Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

AFSA Makes Submission to National Food Plan Consultation

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Today (2 September 2011) the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance made its submission to the National Food Plan Consultation, being conducted by the Federal Department of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. Our submission challenged the core assumptions and general approach which the Issues Paper reflected, with the following paragraph summarising our perspective:

Basically, the main point we want to make is that the Issues Paper in its essential aspects and its core assumptions continues to perpetuate the comfortable presumption that the future will look much like the past, and therefore downplays the urgent need for change towards much more resilient, sustainable and fair food and farming systems. We need a National Food Plan that presents to the Australian public a convincing vision of food and farming systems that will successfully meet the pressing challenges of the present and the future. At the heart of this vision must lie the recognition that food is a basic human right that everyone is entitled to; it is not simply another commodity produced for export and profit."

Download the full submission here: AFSA Response to the National Food Plan Issues Paper (Sep 2011).

Organisations endorse AFSA request for participation in the National Food Policy Advisory Working Group

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Organisations representing over 500,000 Australians endorsed the call by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance for its inclusion in the National Food Policy Advisory Working Group.

Farmers' groups such as Biodynamic Agriculture Australia and the Carbon Coalition, the Australian Farmers' Markets Association, community networks such as the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Networks, and environmental organisations like Friends of the Earth and the Queensland Conservation Council, all supported this call, which to date has not been met with a positive response.

AFSA calls on all its supporters and like-minded organisations to write to the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Senator Joe Ludwig, insisting that this group's membership be broaded to truly reflect the diverse range of actions and perspectives on food and farming in Australia. AFSA also urges all its supporters to work with us and like-minded groups in building a truly democratic and participatory process for developing national food policy in Australia.

You can download the letter with the full list of supporters here.

Text of the letter

Senator Hon Joseph Ludwig
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600 Australia

By email: senator.ludwig@aph.gov.au

31st March, 2011

Dear Minister

Food Policy Advisory Working Group

We acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 22nd October 2010, in which you advised that a wide range of stakeholders and views would be considered in developing a National Food Plan for Australia. Subsequently, you announced the formation of a National Food Policy Advisory Group in December 2010.

We now urge the inclusion of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance national spokesperson Michael Croft, of Mountain Creek Farm (near Canberra), on this Food Policy Advisory Group. As now constituted, this Group’s membership is too narrow, and excludes the new ways of thinking necessary to the transformation of Australian food and farming systems. In the formation of policy on such fundamental matters as food and agriculture, a wide diversity of voices, opinions and expertise needs to be heard and acted upon.

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) speaks to the aspirations of the many millions of Australians – farmers and non- farmers alike - who want a more equitable, sustainable, resilient and democratic national food system. We have set out the vision of such a system in our Manifesto, launched on 10 December, 2010. This is the vision of Food Sovereignty, now a global movement for change embracing hundreds of millions of people in every continent, led by the family farmers’ movement, La Via Campesina.

Australian and global food systems are at a critical juncture. Political, farmer, community and business leaders have an unprecedented opportunity to lay the foundations of a national food system that can be truly multi-functional, resilient and sustainable: creating jobs and prosperity; nurturing generations of healthy Australians; caring for the land, its magnificent and diverse ecosystems, and for the people who live and work within them.

The need for bold change is urgent and unavoidable. ‘Business as usual’, in food and farming, is no longer an option, but that is the mind set of those already appointed to the National Food Policy Advisory Group. Our soils are degrading. Our farmers are in crisis. Our national health is deteriorating – shockingly, the current generation of children will be the first in our history to have a reduced life expectancy, as a result of the obesity epidemic. This would be an appalling legacy to leave for future generations.

Yet a transformed national food system can address all these challenges: it can restore our soils and ecosystems to abundant fertility; it can provide high-quality food for all; and it can do so in ways that guarantee the viability of farmers, so that young people will once again want to embrace agriculture as a career of choice.

