COVID-19: Food sovereignty & Pandemics

March 27, 2020 by Amida

Food sovereignty, pandemics, and public health

Food sovereignty means having control over where our food comes from and how it’s grown. It means being able to build strong, connected local food systems with accountability and mutual support between growers, distributers, and eaters. As supply chains are disrupted and eaters face supermarket chaos, current events highlight just how necessary food sovereignty is for food security in the short- and long-term.

More than that, food sovereignty means being able to build food systems that protect the health of people and animals. Pandemics like the current one are not unrelated to globalised industrial food systems. They are closely related in some complex ways, including through intensive animal operations which increase the risk of zoonotic diseases, the expansion of industrial agriculture into previously wild habitats and the increasing incorporation of wild species into capitalist commodity chains.

While we’re staying home and staying safe, it is a good time to also learn about these roots of the current crisis – read a good summary here, and hear Rob Wallace’s excellent explanation here. Wallace also delves into the issues more deeply in Big Farms Make Big Flu.

It is also a time for Australia to re-evaluate what kind of economic and agricultural systems we want and how to build them. Times of crisis are inevitably times of change – either to adapt and continue business as usual, or to make a transformation.

Let’s make our response to this a transformational one.

Find your farmers

Farmers’ markets, CSAs, local veg box schemes and food hubs are all sources for buying from your local farmers. Most farmers’ markets are still operating, while many farmers and coops also have direct online order options – now is the time to be buying from them! Here’s where to find them:

Australian Farmers Markets Association Markets – nation-wide: https://farmersmarkets.org.au/find-a-market/
Victorian Famers’ Markets: https://www.vfma.org.au/
NSW Farmers’ Markets: https://www.fmansw.org.au/
CSAs near you: http://www.csanetworkausnz.org/csa-near-you.html

Farmers, find your eaters!

AFSA wants to make sure that eaters know where to find their local farmers during this period. We are compiling an updated list of growers with online direct order/farmers’ market options for eaters, so we can share your food with our audience, and will be sharing these options through all of our channels.

We are also pooling strategies and working with other organisations to look at outlets for those with excess produce or lost market channels. Please list your details in the form here so that we can share.Please feel free to share this with your audiences and communities so that we can expand our growers’ directory - AFSA is working to support all growers and eaters during this time, as our aim is to make sure all Australians can assert their right to nourishing and culturally appropriate food produced and distributed in ecologically sound and ethical ways, and their right to collectively determine their own food and agriculture systems.

Complete the Producer Details form to share your farm with local eaters

We understand that some growers have chosen to forego markets or change their production schedules in order to protect their families’ health, and that others have received an influx of new orders in recent days.

You can still provide your details if you are not currently taking orders, or if you are waitlisting new customers. You can change this information as circumstances change and we will update the directory accordingly.

We have also received information about several farmers’ markets closing due to local council or organiser decisions, and we are working to address this with state and local governments so that farmers’ markets can continue as needed, as an essential service to their communities.

If this has happened in your area and you are concerned, we suggest discussing with organisers and representatives directly to ensure your community has access to local food through markets taking appropriate safety measures, and to contact AFSA at admin@afsa.org.au if you would like support on this.

To support discussions on ensuring market safety, you can find the Australian Farmers’ Markets Association resources on market safety, including recommended COVID-19 precautions here.

Meanwhile, if you are thinking of moving online or want to share experiences with other farmers around current events, Open Food Network are running a series of webinars for growers here.

Please contact us at admin@afsa.org.auif you have questions, to let us know what is happening in your area, or if you need support.

Declaration from the 2018 Food Sovereignty Convergence

October 18, 2018 by Tammi Jonas

We representatives of small-scale farmers, fishers, agricultural workers, indigenous peoples, women, youth, eaters, and NGOs came together from across Australia to meet on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri, and Ngarigu peoples, paying our respect to elders past and present. At the 2018 Food Sovereignty Convergence we celebrated the opportunity to meet each other to continue weaving alliances, building solidarity, and strengthening our commitment to defend our right to democratically participate in food and agriculture systems.

We recognise the Original Owners and their role in caring for this land for over 60,000 years, their long history of growing food in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and their careful maintenance of biodiversity before and since Invasion. We re-affirm our support for the Uluru Statement from the heart, which asserts that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under their own laws and customs.

We affirmed our commitment to food sovereignty, which promotes everyone’s right to access culturally-appropriate and nutritious food grown and distributed in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and our right to democratically determine our own food and agriculture systems.

