People's Food Plan Archives - Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

A smart, crowdsourced plan for a better food system

November 28, 2014 by Russ Grayson

The Peoples’ Food Plan — conceived to reform the federal government’s proposed National Food Plan by including Australia’s smaller-scale farmers and the myriad small business, social enterprise and community-based food initiatives that populate our commercial and civil society — was Australia’s first crowdsourced policy directions document.

The Plan continues as a manifesto of good ideas and community and smallholder needs even though the federal government has abandoned the idea of a national food plan. Within its pages are the aspirations and innovations that would make ours a fairer, more secure and resilient food system that benefits all Australians.

A theme running through the Plan is that without secure access to and control over our food, and without authentic freedom of choice when it comes to food, we lack the basis for any lasting personal, community and national development.

By putting our own people — our farmers, Australian businesses, our own communities — first when making decisions about our food future we become better able to provide fairly for our own needs and to play our role in helping feed those beyond our borders.

In a time of change such as we now find ourselves in, creating a fair food system that offers opportunity to small-to-medium farming and economic enterprises, to the people with ideas and for our citizens is a matter of personal, community, economic and national security. The Peoples’ Food Plan sets a fair and sensible course to these things… to a resilient food system. In this endeavour we invite you to join us.

Together we can built a better, more resilient food future… here’s how to join the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance.

[button_link url=”http://afsa.org.au/peoples-food-plan/” target=”” style=”” title=”” class=”” id=”” onclick=””]Find the Peoples’ Food Plan here[/button_link]

Nick Rose departs on Churchill Fellowship trip

July 19, 2014 by

Last year I was fortunate to be one of around 100 people in Australia awarded a Churchill Fellowship. These Fellowships have been awarded to about 3,500 Australians since 1965, to support them for a period of some week’s overseas travel, in order to learn about significant innovations in diverse spheres of social life and bring back lessons that may be of wider benefit to the Australian community.

My research trip is to investigate innovative models of urban agriculture in a variety of sites in the United States (Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit), as well as Toronto and a number of centres in Argentina, to return with any lessons that may be of value in strengthening and expanding the nascent urban agriculture movement in Australia. My decision to apply for a Churchill Fellowship followed on from case study research I was involved in with Griffith University (see the Burton pdf attached) in 2012, exploring the scale and nature of urban agriculture in Melbourne.

I also have a strong personal commitment to working for fair and sustainable food systems in general, having been centrally involved in the People’s Food Plan process as the National Coordinator of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance. The Churchill Fellowship coincides with a new post I began in September last year, to coordinate the establishment of a Food Systems Network (Victoria / National), with the Food Alliance .This has developed into a project to establish an Urban and Regional Food Network, with a key focus being the creation of an Urban Food Charter.

I am hopeful that the lessons I can bring back from the travel can enhance the momentum and enthusiasm we’re already creating with the Urban and Regional Food Charter project, which I see in many respects as a continuation of the work begun in 2012 and 2013 with the People’s Food Plan. In visiting the various organisations and projects, my aim is to engage in open and wide-ranging discussions, including broader issues of socio-economic context and structural disadvantage. I am particularly interested in two questions:

What is the potential of urban agriculture to make a substantive contribution to food security and food sovereignty of the families, communities and individuals involved and / or supported by these organisations and their projects?
What is the potential of urban agriculture to be a source of community development, in terms of generating employment and additional income for hard-pressed family budgets, and helping to establish self-sustaining local and regional food economies?

I am very excited to be departing on this trip and equally excited to share the knowledge and experience I gain with as many people as possible on my return.

I will be blogging regularly about my trip.

[button_link url=”http://www.nick-rose.com/” target=”blank” style=”” title=”” class=”” id=”” onclick=””] Follow my blog … [/button_link]

Food sovereignty and permaculture: A reply to David Holmgren

May 10, 2014 by Nick Rose

Story by Dr Nick Rose, National Coordinator, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, 10 May 2014

In the first issue of pip Australian Permaculture Magazine, the co-originator of permaculture, David Holmgren wrote about food sovereignty, and the role permaculture can and does play in achieving it.

David’s vision of a permaculture-inspired food secure and food sovereign-future for Australia, made manifest in the abundance of food growing, gleaning, harvesting and sharing throughout our towns, cities and rural areas, is one I entirely embrace and fervently desire. Permaculture is a leading and essential element of the wider movement for food sovereignty in this country and beyond. Food sovereignty as a social and political movement now embraces in the order of 300 million people across 80 countries in every continent, led by the small farmers and indigenous peoples organisation La Via Campesina.

Food sovereignty, David writes, is about the “right to produce one’s own food in one’s own territory”; and hence the role of permaculture in providing a set of design principles and ethical practices that can make this right a reality. This partly captures what food sovereignty is about, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

The essence of food sovereignty

The essence of food sovereignty is the assertion of the collective right of communities and peoples to democratically make and implement the key decisions about their food and farming systems. Those decisions include critical questions such as:

Who owns the farmland?
What types of food, fibre and livestock are to be grown?
What types of production and land management methods should be used?
Into what markets, and under what conditions, will those products be sold?
What prices are the farmers entitled to?

