Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

Fair Food is about Fair Work by Emma Kerin, National Union of Workers

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The Fair Food campaign is being run and led by workers in the fresh food supply chain who are members of the National Union of Workers (NUW).

Thousands of workers in warehouses that supply to the major supermarkets are long-time members of the NUW. As a result, it is common practice that workers in this section of the supply chain have access to safe workplaces, living wages and decent conditions.

Unfortunately this is not what we are seeing at large numbers of workplaces where workers are producing the fruit and vegetables that are transported through the supply chain to Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA Metcash.

The NUW is frequently confronted with small contractors who underpay, intimidate and steal from produce workers. At other very large facilities workers remain on the minimum wage without any chance to have a say about their pay and conditions, while the corporations they work directly for turn over millions every year and have a massive share in the market.

Workers are standing up and declaring things need to change. Workers in regional communities should have the right to decent jobs. From the glasshouse and packing shed, to the warehouses and cold stores and into the supermarkets, workers are organising for secure jobs to support their families and participate in their communities.

Up against the might and economic power of the two major supermarkets, many workers and producers understand that cooperation and support must underpin a new conversation about what is sustainable and what is fair.

Find out more about the Fair Food campaign for workers at http://www.fairfoodaustralia.org

Smart thinking can drive local food network in Beechworth

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om-anne-stelling-sheep-1852_pe_c7_20150526.jpg

By Jamie Kronborg. First published in the Ovens & Murray Advertiser, Beechworth, May 27, 2015.

WOORAGEE lamb producer Anne Stelling believes that it would take just a little co-operative smart thinking to work through some regulatory ‘roadblocks’ for the North East to develop a significant – and diverse – local food network.

Anne and her sister Fleur produce first cross lambs, geese, eggs and wine grapes on a 75-hectare farm north of Beechworth and have established a local market for their lamb. But it is a market stitched together with ingenuity that enables the family to maintain all of the benefits of ‘small’ in an industry traditionally geared to large-scale production.

The Stellings turn off 50-60 first-cross lambs a year – most of which are sold in the Corowa saleyards. But Anne has also worked hard to build a local market for their Suffolk-cross meat branded as ‘Weeping Grass Creek’ lamb.

Anne has drawn on Wangaratta abattoir’s willingness to kill small lots of a few animals and the skills of Beechworth’s Luke Whybrow to butcher each carcase to buyer requirements without breaching a strict food regulatory regime.

“I’ve been on this farm since 1997 and we started selling lamb direct to people probably eight years ago,” Anne said.

“It was just serendipity because we usually just breed them and take them off to market, down to Corowa in the trailer.

“My cousins came out one day from Albury for lunch and said: ‘How can we get some of this lamb?’ - and I said ‘Well, you can get it from me’.

“Then I thought there are probably other people who might like a farm contact so I told them if you know anyone else who wants some, then we can look at ways of supplying them.

“I’ve since been trialling all these ways of managing it, and that’s when I really started to get interested in local food.”

One of the challenges has been a regulation that prohibits the sale of meat directly from farmers to would-be customers.

Anne can sell only a live animal but has developed a local market for her lamb by arranging to have it slaughtered and butchered to her customer’s requirements.

“So I sell a live lamb but people pick them up in from the butcher in a box,” she said.

“(Luke) is very good and some people are quite particular about how they want their lamb cut up, or maybe they want it marinated, and he can do all of that – so that’s what we do.”

Anne’s development of an ‘order-by-email market’ enables her to arrange processing of just eight lambs because that’s the limit of the Whybrows’ butchery capacity. But it’s dependent on the willingness of the Wangaratta abattoir to slaughter small lots – and it’s also a potential risk to her developing business.

“I’ve got a philosophical bent towards producing and supplying local – and no doubt I could sell it in Melbourne, but it would be a big step up for me and probably I haven’t enough lambs to supply that anyway,” Anne said.

Australian agriculture in the past 50-60 years has not been geared to supplying a local market.

“It’s exactly the opposite. It’s all geared to this so-called ‘feeding the world’ and big agriculture and exports and economies of scale which make it quite difficult.

“But in other countries this happens.In Laos 86 per cent of food is provided by subsistence agriculture, which is local people feeding their families and village communities.

“So it’s not impossible. Yet it’s derided as subsistence and the question is asked: ‘Why would we want to do that?’”

Anne believes a strong local food market would certainly build local food security.

“I would really like to see local, state and federal governments give an equal focus to empowering local (food) networks, looking at it in terms of real food security and trying to set in place the systems that will help that rather than hinder it,” she says.

“I’d like to see how we could get some co-operative ownership of equipment, like an olive press – so people with three or four trees could have their fruit crushed – and if there was some way to have a mobile abattoir that would come to my place and we could process the lambs here and have it done by a butcher.

“Being able to have local multi-purpose, multi-species mobile or processing facilities close-by would be very helpful.”

