Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

Defending food sovereignty by building a people’s alternative to capitalism and free trade  

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Regional Meeting for Asia of the Land and Territory Working Group of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty: AFSA Report

8-14 October 2018 

 Sarah de Wit

 

Source: La Via Campesina

 This report aims to:

  • Report back on the meetings, workshops and direct actions relating to progress of the food sovereignty movement.  
  • Report back on the IMF/WB agenda in Bali.  
  • Explain and reinforce understanding of AFSA’s membership with IPC and its Asia Pacific Regional Committee.  
  • Refer to the history of IPC and the Working Group on Land and Territories and AFSA’s involvement to date.  
  • Provide members of AFSA transparency regarding funding for the trip.  
  • To give AFSA supporters the knowledge to fully understand the context of these meetings in order to solidify AFSA’s organisational priorities and to encourage the food sovereignty movement in Australia to cohere and work together more effectively and with better opportunity for democratic participation. 

Background  

Stepping out of my usual role as Paralegal for AFSA, from 8th – 14th October this year I attended regional meetings for the Asian Land and Territory Working Group of the International Planning Committee (IPC) for Food Sovereignty in Bali, after being nominated by the AFSA Committee to represent our organisation and our members.  

AFSA has been an active member of the IPC for Food Sovereignty for five years. As part of the Regional Facilitating Committee for Asia Pacific since 2016, AFSA was invited to attend the regional meetings as well as workshops and political actions that followed.  

I had the opportunity to participate as a delegate for IPC Asia and to receive a funded spot within the IPC budget. This meant that AFSA did not cover my international travel costs and expenses. The IPC designates interested delegates by prioritising geographical, gender and constituency representation, such as youth, women or indigenous people. While I am not a farmer or rural dweller, as a young woman I was empowered to attend because of the composition criteria of the IPC Working Group.  

The Meeting for the Land and Territories Working Group 

Corresponding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group Annual Meetings [1] in Bali from 8th – 14th October 2018, the meetings were called by the IPC Working Group for Land and Territories[2] to bring together peasant organisations from across the region to defend food sovereignty and the rights of peasants.[3]  

This followed a call from La Via Campesina to mobilise for the International Day of Action against WTO and Free Trade Agreements on 10th September 2018. The meetings and workshops were also held before 16th October, the International Day of Action for Peoples’ Food Sovereignty and against Transnational corporations.  

On the way to our hotel, I saw countless flags branded with the IMF and World Bank meeting logo lining the streets. Each flag featured the word “welcome” in different languages, welcoming finance ministers and central bank governors from more than 180 countries to Bali. My taxi driver told me that there would be 30,000 individuals travelling to Bali for the IMF World Bank meetings. A new toll had been set up to finance upgrades to the roads between the airport and Nusa Dua, in preparation for the meetings. I was astounded to hear that the Indonesian government had spent more than $75 million to host the three-day IMF and World Bank meetings, especially after the tsunami and earthquake incidents in Sulawesi had happened a mere week before. I later learned from an ABC article that the Indonesian Opposition criticised the government for its hosting budget (which far exceeded that of previous host countries [4]) and called for money to be diverted to earthquake victims in the cities of Palu and Donggala.  

 

Toll point constructed in preparation for the IMF World Bank meetings.

At the IPC meetings, delegates and participants from Asia and Australia as well as Africa, Americas and Europe, unanimously held the World Bank and IMF responsible for facilitating large-scale land grabbing, deforestation and ocean grabbing, which has led to increasing inequality, poverty and global hunger. The meetings were facilitated by Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), the Indonesian Peasant Union, a member of La Via Campesina and the IPC.   

We discussed what strategic support we would expect from the IPC, what fields of work proposed by the IPC Working Group would support our struggles and, according to the priorities discussed, what plans of action we could commit to.  After the presentation and approval of the agenda, we had a session on the IPC Land and Territory WG and its work plan, reviewing the 2017 WG meeting, presenting the WG and its working methods, and presenting the resolutions of the previous IPC general meeting. We also discussed the renewal of the coordination group and identified interested organisations in coordination. Discussions surrounded our response to peasant and advocate criminalisation, our communication strategy and the deepening of our vision of people’s governance according to the priorities that came out of our working groups.  

