in Australia to be released next year, so stay tuned for that too.

There was so much happening during the year on the food sovereignty front that it is hard to mention all activities, but you can track this via our facebook page and website. Incidentally our facebook page reached over 5,000 likes in October, which is impressive for a single-minded food sovereignty page without cute dogs and cats!

Seriously though, there is a sense within your committee, and among other frontline advocates and activists, that food sovereignty in Australia and AFSA in particular is on the verge of a genuinely powerful mass movement - a shift in the way people relate to food, agriculture and the environment. As we stand on the threshold of an exciting year ahead with great potential, it is important to thank all the volunteers who have contributed over the last year. But the truth is I don't want to single anyone out for special recognition as this is genuinely a collective effort, but I must mention your committee and the fantastic commitment shown by all.

AFSA is only as good as the members of the committee who walk the talk of members. In that regard your committee is extraordinary, working countless hours for the common good, unpaid and usually without recognition. So please, keep up your membership and encourage others to join, because it is on your solidarity that AFSA depends to continue the good work.

And speaking of committee, we have an equally great bunch of highly talented people who want to be part of AFSA's future. They are standing for election at this years agm, so please read their bios, be impressed and vote! I am stepping down as president to make way for this talent, and hope to remain part of the great team I see forming. There will be no losers in this election either, as those who aren't part of the official 7 member committee will be encouraged to be part of the process via subcommittees or co-opted post the new committee's deliberations - we want the talents and commitment of all applicants.

So thank you all for last few years, we have achieved some extraordinary results together, and as they say, "the best is yet to come".

In solidarity, Michael Croft

October President’s Message

October 4, 2014 by

Greetings All,

It’s Fair Food Week

Fair Food Week is almost upon us, and what a fantastic week it promises to be! There are dozens of events celebrating the pleasure and values that food embodies for us all – check out the website www.fairfoodweek.org for an event near you. If there isn’t an event near you, create your own. Get inspiration from other events, create your own, and please share it on our website and Facebook page. It could be as simple as a shared meal with friends or local produce or plant a fruit tree.

Over the last few months I have spoken to hundreds of people about Fair Food and the week we celebrate it. The most common question was; what makes food fair? The answers varied enormously and reflected the wonderful diversity that is the fair food movement, but they can all be distilled into three basic groups that revolve around environmental, social and economic justice.

The concept of a ‘fair go’ resonates so deeply with Australians, that for many it is a visceral response and we equate the ‘fair go’ with natural justice. So it is a very healthy thing for the fair food movement to tackle the systemic issues of the food system from multiple directions simultaneously. The great variety of events demonstrates our resilience through diversity.

I would also suggest that it would be fair to say (pun intended) that a ‘fair go’ is the strongest of unifying themes in Australia. Give that Fair Food Week is deliberately centred around World Food Day, it is a great response to the local, national and global challenges to food sovereignty. Fair Food Week is truly thinking globally whilst acting locally.

Best regards and in solidarity,
Michael Croft

July President’s Message

July 19, 2014 by

Greetings all,

It’s Fair Food Week

First of all please check out the Fair Food Week website and join one of the ones in your area or create your own! Creating your own event or happening is easy and registration is free for individuals and not-for-profits/community groups. Oh, and ‘like’ the Fair Food Facebook page whilst you’re at it.

So what is fair food?

Fairness and the idea of a fair go is something that Australians ‘get’ instantly. In this case we mean fair from paddock to plate, field to fork, soil to stomach, wilderness to waste or waist. In other words fair food is food that takes into account all of the aspects that food encompasses: the environment that enables food production, the water it depends on, the soil organisms, the growers, workers, the cooks and eaters, the culture in which it is embedded, the clean air it requires, the life it enables, and the recognition that they are all inseparably linked. If any part of the food system is unfair, the remainder of the system will suffer – including us.

Celebrity line-up

Fortunately this is a message that thinking Australians ‘get’. So much so that we have a celebrity line up of Fair Food Champions who want to support Fair Food Week (see our first video below) – so stay tuned as there are a few surprises in store. That said if you know any high profile Australians who would support Fair Food Week, please get in touch.

During the recent Students of Sustainability conference at the ANU, Simon Cunich, director and producer of the food sovereignty film Growing Change (insert link) caught up with rugby union star and Fair Food Week champion David Pocock, and AFSA national coordinator Nick Rose.

Our role in international negotiations about food

Now I will appear to digress from Fair Food Week for a bit. One of the things I am working on via the Civil Society Mechanism is UN/FAO input into the Food Losses and Waste in the context of Sustainable Food Systems. What is interesting is that at the highest level there is a belief that the current system can be made ‘more sustainable’. I think you know where I am going with this, but either a system is sustainable or it isn’t – period. A ‘more sustainable food system’ is just an unsustainable system that will take longer to fail, because it isn’t sustainable. This error in logic would be funny if it wasn’t happening at intergovernmental level and perpetuating the fallacy that a partial redemption of the existing industrial food system is all that is required.

