MEDIA RELEASE: New National Food Council is Captured by Corporate Interests, Says Agroecology & Food Sovereignty Alliance
***For Immediate Release: 24 November 2025***
The Agroecology & Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) expresses grave concern following the Federal Government’s announcement of the members selected for the new National Food Council (NFC), as part of the “Feeding Australia” National Food Security Strategy.
AFSA—formerly the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance—is the only national organisation representing small-scale farmers, Indigenous food producers, farm and food system workers and researchers, and communities committed to localised food systems. These voices–and civil society more broadly–are glaringly absent from the National Food Council membership, while corporate interests—large producers and industry lobbyists—dominate.
The constitution of the NFC makes visible the control that is exerted by powerful, well-resourced sectors on our food system: executives from large agribusiness, food retailers, and trading groups, including representatives from Bega Group, Grain Trade Australia and the National Retail Association. This composition entrenches the status quo rather than setting a transformative agenda. Rather than challenging inequality and corporate concentration in the food system, the NFC risks becoming an echo chamber for the very players who have helped entrench those harms.
AFSA welcomes the inclusion of a representative from the United Workers Union, whose presence offers at least one vital link to frontline food system workers—though one seat cannot counterbalance the overwhelming corporate weight of the council.
AFSA also notes with concern that the council includes only one First Nations representative, Dr Leisa McCarthy (Deputy Director, First Nations Engagement & Research Strategy, Menzies School of Health Research). While any Indigenous participation is positive, this single appointment cannot substitute for genuine self-determination or proportional representation. First Nations food systems, land rights, and sovereignty are foundational to any credible food sovereignty framework — they should not be reduced to a token seat.
Australia’s food system faces a polycrisis: accelerating climate breakdown marked by more frequent and severe droughts, floods, and crop failures; shrinking access to land and water as speculation dominates and energy projects displace agriculture; widespread labor exploitation, such as through the PALM scheme and underpayment across major supermarkets; biodiversity collapse, including the devastation wrought by industrial fish farming in Tasmania; growing public health threats from rising consumption of ultra processed foods (UPF); and rising hunger with one in three Australian households experiencing food insecurity in the past 12 months. These are systemic failures that demand systemic change—not another business-as-usual advisory body.
This council reveals the government’s failure to deliver on its own commitments to build a fairer, more resilient and more sustainable food system through genuine collaboration. Instead, it paves the way for more of the same: fossil-fuel-dependent inputs, monocultures, land consolidation, extractive tech solutions and deeper corporate control. These approaches do nothing to address the real roots of vulnerability—a globalised food system built on cheap energy and exploited labour. We can expect “solutions” that reinforce corporate dominance rather than deliver food justice. This is not governance in the public interest; it is the Albanese Government choosing corporate interests over people and Country.
AFSA draws strength from our participation in the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, held in Sri Lanka in September 2025, where Indigenous Peoples, small-scale farmers, food workers, feminists and climate and health justice organisers forged a united political agenda. The Forum’s Common Political Action Agenda demands people-centred governance, agroecology and systemic transformation—rejecting corporate capture and multistakeholderism. Around the world, the food sovereignty movement is calling for a return to democratic control of food systems, not more industry-led bodies.
Through our work with the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) via the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM), AFSA also witnesses how corporate capture is reshaping global governance. The latest High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) report on Resilient Food Systems, launched in Rome in October, calls for “equitably transformative resilience” and rejects the idea that resilience means reverting to the systems that created the crisis. We need food systems that are just, diverse and adaptive—not captured by private interests.
The newly appointed National Food Council has no legitimacy to speak for Australia’s farmers, food workers, First Peoples or eaters—the very people whose lives and livelihoods depend on a healthy food system. Instead, it hands the future of Australia’s food to the same corporations that profit from extracting and exporting the gifts of Country. This is corporate capture dressed up as public representation.
AFSA calls for resistance to this deepening corporatisation and for the creation of a people-centred food council grounded in justice, care and food sovereignty. Now is the time to build alliances across community-led, climate-conscious and food justice movements—and to demand a food system that nourishes people and Country, not corporate profit.
AFSA calls on Government to:
- Reconstitute the National Food Council to include genuine representation of small-scale producers, food workers, First Nations communities, and civil society.
- Adopt recommendations from global food sovereignty movements, such as those emerging from Nyéléni, to lay out a radical, people-driven National Food Strategy.
- Ensure transparency and accountability, including how the NFC was selected, conflict of interest declarations of its members, and how its advice will be used.
- Support participatory processes for First Nations-led food sovereignty initiatives, enabling self-determination over land, seeds, food economies, and governance.
Quote from AFSA Focal Point for Farmers, Tammi Jonas:
“The new National Food Council is a textbook case of corporate capture in Australia’s food governance. Rather than building resilience from the ground up, the Government has handed even more power to those who profit from the very system driving ecological, social and economic harm. If the Government is genuinely committed to resilience, equity and justice, it must dismantle this closed shop and make room for the people who actually feed their communities — small-scale farmers, First Peoples, food workers, and local food system organisers. That is the call coming from global movements, as we saw at Nyéléni. The people of Australia cannot afford for the Government to ignore us.”
About AFSA
The Agroecology & Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) is a farmer- and First Peoples-led civil society organisation of people working together towards socially-just and ecologically-sound food and agriculture systems that foster the democratic participation of First Peoples, smallholders, and local communities in decision making processes.
Media Contact: Dr Tammi Jonas, Focal Point for Farmers, AFSA (0422 429 362)