These are structural and systemic questions that go well beyond the right of individuals to produce their own food, important though that is. They raise fundamental matters about who holds power in the food system, how it is exercised and for whose benefit.

In asking such questions, food sovereignty also makes the claim that it is an unacceptable outrage that close to a billion people continue to experience hunger and malnutrition in a world where as much as 40% of all food produced is wasted. Equally, it is an outrage that we are witnessing a pandemic of dietary-related ill-health linked to the rampant expansion of a processed and global junk food industry.

Food sovereignty asks why are these things happening, and what can be done about it. As to the first question, most democratic checks and balances have been abandoned in favour of letting the ‘free market’ make all the key decisions. In practice, this is a recipe for the unrestrained rule of a very small number of powerful corporations. The system’s overriding imperative is the making of money, not feeding all people well or stewardship of the land and ecosystems.

What can be done

In terms of what can be done, food sovereignty claims that the power of these corporations must be named and confronted. At the same time, work must begin to take back increasing portions of the food and farming system into local control and ownership, and to support production systems that care for the land and enhance its fertility, rather than degrade it.

That is why food sovereignty, like permaculture, is about food localisation and agro-ecology. It is about protecting farmland for future generations, from competing land uses such as suburban sprawl and coal-seam gas fracking. It is about fair prices for farmers, and ensuring that everyone, regardless of their income, has access to good and healthy food at all times.

This is why the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) was formed in 2010. This is the agenda we have set forth in the Peoples Food Plan, developed in 40 forums with 600 people during September-December 2012. It is why we are now campaigning for Local Food Acts in Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and other states, learning from the experience of the local food and food sovereignty movement in North America and elsewhere.

A natural affinity between permaculture and food sovereignty

There is, as David suggests, a natural affinity between permaculture and food sovereignty. The opportunity in Australia is to develop that affinity into a powerful and coherent narrative and movement for transformative change, which we all know is the challenge and calling of our times.

Fair Food Week – an opportunity for permaculturalists

From October 10 -19 this year, AFSA is co-ordinating Australia’s second Fair Food Week. Like International Permaculture Day, this is an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of individuals and communities who are engaged in so many ways in the necessary work of creating a fair and sustainable food system.

Last year, 112 events were held around the country with more than 15,000 people participating.

We encourage all permaculturalists to consider holding events and activities during that period, to let the country know that the new story of food is being written and lived.

Interested in reading the longer article?

For those who are interested, I have discussed the issues that David raises in his Food for Thought article, as well as some related material from his earlier Crash on Demand paper, in a longer piece of writing that can be accessed here:

[button_link url=”http://afsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Holmgren-Reply-N-Rose.pdf” target=“blank” style=”” title=”” class=”” id=”” onclick=””]Download pdf document — David Holmgren story — reply by Nick Rose[/button_link]

The Fair Food Movement in Australia — an overview

April 9, 2014 by Nick Rose

Story by Dr Nick Rose[1] , April 2014

This paper – and the video presentation – was prepared for delegates to the 7th World Urban Forum, taking place in Medellin in Colombia, from 5th to 11th April, 2014.

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and the Food Alliance were successfully in securing a 2-hour workshop on 9th April, in a very crowded program catering for an estimated 20,000 delegates, to share with up to 100 people from all around the world the work underway here to build Fair Food Systems and Networks.

Facilitating the workshop will be Liz Ryan and Julia of RMIT’s Global Cities Institute and the UN Global Compact Cities programme.

We are excited to have this opportunity to share what we have been up to with colleagues from other countries, and very keen to hear from Liz and Julia on their return to Australia next week.

Nick Rose addressing attendees to the ‘Fair Food Systems and Networks in Australia’ workshop on 9th April at the 7th World Urban Forum being held in Medellin, Colombia, from 5th – 11th April, via pre-recorded video.

Footage courtesy of Rasha Tayeh, creator of the Growing Food project

History and context

According to some estimates, Australia has been continually inhabited for more than 50,000 years. Over that timeframe, it has sustained thousands of generations of people, cumulatively numbering in the tens or even hundreds of millions. This was by any meaningful definition a ‘sustainable food system’, or rather, multiplicity of systems, made possible by a deep knowledge of the land and its ecosystems amongst Australia’s indigenous peoples, expressed in the cosmology of ‘Connection to Country’.

In the 216 years since European occupation and colonization of Australia, huge changes have been wrought upon the landscape, many of them driven by an agriculture that has largely been oriented towards production of commodities – wheat, sheep, beef, dairy, sugar – for export. In retrospect agriculture in Australia was always going to be challenging and problematic, given the country’s relative lack of good, deep soils, together with its harsh climate and propensity for drought and floods.

