Last week’s meeting between the Who Decides Food? campaign and senior officials from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) confirmed what so many farmers, communities, public health researchers, and food-system advocates feared: Australia’s newly constituted National Food Council (NFC) is a textbook case of corporate capture dressed up as ‘expertise.’

DAFF contacted us for the meeting — an encouraging sign, we thought. We came prepared to raise serious concerns about the composition of the council and the direction of the National Food Security Strategy. Instead, what we encountered was an almost surreal display of bureaucratic gaslighting.

A Council Built for Agribusiness, Not Food Security

The National Food Council is stacked with corporate and export-driven actors whose business models depend on consolidation, global supply chains, and commodity logic — the very systems that have made our food increasingly insecure, environmentally destructive, and socially unjust.

A few examples:

• Bega Group, worth around $3.5 billion, representing large-scale agribusiness interests.
• An academic from a food and beverage accelerator, who openly frames food security in terms of value-adding for domestic consumption and export into global markets. This is not food security — it’s market expansion.
• The Australian Fresh Produce Alliance, representing just 11 companies controlling 50% of all fresh produce sold in Australia.
• The National Retail Association, whose priorities regularly conflict with those of farmers, workers, and eaters.
• An agribusiness academic formerly with CBH and Canola Breeders WA, reinforcing a commodity-export paradigm.
• Grain Trade Australia, whose explicit mission is to promote the grain trade — not food resilience or community nourishment.
• The interim CEO of the National Farmers’ Federation, which overwhelmingly represents export-oriented large agribusiness, not the diversity of farmers who actually feed local communities.

The council includes one First Nations representative and one union representative — both of whom we strongly support. But with such a heavily corporatised membership, how can their voices meaningfully shape the outcomes? Two people cannot counterbalance an entire governance structure built around capital accumulation rather than community nourishment.

“I Don’t See Any Corporate Interests”: The Meeting That Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

When we raised these concerns directly, the Assistant Secretary responded with an astonishing claim: he did not see where corporate interests were represented on the NFC.

Let that sink in.

Bega Group?
Fresh Produce Alliance?
National Retail Association?
Grain Trade Australia?
The NFF?

Apparently none of these count as corporate interests.

He further claimed that there are already First Nations and smallholder interests represented. When we pointed out that the consultant Andrew Henderson and NFF CEO Su McCluskey do not represent smallholders — and that Leisa McCarthy was appointed as a First Nations leader — he responded that nobody on the council is there to represent their workplace or organisation (not all of which have been disclosed), including McCarthy herself.

This would almost be funny if it weren’t so dangerous. The council was announced precisely as a gathering of organisations and experts whose affiliations were listed publicly — but now we are told their roles are irrelevant, that they are there purely as individuals, and that therefore representation doesn’t matter.

This linguistic sleight of hand is how corporate capture is normalised: erase power, deny interests, and insist that everyone is there ‘as an individual.’

Who Actually Gets to Shape the Strategy?

DAFF also made clear that their internal team will write the National Food Security Strategy. The NFC’s job is simply to “advise” — but only the existing members. There are no plans to expand the council, despite the glaring absence of:

• small-scale farmers
• food-justice advocates
• independent public health experts
• First Nations food sovereignty leaders (beyond a single voice)
• community food organisations
• workers beyond a single union representative

We were told not to worry — there will be a broader public consultation where we can submit input like anyone else. But let’s be clear: public submissions are not power-sharing. They are a democratic minimum, not a form of participatory democracy.

If the strategy is drafted by a department guided by a council of corporate actors, with community perspectives relegated to a submissions portal, then the result is predictable: more consolidation and more export-dependence, less processing and distribution options and fewer farmers, resulting in more vulnerability and less equity.

Food Sovereignty Means Real Representation — Not Gaslighting

The food sovereignty movement has long asked the essential question: Who decides food? Who shapes the systems that grow, process, distribute, and price the food that nourishes us? Who sets the rules? Who holds the power?

The NFC makes the answer brutally clear:

• Those who profit from large-scale agribusiness decide.
• Those who build export markets decide.
• Those who run supermarket supply chains decide.
• Those whose primary interest is commodity flows decide.

And those who live on Country, feed local communities, care for soil and water, run small and medium farms, build food cooperatives, feed people through community kitchens, and fight for food justice?
We get a consultation link.

We Can — and Must — Demand Better

The coalition behind the Who Decides Food? campaign is fighting for a food system where communities, not corporations, shape the policies and infrastructures that determine the future of food in Australia. Yesterday’s meeting affirmed why this work is urgent.

We need a National Food Council — but one grounded in:

• Food sovereignty
• Agroecology
• Democratic representation
• First Nations leadership

Not a council that treats corporate dominance as invisible and community expertise as optional.

We will continue to call for:

• Expanded and rebalanced membership devoid of big industry
• Transparent appointments and clear criteria for representation
• A strategy grounded in community resilience, not export markets

The question remains:
Who decides food?

Right now, the answer is unacceptable.
But together, we can change it.