Foodies, fess up – are you fed up?
It’s hip to be fair this month, as the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) Fair Trade Week kicks off an ethical alternative to the National Food Plan.
The AFSA bases itself on ‘La Via Campesina’, which loosely translates to ‘The Way of the Peasants’.
It may sound more exciting in Spanish, but the term coined in 1993 began an independent international movement involving 150 local and national organisations. Their ethos to defend small-scale sustainable agriculture inspired the AFSA to support the underdog.
And in this case, the underdog is struggling Australian farmers.
Think of the AFSA as Robin Hood, and organisations such as MADGE, Gene Ethics, and Little Vegie Co as his merry men; outlaws of the political system and pioneers for the farming community.
The former Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Joe Ludwig started the National Food Plan in May this year, with a focus on excessive produce imports, such as Australia as the food bowl of Asia by 2025.
The AFSA launched the People’s Food Plan in response to the scheme’s “heavy bias towards corporate agri-business, large-scale food manufacturing and big retailing interests.”
National Coordinator of the AFSA Dr Nick Rose says the People’s Food Plan aims to give power back to minority groups, indigenous communities and agricultural workers.
“The market isn’t an all-knowing, all-wise demigod that is benevolent and is going to look after us,” said Dr Rose. “It’s a real time of anguish for farmers, which sometimes results in depression and suicidal thinking.”
“It’s a very human tragedy being forced through the impersonal and inhumane operation of the free trading system,” he said.
Although the National Food Plan accepts that Australia provides adequate quantities of high-quality food, it maintains importing produce is the answer to a strong and sustainable food sector.
Co-founder of MADGE Frances Murrell argues that famines should not occur within democracies and that it was unacceptable that there were at least one million Australians currently facing food insecurity.
“Asia has a population of around three billion people, and Australia produces enough food for 60 million people,” she said. “Governments are supposedly concerned with the wellbeing of the people.”
“If my child is sick, or people in my neighbourhood can’t be fed, that’s a failure,” said Ms Murrell.
Foodbank refers to the 2012 ANU College of Arts and Social Science study ‘Public Opinion on Food Security’, reporting two million Australians use food relief each year.
Ms Murrell says this is a food justice issue, and not a production issue.
“Governments cannot be expected to do anything if people are passive and refuse to become engaged with debates,” she said. “You have to challenge the ideology that everyone can see is just enriching a few corporations.”
Ms Murrell says that diet related disease and poor mental health will increase if the food system neglects fair access to nutritious and affordable food.
“More people are losing limbs to diabetes than landmines,” she said. “This is why the People’s Food Plan is so important, because food shouldn’t be about creating profits, but about a healthy population, and food that is being produced in a way that isn’t wrecking the land, farmer’s health or the climate.”
Manager of Fitzroy organic store Aunt Maggie’s, Simeon Rae, argued that issues surrounding consumer demand and competition are problematic for farmers.
“Supermarkets are forcing the competition out of the food industry by undercutting smaller producers with their home brand products,” he said.
In June, La Via Campesina hosted their sixth international conference in Jakarta, and for the first time there was a delegation of Australian farmers present.
“In some ways we’re behind Europe, America, and other parts of the world, but we are also leading the way in terms of moving towards a genuine sustainable form of production that isn’t dependent on chemicals and fossil fuels,” said Dr Rose.
A short film trailer by ACT-based film-maker Simon Cunich (courtesy of AFSA).
