The following nominations have been received for the 2017 AFSA Committee. The AFSA AGM will be held at CERES Community Environment Park, Cnr Roberts & Stewart Sts, Brunswick East, VIC, at 2.00pm on Sunday the 23rd October.

President:

Sally Ruljancich

Sally Ruljancich has worked in fundraising for over 8 years at the University of Melbourne.

Prior to this position, she was a research assistant at the University of Melbourne for The Encyclopaedia of Melbourne and a postgraduate in the field of history. Her PhD thesis [incomplete but never forgotten] was on the regulation of the food supply of Melbourne, circa 1860-1920.

Sally is also one half of Colin and Sally’s Organic Lamb and Beef, a direct to consumer, grass-fed and certified organic farm-to-fork business. Together over the last three years they have built Colin and Sally’s, farming on 81 acres of their own land and leasing two other farms nearby.

Starting their business was a way to more fully engage with a community of conscientious meat eaters and has increasingly alerted Sally to the need for thoughtful advocacy around issues of the rights of small producers, food sovereignty and food hubs.

Vice President:

Chris Balazs

Chris is a first generation farmer. Starting with a small herd of Herefords, Chris has expanded his paddock to plate business (SageChoice) to run a sustainable business supplying ethically raised grass fed beef and lamb through a network of like-minded farmers to the local community. Passionate about ethical livestock farming and ethical meat consumption - you will find him at VFMA markets talking and advocating the need for people to understand where their food comes from and how consumers have the power to change the food paradigm for the better. Chris comes from a corporate background having worked in a large pharmaceutical company for over 18 years. Now having left the corporate life behind, Chris is primarily focused on the farming and food production. Trained and educated as a scientist, Chris is also passionate about continual education having recently completed a MBA, he brings fresh thinking to traditional farming. Years of business, management and science experience is being used to help improve and create a sustainable farming future.

FFFU Chair:

Tammi Jonas 

Current AFSA President Tammi Jonas is nominating for Chair of Fair Food United (FFFU) for 2017 to continue to lend her strong female farmer’s voice to the fight for food sovereignty in Australia.

Tammi considers herself an ethicurean farmer, mindful meatsmith, and agrarian intellectual. Along with her hypercompetent husband and three #orsmkids, she raises rare breed Large Black pigs, a motley crew of cattle, and Australorp chickens on the volcanic soils of central Victoria at Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths.

Former vegetarian academic Tammi does whole-carcass butchering on the farm (thanks to two successful crowdfunding campaigns to build a boning room, commercial kitchen, & curing room), and sells their ethical pork and beef predominantly through a thriving CSA (community-supported agriculture).

Jonai Farms is an ethically viable no-growth model – Tammi often says we need to multiply our farms, not scale them, to support more people working the land fairly and to revive rural communities and local food economies.

Tammi has been writing about food culture, ethics and politics since 2006 at her blog Tammi Jonas: Food Ethics, and speaks regularly on food sovereignty at public events, on radio, and in print media. She is also a founding member of Fair Food Farmers United (FFFU), the producers' branch of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA).

Jonai Farms features in Australia’s first food politics documentary Fair Food, and Tammi also has a chapter in the anthology Fair Food, published by UQ Press.

As President over the past two years Tammi has worked solidly for fair and consistent regulation of farming and food production and distribution, and is leading a process to establish a Legal Defence Fund to protect and promote the right of people to determine their own food and agriculture systems. The Legal Defence Fund campaign has more than doubled AFSA’s membership over the past year.

During Tammi’s time as President, AFSA was influential in triggering the 2015 review of PrimeSafe, the Victorian meat regulator, resulting in 24 recommendations for improvement of its regulation of the meat industry.

She has helped AFSA establish its voice and authority on a range of issues and secured frequent meetings with a number of politicians to lobby for significant reform, as well as leading the process for submissions to government inquiries, including the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the impact of regulation on agriculture, and the Victorian Government’s Animal Industries Advisory Committee, which has just released its report that includes recommendations for more scale-appropriate application of the planning scheme around extensive and intensive animal husbandry.

Tammi has also had the privilege to attend a variety of meetings of the global food sovereignty movement, including the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty meeting in Gujarat in August 2015, Urgenci: the International Network for Community-Supported Agriculture outside Beijing in November 2015, Slow Meat in Denver in June 2015, the Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) in Kuala Lumpur in March 2016, and Slow Food’s Terra Madre in Turin in September 2016. She helped lead the process to gain membership of the leading voice of the global food sovereignty movement La Via Campesina (LVC) in August 2016. LVC brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world.