AFSA has received direct written endorsement of its inclusion on this Advisory Group from the following diverse array of organisations right around Australia. Collectively these organisations have membership and support bases of more than 500,000 individuals, farmers and non-farmers alike:

  • Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network
  • Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network
  • Australian Farmers Markets Association (150 farmers markets across Australia)
  • Biodynamic Agriculture Australia
  • Canberra Food Fairness Alliance
  • Carbon Coalition Food Alliance (Victoria)
  • Food Connect Foundation
  • Food Irradiation Watch
  • Friends of the Earth Australia
  • Gene Ethics Greenpeace Australia, True Food Network
  • Healthy Soils Australia
  • Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE)
  • Organic Federation of Australia
  • Queensland Conservation Council
  • Resources Consulting Services
  • Slow Food Australia
  • South Australian Organic & Biodynamic Alliance
  • Sustain Queensland
  • Sydney Organic Gardens Pty Ltd
  • Tasmanian Community Gardens Network

We would welcome the opportunity to brief you and your colleagues directly about AFSA and the unique and deeply participatory perspective we will bring to the Advisory Group.

Yours sincerely

Nick Rose National Coordinator,
Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

AFSA renews its request to be included in the Federal Food Policy Advisory Working Group

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On 27 May the AFSA sent a Letter to the Federal Minister of Agriculture Joe Ludwig, renewing our request made at the end of March 2011 to be included in the Food Policy Advisory Working Group.

Earlier in May we had been contacted by the National Food Policy Unit at the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, explaining in effect that the Advisory Working Group was only intended to include 'food chain interests', and that a broader national consultation would take place in the form of an issues paper and submissions on a food policy for Australia.

A call for broad national consultation

While we welcome the intention to conduct a broad national consultation, we remain concerned at the lack of transparency in the current process with the Food Policy Advisory Group. No minutes of its two meetings have been made public, for example. We also remain concerned at its narrow composition, and remain firmly convinced that much broader community participation is required in this forum and indeed in all forums that are working towards a national food policy for Australia.

Echo our perspectives

We invite all our supporters to echo the perspectives advanced in our letter to Minister Ludwig regarding these matters of vital national and community interest, by writing directly to the Minister at:

  • senator.ludwig@aph.gov.au.

AFSA online questionnaire

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What will be our key tasks for AFSA?

Your feedback is helpful

The AFSA is asking supporters & colleagues to help us define our key tasks and set our orientation in these new unchartered political waters.

Please take 10-20 minutes to complete the AFSA online questionnaire by clicking here.

AFSA-questionnaire

Media Release – August 2010 Letter to Politicians

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In August 2010, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance produced a letter supporting the participation of the social enterprise and small food business sector, as well as the community food sector, in the development of a national policy on food.

The letter has been circulated and a number of organisations and individuals active in food systems, in food education and food issues have signed. The letter is to go to:

  • Tony Burke MP, federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
  • Ray Hopper MP, Shadow Minister for Food Security and Agriculture (including Fisheries and Biosecurity)
  • Senator Christine Milne, Australian Greens climate change and biosecurity spokeswoman.

The letter will be simultaneously released to the media.

A modest proposal

The letter proposes that the formulation of a national policy on food should be a democratic process involving the full range of food interests. The Alliance is concerned that only large corporate organisations would be included in its formulation and that this could skew the emphasis of a policy away from building a resilient food system in Australia that is inclusive of farmers (including market gardeners and small farmers), food processors and distributors including the emerging community-based food distribution systems.

The Alliance believes that economic scale and power should not be the sole criteria for participation in the formulation of a national policy on food. Our food system would work better by recognising the social value of diversity in food systems in delivering citizens the type of food they prefer at a price they can afford. Market conditions force the small, community-based food initiatives and the social enterprise and small, for-profit food businesses to be innovative in their work. This can only add value to any deliberation over a national policy on food.

Read the August 2010 Letter to Politicians here. Download the Letter to Politicians.

 

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