 

Local food resilience – why is it important?

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food-local-kmStory by Merran Laver, May 2015

As interest grows among consumers in sourcing their food from local producers, it is worth looking at resilience in the local food system as one of the many benefits.

The term resilience has roots in the Latin word resilio, which means to ‘jump back’1; and broadly it is defined as a return to an original state. In a food context, resilience is the ability of a community to maintain a certain level of wellbeing by withstanding shocks or stressors to its food security.1 Such impacts might be natural disasters, transportation problems, water shortages and other disturbances that can disrupt the supply of food being brought long distances from other regions or countries. To have at least some level of self-sufficiency in food production provides the local community with security if its broader food supply is disrupted.

A resilient local food system is one that promotes self-reliance and empowerment to provide for a community’s own food needs.2 Food production, processing, distribution and consumption are integrated to benefit the overall health of a particular place – socially, economically, nutritionally and environmentally.

Inclusion of the word ‘community’ places an emphasis on strengthening existing, or developing new, relationships between all components of the food system.2

We can look to countries such as the United States for models of local food resilience, and where the literature on this topic is quite extensive. Again, often there is an emphasis on the community’s involvement in their food system. For example, an article from the US Community Food Security Coalition on what a ‘secure and resilient food system’ looks like refers to ‘a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice’.3

Another US source4 refers to community food systems, the key features of which include equity, sustainability, self-reliance, empowerment, and individual and communal wellness. The authors provide a long list of what can be found in a ‘secure and resilient’ community food system, covering issues such as health promotion, business support and employment, consumption of seasonally available foods and strengthening of farm to community connections.

A potential and worthwhile aim of our own region’s food policy and planning is to create a resilient food system. The recent Discussion paper – Towards an ACT Region Food Policy and Food Plan – states that a ‘roadmap’ for all ACT food system stakeholders will be provided to ‘ensure that a resilient food system is achieved’.5 As well as setting a target for 30% of food consumption to be sourced from the ACT Region by 2030, the plan aims to create a resilient ACT food system by:

  • strengthening, and ensuring diversity within, the local food economy to protect the community against potential shocks to the system (eg oil or water shortages); and
  • ensuring food supplies are adequate, accessible, affordable and nutritionally balanced.5

Diversity in the food supply is important in the creation of a resilient local food system. The authors of the Discussion paper believe that: ‘By supporting this local food economy, the food cycle becomes increasingly more multifaceted and less reliant on one sole means of food supply, making the overall system much more resilient’.

References

  1. Klein, Nicholls, and Thomalla 2003; Understanding Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security. http://www.ifpri.org/ghi/2013/understanding-resilience
  2. E. Mane, L. Alinovi, D. Melvin 2010 Measuring resilience – A concept note. www.fao.org/docrep/013/al920e/al920e00.pHamm and Bellow; What Is Community Food Security? Community Food Security Coalition;  Found at http://www.foodsecurity.org/views_cfs_faq.html
  3. Hamm and Bellow; What Is Community Food Security? Community Food Security Coalition;  Found at http://www.foodsecurity.org/views_cfs_faq.html
  4. Eames-Sheavly, M., J. Wilkins.  A Primer on Community Food Systems: Linking Food, Nutrition and Agriculture, In Discovering the Food System: an experiential learning program for young and inquiring minds. Cornell University, Department of Nutritional Sciences and Department of Horticulture.  Found at http://www.discoverfoodsys.cornell.edu/primer.html
  5. Discussion Paper: Towards an ACT Region Food Policy and Food Plan March 2015

Merran Laver is a freelance writer/editor with an interest in food, nutrition and health. Contact Merran: merran_laver@fastmail.fm

This article  is reprinted with permission of Southern Harvest, the regional food organisation for the Australian Capital region - www.southernharvest.net.au

Shopping with Catriona — in the rain

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...story by Russ Grayson, December 2013

A Tasmanian journey...

catriona-hobart-marketsIT WAS RAINING but that didn't stop Catriona Macmillan (left in photo) and Fiona Campbell joining the hundreds, perhaps well in excess of a thousand people at Hobart's Sunday Farm Gate Market, the popular farmers' market in the centre of the city.

You should have known that if you're going to encounter Catriona then that's likely to happen at a food market of some kind. We encountered her buying a couple dozen of the shellfish from Ironstone Oysters who source their product at Pittwater, just over the eastern hills from Hobart. That, surely, counts as local seafood.

"You must come and meet some of the stallholders", insisted Catriona. "You've got to meet the people selling Tasmanian walnuts".

Another thing you should know: when you meet Catriona at a farmers' market you soon get to meet the stallholders. Meeting people engaged in growing, processing and selling food is her normal work, after all, being a food system consultant and a consummate networker.