The consensus among delegates was that the World Bank and IMF have taken control of the global food chain and placed it into the hands of agribusiness and development speculators, while creating devastating impacts on food production, rural people, markets and the ecosystems affected.  

 


The South East Asian Working group breakout session. Source: LVC Twitter

 A Media Release by La Via Campesina (LVC), the international peasant’s movement, reported on the struggles of various countries according to their representatives, including Indonesia, Timor Leste, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, South Korea, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and also allies from Kenya, France, Nicaragua, Germany and Argentina. Many cited the major factors contributing to the forced displacement and development of peasant communities by the World Bank and IMF.  

For over three decades, the IMF and World Bank have “forced countries to decrease investment in food production and to reduce support for peasant and small farmers.” LVC also reported that, because of “neo-liberal policies, state managed food reserves have been considered too expensive and governments have been forced to reduce and privatise them under structural adjustment regimes.” 

Ms Jeongyeol Kim from the Korean Women Peasants’ Association pointed out the impact of free trade agreements and export-oriented agribusiness models on women farmers.  

“Peasant women face the worst of this industrial model, that is heavy on use of chemical inputs. This shift in the way we do agriculture came about largely due to conditions put forth by IMF and World Bank while giving loans.” 

Baramee Chairayat from Assembly of the Poor, Thailand said:  

“The National Development Plan in Thailand always had the blessing of World Bank and it meant that agricultural land and public forests were being diverted to make way for massive highways, large agribusiness plantations and sugar cane factories. Over a period of four decades much of rural Thailand has become landless. They have enacted laws that alienated indigenous peoples from their forest.” 

Zainal Arifin Fuad, national peasant leader from SPI, said:  

 “World Bank and IMF have, in the name of Structural Adjustment Programme, pushed for financialisation and privatisation of natural resources in Indonesia. When people resist these land grabs – taking place whether in the name of REDD+ or any other such programs – peasants are attacked, jailed and criminalised. We have the most recent case of Ahmad Azhari, who was kept in prison for nearly 9 months for defending the rights of peasants. All these institutions are here to help corporations expand their businesses rather than lifting people out of poverty.” 

AFSA shared solidarity with the movement by firstly stating Australia’s direct hand in contributing to free trade and export-oriented deals across the globe. As a country that voted against the recently adopted UN Declaration for the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, Australia is seen by many rural communities of Asia as one third of the “evil three” in the context of globalisation. During a working group discussion at the meeting, I stated that AFSA is working to build local, state and national government support for small-scale farming. I shared our successes in making planning permit applications cheaper and easier for small-scale farmers through our lobbying efforts. I also described the work of our Legal Defence Fund (LDF) which has in its first year supported farmers with their planning permits, given advice about alternative milk supply chains, responded to spray drift concerns in the urban and rural context, and made nearly a dozen law reform submissions to state and national governments relating to food and agriculture regulations. I also talked about the significant loss of farmland to peri-urban growth, and due to roads and infrastructure development and the increasing expansion of large-scale, concentrated farming methods. 

I was asked to expand on the concerns of indigenous peoples within Australia for control over land, water and seeds. While I could not represent the voice of Aboriginal people, I touched on the impact of the intellectual property regime in relation to native foods and the expression of Aboriginal culture. AFSA has strategised over these issues, significantly since Bruce Pascoe spoke at our 2017 Convergence, which had a major impact on our work for food sovereignty in Australia.  

We hope the IPC Working Group on Land and Territories will continue to open regional spaces for policy discussion and strengthen relationships between social movements. The IPC’s contribution to formulating the Declaration for the Rights of Peasants will further validate the experiences of small-scale farming in Australia. In turn, small-scale farmers are to enjoy newly formed rights given to them by way of being captured under the definition of “peasant” in that Declaration[5]. I committed at that time, on behalf of AFSA, to promote the legitimacy of the Declaration by lobbying to our national government and its departments.  

