AFSA calls on First Peoples, farmers and policymakers to attend its inaugural Agroecology Roadshow 2024
MEDIA RELEASE
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
21 August 2024 (Australia)
The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) has announced the launch of its inaugural Agroecology Roadshow from 4th-23rd 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, land workers, and allies – to facilitate discourse that seeks to strengthen the resilience and 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 (aka Global North) and to the middle classes in the Majority World (aka Global South).
The Agroecology Roadshow will give AFSA the opportunity to collect more stories of the growing peasantry and agroecology movement that are taking on the industrial, capitalist food system.
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 bio-regional knowledge, and discussions of key challenges communities are facing.
“Agroecology encapsulates what has been practised by Indigenous peoples and smallholder peasants for millennia. A far-cry from the hyper-industrialised capitalist food system that dominates the contemporary world, agroecology understands the importance of working with nature; not against it, and the important role that small-scale farmers have to be good custodians, as we are repeatedly urged by the First Peoples of this Country,” says AFSA President and small-scale pig and cattle farmer Tammi Jonas.
As AFSA hits the road along the east coast of Australia, the organisation will be running a series of farm dialogues and town hall meetings as a way for First Peoples, farmers, food producers and policymakers to come together and tackle region-specific issues.
“We hear that communities in New South Wales have different experiences to those in Queensland, though they also have many challenges in common around access to land and infrastructure, which is why we’re running the roadshow. We are committed to growing the agroecology movement in Australia and building momentum to empower local communities to take back control of food and agriculture systems,” says Jonas.
AFSA’s inaugural Agroecology Roadshow will also coincide with the organisation’s annual Food Sovereignty Convergence in Bermagui on 18-19 October.
-ENDS-
Contact:
For AFSA enquiries:
- Jessie Power, AFSA General Coordinator
- m: 0403 795 670
- e: coordinator@afsa.org.au
For media enquiries:
- Tammi Jonas, AFSA President
- m: 0422 429 362
- e: president@afsa.org.au
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About the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA)
The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) is a farmer-led civil society organisation of people working together towards socially-just and ecologically-sound food and agriculture systems that foster the democratic participation of First Peoples, smallholders, and local communities in decision making processes. Website: afsa.org.au