Soon, thanks to her introductions, we were sampling Ashbolt's elderberry juice and syrup concentrate, chatting to the woman selling breads made with flour from Carrington Mill in Oatlands and talking with the people selling Tasmanian walnuts.

Already familiar with Hobart's Farm Gate Market, Catriona the other day visited Launceston's Saturday farmers' market, Harvest. That's a smaller market but it's an authentic farmers' market at which, like the Farm Gate Market in Hobart, you buy from those who make the food.

Fiona, who you see with Catriona in the photo, is no stranger to good, regionally produced food. Her experience is as an urban grower and educator in home and community gardens. In Sydney she has been associated with the community supported agriculture scheme, Sydney Food Connect. Walking around food markets, talking to stallholders, making edible discoveries and buying tasty goodies, even in today's light drizzle, is not something alien to her normal behaviour.

SHARED SENTIMENT

"Are you taking photographs for some publication?", the man asked. "I saw you photographing elsewhere in the market".

"For the website of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance", I told him. "It's an advocacy organisation that supports regional food markets and food systems and the livelihoods of smaller farmers, food processors and eaters".

Standing in the light drizzle we got to talking. He was a man perhaps in his mid-sixties, bearded, and dressed in the manner you find Hobartians adopt in cooler weather, a kind of rural-outdoor get up that keeps them warm and relatively dry, though being damp is not something that bothers them.

He seemed to approve of what I told him then went on to let me know his thoughts on the global food market.

"Tasmania can produce much of what it eats rather than bringing in food from China and elsewhere", he said.

"And those television cooking shows... they demonstrate complicated-to-cook foods rather than basic foods".

Exactly my thoughts I realised, as he explained his attitudes to me, recalling reading somewhere that the preponderance of television cooking shows and the deluge of cookbooks in bookshops has failed to increase the home cooking of meals and, instead, has become part of the television entertainment industry... cooking as spectator sport.

Here was a man who had thought things through, saw them for what they are and realised that regional food systems can do better. It was one of those chance encounters that let you know that what you are doing in promoting regionally-produced food is the right thing to do.

 

[button link="http://farmgatemarket.com.au" size="small" target="self"]Visit 'Farm Gate Market' website[/button]

 

Harvest the market for fresh food in Tasmania’s north

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...by Russ Grayson, December 2013

harvest-launceston

A Tasmanian journey...

THE OTHER NIGHT, we ate local... Tasmanian local, that is.

Doing that was the result of shopping for food at Harvest, Launceston's weekly growers' market. It's located conveniently in the CBD where it's been for more than a year. Here, it brings together fruit and vegetable growers, bakers, olive oil brewers, meat producers and the agricultural panoply of the northern region of this island state.

The market meets Jane Adam's (who set up the Australian Farmers' Market Association) prescription for farmers' market authenticity of no resellers, stalls staffed by producers or family or staff, a central, accessible venue and regular high frequency — weekly on Saturday mornings for Harvest.

It also supplies basic foods such as fruit, vegetables and breads as well as gourmet foods. Those basic foods are the mainstay of growers' markets. The specialty and gourmet lines are really add-ons. Were they and not basic foods the mainstay, then we would have substantially different types of markets catering mainly for foodies and an affluent clientele.

Back to dinner which Fiona made, my culinary expertise expiring after more than a single saucepan of frypan is needed. Here's what went into it, all but the Tasmanian cherry tomatoes and olive oil derived from Harvest:

  • olive oil for cooking from Glendale Olives in White Hills
  • organic haloumi cheese from Elgaar farm
  • scapes from Tasmanian Natural Garlic (scapes are garlic stems with the bulbils from which new garlic plants are grown — they've a strong garlic taste and if you haven't tried them I recommend you do)
  • greens of tatsu, spinach, matzuma and asparagus from the market gardeners at Harvest
  • Tasmanian cherry tomatoes procured elsewhere
  • regional market gardener carrot
  • sunflower seed roasted in soy and sweet chilli sauce from Coronea Grove.

Thankfully, Fiona knew how to put these together to produce a culinarily coherent and tasty meal of regional produce. I volunteered to wash up as my contribution.

THE PHOTO

The photo shows our haul from Harvest farmers' market:

  • fresh and succulent Tasmanian cherries and asparagus at top left pumpkin seed roasted in extra virgin olive oil and rock salt at top right
  • multigrain sourdough bread from Manubread at centre
  • fresh Tasmanian raspberries (Tasmania is the berry fruit capital of the southern hemisphere) at right
  • fresh and crunchy Tasmanian-grown golden delicious apples at lower right
  • garlic scapes at lower right
  • organic haloumi cheese lower centre, which we were told can be fried or eaten raw with salad
  • Tasmanian gala apple and sunflower seed roasted in soy and sweet chilli sauce at lower right.

[button link="http://harvestmarket.org.au" size="small" target="self"]Visit Harvest Growers' Market's website[/button]

 

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