After long hours of meetings and working groups, I spent evenings in the lobby of the hotel working with newfound friends and allies from India, Argentina, Germany and Nicaragua. We designated the lobby as “The Office” where we would share resources, work for our separate organisations, socialise and reflect on the meetings.  

 

“The Office”.

Workshops and Direct Actions 

The Working Group also hosted a series of events with allies in Bali to protest against the neoliberalist agendas of the World Bank and IMF which promote free market trade regimes responsible for destroying rural peasant communities, fishers’ livelihoods and peasant markets.  

Under the theme of “A World Beyond Banks”, the workshops enabled a broad assembly of peoples’ movements, indigenous peoples, peasants, fisherfolks, workers, migrants, women, youth, LGBTQI people and others adversely affected by the IMF and World Bank’s agenda to meet and strategise.  

The event was organised and facilitated by Gerak Lawan, the Indonesian peoples’ movement against neo-colonialism and imperialism. The workshops included joint public forums on extractivism, monetisation, commodification, and infrastructure. We were fortunate to have the location provided by TVRI, the national broadcasting television network of Indonesia.  

As we entered the TVRI auditorium, an open picture board was visible behind the registration table. The photos, showing the struggles of rural workers’ alliances, women peasants and many others against neoliberalism, were powerful to say the least.

  

Nged Khow from APWLD, Cambodia (Mrs Khow came to the workshops to talk about her campaign to save her farm. I was honoured to meet her and hold her hand as she shared her story with me through her interpreter).  

These photos were eventually taken down by Gerak Lawan members to reduce the risk of the event being shut down by local police.  

 Women played a strong role in many aspects of the workshops. This is unsurprising as most of the world’s food is grown by peasant women [6]. I was personally inspired to see Indonesia’s women’s solidarity group, Solidaritas Perempuan and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development contributing significantly to the discussions and strategising for development justice for women. Women voices led most of the workshops, forums and direct-action preparation.   

An entire working group session was dedicated to a gender discussion, “Food Sovereignty: Power Gender and Right to Food” on 12 October at the TVRI Auditorium. The speakers highlighted the failure of the IMF’s gender equality policies, where women empowerment is promoted by way of encouraging market-based solutions to market access. Instead of assisting women in the labour force to have control over their own land, the IMF maintains that women should set up their own bank accounts to access financial services in an increasingly precarious and deregulated market.  

Among the speakers was Ms Kim from KWPA, an active member of the IPC and LVC.  

    

 

I was impressed and motivated by the leadership shown by the feminist organisations present and their drive and motivation to carry out advocacy, activism and movement building. Their efforts significantly advance women’s human dignity and development justice in the region.  

At the auditorium, we were also joined by grassroots organisations such as the Asia Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, Focus on the Global South, Fight Inequality Alliance, ReCommon, Indonesia Legal Aid Foundation, FTA Watch, World Forum of Fisher People, Peoples Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA), Center for Financial Accountability, Bina Desa, Coalition for Human Rights in Development, IFI Watch Myanmar, OT Watch Mongolia, Oakland Institute, Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), Indonesia for Global Justice (IGJ), and many others.  

The program for the workshops was designed to match the discussions being had at the IMF World Bank meetings themselves, canvassing issues relating to social justice, feminism, civil societies, the future of work, transparency and impunity of international financial institutions, and others.  

Some effective protests were held around the Nusa Dua for reclamation of farmland and ocean territory. While arrests were made two days prior, quick legal assistance provided by Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation and Solidaritus Perempuan meant that the protesters were released without charges.  

Disappointingly for many, the delegates of the regional meeting for IPC were not granted police approval for a public protest by this time and were unable to participate in direct action for safety reasons. Despite this, we supported the above grassroots organisations in stating truth to power in their objectives to the police when the TVRI was investigated on 14 October.  

  

 

 Action!  

Delegates and peasant organisations have pledged to expose the incriminating role of World Bank and IMF in increasing inequality, land dispossession and poverty.  

We agreed to continue to denounce the existence of World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation as well as expose the details of corporate agreements that threaten to take away people’s food sovereignty and allow expansion of markets for multinational agribusinesses. 