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) today celebrates an historical achievement as we unanimously voted to amend our constitution to make AFSA explicitly farmer led. While in practice we have for some years been an alliance of farmers and allies with a clear focus on radically transforming the food system from the ground up, the new constitution gives farmers control of decisions that have a material impact on their efforts to grow food ethically and ecologically. If you’re not a farmer, you must be an ally, and if you’re not an ally you have to ask yourself why not? AFSA’s farmers are not interested in the old silo mentality – we work in solidarity with the full range of other actors in the system for the radical transformation so desperately needed.

Agroecology is recognized by the UN as the best way to feed the world. In Australia, regenerative farming is on the rise, and AFSA hopes to support an evolving conversation that acknowledges agroecology’s potential to extend the movement’s progress on ecological improvements to farming to also include social and economic improvements embedded in the principles and practices of agroecology.

Small-scale farmers are struggling to maintain access to critical supply chain infrastructure that is owned by a shrinking number of corporations. AFSA is committed to supporting communities to take control of the means of production, and are helping farmers and allies to network and develop cooperative models to build supply chain infrastructure such as abattoirs, grain mills, and other collaborative processing and storage facilities. We see this work as essential to the project of building a new food system that will ultimately make the old one obsolete.

AFSA champions the work of leaders such as farmer and agrarian intellectual Charles Massy (author of Call of the Reed Warbler), who is supporting an underground insurgency of broadacre farmers transitioning to more regenerative and agroecological models of farming. We applaud the many farmers across the country who are developing practices that are creating resilient systems so needed in the face of the negative impacts of climate change. We extend a message of care and concern for the farmers suffering from the devastating impact of the current drought who are trapped in the industrial system, and hope they receive more than just bales of hay that don’t address the core issues with industrial production methods that have left them so vulnerable.

Solidarity is critical to any movement, and AFSA re-affirms our commitment to working productively with the many excellent organisations acting for food sovereignty in Australia and globally, such as but not limited to Open Food Network, the Right to Food Coalition, the Victorian Farmers’ Market Association, Melbourne Farmers Markets, Regrarians, Sustainable Table, Friends of the Earth, Food Connect, Gene Ethics, ActionAid, ORICoop, the many Slow Food convivia around the country, and internationally the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), La Via Campesina, and Urgenci: the International Network for Community-Supported Agriculture.

We recognize the important role played by local councils in supporting their farmers, makers, and distributors of food, and commit to developing ‘ideal council guidelines’ to assist them with a food sovereignty framework to help guide their decision making around matters spanning from verge gardening to capturing rainwater for drinking to having animals on smallholdings and safely converting home kitchens to commercial kitchens for cottage industry.

On World Food Day we celebrated the recent UN Human Rights Council’s ratification of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. We bear witness to the Australian Government’s retrograde vote against the Declaration, an egregious undermining of the rights of the world’s most oppressed peoples who do the world’s most critical work to grow more than 70% of our food globally. The Declaration defines peasants as:

a man or woman of the land, who has a direct and special relationship with the land and nature through the production of food and/or other agricultural products. Peasants work the land themselves, rely above all on family labour and other small-scale forms of organizing labour. Peasants are traditionally embedded in their local communities and they take care of local landscapes and of agro-ecological systems. The term peasant can apply to any person engaged in agriculture, cattle-raising, pastoralism, handicrafts related to agriculture or a related occupation in a rural area. This includes Indigenous people working on the land.

The farmer members of AFSA identify with the definition of peasants as we work the land, caring for our agroecological systems embedded in our rural communities. We look forward to strengthening social relationships and opportunities for farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing with regular gatherings of ‘Peasants at the Pub’ across the country.

The movement is diverse, and we recognize the particular struggles some of our members experience because of discrimination or lack of recognition. We affirm our support for Indigenous Peoples, rural women and youth, and queer and gender diverse people, many of whom are leaders in the new farming movement.

The forces we’re struggling against may have the money, but we have the people. We’re looking for more food sovereignty warriors to help do the work before us – volunteers are essential to our ultimate success in radically transforming the food system. Whether you are good at writing letters and petitions, providing website support or graphic design skills, have legal experience or could help prune fruit trees to free up our committee members to take their activism off their farms and into the halls of power, the food sovereignty movement needs more people to get active in creating the future we wish to see.

