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.