AFSA agreed to write a letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) about our position on the forthcoming Australia/European Union Free Trade Agreement. While we have not received an update from DFAT about this agreement, we intend to work with our allies in Europe to draft this letter expressing our views towards the agreement. We will refer to the experiences of the delegates and peasant organisations at the meetings and workshops in Bali. On behalf of AFSA, I agreed to help promote the legitimacy of the Declaration of Peasants’ Rights in Australia by lobbying our national government and discussing this strategy with AFSA and its supporters at our annual Convergence.  

La Via Campesina continues to denounce the impunity with which destructive policies are pushed forth by World Bank and IMF. As a member of LVC, AFSA will continue our campaigns for realising food sovereignty and freeing agriculture from trade negotiations. 

 

 

You can read about the history of the Indonesian resistance to WTO/WB/IMF HERE.

If you’d like to see more photos of this meeting and the events surrounding it, you can see some HERE.

 

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[1] The 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group took place in Bali Nusa Dua, Indonesia, and were held between the Boards of Governors of the IMF and the World Bank Group. Central bankers, ministers of finance and development, parliamentarians, private sector executives, representatives from civil society organizations (progressively becoming key components in a global context often described as neoliberalisation) and academics were given a luxury business travel package to attend and discuss “issues of global concern, including the world economic outlook, poverty eradication, economic development, and aid effectiveness.” In addition to the meetings of the Boards of Governors, the Development Committee and the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) convened.

[2] This Working Group is endorsed and has full support of the all the IPC organisations on a specific priority theme. They are open and flexible structures, formed on an ad hoc basis with an open working methodology. They work in coordination with the Facilitating Committee on issues relating to land, indigenous peoples, fisheries, livestock, agroecology, genetic resources and trade.  It is supported by human rights organisations, Focus on the Global South and FIAN International.

[3] According to the IPC Terms of Reference, the delegates formed an agenda for the meetings including discussions on each organisation or country’s regional priorities for food sovereignty and challenges regarding the control of natural resources (land, water, fisheries, forests).

[4] The Indonesian Opposition, the Fair and Prosperous Coalition, argued that as a host of the IMF World Bank meetings, Indonesia is only required to provide venues, simple catering, and accommodation, yet the amount being spent far exceeds that of previous host countries.

[5] Article 1.1 a peasant is any person who engages or who seeks to engage alone, or in association with others or as a community, in small-scale agricultural production for subsistence and/or for the market, and who relies significantly, though not necessarily exclusively, on family or household labour and other non-monetized ways of organizing labour, and who has a special dependency on and attachment to the land

[6] Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Role of Women in Agriculture.<http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/am307e/am307e00.pdf>.

 

Ending Hunger With Dr. M. Jahi Chappell

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16 of October 2018
6:30PM
Library at The Docks
Melbourne, VIC

 

About Ending Hunger With Dr. Jahi Chappell

Ending Hunger with Jahi Chappell is an opportunity to hear from author, scholar, and political agroecologist Dr. M. Jahi Chappell as he discusses food sovereignty and ending hunger through the lens of his book, Beginning to End Hunger: Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond.

Beginning to End Hunger presents the story of Belo Horizonte, home to 2.5 million people and the site of one of the world’s most successful food security programs. Since its Municipal Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security was founded in 1993, Belo Horizonte has sharply reduced malnutrition, leading it to serve as an inspiration for Brazil’s renowned Zero Hunger programs. The secretariat’s work with local family farmers shows how food security, rural livelihoods, and healthy ecosystems can be supported together. In this convincing case study,

M. Jahi Chappell establishes the importance of holistic approaches to food security, suggests how to design successful policies to end hunger, and lays out strategies for enacting policy change. With these tools, we can take the next steps toward achieving similar reductions in hunger and food insecurity elsewhere in the developed and developing worlds.

The event kicks off at 6:30pm with opening drinks & nibbles.
Dr. M. Jahi Chappell will speak at 7pm.
After his presentation, atendees will have the opportunity to ask questions and chat over closing drinks & nibbles.

