Over the past few months a focus of Growing Change has been developing a big idea to value add to all of the great Local Community Food Initiatives underway in Bendigo.
The local food scene features many community gardens, community farmers market, school gardens, city farm and food box scheme, urban food growing and cooking and preserving collaborations, fruit gleaning, food aid and ideas for food vans and more.
Following this an opportunity emerged for a collaboration to respond to the challenge of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and developing a culture of healthy eating, via the VicHealth Seed Challenge . My Growing Change response is the idea for Edible Bendigo (see link to infogram below), with a vision of the whole city sharing enthusiasm for growing, preparing and eating fresh fruit and vegetables, and with Bendigo Edible Enterprises being an overarching vehicle proposed for supporting community food enterprises, supported by a broad consortium of organisations and businesses.
A digital component to create an Online Kitchen Hub would act as a portal and coordination point for all events and activities, ideas and contacts as well as being a link to Kitchen Elders, trained volunteers who could provide explanations of basic cooking skills and techniques.
Another component of the idea is that creating a culture of healthy eating entails making healthy choices easy, and this could be achieved via a +1 Fresh campaign theme throughout Bendigo Edible Enterprises’ activities in the community. Its food for thought … and, hopefully, action as well.
The Healthy Together Bendigo program , involving the City of Greater Bendigo and Bendigo Community Health Services, came up with an idea to encourage ideas and innovation to support healthy eating community food initiatives via a Food Forum. This saw an afternoon of dynamic and excited conversations earlier this week that has added to the buzz around food in Bendigo and started a process of mapping collaborations, current and potential.
Using an Open Source process the community were keen to talk about the following issues: Soil and compost, Edible food waste, Food as a tool of communication, Food education, Food-scapes, Sustainable production, Producer to consumer, Community participation, Community gardens, Community kitchens, Maintaining affordability, Inspiring behaviour change, Involving rural communities, Sharing of the surplus, Collaborative supply, Building skills, Urban bee keeping, Food in the public realm, Food safety/food regulations, How to access funding in schools and groups, Creating employment around food, Food for fun, Urban agriculture facilitator in Council, How to garden without funding, Urban livestock, Volunteer private land use – home gardens etc, Young people and primary production….an amazing response.
Action resulting from all of these ideas that are fermenting currently could enable improved fruit and vegetable supply and access, developing a sustainable and replicable prototype of healthy eating in Bendigo, and in addition further the creation of a strong and resilient community, able to face future climatic variability. A regional plan for a local food system less vulnerable to the emerging challenges of climate change is the next step.
