Dr Amy Carrad
The ACT Government released a Draft Canberra Region Local Food Strategy in September 2023, which claims it will “increase community access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food.” It aims to do so by leaning heavily on community gardens as a means of increasing fresh produce in the region.
While this is a noble pursuit, can the Strategy ensure equitable food access while relying so heavily on community gardens?
In my recently published paper about local governments’ community garden policies, I discuss how local governments can do more to support community gardens through adequate funding and policies.
In creating food strategies, consulting with communities, and implementing policy, the government must make considerations about purpose and framing, food equity and justice, governance, and financial capacity.
Done well, these considerations would ensure that food strategies are comprehensive and fair, as well as viable.
In my submission to the ACT Government on this issue, I drew on my research (local food system governance in NSW and Victoria) and personal experience as a member of various food-related civil society organisations.
Ambition and Framing
In the Draft Canberra Region Local Food Strategy (the Strategy), there is a misguided assumption that if we produce more food in the ACT and raise awareness, then local people will eat that food.
This overlooks the broader social, environmental, economic, cultural, and commercial determinants that contribute to people’s capacity to obtain food, and their consumption behaviours.
Even if we produce more food in the ACT region, people will continue to face significant economic and other barriers to purchasing healthy, local food, or to growing their own.
The Strategy does not reflect a food systems approach. Food policy needs to move beyond the agricultural silo and toward an integrated and comprehensive human rights-based food system and food security approach if we are to achieve a healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system.
Equity, justice, human rights, food security, and sovereignty are key food system issues
Disappointingly, the Strategy contains no references to equity (in a substantive way), food justice, human rights, food security, or sovereignty. Without this, I fear it lacks a strong purpose and will fail to ensure that locally produced food is equitably accessible.
Without intentional effort, the Strategy may fall into the trap of local or ‘alternative’ food systems benefitting wealthier, white people and excluding those who experience food insecurity most severely.
Food security is a fundamental product of a sustainable food system. By thinking of food security only as a food production (availability) issue, we ignore the social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political circumstances that also shape food security.
Moving toward a food system approach, and one that might meaningfully address equity, would require recognition of and action on the broader determinants that influence food-related practices.
This requires progressive public policy (e.g., increasing income support payments to above the poverty line and indexing these payments to wage growth) that can ensure that people are not forced to decide between purchasing food or essential medicines, or between eating or heating.
Governance, participation, and representation
Governance is a critical element of any strategy, yet this Strategy fails to provide sufficient details regarding oversight.
I urge governments to engage with more diverse stakeholders and utilise governance models that distribute power more equally with the community. The current community-reference group model is not sufficient. Regarding governance, participation, and representation, I suggest:
- The need for a new whole-of-system Food Systems Committee to oversee the Strategy’s implementation;
- That power sharing could occur through the establishment of a Food Policy Council;
- The employment of at least one designated agricultural/food system officer within government;
- Meaningful and more diverse participation and representation, such as people with lived experience of food insecurity;
- Continued integration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and community groups in the Strategy’s evolution and implementation; and
- Community representation during the development of the forthcoming implementation plan, not only during the implementation phase.
On that last point, I’m pleased to report that the ACT Government has recently created a Community Reference Group – a group of stakeholders to inform the implementation plan by developing five priority actions for the first year of the plan. This is a best-case scenario for 2024, given the timelines for finalising the Strategy for cabinet approval and budget applications.
Financial capacity
Information about funding to implement the Strategy was also lacking.
This essential food systems work deserves and requires sustained funding.
This must combine core funding for staff, fit-for-purpose funding, grant schemes (including designated allocations of money, and simplified grant application procedures for community groups), and investing resources into community-run organisations who are already contributing to this important work.
These considerations would ensure the Canberra Region Local Food Strategy fulfils its promise of increased community access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food.
Amy Carrad is a Research Fellow in ARCHE | Australian Research Centre for Health Equity at the Australian National University. ARCHE focuses on complex systems, regulatory governance, and health equity. We seek to understand the dynamic systems of institutions, actors and ideas that shape multisectoral public policy, market practices and products, and the actions of civil groups. ARCHE’s research spans the political, commercial, environmental, social and cultural determinants of health inequities. The aim of our work is to provide evidence related to these complex systems, which through proactive engagement with key change markers across society, will help contribute to a fairer, more sustainable, and healthier society within Australia, across the Asia Pacific region, and globally.
Image credit: rawpixel.com / U.S. Department of Agriculture
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