Story by Michael Croft, March 2014

As some of you are aware the Federal Government cancelled the Community Food Grants.  This was a relatively small and insignificant budget item of $1.5 million dollars from the previous government, small but of vital importance to local food and communities.  In essence the government has declared that it doesn’t care for local communities and all that matters is that we focus on exporting our foods.

AFSA was quick off the mark to register our disagreement, but were perplexed by a peak vegetable producers’ body support for the axing.  AFSA and our members are strong and articulate supporters of Australian vegetable producers so we were a bit stunned at the attack, particularly the unsubstantiated and false claim that community gardens are a biosecurity risk.

AFSA responded with press releases and radio appearances to counter the misleading assertions and were very successful.

So much so that the local food story was picked up by the mainstream business press.

This ‘discussion’ about local food grants is far from over, so once again stay tuned as we are on the case.