The extent of Tammi’s work in Australia and internationally has deepened and broadened her understanding of the issues in the food system locally and globally and she is keen to continue applying that knowledge and experience to assist farmers and eaters, AFSA, the FFFU and the global food sovereignty movement in the role of FFFU Chair.

Ordinary Committee Members:

Ben McMenamin

Ben McMenamin is a chef, social entrepreneur and founder of the Social Food Project. Having worked as a chef for over 10 years and gained a degree from RMIT, Ben has come to realise the power that food has to bring people together and catalyse social change.

Ben has cooked with a number of great social initiatives including the Food Know How project, Scarf Community Dinners, Give a Fork Sustainable Seafood lunch, OzHarvest and more! His work as a food educator has taken him all over Australia presenting at sustainability conferences and community festivals.

Ben's passion for food and education is matched only by his love of gardening! While at RMIT, Ben started a student project called Greening RMIT dedicated to creating more urban gardens and increasing food literacy on campus. He has hosted numerous gardening workshops and cooking demonstrations for students and staff alike.

In 2016, Ben joined the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance as the Membership Officer and Co-founded the Fair Food Challenge, to promote a more fair, healthy and accessible food system.

Jo Hall

Jo Hall was co-opted as National Secretary to the AFSA National Committeein May 2016, with a view to assisting with the Legal Defence Fund and governance processes.

Jo is a lawyer with over 10 years’ experience, currently working in public health, with previous experience in commercial real estate, planning and environment law. Jo also has significant experience working with not-for-profit organisations, including incorporation, governance and tax implications.

Jo has a strong focus on governance with significant experience as a Board Secretary and Company Secretary in both the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. Jo is also a Director on the Board of 3000acres; a charity aiming to bridge the gap between people who want to grow food, and local councils and other organisations who hold the keys to vacant land.

Jo is also a landowner in rural Victoria in the early stages of creating a sustainable market garden business with her partner. Jo is passionate about food sovereignty and in particular, building the Legal Defence Fund into an incredible resource for Australian farmers.

Samantha Hawker

Samantha is a lover of local food, natural living and resilient communities and believes that food is an entry point to something bigger. She is frustrated by food waste, over the top bureaucracy, food miles and fake food and tries to live her values every day. Sam and Frank (Green & Gleaned) use rocket stoves and hay boxes to cook their food, grow, forage and preserve most of their fruit, vegetables, funghi and meat and get a small number of things from local farmers practicing regenerative methods.

Sam has been the market manager of the Southern Harvest Farmers Market at Bungendore since they started in January 2015. “I hope to help people recognise the true value of food” and the markets are a wonderful place to help make this happen. Samantha is a committee member of Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and the newly establishing Farmers Markets Alliance of NSW.

Phil Stringer

Phil Stringer is currently managing a small mixed farm in SE Qld, running free range purebred Tamworth pigs, a small herd of cattle and growing subtropical perennial tubers along with various cut flowers and vegetables.
He's also a director of the Mary Valley Country Harvest Coop which provides  weekly deliveries to the Sunshine Coast and valuable training, workshops and farm tours to local growers, as well as being actively involved in a project to get a local mixed species abattoir in the region again.

His background is in land management, and he continues to work off farm on revegetation projects.

He joined the AFSA national committee in August this year.

The following nominations have been received for the 2016 AFSA Committee. The AFSA AGM will be held at William Angliss Institute, 555 La Trobe Street, from 3 pm to 4.30 p.m. on Sunday, 18th October.

President

Tammi Jonas

Current AFSA President Tammi Jonas is re-nominating for President for 2016 to continue her involvement in the fast-growing fair food movement and lend her strong female farmer’s voice to the fight for food sovereignty in Australia. Tammi considers herself an ethicurean farmer, mindful meatsmith, and agrarian intellectual. Along with her hypercompetent husband and three #orsmkids, she raises pastured rare breed Large Black pigs and a motley crew of cattle at Jonai Farms; Meatsmiths in central Victoria.

Former vegetarian academic Tammi does whole-carcass butchering on the farm (thanks to two very successful crowdfunding campaigns to build a boning room, commercial kitchen, & curing room), and sells their ethical pork and beef predominantly through a thriving CSA (community-supported agriculture, a membership model). Jonai Farms is an ‘ethically viable no-growth model’ – Tammi often says we need to multiply our farms, not scale them, to support more people working the land fairly and to revive rural communities and local food economies.

