Growing Change

As the saying goes ‘it’s been a long time between drinks’ – Well overdue, the prompt to get active with this blog again is this week’s second national Fair Food Week. It follows last year’s inaugural Fair Food Week, the idea for which came about after the successful nationwide consultations for the development of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’s (AFSA) People’s Food Plan discussion paper.
To date there are more than 80 events organised and underway around the country with themes including: Beyond the trolley; Support your community fair food projects and groups; Grow our urban agriculture and Support gasfield-free communities.

Locally we have some great events – in Bendigo we have the annual Spring Fair at our local Old Church on the Hill community garden hub, where the proceeds will add to the funds for establishing a shared feast space and community kitchen.

In Harcourt the Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens folk are holding a free fruit-growing workshop.

We can make food access fairer with a Local Food Act. AFSA and the Food Alliance in Victoria have been lobbying for an Ontario-style Local Food Act for Victoria. Its objectives are:
• Support our food economy, our local farmers and food businesses
• Increase access to healthy and local food for all Victorians
• Provide healthy food education for Victoria’s children and youth
• Enhance ecosystems by supporting sustainable farming practices
• Protect our fertile food bowl regions and
• Connect people to food via funding for a wide range of food initiatives

And you can sign our change.org petition in support of action.

A substantial Victorian Local Food Fund, part of the Local Food Act advocacy, might support innovative local food initiatives such as:

• Local producers selling into local markets – ‘Farmers Markets / Food Hubs and Community Food Centres / on-farm diversification’ etc
• Urban agriculture and related initiatives
• Local Food Networks, education and food literacy initiatives
• Community food kitchens, Emergency Food Relief, financial assistance programs, fundraising events, social enterprise and other forms of food security empowerment initiatives

This investment can better support our local food farmers, create job opportunities and stimulate economic development, particularly in regional Victoria. Here in Bendigo the emphasis needs to be significantly focused on enabling people experiencing disadvantage to have improved access and availability of fresh and healthy produce. With a third of the community living below the poverty line the challenges of eating well are being discussed and solutions sought. Support for local producers and Local Community Food Initiatives can play a major role and will go a long way to achieving the goal of access to fresh and healthy food for all.

Want to learn more about what can be done to support people in need of emergency financial assistance? For further information and resources, check out this useful guide from GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/c/blog/emergency-financial-assistance.

Remember to stay tuned to our website for future updates about similar events that are designed to raise funds for people living in poverty.

Kicking off 2014 for Growing Change I have updated my top 10 ideas for a better food system into a more reflective, action oriented and local focus:

Growing Change

A Template for Food System Change in Your Local Community

1.    Vision

Bring people around the table who are active in local food initiatives to discuss what a sustainable, just, resilient and healthy food and farming system would look like in your community. Who needs to be there?

2.    Champion

By supporting local food producers you can help protect and champion sustainable food sources. Who do you know in your area that produces food sustainably and who is promoting them?

3.    Participate

All people have a right to access to healthy and nutritious food. Bring people together to participate in decisions that affect the local food system. Bear in mind those who experience disadvantage when discussing how food system issues affect community members and think about ‘Who is not here and why not?’

4.    Advocate

Campaign for a local food policy coalition that can develop regional food strategies. This is a role for local government in particular. Who do you need to work with to support the case for participation in governance of local food system issues that affect the health and wellbeing of the whole community?

5.    Value

Assess what facilities are available for local community food initiatives and audit land suitable for food production in your area. Will you speak out to protect land from development that could produce food?

6.    Establish

Start doing the groundwork to establish community food centres, social enterprises that could potentially be organised in regional clusters as hubs. Who may provide support for these in the community? Work with them.

7.    Celebrate

Respect our local foods and diverse cultural influences. How many groups in your community speak a language other than English and how can they participate and connect with their community via food?

8.    Teach

Learning about where our food comes from and the future impacts of climate change on our ability to eat healthy and nutritious food is important for the whole community, those in schools and higher education.  How many programs exist in your community, schools and workplaces?

9.    Invest

Promote support for newer food producers via mentoring and farmer enterprise diversification that will keep growers profitable whilst nurturing the environment. What farming groups exist in your community and how do you start a conversation with them about creating a food system that is better for everyone?

10. Reduce

Decreasing food waste relies on new food production, processing and trading processes that make better use of valuable food. Does your local area have a plan for large-scale compost production facilities, or associated energy production? How can you be a part of a change that values food and hates waste in your community?

Establishing Growing Change in 2012 my mission was, and remains, working for healthy communities, environmental sustainability and a more equal society via community involvements, advocacy and consultancy work. In addition the development of The Backyard Pharmacy at Maison Bleue has been great recreation.

2013 saw Growing Change progress with involvements both small and large scale, local and international and from vision to practice. A year ago I set off for India with CERES Global, braced for adventure. In a trip where hospitality and friendship sat alongside revelations of resourceful empoverished communities plus public health nightmares, my reflections led to our signing up to ‘Who Gives a Crap’.

