AFSA National Committee
Focal Point for Farmers
Tammi Jonas
Tammi Jonas
Tammi Jonas is an agroecologist in practice, principle, and philosophy. Along with her hypercompetent husband Stuart, Tammi farms heritage-breed Large Black pastured pigs, cattle, and garlic on the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people in the central highlands of Victoria. She is also resident meatsmith at Jonai Farms, a thriving community-supported agriculture (CSA) with 80 wonderful household members. Tammi has been president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) since 2014.
She is undertaking a PhD at the University of Western Australia on the biodiverse and decolonising practices of agroecological farmers, and investigating the logistical, financial, social, and legislative barriers to their efforts.
In her years serving AFSA, Tammi has been very active in the global fight for food sovereignty with comrades in the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), advocating in numerous UN governing bodies for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and peasants and their communities. She is an editor and co-author of Farming Democracy: Radically transforming the food system from the ground up (2019).
Focal Point for First Peoples
Jordan Nye
Jordan Nye
My name is Jordan Nye, I am a walbunja man from the yuin nation and have ancestral ties to the south east coast. I have a strong passion for cultural education and uniting our communities through traditional dance, ceremony, bushfoods, traditional art and storytelling. Within my career I have worked as an Aboriginal Health Worker for the local Aboriginal Medical Services, youth worker and Aboriginal education officer, Policy Officer for Department of Health and Community Development Officer for Eurobodalla Shire Council. I currently run my own business called Muladha Gamara, meaning ‘Wise woman, Wise Man’. We run cultural education services through tourism, youth programs and community workshops, we perform traditional dance/ceremony at events and community gatherings, we are working our way towards native food production in our area and we provide cultural consultancy services for local organisations.
Treasurer
Simon Matthee
Simon Matthee
Simon lives on Wurrundjeri Country in the Macedon Ranges with his wife, Sarah, and their dog, Leah. He runs The Millett Road Maker, a small sourdough micro-bakery specializing in artisan crumpets and bread, bringing his passion for traditional, sustainable baking to the community.
As Treasurer of AFSA, Simon is deeply committed to fostering transparency within food systems and building meaningful connections between producers and consumers. With a focus on mutual benefit and engagement, Simon works to support AFSA’s vision to return the power in our food system to its consumers and producers.
Secretary
Ben Trethewey
Ben Trethewey
Ben was born and lives on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people, studying at Monash University in the Bachelor of Science Advanced – Global Challenges program. He lived, worked, and studied in Samoa for seven months, much of which was spent at the Samoan Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries and Alafua Campus of the University of the South Pacific. Seeing the systems of power that impede communities around the world from living in collective sovereignty, Ben is committed to counterhegemony and resisting problematic structures of neoliberal capitalism. He is about to undertake an Honours research thesis on shifting settler colonial structures and visions of land for food sovereignty in what is now called Australia.
General Committee Members
Mirella Gavidia
Mirella Gavidia
Mirella is a mother, food grower, and academic with a background in Law and Anthropology. She has 15 years experience working with communities in the Brazilian Amazon, as an academic, consultant, volunteer, friend, and ally. Mirella is an educator, or a learning facilitator as she prefers to call herself, committed to creating positive change in the way her students understand and live in the world. She mostly teaches First Nations, environmental, and global affairs, and has been casually designing and delivering courses at RMIT University (Wurundjeri Country) for 7 years.
Mirella lives on Djaara Country with her partner and son on a beautiful native bird heaven, where they currently work on the regeneration of an old orchard, and grow seasonal crops for themselves and their community. There are many plans in the pipeline to increase the use of the land using agroecology and regenerative principles.
Her main interest in becoming part of AFSA is to be further engaged in practical, on-ground, action when it comes to food sovereignty. Mirella is keen to share her skills to support the organisation’s work, especially on the First Nations and International fronts. She also aims at gathering more critical knowledge and sharing with her Brazilian comrades in the jungle, as a way of fostering their food sovereignty too.
Sári Szász Komlós
Sári Szász Komlós
Lucy Ridge
Lucy Ridge
Lucy Ridge (she/her) is an eater and ally living and working on Ngunnawal Ngambri land. Lucy is an AFSA member, a staff member of Southern Harvest Association, and an advocate for food sovereignty and local food in her area. Lucy also works part time as a food writer and draws from her many years experience in the hospitality industry as a chef to bridge the gap between chefs and producers.
Lucy has also undertaken several internships working with women across the food system all over Australia in an effort to further her own education and understand what it takes to be a farmer, butcher, cheesemaker, wild harvester, distiller and market gardener from the ground up. Lucy recently contributed a chapter to Eating Democracy and is also working on a book about her own journey through the food system.
Ivan Blacket
Ivan Blacket
Ivan Blacket is a farmer, educator and consultant with a focus on integrated regenerative food production systems. He grew up on a small goat dairy on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula and, since studying agricultural sciences at Melbourne University, has managed many different production systems around Australia from agroforestry market gardens to timber plantations and large fruit orchards.
He has developed food systems at The Farm at Byron Bay, Conscious Ground and Common Ground Project, and educated hundreds of aspiring farmers and homesteaders in the process. He is also currently a facilitator with Permaculture for Refugees.
Antoine Lenique
Antoine Lenique
Antoine lives in Naarm and has a background in international trade and foreign languages, development economics, sustainable tourism and logistics. He grew up in Spain and France where food is not only a tourist magnet but most importantly an integral part of every citizen’s cultural identity. This particular experience made him realise how political and how culturally relevant it is to understand where, how, by whom and why the food we eat is grown.
Through his travels around New Zealand and Australia, Antoine developed a keen interest in agroecology and its potential to not only regenerate land and biodiversity, but also to tackle social and economic inequalities, climate change and current power dynamics in the food system. He’s been involved in hands-on food systems transformation for the last 7 years and keeps a keen interest in sustainable food systems literature, with a focus on agroecology and alternative distribution networks.
After navigating through Sovereign Foods’ and Food Connect’s values-based short supply chains in Meanjin, Antoine has recently joined The Community Grocer, a not-for-profit food enterprise based in Naarm.
Rob Arcidiacono
Rob Arcidiacono
Rob Arcidiacono (he/him) is passionate about food and agriculture, a connection fostered growing up as the son of an Italian migrant who emphasised the cultural significance of food, and through his family’s ties to a fourth-generation farm in Stanthorpe, situated on the unceded lands of the Kambuwal people. Rob’s exploration of food sovereignty began in university and continues to be both a theoretical and practical foundation for his work. Connecting dimensions of Indigenous knowledge of land stewardship, social and ecological justice, and a critical lens on the industrial food system, and the broader implications these have on rural development in Australia and globally.
Rob has contributed to participatory research projects into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives in East Africa, climate change mitigation efforts that empower artisans in decision-making in Afghanistan, and refugee support projects in Syrian camps in Jordan. More recently, his PhD research focused on the perceptions of agroecology-oriented farmers in Australia toward digital and data-driven technologies. His work amplifies the voices of smallholder farmers, often marginalized in national agricultural policy and decision-making, and critiques the dominant narrative around ‘ag-tech’ that perpetuates the unsustainable business-as-usual approach to addressing ecological and social issues in the Australian food system.
Staff Members
Jessie Power – General Coordinator
Jessie Power
If you need to contact Jess about anything AFSA related, send her an email: coordinator@afsa.org.au.
