Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

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

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Fair Food by Nick Rose
Fair Food by Nick Rose

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.

AFSA National Coordinator, Dr Nick Rose
AFSA National Coordinator, Dr Nick Rose

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.

[button_link url="https://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780702253669/fair-food" target="_blank" style="" title="" class="" id="" onclick="”]Visit book weblisting[/button_link]

AFSA joins university students in the Fair Food Challenge

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By Sophie Lamond, co-leader of the Youth Food Movement, Melbourne

Fair food matters. This audience, if anyone, knows the importance of the mission to educate people about what fair food means and why it is crucial for our future. One of our biggest challenges is to communicate this message beyond our immediate community. It is vital that we spread the word far and wide and turn these conversations into action.

This is the basis of the newly launched Fair Food Challenge. Supported by AFSA, the Challenge is asking Australian higher education institutions to implement sustainable food policies that support and encourage local, sustainable, ethical and fair procurement. We are calling for a commitment to 20 per cent fair and sustainable food procurement by 2020.

The Fair Food Challenge is inspired by the Real Food Challenge (RFC), a grassroots movement that begun in 2007 in the United States. The RFC bought together student activists, national food movement leaders and higher education sustainability experts to agitate for real food on university campuses. In the intervening eight years the American organization has become a national movement that has persuaded dozens of tertiary institutions to adopt food policies. Major victories have included the integration of the Real Food Challenge into the sustainability policies of multi-campus systems such as state university system of California. In total the challenge has succeeded in redirecting over $60 million of institutional money to purchasing local, fair, sustainable and ethical food.

It is a daunting aspiration, but an important one. If we can successfully bring this challenge to Australian universities we can do so much to further the cause of fair food in this country. Not only can we provide substantial direct economic support for fair food producers, but we can open up a massive platform for advocacy and education. University students are away from home and on their own for the first time, and the behaviours they adopt at this time will influence the rest of their lives. To encourage young people to ask critical questions about where their food comes from and to demand more from their food system sets up a new generation of consumers willing to venture outside the strictures of duopoly shopping and fast food.

Students have a right to food. Research that we’ve undertaken shows that Australian university students are overwhelmed with the task of trying to feed themselves good food while surviving on low wages and sensitive time pressures. Recent reports have outlined that students are lining up for meals from charity because they can’t afford anything else. University food outlets are expensive and often lacking in healthy options. Part of the challenge will be to encourage the provision of healthy, fresh and affordable food on campuses.

We face a unique set of hurdles in the Australian iteration of this challenge; although we may think of America has the epitome of the free-market it still has a much more centralised model of food procurement than anything we know in Australia. Our childhoods were free of school lunch programs and our university experience is not defined by dining halls. Food on our campuses is a dispersed affair – which means we will need some creative and engaged thinking to bring about change in our system. But difficult is not impossible, we will work with student unions, clubs and societies, university administration and students to create knowledge networks that can contribute to the formulation of sustainable food policies.

We won’t be able to do this alone, this is a challenge that will benefit from collaboration and engagement from a wide variety of stakeholders. Join Us. Sign up for updates at fairfoodchallenge.com. Spread the word, if you or anyone you know are interested in fair food and are involved with any Australian tertiary institution we’d love to hear from you.

 

A gross infringement of food sovereignty and basic rights

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Media release 26 April 2015

The Western Australian Government’s proposed closure of remote Aboriginal communities

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), supported by the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA), express our strongest opposition to the forced removal of Aboriginal peoples from their communities, as proposed by the Western Australian government.

AFSA_logo-square-dark-bluepublic health

Such a removal would infringe fundamental human rights, and further diminish the food sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Government in breach of obligations

ABS data released this week indicates that more than one in five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in a household which had run out of food and was unable to buy more, a rate of food insecurity six times higher than the rest of the Australian population.  AFSA supports the combined call by the Public Health Association of Australia, Red Cross and Dietitians Association of Australia for increased resourcing of nutrition and food supply strategies to respond to this crisis.

This appalling rate of food insecurity shows that our Federal and state governments are in breach of their obligations to ensure that all Australians, and especially the most disadvantaged, enjoy the fundamental human right to adequate and culturally appropriate food, guaranteed by Article 10 of the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Australia is a signatory to that Covenant and has ratified it.  The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples outlines a range of rights of indigenous peoples which would be contravened by the forced removal of Aboriginal peoples from their communities and lands.

We believe it is a fundamental and ongoing act of reconciliation, respect and celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their culture that as a nation we support their right to remain on their traditional lands.  This is where they are able to maintain the crucial relationships to the land, animals, plants, and ancestral and spiritual beings.

We acknowledge also that language, culture, spirituality, health and wellbeing and nutritional and medicinal knowledge are inextricably linked to peoples’ traditional lands and are strengthened, deepened and replenished by being on their traditional lands.