We acknowledge the ecological devastation caused by industrial agriculture since European invasion, and commit to ongoing conversations with communities of Indigenous Peoples as we work towards deeper understanding and genuine relationships with the Original Owners. We are conscious of the risk of hollow acknowledgements of country, and commit to supporting our members to seek stronger ties to Indigenous communities and work towards a day where everything we do is in connection and mutual accountability with community.

All this and more we commit to in our struggle for food sovereignty locally and globally. We have again democratically elected a committee of farmers, food workers, educators, and academics to lead the important work ahead of us.

Viva la revolución! Viva la via campesina!

Baw Baw Food Security Coalition

September 15, 2017 by Tammi Jonas

"Food security is an individual or community’s ability to access healthy, affordable and appropriate food. Food insecurity can therefore be defined as having limited or irregular access to safe and secure nutritional food from a non-emergency source.

Food insecurity has been prioritised in the Central West Gippsland region in 2007. Subsequently, research and food system mapping was undertaken, which showed that the individuals found to be most affected by food insecurity in Central West Gippsland include the people on low incomes, older people, young people and people living in isolated areas. The result of this research was a Food Security Recommendation Report which was published in 2012 and provided guidance on the types of interventions that the CWGPCP and its partners could implement in order to tackle food insecurity. The Baw Baw Food Security Coalition was then developed to lead this work in the Baw Baw Shire."

Read more about the history and impact of the Baw Baw Food Security Coalition.

Towards increased diversity in our food supply

July 5, 2015 by Alana Mann

By Merran Laver. First published on www.southernharvest.net.au

Diversity in food production and supply is important in creating a resilient local food system.

There are many reasons to increase diversity in our food supply at a local level. One is to promote access to fresh, seasonal foods that consumers will choose to eat. Foods available locally have a reduced ecological footprint compared with those from the large-scale, conventional system upon which we’re all at least partly dependent. Another is our vulnerability due to reliance upon only a few crops.

This is a local as well as a global issue.

Simran Sethi, an environmental journalist from the US, discussed the recent global decrease in food diversity in an ABC Lateline interview. She talked about the vulnerability we’ve placed ourselves in by relying on a reduced number of crops: 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants. This, Sethi believes, fits in with dominating agricultural enterprises that are based on crop monocultures. She stated that we need to increase diversity in our farming and that consumers also have a critical role by choosing to diversify their diets.

"Eating locally is a revolutionary act and I really don't want to sound trite about that but you know, this globalisation has happened in our lifetime. In 20 years we've seen the entire food system kind of upended and I think really the solution to this challenge is to start to think differently about how we grow food and how we consume and purchase food."

"It makes very little sense in some instances to procure food from faraway places. It increases the ecological footprint of that food, it increases greenhouse gas emissions of that particular food."

Many regions throughout Australia are undergoing fundamental shifts in diversifying their food supply and promoting local production to consumers. This is happening both in cities and in rural areas, and where these overlap, such as in the Southern Harvest Region, which incorporates the growing city of Canberra as well as smaller towns and communities surrounding the ACT.

Examples of how diversity in local food supply systems is increasing include: the growth of farmers markets and community gardens; promotion of encouraging people to grow their own produce; value-adding enterprises (eg small businesses, such as baked goods, juices, smoked meats/fish); farmers trying out new products for sale (cheeses/milk, different varieties of apple/pork/etc.).

These examples involve those who currently work to supply food to the population as well as the consumers who ultimately determine demand. As Sethi says,we need to "recultivate our relationships with local farmers and ensure that those relationships are strong and supported and in place, and the only way to do that is through consumer support".

Our diverse seasonal produce is sometimes showcased at local annual food festivals that are mushrooming all over the country; including the pumpkin festival at Collector, chestnut festival at Hoskinstown and cherry festival at Young, to name a few. These highlight and celebrate the production of particular foods during their harvest season, while bringing communities of producers and consumers together for a day each year. A quick scan of food annual festivals everywhere shows that diversity is one aspect that is also celebrated – both cultural and in relation to the produce.

Sustainable food initiatives that encompass this diversity are increasingly of interest to people who care about how and where their food is produced, and the increased security or resilience of their food supply. It is also of great interest to the producers of our food, some of whom are successfully venturing into products not traditionally grown in the region but suited to the climate – such as nuts, olives, herbs, truffles, saffron etc.