Tammi has been writing about food culture, ethics and politics since 2006 at her blog TammiJonas: Food Ethics, and speaks regularly on food sovereignty at public events, on radio, and in print media. She is also a founding member of Fair Food Farmers United (FFFU), a producers' branch of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA).

Jonai Farms features in Australia’s first food politics documentary Fair Food, and Tammi also has a chapter in the new anthology Fair Food edited by Nick Rose. As President this year she has been actively involved in fighting for fair and consistent regulation of the food system, and is leading a process to establish a Farm to Consumer Legal Defence Fund to protect and promote the right of people to determine their own food and agriculture systems.

Vice-President

Nick Rose

Nick is the co-founder and has been the National Coordinator of AFSA since its inception in 2010. He led AFSA's engagement with the National Food Plan (2010-2013) and jointly led and co-ordinated the development of the People's Food Plan, Australia's first crowd-sourced food policy document. He helped conceive and co-ordinate Fair Food Week, now in its third year, which has become a focal point for the food sovereignty movement in Australia. He is the Content Director of Australia's first food politics documentary, Fair Food.

In 2014 Nick secured a contract with the University of Queensland Press to edit an anthology of Australia's Fair Food movement, titled, Fair Food: Stories from a Movement Changing the World. With this publication and years of writing and speaking on food sovereignty and food systems topics, Nick has played an important role in developing an expanding awareness of the need for broad food systems transformation.

Nick is a Churchill Fellow, with a particular focus on the role and potential for urban agriculture to address critical food security and livelihood issues for low income and vulnerable urban groups in Australia. He is also the Executive Director of Sustain: The Australian Food Network, which is working with local governments and other institutions to support a policy and research agenda in favour of healthy, fair and resilient food systems across the country. He is one of the founding members of the Australian Food Hubs Network, and a former Director of the Food Connect Foundation.

Nick has previously worked as an employment lawyer, researcher, whistleblowing campaigner and in the field of human rights with indigenous, farmer and women's groups for many years in Central America. His PhD investigated the transformative potential of the global food sovereignty movement, in the face of the intensifying crises of the globalising capitalist food system. He also holds a Masters in International and Community Development.

Nick has a long-term relationship with Julie Tucker, and they have two boys, Camilo (14) and Jude (10). They recently moved to North Melbourne after many years in the mid-north Coast of NSW. Nick is standing for Vice-President of AFSA in order to continue to support the building of the food sovereignty movement in Australia through continued campaigning, awareness-raising and alliance-building.

Secretary 

Chris is a first generation farmer. Starting with a small herd of Hereford’s, Chris has expanded his paddock to plate business (SageChoice) to run a sustainable business supplying ethically raised grass fed beef and lamb through a network of like-minded farmers to the local community.

Passionate about ethical livestock farming and ethical meat consumption - you will find himat VFMA markets talking and advocating the need for people to understand where their food comes from and how consumers have the power to change the food paradigm for the better.

Chris comes from a corporate background having worked in a large pharmaceutical company for over 18 years. Now having left the corporate life behind, Chris is primarily focused on the farming and food production. Trained and educated as a scientist, Chris is also passionate about continual education having recently completed a MBA, he brings fresh thinking to traditional farming. Years of business, management and science experience is being used to help improve and create a sustainable farming future.

Communications Officer

Alana Mann

Alana Mann is nominating to return as Communications Officer in 2015-16. She is a lecturer and researcher in communications and international relations at the University of Sydney and lives in the inner city suburb of Newtown. A Queenslander by birth, she is a proud Cowboys fan. A passion for food citizenship, social justice and alliance-building drives Alana’s work with AFSA and her research on food sovereignty. She published a book on La Via Campesina campaigns in Europe and Latin America called Global Activism in Food Politics: Power Shift in 2014.

At the University Alana is a member of the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) research node 'Food, People and the Planet' and the global food security and nutrition node within the Charles Perkins Centre for cardiovascular health and nutrition. Her current research projects focus on the social movements opposing land-grabbing for resource extraction in Brazil and Australia; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander conceptions of food sovereignty; and the socio-cultural dimensions of food security for inner-city residents of Sydney.

Ordinary Committee Members

Sophie Lamond

Sophie Lamond is the co-leader of the Youth Food Movement Melbourne. YFM is a national volunteer-led organisation that aims to build the skills, knowledge and experience that young people have around food. She founded the Melbourne chapter after working the organisation in Sydney.