Back in Oz the nascent idea of creating resilient communities via enthusiasm for growing, preparing and eating fresh fruit and vegetables progressed to my concept of Edible Bendigo. And with all the relevant players in Bendigo around the table the notion of Bendigo Edible Enterprises was born as a means of social enterprise supporting the multiple local community food initiatives underway.

With equity issues at front of mind I spoke at the Symposium of Gastronomy on the theme of the communal table and at the City of Greater Bendigo’s Healthy Together Bendigo Food Forum on the current status of the community food movement in Australia, and with the 90 participants brain stormed the possibilities for the community food system in Bendigo. Now some funding for these local community food initiatives will support further action.

The Regional Food Network conference in Daylesford was another opportunity to describe the idea of Edible Bendigo as a model for creating community action around food initiatives. Recently the Agrifood XX conference in Melbourne provided another forum for the Edible Bendigo concept, where Food Hubs’ development as places where people learn to enjoy, grow, cook and choose to eat fresh and healthy food and access information via an Online Kitchen hub had an audience.

The 2012 work to develop the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’s People’s Food Plan progressed to our first annual Fair Food Week in August, with over 100 events around the country celebrating food systems that nourish all people, keep growers profitable and nurture the environment.  In Bendigo The Old Church on the Hill provided the venue for the films Fresh and Nourish and once more the discussion flowed.

Contacted by an enthusiastic community member, I joined a group of locals around her kitchen table in North Eltham who were involved in different community groups, many food related, and keen to discuss ways to enhance their impact and to achieve bigger things. The group is still meeting and plans are underway to simplify community tasks through the experience of others and the synergies that can emerge when groups working together form better community connections.

The November visit of British Council Fellow, Chris Walsh, hosted by the Victorian Eco Innovation Laboratory, was an opportunity to spark ideas locally with his speaking tour around initiatives such as Feeding Manchester and Manchester Veg People and once more the ideas and connections blossomed in our local community. My Edible Bendigo concept got another run, with its potential in supporting Food Hubs the focus.

When Deakin University’s Food Alliance received VicHealth funding to establish a Victorian Food Systems Network I was happy to chair the steering group for the project as another timely way to connect the dots and bring groups together to be more than the sum of their parts. Similarly, participating on Boards of the local Foodshare and the Victorian Farmers’ Markets Association provides further opportunities to progress ways that communities can improve their access to nutritious food, while at the same time strengthening community. This is despite the loss of the National Food Plan with a change of government, and with it the new Community Food Grants, the Australian Council on Food and potentially the whole Australian National Preventive Health Agency, fought for via evidence and advocacy over decades.

Not to be deterred, communities are mobilising. Locally we have Ian McBurney, proposing some novel ideas at the recent Bendigo Sustainability Awards: individuals becoming carbon neutral in their lifestyles within 10 years, holding 450 local kitchen tables talks around themes of energy efficiency and other community resilience initiatives and buying back the power grid locally. Exciting stuff. So much so that weeks later I joined others around a table to discuss the challenges posed. The aim is to create resourceful communities who can better weather what is ahead with our changing climate.

So it’s one table talk down, and 449 to go. Welcome to 2014, the year of action and a New Year’s Revolution.

In the last few years many groups have been working to achieve changes to their local food system and, by default, their communities. Local community food initiatives are being mapped leading to projects like the City of Yarra Community Food System Google map, the VEIL food map, Local Harvest, gleaning maps such as Falling Fruit Bendigo Google maps for finding local bonanzas of forgotten or neglected fruit trees, regional producer guides and ‘foodprinting’ at a local level such as Know Your Foodbowl, inspired by the Oxford Foodprint report, being just some examples.

As I sat recently talking with a group of locals in a semi-rural area the conversation once more turned to mapping. This time the focus was slightly different. The approach discussed was called asset based community development and is a type of mapping that focuses on strengths, similar to the strengths based programs so effective in mental health work, rather than focusing on a problem to be solved. If you are interested in looking at reality as if it is ‘resplendent with possibilities and potential’ then you may find this approach as exciting as I did. It is claimed that tapping into this potential has ‘the capacity to leverage social and organisational change well beyond the expectations of existing practice’. In other words, when we put our mind to it, a new voice can emerge for change in a community at all levels.

How do people know what is possible? This is where leadership and local knowledge come in. Whatever the realm, there will be someone who has experienced or understands what is being done locally or elsewhere, and the strengths and successes of that approach. By listening to these stories a conversation can begin to define what the new narrative or story is that can emerge when we all join with the assumption that what has been done in the past may be built on to serve our needs into the future. When people started to outline what they would like to see, the how can start to emerge coincidentally. In the case of the food system, community resilience and climate change that certainly is the case.

So many people are aware of the need to change our practices when it comes to sourcing fresh, nutritious food that treads lightly on the planet regarding resource inputs for its growth. Witness the booming local and organic movements, premised on a sustainable environmental impact of what we choose to eat and how we prefer it to be produced.

