Join AFSA as we hit the road for our inaugural Agroecology Roadshow along the east coast of Australia on 4-23 October!
The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) has announced the launch of its inaugural Agroecology Roadshow from 4-23 October, visiting a number of regions across New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT to mobilise First Peoples, farmers, communities and policymakers to collaboratively transform the food system from the ground up.
AFSA’s Agroecology Roadshow comes as a call to action in the face of mounting food system challenges, from lack of access to land, the closure and corporate capture of abattoirs and other processing infrastructure, and climate change. The Agroecology Roadshow will see AFSA bringing people together – First Peoples, farmers, farm and food workers, and allies – to facilitate discourse that seeks to strengthen the collective autonomy of these communities.
Australian farmers currently produce 93 per cent of Australia’s food, even while exporting some 70 per cent of what is produced overseas. The productivist and export focus is often framed within a moralising discourse that Australian agriculture is ‘feeding the world’. Yet, the reality is that exports are directed not to countries suffering widespread food insecurity, but rather the highest value markets in the Minority World and to the middle classes in the Majority World.
The multitude of crises that we face as a society currently: cost of living, climate, global conflict, makes the need to collectivise increasingly urgent. Despite the ongoing legacies of separationist thinking which see individualism privileged over collectivism, we must come together to actively create a socially just and ecologically grounded future.
The Agroecology Roadshow will give AFSA the opportunity to promote more stories of the growing peasantry and agroecology movement that are taking on the industrial, capitalist food system. The Roadshow will contribute to the political formation of food sovereignty activists to rhizomatically spread the movement from the ground up.
The Roadshow – like all AFSA events – will not take on the form of a traditional conference, rather the agendas are determined by who turns up, cultivating spaces of profound democratic participation. AFSA will be working with local communities in facilitating the space that allows for the exchange of bioregional knowledge, and discussions of key challenges communities are facing.
AFSA’s inaugural Agroecology Roadshow will also coincide with the organisation’s annual Food Sovereignty Convergence in Bermagui on 18-19 October.
Want to come along? Here’s when we’ll be in your town:
- 2 Oct: Violet Town (Taungurung Country, VIC)
- 4 Oct: Bilpin (Dharug Country, NSW)
- 6 Oct: Comboyne (Birpai Country, NSW)
- 8 Oct: Bellingen (Gumbaynggirr Country,NSW)
- 9 Oct: Lismore (Bundjalung Country, NSW)
- 10 Oct: Nerang (Yugumbeh Country, QLD)
- 11 Oct: Brisbane (Jagera and Turrbal Country, QLD)
- 13 Oct: Goomburra (Bundjalung Country, QLD)
- 14 Oct: Armidale (Anaiwan and Kamilaroi Country, NSW)
- 15 Oct: Maitland (Wonnarua Country, NSW)
- 16 Oct: Wollongong (Dharawal Country, NSW)
- 18-19 Oct: Food Sovereignty Convergence in Bermagui (Yuin Country, NSW)
- 21 Oct: Canberra (Ngunnawal Country, ACT)
Tickets to launch shortly – stay tuned!
If you have any questions about the Agroecology Roadshow, please email us.