About Dr. M. Jahi Chappell 

Dr. M. Jahi Chappell is a political agroecologist with training in ecology, evolutionary biology, science and technology studies, and chemical engineering. He is a Senior Research Fellow in Agroecology and Agricultural Policy at Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), a Fellow of FoodFirst/the Institute for Food and Development Polilcy, and an Adjunct Faculty member of the School of the Environment at Washington State University.

Dr. Chappell has worked with and consulted for groups like Via Campesina, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the urban agriculture nonprofits Growing Hope (Ypsilanti, Mich.) and Growing Gardens (Portland, Ore.).

This event is proudly sponsored by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, The Australian Open Food Network, and the Right to Food Coalition.

 

For tickets to the event, head to: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ending-hunger-with-dr-jahi-chappell-tickets-50847947580

This event is proudly sponsored by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, Open Food Network Australia, and the Right to Food Coalition.

A food-filled evening with the teachers

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Story by Russ Grayson, March 2015

KAREN raided her parent’s garden in Orange, a small city out on the flat lands of NSW’s middle western reaches. Then she hopped the fence to collect from the neighbour’s lemon and lime trees. This she combined with home-grown produce from her own Sydney garden.

Margaret obtained her vegetables from the vegetable co-op. She made a beetroot leaf salad by adding vegetables grown in the garden of her preschool. To top it off in a delicious way, she brought along some of her homemade tomato sauce and, to wash it down, the distinct taste of her homemade kambucha, a fermented concoction to which she added fruit from her garden.

Deb was different. Faced with a serious over-production of tiny tim tomatoes at the end of last growing season, she put them in her blender and froze the pulp. This, she said, was the way she gets to eat her own tomatoes out of season, and this she offered spread on sourdough bread fresh from the oven that morning, accompanied by cooked broad bean stems and leaves from her garden.
Julie did something different. She used her leftover food to make a tasty vegetable curry to which she added fresh veges.

I mention only a few of the culinarily-innovative foods we were treated to at the ECEEN (Early Childhood Environmental Education Network) end-of-year gathering last year that brought preschool educators from as far away as the Central Coast.

Talking about food

Eating time for Deb
Eating time for Deb

Julie had invited Fiona and I to make a presentation around food, but rather than offering the usual monolog followed by questions that is the standard offering at such events, we went for an interview and conversation format that we had used elsewhere.

Fiona, the interviewer, asked me about food sovereignty, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, community gardens and more, and encouraged participants to share their knowledge and experience as well as their questions that were answered not only by Fiona and I but by others, too.

This created a conversation rather than a presentation. Definitely no Powerpoint.

Preschools have changed

The Clovelly preschool was a superb venue for such a convivial gathering. It was far from my clearly-obsolete mental image of a preschool. How else could I account for its raised garden beds full of vegetables, chook yard with spaceous chook house, solar panels on the roof, rainwater tanks to irrigate the garden, compost bins, shady trees, bark-mulched playground equipped with natural stuff for the children to use in creative play, and what I can only describe as ‘sustainability practices’?

Some of that produce that the children and educators grow is taken by the cook to turn into fresh-food lunches for the children. In having these features, I learned, the Clovelly preschool centre is far from alone. Seems there’s a new ethos, new to me, anyway, among those preschoool educators who were engaged in animated conversation around the long table loaded with their homemade foods. I thought, during our guided tour of the centre, of the preschool at the Randwick Community Centre with its rainwater tanks and little vegetable garden.

Teachers go low-waste

The theme of this that evening, what the educators called their ‘sustainable table’, was that they would make and bring along as low-waste a meal as they could manage. Behind it lay the reality—deficiencies and waste are better words—of our food system so well documented by the state government’s Love Food Hate Waste website.

On the pages of that website you find the reality—that 30 to 50 percent of all food produced on the planet is not eaten (And they say we face an imminent food shortage? Seems more a shortage of imagination to me); that people each produce around 360 kilograms of food waste annually in Australia—that totals to around $5 billion worth; that food makes up around one-third of all our municipal rubbish. And here in Sydney, a city that positions itself as a national leader (but that continues to fall well behind Melbourne in urban liveability assessments), 300,000 tonnes of the food we buy is thrown away—for those who like numbers, that’s $2.5 billion worth.