These underlying challenges have been overlaid through a series of changes in the 20^th century, continuing to the present day:

The industrialization of agriculture, resulting in the excessive irrigation of critical waterways to produce commodity crops such as cotton, sugar and rice: this has led to widespread ecological damage of key river systems as well as the salinization of millions of hectares of productive farmland
The emergence of a supermarket duopoly in the 1970s which now controls 70-80% of the Australian retail food market, so that many producers are locked into a ‘price-taker’ relationship
The rising costs of inputs – agro-chemicals, seeds, fuel – as well as the need to service rising levels of farm debt: combined with the downwards pressure on prices many farmers find themselves in a ‘cost-price’ squeeze
The push to liberalise trade in agriculture which has exposed many Australian producers and food manufacturers to much cheaper imported products, forcing many out of business
The exponential growth of the fast and junk food industries which has produced a pandemic of obesity across the country
The emergence of climate change and critical constraints on fossil fuel and other non-renewable resources as key limiting factors for the expansion or even maintenance of existing large-scale food production systems in Australia
The loss of good farmland due to urban sprawl and mining industries

This combination of factors and trends means that the food system in Australia is at a critical juncture. Yet the policy response at the Federal and State level has simply been ‘more of the same’: ramp up production volumes, push the land harder, push the farmers harder, and treat food and farming as a sector like any other where the highest priority is profit and capital accumulation.

Fair Food emerges as a movement

Yet food is not a sector like any other: it is fundamental to our health and well-being as individuals; to who we are as a culture; and ultimately to our very survival as a species. Recognising the lack of vision and leadership on these profound questions, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance was formed in 2010, consciously linking Australia to the global movement for food sovereignty, with the aim of promoting a different, values-based national conversation on the future of our food and farming systems.

Like most countries, Australia has a long tradition of backyard food growing, yet this dwindled significantly with the rise of the supermarkets and fast food in the post-war era. Now backyard food growing is returning strongly, with recent surveys suggesting over 50% of adults are involved. Many are also involved in community food production, especially community gardens and school kitchen gardens, which have expanded rapidly since the 1990s. The permaculture movement, which began in the late 1970s, has also been influential in the growth of community and backyard gardening, as well as small-scale bio-diverse agriculture. The farmers markets movement in Australia is also experiencing rapid growth, from a very low base in 1999 to over 150 today.

Peoples Food Plan, Fair Food Week, ‘Fair Food’ documentary

In its short life, AFSA has undertaken a series of strategically significant initiatives that are beginning to articulate a coherent ‘fair food movement’ in Australia, based on food sovereignty principles. These include:

the Peoples Food Plan, Australia’s first ‘crowd-sourced’ food policy text, which involved over 600 people participating in 40 public forums throughout the country from September to December 2012.
Australia’s first Fair Food Week [12] (19-25 August 2013, involving 112 events in every state and territory with an estimated 15,000 people participating
Australia’s first food politics documentary, ‘Fair Food’, a joint project with the Locavore Edition in Melbourne
The launch of Fair Food Farmers United, a farmer-to-farmer knowledge-and experience-sharing project to promote understanding of food sovereignty principles and practices amongst Australian producers
A campaign for a Local Food Act, drawing on the inspiration of the Ontario Local Food Act and $30 mn Local Food Fund (Nov 2013)

Urban and Regional Food Network & Charter

Since September 2013 the Food Alliance (Deakin University) has begun the process of establishing Australia’s first Urban and Regional Food Network, bringing together 20 local governments as well as a wide and expanding cohort of researchers, food businesses, health professionals, planners, community gardeners, not-for-profit organisations, Transition groups, permaculturalists and others. This Network has collaboratively developed as a key strategic priority the development and implementation of an Urban and Regional Food Charter for Victoria, as a systemic and integrated text to drive forward legislative and policy change and shape practice across the state. This will be a model to be replicated in other Australian states and territories and will provide a substantial boost to the movement for urban agriculture and fair food in Australia.

More coverage for food plan

January 5, 2014 by Russ Grayson

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’s (AFSA) Peoples’ Food Plan has received coverage in the January-March 2014 edition of ReNew magazine, the long-running publication of the Alternative Technology Association (ATA). See page 10. The issue focuses on sustainable travel and is sure to have appeal to the nomads among us.

The ATA perhaps Australia’s long-running technology enthusiast-based organisation of its type and for some time now has been an advocate for renewable energy technologies.

ReNew, their quarterly journal, was once called Intermediate Technology after EF Schumacher’s (credited with inventing the concept) name for what we now call ‘appropriate technology’. It changed its name after the computer industry co-opted ‘IT’ to describe its own technologies. The magazine carries authoritative reports, assessments and research into renewables.

The significance in ReNew’s half column report of the AFSA’s food plan lies in its appearance in a magazine that is focused on technology and suggests that the editor sees sustainability in its broader context of which food is a part.

Thank’s ATA.