A current food production strategy for urban Victoria outlines how "Council and the community will work together on local food initiatives which enhance health, wellbeing and community connectedness, improve the environment and regenerate natural resources".

"An integrated response is called for to deliver better and more resilient food production models. This requires Council to form innovative partnerships with the community, local business, professional stakeholders and all levels of government."

The strategy also points to its community’s ‘rich diversity of food cultures’ and the increased biodiversity that can come from promoting local food growing.

Feeding Struggle Street: How Australia’s hidden hungry are deserted by our food system

May 17, 2015 by Alana Mann

There is an urgent need to address inequities in the current food system with evidence-based community food policies that ensure and protect peoples’ access to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.

The controversial SBS program Struggle Street, screened on Wednesday May 6, is a window into the lives of suburban residents in Sydney, now one of the most expensive cities in the world. In the food desert where the program is set major thoroughfares are festooned with the livery of McDonalds’, Hungry Jacks and KFC. A take-away sandwich or pre-made salad at the local service station is considered a treat; Coca-Cola and calorie-laden energy drinks are meal substitutes for children, teens and adults alike. Curried sausages top the menu choices at home.

Evidence of these poor diets is stark, ranging from malnutrition to obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

For the cast of Struggle Street and many other city dwellers access to fresh, healthy and affordable food - and especially fresh fruit and vegetables - is limited. Low-income residents stranded in food deserts have limited access to the transportation needed to perform household provisioning tasks such as grocery shopping. The small in-city grocers that improved neighbourhoods in low- to moderate-income housing areas have all but disappeared at the expense of a profit-driven supermarket duopoly.

Food insecurity is a daily challenge for families trying to survive on limited means, leading to increasing reliance on food charities.

According to last year’s Food Bank Hunger Report 516,000 Australians rely on food relief per month.

Thirty-five per cent of clients are children. Up to 60,000 people are turned away from the 2,500 charities that struggle to support them. Sixty per cent more food is needed to meet demand.

We are not alone. One in seven Americans now relies on a food bank and there are 1,000 operating in Germany. Feeding Britain (2014), a parliamentary inquiry into hunger in the UK, attributes the new ‘food bank movement’ to the inability of citizens to meet increasing costs of food, housing and utilities that outstrip growth in wages. Further, people lack the budgeting skills that might help them get by with less.

In Sydney, as in many other cities, social enterprises are doing their best to fill the gaps in food provisioning that governments do not. Food rescue charity Oz Harvest turns thousands of kilograms of waste food into meals for the most vulnerable everyday. The Wayside Chapel in Kings’ Cross has been feeding the lonely and destitute since 1964. The Chapel café provides a safe, relaxed environment for patrons to enjoy the dignity and sociability of purchasing and sharing a cheap meal. This sentiment also underpins the mission of Lentil as Anything, a non-profit restaurant chain in Melbourne and Sydney where customers pay what they can afford for a multicultural, communal dining experience that welcomes workers, refugees and the long-term unemployed.

These initiatives and a range of other urban food projects provide residents with food security, education, health and social benefits. Many are threatened by urban sprawl and rezoning of agricultural land; others struggle to continue due to lack of funding and reliance on volunteer labour. Research into their significant and genuine contribution to strengthening community food systems is needed.

Though comprehensive studies of food production on the peri-urban fringe of Sydney and farming in the Sydney Basin have been conducted there is a lack of data on urban food production and gaps in land use data for the City of Sydney. There is little information about who participates in local food networks and community gardens, and no measurement of quantities of produce. Few local councils have food policies, the exceptions being the Blue Mountains, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, the Illawarra region and Penrith.

In the City’s Strategic Vision for a Sustainable Sydney 2030 food systems are conspicuously absent.

Community food plans must take a whole-of-systems approach in mapping agricultural activities through developing a framework that enables us to understand and measure how these activities combine in ‘food flows’ that contribute health, social, economic and ecological benefits to residents of the city. Successful models include Ontario’s Local Food Act (2013), New York City’s Five Borough Farm Project (2012) and the City of Melbourne Food Policy, the planning of which began in 2011.

Projects with long-term vision to strengthen community food systems must measure the macronutrient content of these food flows, and determine how better access can be provided to city dwellers, and particularly the socio-economically marginalised. The formation of this policy must be systems-based, community-led and co-created to succeed.

Because hidden hunger is a public problem for which we are all responsible.

This post was originally published on the University of Sydney Environment Institute's 'Food, People and the Planet' web site.