Discussion: Overview
For the optimum conductance of daily life activities and maintenance of basic sustenance, food is undoubtedly, a necessity. Hence, being in the centre of food production and manufacturing activities, every individual on a global scale must have access to healthy, safe and adequate food supplies every day (Hardin 2018). However, recent trends in globalisation and the advent of science and technology, have resulted in a paradoxical situation resulting in not just inadequate access to food but also prevalence of harmful substances. ‘Food Democracy’, as opined by the Pesticide Action Network in North America, implies the right of every individual to gain access to nutritious and safe food, produced via ethical means (Wiley 2015). The idea emphasises on the decentralisation of food acquisition and supply from multinational corporations to involving local citizens in participation in the decision-making process of producing food through sustainable usage of essential environmental resources along with ensuring equity in distribution (Jokisch et al. 2015).
The following paragraphs aim to shed light on the ‘Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’. There is extensive and elaborate discussion on the democratic principles adopted by this organization with respect to food security, safety and access along with critical analysis concerning its association with food citizenship and civic agriculture. Lastly, the report attempts to critically analyse the theoretical frameworks pertaining to the politics of transforming food supply through this selected organization.
The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance is a collaborative network of various food production professionals and organizations with a collective aim to establish a global, democratic and sovereign food network where individuals are provided with the freedom and opportunity to select, formulate and organize the production supply chain of their food from farm to fork. The organization is independent without any affiliation to political parties and comprises a team of over five hundred individuals and organizations such as Community Gardens Network, Australian City Farms, Victorian Local Governance Association, City of Melbourne, Melbourne Farmers Markets Association, Gene Ethics, Human Choice and MADGE (Carey et al. 2016).
The establishment of the organization dates back to the year 2010, in response to the creation of a National Food Policy for Australia, as suggested by the Australian Labour Party during the federal elections. The creation of such a policy triggered nationwide outrage amongst individuals advocating for a fair food movement since it focusses mainly on the stronghold of Australian food chains by powerful retail and agricultural businesses. Since then, the organization has worked tediously towards the development of a ‘People’s Food Plan’ which emphasised on enhancing the transparency of the proposed national food policy by allowing participation of every Australian at the localised food production levels (Davila and Dyball 2015).
Food Citizenship and Civic Agriculture
At present, the selected organization places great emphasis on the presence of localised farming business in Australia, and hence works actively for their flourishing and thriving. This is done through the establishment of their organizational subsection, ‘Fair Food Farmers United’ which serves as a representative body for farmers all over Australia. For the successful growth of farmers’ businesses and food supply, there is a need for the eradication of restrictive regulations, which the organizations aims to achieve by working on advocacy for justified costs incurred by farmers while trading with domestic markets, enhancing awareness concerning the implications of low quality farmers imports and establishment of communication and information dissemination amongst various farming groups in the nation (Devin and Richards 2018). The organization also works extensively with academicians in various reputed universities, customers and independent food producers such as Food Connect, Fair Food Brisbane, Regrarians, Friends of the Earth and Permaculture Network (Dixon and Richards 2016).
Civic agriculture implies the establishment of an agricultural system in the local levels, which is strongly associated with the economic and social development of any community. The aim is to efficiently meeting the food demands of the community through strengthening local food production businesses, economies and entrepreneurs (Obach and Tobin 2014). The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance attempts to strongly advocate civic agricultural policies by supporting and representing various Australian local farms along with actively working towards their well bring through avoidance of the usage of pesticides, ensuring sound physiological and psychological health of such farming families and establishment of ‘people friendly farms’ where even children can inhabit safely and ethical animal treatment procedures are strictly followed (Carney 2016). The organization has further suggested amendments to support such farming practices to the Australian Productivity Commission in response to its greater emphasis on giving importance to corporate retail businesses in the food production chain. Unfortunately the draft has been considering paving the way for the requirements of increased efforts by the organization to work towards local Australian farming communities in gaining equitable share in the food production chain along with greater availability of agricultural areas (Larder, Lyons and Woolcock 2014).
The ideal of food citizenship refers to the engagement of behaviours, practices and attitudes which are food-oriented and aim to empower the creation and maintenance of a food supply chain and system which is adheres to just social, democratic and economic policies along with maintenance of sustainability in the environment (Poulsen 2017). The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance aims to successful fulfil this policy by advocating and abiding by the principles of Community Supported Agriculture, which included a direct relationship between local farming groups and consumers without any further organizational barriers (Thornton 2017). The organization further engages in the above by being a part of ‘Urgenci’ and network working on Community Supported Agriculture on an international platform. However, despite such attempts, the organization still requires considerable effort since current political trade and food supply practices continue to favour large retail businesses which not only view localised farming groups as exhibiting greater levels of risks and contamination, but also threaten the concerned farming practices through mere availability of cheap imports and production means (Blättel?Mink et al. 2017).