The other issue that this report raises is that the costs of the global food system and the vast amounts of waste it produces (30 to 40% of all food produced goes to waste) are all ‘context specific’. What this means is that the solutions to waste must be local and context specific. To me this is another example of globalised food system profits, with the costs to be paid for by the local communities. In other words the demands of a globalised and corporate food system produces the waste, which the local, regional or industry specific is expected to fix. It should be obvious to all that food losses and waste are a symptom of the system, and treating a symptom is not going to cure the disease. We risk putting a Band-Aid over waste when what needs to happen is that the system should be redesigned (cured) to stop rewarding over production – ‘productionism’.

I digressed a little, but a system that produces vast amounts of waste, whilst hundreds of millions go hungry, is manifestly unfair. So we are back to supporting Fair Food Week and entrenching it in the annual calendar of national events.

This year Fair Food Week 10 – 19 October is centred around World Food Day which is 16 October 2014.

So please get behind Fair Food Week and encourage your friends, families and communities do to likewise. Be creative and have fun with it too, because this is meant to be a celebration of what a better food system can look like.

Best regards and in solidarity,
Michael

June 2014 — President’s Message

June 6, 2014 by Food Sovereignty

Greetings all. It is early June as I write this and winter is meant to have started in my region. However there have been no frosts and I have tomatoes still yielding which is unheard of.

Forecasts of this being the precursor for an El-Nino event is not good news for our farmers and gardeners, as hot dry conditions will prevail this summer.

There is so much happening on the food sovereignty front in Australia it really is hard to know where to start — perhaps the Northern Territory.

Fair food movement is booming

I had the great privilege and honour of meeting up with fair food pioneers in Darwin a few weeks ago. What the visit brought home strongly, is how just dynamic and vibrant the grass roots fair food scene has become all over the country. One of the things that amazes me is that no matter where you look in Australia the fair food movement is booming – it is happening everywhere.
Have you ever wondered what your volunteer contribution to AFSA and the common good is worth? I mean put a dollar price on it? Well here is just one example of our contribution to Australian civil society. The Peoples' Food Plans National Food Plan (NFP). We now know (thanks to a question asked in parliament by The Greens) that the National Food Plan cost taxpayers $4.5 million dollars! The Peoples' Food Plan (your effort) has contributed a similar amount to the national debate.
The Peoples' Food Plan (PFP) is Australia’s first ever, and is the only crowd sourced national policy document. It can be accessed by all Australians at the National Library of Australia as well as our website. The PFP is worth every bit as much as the $4.5 million NFP, and we continue to donate our time effort and skills to the common good – well done you!
The University of Queensland Press has enthusiastically agreed to publish a book edited by AFSA’s coordinator Nick Rose. The book will be called Fair Food: the story of a movement. Well done Nick!
Nick Rose
Whilst I am talking about Nick, he deserves much recognition and praise as a major driving force behind AFSA, so it is wonderful news that Nick has been awarded a Churchill fellowship. Nick’s Churchill studies will be of great benefit to the development of fair food and Urban Agriculture in Australia, as Nick will share his findings, enabling us to pick through the world’s best ideas and projects and apply those we deem appropriate to Australia. Nick will be away for 3 months investigating innovative models of urban agriculture in the USA, Canada and Argentina.
The documentary 'Fair Food' that we crowd funded is being filmed right now and should be ready for a national launch during Fair Food Week.
Organic food sales were up 11.5% in 2013 in the USA and we are sure by a similar if not greater amount here in Australia.
Councils and state governments are responding to demands for relocalised food systems. The ACT Government’s Minister for Agriculture has convened a Food Policy Round Table with community groups to determine policy initiatives. All this is being driven by community demands such as the drive for the ‘Capital Region Food Hubs'. These sorts of initiatives are happening in your area so please get involved and promote the principles and values of food sovereignty to your local council, state and federal politicians and governments.
There have been a massive increase in interest in community funded ethically produced foods, and this is a good thing. Some examples: Lauren Mathers, a free range Bundarra Berkshire pig producer and AFSA committee member, has been very successful in her crowd funding campaign; Tammi Jonas, producer of heritage breed Large Black pigs and driver of Fair Food Farmers United has also launched an excellent crowd funding campaign check it out and and of course Madelaine’s organic egg project was hugely successful.
Source: Food Alliance
The Food Alliance does great work with the ‘know your food bowl project' for Melbourne and surrounds. Two weeks ago, the Food Alliance had a double-page spread in Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper profiling their great info-graphic which shows that 40-50% of Melbourne’s vegetables comes from its local food-bowl regions.
Planning for Fair Food Week (FFW) is well under way and we are determined to make it as big a celebration of all things fair food as we can. There are all sorts of extraordinary things in the making that will embed celebrating FFW in the national calendar of events – details in our July eNEWS!
On the international front the big news is that International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and the UN/FAO will establish common priority themes for a collaborative work in the fight against hunger and food insecurity. This is important because it allows direct communication at the highest level between governments and those working for Food Sovereignty at the grass roots. AFSA is both honoured and proud to be a member of the IPC, and we see this as part of the food sovereignty ‘pincer movement’. Tackling food sovereignty issues at the grass roots and intergovernmental level simultaneously is something only an international collective of food sovereignty social movements can do with genuine authority.

So that’s all this month folks, together we are changing the world for the better, one meal at a time!

In solidarity,
Michael Croft