Questions only a guide

We prepared a set of questions before the event, not to slavishly follow, but as a guide to getting the conversation started. The beauty of the interview/conversation format is that you can cease using your prepared questions and go into the free flow of the conversation that develops, only returning to the questions if the conversation drifts off onto a side track.

As it turned out, and as these types of sessions often turn out, all of the questions we had prepared were covered, though not in the order they had been written, and not by deliberately asking the questions but by using what the participants said as the opening for what we had already thought of talking about.

A question of sovereignty

What surprised me was the response to one of our opening questions as to what ‘sovereignty’ means—as in ‘food sovereignty’. It seems most had a fairly clear idea of this, saying that it means ownership. From there it was easy to seque into defining, through questions, what sovereignty might mean for our food system.

In some ways our conversation was one of talking with people most of whom were familiar with the idea of ‘good’ food, as in nutritionally good, and ‘local’ food. A number were home growers and their childcare centres already have little kitchen gardens. Cynics might dismiss the value of talking with people who are already following the same path to good, local and fair food, however that would be a mistake based on a misunerstanding of how education works and of how ideas spread through society.

Rather than ‘preaching to the converted’, as the tired old cliche goes, conversations such as we led become educational devices to explore and extend what people know, often by their freely sharing their experience and insights. Those people, then, go back to their workplaces and their communities to influence others, probably more by doing than talking.

We can think of this as the ‘ripple effect’, or, better still, as a network of localised ripple effects spreading from the participant’s preschool centres. Time spent in the mutual education of those that already are engaged in something—I think the term is ‘social learning’, I picked that up from a professional evaluator from UNSW, Phil Booth—turns them into colleagues rather than students. And that’s time well spent.

Lib-Dems offer little hope for a fair food future

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Story by Russ Grayson, March 2015

THIS IS A STORY of surprise, hope and disappointment. It is about the surprise that a libertarian has been elected to the Australian senate, hope that he would be the variety of libertarian that supports freedom, social liberalism and a secure future for our citizens rather than big corporations, and disappointment at finding that he and his party are not.

As a fair food advocate, I hoped that his party would support Australia’s small-to-medium scale farmers, our food processing industry and we food buyers. I’m sure he would say that he does, however I suspect that his party’s policies would work against it.

David Leyonhjelm (photo source: Wikipedia)
David Leyonhjelm (photo source: Wikipedia)

Here’s the background to this sudden appearance of a political philosophy that has been marginal to Australian politics: On 1 July 2014 became the first senate representative for the supposedly-libertarian party, the Liberal Democrats, founded in 2001. The party has two representatives in local government — Jeff Pettett at Ku-ring-gai Council in northern Sydney and Clinton Mead at Campbelltown Council on Sydney’s south-western urban fringe. It is likely that David’s election can be in-part attributed to the party being listed first on the senate voting form and its being mistaken for the Liberal Party.

For the Liberal Democrats the precedent is John Singleton and Bob Howard’s Workers Party of the 1970s, Australia’s first libertarian political party that combined classical right-libertarianism with populism (the party later changed its name to The Progress Party). I remember them saying that those who want a governor-general should pay for the role, and that sounded a good idea to me. But the party had little voter appeal and didn’t persist, becoming extinct by 1981.

Search for a better politics

Libertarianism is a political and economic philosophy that through its modern history has had little currency on the Australian political scene.  Its appeal to many is that it is seen to offer an alternative to the tired old divisions of Left and Right in the contemporary politics of Western nations.

“Might believers in modernity — whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — find ways to break free of the doctrinal rigidity that has been imposed on us by fanatics of both the so-called Left and the so-called Right?”