In Western Australia, dispossession continues

The history of colonisation of Australia demonstrates that when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are removed from their traditional lands there is a loss of skills and knowledge of the nutritional, medicinal and spiritual properties of traditional foods and the language to describe them. These processes of removal constitute a form of cultural genocide. It is unacceptable for this to happen yet again.

In the historical frame of the last 230 years, the current proposal by the WA government to remove basic services and infrastructure support from some remote Aboriginal communities is, whatever the rhetorical and ‘pragmatic’ justifications, yet another dispossession of both people, and the country to which they belong and owe the duty of custodianship.

With rapidly declining soil health and water availability in Australia, the living bank of sustainable land management knowledge held by Aboriginal people who have been able to maintain their language, culture and connection to country is an irreplaceable resource, not just to the people themselves, but to the whole nation.  The impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ lives that have occurred through colonisation mean that remaining knowledge and skills are vulnerable to loss.  Closing remote Aboriginal communities would all but guarantee that loss.

Should the Western Australian government proceed with the closure of remote communities it would set a disturbing precedent for the denial by governments of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders rights across Australia to remain on their traditional lands.  Such action would also have broader implications for infrastructure in rural and remote areas of Australia particularly regarding critical issues such as road maintenance and health services which are shared by all.

A better way forward

What is required of our governments are responses to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples human rights which are driven not by governments but by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves.

AFSA calls on the Western Australian government to confirm that no remote Aboriginal communities will be stripped of essential service and infrastructure supports.

The reoccurring failures of governments to adequately and consistently respect and uphold Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights to food sovereignty and food security is reflected in the lack of national, coordinated policy, funding and practice regarding food sovereignty and food security.

We call on governments at all levels to come together as a matter of urgency to develop in collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities, health and community sector peak bodies and other key stakeholders, a policy framework, funding commitments and national action plan for food sovereignty and food security.

...........

About the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and food sovereignty

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) is working towards a fair, diverse and democratic food system for the benefit of all Australians.  We are a civic organisation of Australian producers, communities, organisations and individuals committed to upholding the rights of peoples to food sovereignty.

Food sovereignty asserts the right of peoples to nourishing and culturally appropriate food produced and distributed in ecologically sound and ethical ways and their right to collectively determine their own food and agriculture systems.

The degree to which peoples experience food sovereignty has a direct bearing on their food security.  Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.  The greater peoples’ food sovereignty, the greater the level of control they have over their food choices and the sources of their food.

Contact:

Clare Richards, National Committee member for North Australia, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance:

  • Mobile: 0409 944 136
  • Email: clare@clareskitchen.com

Michael Moore, CEO, Public Health Association of Australia:

  • Mobile: 0417 249 731

[button_link url="http://afsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/MR-WA-community-closures-26april15.pdf" target="" style="" title="" class="" id="" onclick="”]Download media release (pdf 141kB)[/button_link]

 

 

On 17 April 2015, dairy intensification is not the way to a fair food future

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Community unites with farmers in resistance to dairy expansion in Bass Coast Shire

The proposed multi-million dollar expansion of Kernot Dairy, owned by the Chinese corporation Ningbo, is raising the ire of farmers and local residents in Gippsland on a day that commemorates the struggle of small farmers internationally.

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) and Fair Food Farmers United (FFFU) are supporting the campaign against the expansion of the dairy in solidarity with the local community and the worldwide family farmers’ movement La Via Campesina, which celebrates the International Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17.

While Australian farmers and food workers do not experience the physical intimidation and violence that many small-scale farmers face world-wide, AFSA says they are subject to the same negative impacts of the increasing power of foreign multinational companies.

The plans to expand an existing dairy on Loch-Kernot Road include the construction of a bottling plant, storage facility, a feed-pad barn to house 1,000 dairy cows, and an effluent treatment plant on prime agricultural land.

Residents and local producers are concerned about the economic, social and environmental impacts of large-scale industrial farming on the region.

"We are consistently told that this type of investment will bring jobs to the region," says Sylvia Collett, owner of Bass Coast Farm.

"Yet where I have a farm at Glen Forbes, 34 family dairy farms have closed down over the past 25 years in a five kilometer stretch of road.

"These family farmers left the dairy industry as they were told either ‘get big or get out’."

Issues of animal health and welfare in the proposed intensive farm rearing systems have also been raised, along with the environmental risks to the Bass River catchment.

"The myriad of hidden costs to the environment which allow for ‘cheap’ milk are unloaded onto local communities and the broader community," says Sylvia.