Why not invite a few people involved in different community groups of interest to you for a cuppa and see what conversations emerge? Just as each of us differs, so, too do our communities. There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to understanding our unique strengths but there are some good examples of how to learn about the whole being more than the sum of the parts.

A recent community food film night, auspiced by Growing Change and the Bendigo Community Food Network, brought people together at the Old Church on the Hill in Bendigo.

It was the bleakest winter’s night – pouring rain and single digit temperatures, yet the cosy Old Church on the Hill was filled with people keen to find out more about why Australia needs a food system that nourishes people, is fair to farmers and nurtures the environment.

In a venue filled with comfy couches, crocheted rugs and a country supper to be envied – dozens of people gathered in this newly emerged community hub, ranging from medicos to producers and business owners, educators and community gardeners. All heard how the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance is raising funds to make a film to tell the story of Australia’s food producers, with a short film clip Orange Tree Blues introduced by Costa Giorgiadis.  It will feature the stories of those who are struggling as part of a food system that favours cheap and suspect imports over local producers, community and viability of our food manufacturing industry long term.

They heard about the story of our food with the Nourish documentary, then about the issues of our modern food system with Fresh the movie. Both films highlighted the solutions being sought by people who know the problems we face in favouring an industrial approach to agriculture. One where the reality we face is a future of a changing climate and vulnerabilities of our food system touted as the ‘food bowl of Asia’.

This was but one of a hundred events around the country to mark the inaugural Fair Food Week and celebrating the rejuvenation of food citizenry and democracy. Proclaiming a role for everyone in determining the food we want in the future and how it needs to be produced. It celebrated the People‘s Food Plan. Where nationwide consultation has produced the first people’s policy for our food system, divorced from vested interest and its sole focus on market economics. It’s a plan with a resilient community as its goal and an aim of prosperity for producers. One where enterprise is supported at all scales and the community benefits from improved access to fresh and healthy foods, key to a healthy and happy older age for all.

The evening ends, the migrants who work in a rural chicken farm have heard about the dilemmas faced by Mr and Mrs Fox (real names) who are locked into a chicken production contract that is less than favourable for them and the community, to say the least. In contrast they have also heard Joel Salatin celebrating the need for chickens to express their ‘chicken-ness’ (you had to be there).

The words of Will Allen of Growing Power, the national non profit and land trust urban farm in the US reverberate as people discuss composting and food growing.  The community is discussing how they can work towards implementing initiatives locally to build on what’s underway in making Bendigo’s food system a fairer and healthier one. Conversations of hope and enthusiasm. Yes the evening has been a success. From these seeds many things may grow.

It’s here!  Fair Food Week August 19 – 25 is a week of events that will celebrate the work of Australia’s fair food leaders.

Coordinated by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), to support the Peoples’ Food Plan, Australia’s first-ever Fair Food Week shines a light on our new story of food. The crowd-sourced week demonstrates the initiative of citizens, organisations and small business in creating events that convey the message of fair access to good food for all, an abundant future for Australia’s farmers who produce what we eat and the sovereignty of free choice over the foods we want as the eaters of that food.
Over 90 events are being staged across the country: forums, workshops, speakers, films, farmers’ fairs, food swaps, community garden and farm tours, and more. The powerful response to the first Fair Food Week reflects renewed community interest in what we eat, how it is produced and how it gets to us.

Here in northern Victoria we have already had free food at the Seymour Community Market, the Red Gum Food Group Koondrook Barham Local Food Challenge has kicked off, Growing Abundance in Castlemaine has a Food for Thought lunch coming up on Tuesday, on Thursday Growing Change and the Bendigo Community Food Network are hosting a community film night with Nourish the documentary and Fresh the movie, the Bowden Street Women are gathering on Friday night and on Saturday the week rounds out with the Trentham Growers Cookers and Eaters dinner.

Fair Food Week was organised because Australia’s food economy is changing in ways that do not always benefit farmers, our food processing industry or eaters. There are concerns over how food is processed, the excessive market power of supermarkets, how cheap food imports with unknown health impacts force Australian farmers off the land and Australian food processors to close, and over biosafety. Plus both farmers and farm workers and food processors should be able to enjoy healthy, good and fair working conditions.

Then there is the link between food advertising and the national epidemic of diet-related ill health, highlighting a need for change that is obvious and overwhelming. Countering these trends is an upsurge of interest in our food future and of initiatives by small to medium scale business, social enterprise and communities in co-creating a better food system with increased access to healthy foods.

Supporting regional food economies with the employment opportunities they bring is not only desirable, but that it is achievable too. Food fairness is the real quadruple bottom line: it looks after our health and well-being, it cares for the land and water, generates decent jobs and conditions for producers and contributes to prosperous and resilient communities.

Communities where there is fair access to good, tasty food for the thousands of Australians and their children living on low incomes.

So during Fair Food Week, we can all go out and enjoy food produced fairly and realise that fair food can nourish all people, support communities, keep growers profitable and nurture the environment.