Scientist, science fiction author and libertarian, David Brin, summed up this need for a new politics:

[quote author=”Article: Alliance for the Modern World by David Brin” image=”http://afsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/David_Brin_at_ACM_CFP_2005dsc278c.jpg” w=”150″ h=”205″ image_align=”right” b]”It’s time to free ourselves from the old left-right axis of the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Might believers in modernity — whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — find ways to break free of the doctrinal rigidity that has been imposed on us by fanatics of both the so-called Left and the so-called Right?” (Source: Alliance for a Modern World. davidbrin.com).[/quote]

 

Political philosophy: a very brief and general excursion

Liberal_Democratic_PartyTo make sense of the Liberal Democrats, let’s take a brief excursion into libertarianism. I generalise for sake of brevity and to avoid losing readers in the arcane world or economic philosophy.

Libertarianism is like socialism only in that it is a political philosophy that comes in a range of flavours. Contemporary libertarianism is conveniently divided into what we might call ‘right-libertarianism’ and ‘left-libertarianism’ (what I would prefer to call its ‘communitarian’ branch).

Like most political philosophy it has leaky margins as there are large areas of agreement between the two — the right and left libertarians — epecially when it comes to civic and personal freedoms.  The difference is this: the economic freedom favoured by the right-libertarians favours the big corporations while that of left-libertarians favours more the small entities in the marketplace as well as the decentralisation of economic and political power. The right-libertarians, too, favour decentralising political power or defusing it altogether. Both agree that government is too big, too oppressive, too intrusive, too limiting of opportunity, too bureaucratic, too sluggish, too captured by its corporate paymasters and ideological fellow travellers, and should be diminished in scale and reach. Both agree that the main role of government should be to protect the freedom of the people.

Both of these flavours share a social philosophy that values personal freedoms and freedom from government interference in life. This notion of freedom from government intrusion in individual lives is what attracts many in the US to libertarianism there, where there is a deep suspicion and distrust of government. It is a sentiment that is growing as government and its agencies become more intrusive, more controlling and more dominant in the lives of citizens. It is a sentiment difficult to disagree with (unless your personal political philosophy lurches towards fascism or communism, supposedly polar opposite but really, to some extent at least, just look-alike ideologies, or towards other forms of authoritarianism).

Reading up on this stuff I was again surprised, though not this time at a libertarian being elected, but to discover that there is a libertarian thread — ‘green libertarianism’ — that Wikipedia says applies libertarian principles “in such a manner that environmental protection becomes necessary to maintain a free society.”

Surprise, hope and disappointment

My surprise and hope at learning of the Liberal Democrats was that here would be a party that would represent those without political power in this country, one that would represent individual citizens and small business, one that would create  corrective feedback to the growing dominance of the BIG ENTITIES in our lives — to market control by big corporations and social control by big government, and the assaults on freedom that these entities bring.

The danger of allowing those big entities… entities controlled by small groups of corporate, institutional, public service or government decision makers… too much power reminded me of something David Brin’s wrote:

[quote author=”David Brin” image=”http://afsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/David_Brin_at_ACM_CFP_2005dsc278c.jpg” w=”150″ h=”205″ image_align=”right” b]” …across 4,000 years we’ve seen that whenever a small group of men become powerful enough to control an economy and command-allocate its resources, they will do so according to biased perceptions, in-group delusions and fatally limited knowledge.

“Whether they do the normal oligarchic thing — cheating for self-interest — or else sincerely try to ‘allocate for the good of all,’ they will generally do it badly. As a blatant recent example… the collapse of the Soviet Union.”[/quote]

 

In hope of discovering a political entity with our various freedoms and with a philosophy of opportunity for all who want it at its core, I eagerly clicked through to the Liberal Democrats website and was encouraged to first see their statement of social principles supporting “civil society and volunteerism, civil liberties and individual freedom, individual liberty and personal responsibility under the rule of law”. Then there was “free markets and freedom of choice” in their economic principles.

For global market economic fundamentalists, any idea of protecting smaller economic entities and protecting Australians with legislation is anathema…

It’s here that my hope turned to disappointment. Further reading of the party’s principles put a different slant to their ‘free markets’ principle. It turns out that it is less about free markets for small-to-medium enterprises, farmers and sole traders, and more the shibboleth of free market fundamentalism that free, open, global markets benfefit all.