Foreign investment has seen large segments of the Australian food industry absorbed by multinational agribusiness that take profits offshore:

  • Four firms control over 72 per cent of the milk and cream markets in Australia. Three are multinationals: Lion (Japan), Parmalat (Italy & France) and Fonterra (New Zealand). The fourth is the Murray-Goulburn co-operative.
  • Primo Meats, a subsidiary of the world's largest meat supplier JBS (Brazil), controls 50% of the Australian smallgoods market, with George Weston Foods (owned by British-based multinational Associated British Foods) holding 20%[1]
  • Two firms now control 49% of all meat processing in Australia: JBS-Primo, and a Cargill-Teys (United States) joint venture[2]

Meanwhile, Australia is losing its farmers. Nationally, the number of dairy farmers has declined from 22,000 in 1980 to less than 7,000 by 2012.

Take action: make your views known!

We call on all AFSA members and supporters, especially those living in and near Gippsland, to express your views about this proposed development to Bass Coast Shire, by writing to basscoast@basscoast.vic.gov.au, and referencing the development application: http://www.basscoast.vic.gov.au/Services/Building_Development/Planning/Statutory_Planning/Planning_Issues/Planning_application_140368_-_Kernot_Dairy_proposa

We also invite all readers who support our vision of a fair and democratic food future for Australia to join AFSA.

Media contacts:

  • Tammi Jonas, President, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance: 0422 429 362
  • Sylvia Collett, Bass Coast Farm: 0409 252 373

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April 17th: History and Background

April 17th, the International Day of Peasant and Family Farmer Struggle is an occasion to recognise the negative impacts of the industrialised food system on small-scale agriculture, and to remember those who have died fighting for their right to food and the freedom to produce it.

On this day in 1996 19 members of Movimento dos Trabalhadores Ruralis Sem Terra (MST) were killed in Eldorado do Carajas, Brazil, while fighting for land and justice.

La Via Campesina’s central message is the importance of food sovereignty – the right of communities and nations to decide their own agricultural production regimes, with priority to local production and consumption.

Via Campesina argues that food is much more than a mere commodity to be traded for profit and speculation, without regard for the livelihoods of those who produce it. On the contrary, it is fundamentally important to human health and well-being, and the long-term sustainability of ecosystems; and as such demands priority recognition in our political, economic and legal systems.

Via Campesina, in common with many analysts and experts around the world, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, attribute the crippling hunger of close to 1 billion people to the domination of the global food system by corporate agri-business and an unjust international trade regime that squeezes the livelihoods of small- and medium-scale producers.

 

AFSA and the VFMA call for food safety regulators to be accountable

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AFSA and the Victorian Farmers Markets Association have today released a joint public statement, calling on the Victorian Government to work with AFSA, VFMA and small producers to engage in open and constructive discussions about how to support the rapidly emerging local and fair food economy in Victoria.

Public statement – Cancellation of Regulator-Producer Forum

18TH FEBRUARY 2015

Regulatory costs and compliance have a major impact on the viability of all producers and food businesses. The need to ensure the flexibility to innovate is recognised by the Inquiry into the impact of food regulation on farms and other businesses (2013). In the same document the Victorian Government emphasises the value it places on the contributions of producers in policy-making.

Accordingly, the cancellation of the public multi-stakeholder discussion forum on regulation at Monash University on February 24 is a serious blow to public engagement and transparency.

This event, hosted by Monash University Law Faculty and co-sponsored by AFSA and the Victorian Farmers Markets Association (VFMA), was to be a landmark forum addressing the regulatory challenges in enabling the production and provision of safe, transparent, innovative, fair and local food in Victoria. Producers, regulators, industry representatives and certification agencies were invited to participate in two panels addressing the challenges and opportunities of ensuring safety and transparency in small scale food production and retailing.

The aim of this ground-breaking day was to generate a productive dialogue around the potential and opportunities for improving food regulation to build consumer confidence in and access to fair local food. This dialogue is essential to the co-creation of an effective, coherent and evidence-based regulatory environment that enables a strong and thriving local and fair food economy.

Shortly before the forum was due to take place, AFSA and the VFMA were informed that it was being cancelled, and replaced with a closed invite-only workshop focused just on food labeling issues. AFSA and the VFMA are deeply disappointed that a unique opportunity for a constructive and productive dialogue between regulators and producers has been lost. Many producers were excited by the opportunity for this dialogue and were prepared to travel long distances, at their own time and expense, to take part in it.

We believe it is the public duty of these regulators to engage in open and constructive dialogue with producers. As publicly-funded agencies with significant enforcement powers conferred by legislation, we are concerned that this last-minute cancellation of a public event demonstrates disregard for public accountability and openness to scrutiny.

Further, we believe this stance to be inconsistent with the publicly-stated values and missions of each regulator. Dairy Food Safety Victoria states its values as follows (emphasis added):

Respect

We value diverse opinions, strengths and ideas, and consider the feelings of others.

