Professor Paul Burton had a piece published in The Conversation on Monday, 9th July, titled Grow Your Own: Making Australian Cities More Food-Secure.  Prof Burton covers familiar territory here in terms of drivers of change (climate change, resource constraints, loss of farmland to competing uses) and the perceived benefits of urban and re-localised food production. The many thoughtful comments have, with a few exceptions, been overwhelmingly supportive. This is an articulation of what food sovereignty might look like in Australia, and it would I suspect be supported by many people.

What wasn’t discussed were political-economic issues to do with concentrations of corporate power. We all know about the duopoly, and this is one of several ‘elephants in the room’ (it’s a pretty crowded room!). How that issue of corporate power can be tackled – and who is going to tackle it – is perhaps the most challenging of all, in terms of building fair, sustainable and resilient food systems.

Nick