The problem with this is that the free global market tends to favour the big entities that inhabit it. In the case of our food system, their market power overwhelms the smaller farmers and food processors in this country and, through predatory pricing, advertising and PR budgets and other means, they marginalise the small-to-medium enterprise and drive them out of business. We know this because we see it happening with Australia’s supermarket duopoly.

For global market economic fundamentalists, any idea of protecting smaller economic entities and protecting Australians with legislation is anathema. They are willing to see those smaller, less-economically-powerful entities disappear, to see Australia’s lands sold to the highest bidder, to lobby against laws that protect the public. As much as I agree with their social principles, that was my disappointment with the Liberal Democrats. So was their social welfare policy that seems more like an expression of creative writing and wishful thinking based in an ignorance of the realities of the contemporary labour market and possibly leading to social darwinism. Privatising the social net ignores the reality of relying on a market that fluctuates and in so doing puts people’s wellbeing at risk.

A better libertarian thread

To those who support the smaller rather than the larger, who support the individual freedoms and civil rights that have made liberal democracies better places to live than the various banana republics, oligarchies, authoritarian command-and-control societies and theocracies that litter our planet, and to those to whom freedom is a basic life principle, elements of the Liberal Democrats program will appeal while others will turn them off simply because — like their policy for an unregulated free market — they contradict their social principles in that it would limit opportunity for those less-economically well off.

…the name you’ll never hear (them) mention… is Adam Smith, whose version of libertarianism adults still look to from time to time…

This leads me to wonder whether there is a thread of libertarianism that would be truly refreshing and new in Australian politics, one based on pragmatism instead of the tired ideologies that laid waste much of the Twentieth Century, one that is science-literate and that places the wellbeing and future of Australians first, including our primary producers catering to the domestic market and the industry and people who depend on them. Perhaps the nearest is that espoused by David Brin, who writes of those libertarians that favour big powerful economic entities:

[quote author=”David Brin” image=”http://afsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/David_Brin_at_ACM_CFP_2005dsc278c.jpg” w=”150″ h=”205″ image_align=”right” b]” …the name you’ll never hear (them) mention… is Adam Smith, whose version of libertarianism adults still look to from time to time.

“A version that admires and promotes individualism and the stunning power of human competition, but also recognizes that competitive-creative markets and democracy and science only achieve their wondrous positive sum games when carefully regulated… the way soccer or football must be, lest the strongest just form one team and stomp every potential rival flat and then gouge out their eyes… which is exactly what winner-owner-oligarch-lords did in every human culture for 6000 years. Till Adam Smith came along and described how to get the good outcomes without the bad.

“The stealing of Adam Smith’s movement by fanatics and cynically manipulative oligarchs is not just a tragedy for the right, and for market capitalism. It is tragic for civilization.”[/quote]

 

Brin continues his economic critique when writing in Alliance for a Modern World: “We believe small business is the engine of innovation and a vibrant economy, and motivated workers provide its thrust. Specific Proposal: Reforms that energize small business should get priority over those that benefit narrow elites, who can afford to lobby for themselves.”

So, what do we need by way of an economic system? How about an economy free of the dominance of a small number of big corporations and the faceless men and women who are their decision makers… a ‘natural’ market based on people selling and buying as sole traders, as small or medium sized businesses, whatever it is that they trade in, whether goods or services… a ‘freed market’, let’s call it.  What we can call it is something, disappointingly, that the Liberal Democrats do not offer us.

Let’s use the analogy of the farmers’ market — growers and food processors directly offering their goods for sale free of the local presence of market-distorting and dominating supermarkets.

Such a freed market is best accompamied by a free society where government makes a big effort to keep out of people’s private lives as much as possible and declines to legislate on things that have no negative social impact or that would benefit some wealthy or political elite.

For those of us looking for a way forward, a way out of the straitjackets of make-it-up-as-you-go, self-seeking Labor and Liberal policy, and those of us seeking to move forward from the tired and now-expired, simpleton divisions of Left/Right so increasingly irrelavent in the contemporary world, for those tired of the cynical politics of the electoral cycle, the Liberal Democrats offer us no solution. Sad.

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

by

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

 

* * * *

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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