Integrity 
We are honest, open and transparent in our dealings with all stakeholders and will match our behaviours to our words

'Can do’ 
We are always willing to help stakeholders and each other and strive to continually improve the way we work whilst remaining adaptable and open to change

Fairness
We are fair, objective and courteous in all dealings with industry, stakeholders and our employees

 

The mission of Prime Safe is (emphasis added):

To regulate and advance food safety in the Victorian meat, poultry and seafood industries through a credible, effective and efficient quality assurance system that facilitates opportunities for industry growth and innovation

Despite the opportunity lost with the cancellation of the forum, AFSA and the VFMA will continue our efforts to engage regulators in a constructive dialogue of how they might work within the existing regulatory framework to best support and enable the producers and communities who are building local, transparent and fair food systems.

At the same time, accumulated experience from many producers does, in our view, make a powerful case of the need for a simplified and coherent regulatory framework that enables the emerging local and fair food system to flourish. Anecdotal evidence from many producers reveals that such costs and compliance, and at times heavy-handed enforcement, has a crushing and at times terminal effect on viability.

A case in point is the summary closure of the Giles Family Abattoir in Trafalgar, Gippsland, at the end of 2012, after images of a pig escaping on the slaughterhouse floor were passed by Animals Australia to PrimeSafe. The business employed 30 locals and contributed $7 mn to the local economy, yet its licence was cancelled in a manner that owner Colin Giles felt was most unfair:

Colin Giles says that PrimeSafe's [Deputy Chief Brendan] Ryan told him at the Melbourne meeting that it was an "open-and-shut case" of cruelty and that he was cancelling their abattoir licence permanently. They were also warned that any animal cruelty charges, if proven, could carry a jail sentence.

"Then PrimeSafe told us that if we surrendered our licence to them that afternoon, there would be no further investigation," Giles recalled this week.

"And then they asked us what we thought. But I don't think we said much at all. We were devastated, dumbfounded -- we certainly felt like we were being forced to hand our licence in."[1]

Therefore:

We call on the Victorian government to ensure that food safety regulators are held accountable to the Victorian public as a whole, and in particular the industries they are established to regulate and support.

We also call on the Victorian government to work with stakeholders across the food system to understand the need for regulatory reform and explore options for the most suitable and effective way this can be achieved. Such reforms must be guided by the need to balance the principles of: 

  • Ensuring public safety
  • Supporting a thriving and diverse local and fair food economy
    Promoting open consultation
  • Enhancing transparency and accountability
  • Building food literacy and guaranteeing the public’s right to know

 

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For comment / interviews, contact Tammi Jonas, AFSA President, M: 0422 429 362 / Wayne Shields, VFMA President, M: 0400 643 341

 

About the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

AFSA is a national alliance of farmers, food entrepreneurs, public health professionals, community gardeners, farmers market coordinators, journalists, researchers and local food advocates who share the vision of a fair food future for all Australians. AFSA draws inspiration from and is founded on the principles of food sovereignty.

Founded in 2010, AFSA has provided national vision and leadership through collaboratively creating Australia's first Peoples Food Plan, and in coordinating Australia's first Fair Food Week. In 2015 AFSA is launching Australia's first Fair Food feature documentary, which tells the stories of Australian farmers, social entrepreneurs, and urban agriculturalists who are transforming Australia's food future.

 

About the Victorian Farmers Markets Association

The Victorian Farmers’ Markets Association (VFMA) is a not for profit organisation, founded in 2002, that supports and promotes authentic farmers’ markets throughout Victoria by:

a) Representing members on a range of industry issues.

b) Providing a central information point for shoppers and industry alike. We support 40 accredited farmers markets around Victoria.

The VFMA represents myriad types of Victorian farmers and food producers who trade at our accredited markets. VFMA accreditation aims to ensure our farmers’ market customers are buying what they expect, with genuine informed choice, as well as providing a fair environment for local small-medium scale food growers and producers to prosper. The VFMA accredited farmers’ markets provide a reliable benchmark distinct from non-accredited markets  - primarily no middle men/re-selling – only the genuine growers and their production staff, reconnecting people with their food sources and producers with their consumers.

The VFMA and our stakeholders share the vision of a fair food future for all, from farmers and along the food production chain to consumers. The VFMA has collaboratively consulted with AFSA regarding Australia's first Peoples Food Plan, and in promoting Australia's Fair Food Week.

[1] Reproduced from the 22 March 2012 Australian story by Rural Reporter Sue Neales – for the full story see http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/piggy-in-the-middle/story-e6frg6z6-1226306631801.

 

 

To read the full statement, follow this link

AFSA VFMA Joint Public Statement Cancellation of Regulator-Producer Forum 18.2.15

 

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