Sophie is currently undertaking her masters in sustainable food systems, researching corporate responsibility in international nutrition and environmental politics. She has recently returned from the World Food Systems Summer School at ETH Zurich where she explored challenges in the global food system with students from nineteen countries. She has a keen interest in connecting eaters to their local and global food environments and making living well and eating ethically and sustainably an affordable and livable reality. Sophie is interested in how institutions formulate sustainability policies and empowering people to advocate for change in the systems in which they live. Sophie writes about food issues and campaigns for the development of sustainable food policies in tertiary institutions with the Fair Food Challenge.

Michele Lally

Michele Lally is a passionate driver of branding ethically produced food and connecting farmers with consumers through education and relative product marketing. She lives at their award winning property Savannah Farm in the Clare Valley in South Australia with her husband Phil and 12 month old daughter Zara.  Together, Phil and Michele created their branded lamb product, Savannah Lamb in 2009 after being faced with an unexpected succession plan that meant they had to find a viable operation that could sustain them living on the farm and continuing the Lally family’s 150 year farming tradition.

Previously cereal croppers and wool growers, their options were to get big quick and go into large ag debt, or niche market and change their farm to be what reflected their own values and ethics as people and regenerate it for their children’s future and the community’s sustainability. Michele spent most of her twenties and early thirties training, unbeknown to her at the time, to be a regenerative fair food farmer in management level corporate roles of marketing, sales, events, IT and business consulting.   She has been a leader in the South Australian Food Industry creating food events and media attention of ethical meat production, regional small producers and utilising animal psychology, modern technology and traditional flock shepherding to increase the quality of meat products on the plate.  As the project manager of Australia’s first licensed multi species mobile abattoir, her passion for local accessible supply chains and the opportunity for all farmers to set their own pricing structures, is evident, by offering new branding and sales opportunities in regional areas, where in the past, traditional sales have been the only option.

Michele has been a guest speaker at numerous sustainability and food events.  She is a passionate advocate to increase the perceived opportunity of the ‘daughter in law’ on farms and wants to see family farming continue as the leading industry structure into future generations of the industry in Australia.

Michele has been key to the Clare Valley’s food industry by hosting numerous high profile food and farming events.  She has been one of the drivers that has created a new reputation for the Clare Valley as a food producing region by mentoring other farmers to brand their products and designing new co-operative selling groups.  She was a founding member and driver of the Clare Valley Alliance (bringing food, wine and tourism together in the region) and was nominated as a finalist in the Young Leader Category in the South Australian Food Industry Awards in 2011.  Michele has a Degree in Tourism Management from the University of South Australia, Advanced Diplomas in International Business and Le Cordon Bleu and has led Savannah Farm with her husband, to win South Australian Food Industry Awards Most Sustainable Food Business 3 years in a row.  She is a champion at networking, thinking outside the box and creating collaborative partnerships with likeminded people and organisations.  Michele’s can do attitude and enthusiasm for sustainable change and strategic direction has led her to be a highly respected and ethical operator in the South Australian Food Industry and she hopes to motivate and instigate increased consumer awareness to build a strong and resilient fair and ethical food model in Australia.

Gavin Williams

Gavin Williams was a founding member and secretary of Canberra City Farm who played a number of key roles in the establishment of the farm, including public speaking, building a social media presence, newsletter editing, fundraising activities and workshops. Gav is also a member of Slow Food and a committed advocate for good, clean and fair food. Through a long public service career Gav has a background in policy and program implementation and a strong understanding of government processes. Gav also brings a consumer perspective backed by by engagement in food planning processes at the federal and territory (ACT) government levels.

Ben McMenamin

With a Bachelor of Environment & Society and 10 years experience as a professional chef, Ben has a particular passion for fair food and ethical restaurants. In 2013, Ben started a student project called Greening RMIT, with the goal of promoting sustainable food and gardening on campus. Over the past two years, Ben has experience hosting events, sustainable cooking workshops and facilitating urban greening projects. From May 2015, he has been working with Nick Rose and Sophie Lamond on developing the Fair Food Challenge as a way to engage students and youth as active change agents in the broader Fair Food movement. In his role with Greening RMIT he has recently attended and spoke at numerous national and international student and university sustainability conferences and meetings, bringing to the attention of many the opportunities offered by the Fair Food Challenge.