Impact on Health and Industrial Food System: Challenges and Opportunities
One of the key challenges pertaining to the present functioning of the food supply chain is the prevalence of the health condition of obesity in Australia. A primary reason which leads to the occurrences of such detrimental public health condition, is the continued advertisement and easy availability of food products manufactured and sold by powerful retail companies which are rich in calories and deficient in essential nutrients. A further added burden of this public health is the growing costs associated with the procurement of fresh, locally grown agricultural produce and food products, due to decreased prevalence and usage of the same (Mialon, Swinburn and Sacks 2015). The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance aims to overcome this public health challenge through the proposal of a people’s food plan, which will promote opportunities of improvement of heath literacy amongst youth and children through conductance of educational programs aimed at emphasising the importance of healthy and safe agricultural practices. The plan also attempts to positively impact public health by promoting opportunities such as increased local access to foods through creation of various localized farming practices such as community gardens, home based gardening and city based farms which will not only increase availability of heathy and nutritious food but also result in subsidized prices further encouraging healthy dietary practices and improved public health (Farsund and Daugbjerg 2017).
The Industrial food system presents challenges in the form of rampant advertisement and easy accessibility to unhealthy food which not only results in decreased intake of adequate nutrients but also increased prevalence of detrimental public health concerns such as obesity. The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance aims to impact the industrial food system challenges by advocating for opportunities aimed at restricting the unnecessary food supply freedom by such industrial strongholds through implementation of their proposed people’s food plan (Jarosz 2014). The additional challenge is the prevalence of risk of contamination prevalent due to prolonged storage hours and handling of food products by various parties. Hence, the organization aims to overcome this challenge by advocating the safety of locally grown produce along with promoting the awareness of fair trade policies which will prevent localised farming groups to obtain cheap and poor quality produce (Lindberg et al. 2015).
The organization works actively in the fulfilment of successful food supply by the concerned citizen’s further resulting in long tern changes in the prevalent food supply and production system. There is a need to establish an integrated and all-inclusive food system which is highly doubtful in accordance to the Australian scenario due to the scattered food governance policies across several governmental levels at the national, state and federal platforms and also across various food supplies functioning department such as health, retail, distribution and transportation, processing and agriculture (Vilar-Compte et al. 2017). Various private retail industries and multinational corporations express major stronghold over these governance levels hence resulting in exclusion of the needs and interests of local stakeholders responsible for food production and supply. The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance aims to transform this food system in the long run through regaining citizen’s control – which it has achieved through formulation of localised food policy committees. Such councils encourage all-inclusive participation of various important stakeholders such as food consumers, local farmers, chefs and even community and health workers. In its proposed plan of implementation of a ‘people’s food plan’, the organization has actively advocated to the Australian government for the creation of a ‘National Food Council’ in response to the governmental ‘National Food Policy’ (Turner et al. 2018). Such a council will aim to represent the needs and interests of local food system stakeholders through a highly inclusive and equitable representative body consisting of public health and community welfare professionals, farming families and even participating members belonging to various indigenous and underprivileged communities. The governmental implementation of such a reformed council body will increase the citizen’s control over the food system due to equitable representation of localised farming and community food stakeholders. Another strategy of enhancing citizen’s control and long term food system change is the abolition or reduction of centralisation in the food production chain which leads to unnecessary increased concentration on private industrial and retail benefits (Blay-Palmer, Sonnino and Custot 2016). The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance aims to achieve this by the formulation of an ‘Open Food Web’ and ‘Food Hubs’ at the localised and regional platforms, where like-minded individuals such as farmers, consumers and community health workers can share information, voice their concerned, get themselves heard at the federal level and gain local control on the local farming activities and associated food distribution products, equipment, manufacturing and domestic market distribution (Levkoe and Blay-Palmer 2018).
To critically analyse the functioning and working principles of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, we can consider the research conducted by Enderton et al. (2017), which is based upon usage of the principles of ‘shepherding’ for the purpose of enhancing the prevalent food systems and the resultant improvement in the conductance of principles of food democracy. The authors in this research focus extensively on the principles of ‘community engagement’ and the usage of a multidisciplinary approach which can be associated with the functioning of the selected organization in this report (Enderton, Bregendahl and Topaloff 2017). The principles of community engagement imply the involvement of the community citizens for the purpose of initiating changes in the social system – an ideology which is widely utilised by the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance as it advocates for an all-inclusive participation of all the localised community welfare individuals such as farming families, public health workers as well as consumers, for the purpose of betterment and increased control over the local, indigenous public food system (Carey et al. 2016). Further, the authors of the selected research also emphasise the usage of interventions associated with multidisciplinary, multi-sector and multi-level platforms, which has proven to be more beneficial in the administration of positive consequences in the food democratic principles. The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance actively utilises this principles as mentioned in the previous sections of this report – the organization serves to be as an umbrella group consisting of various academicians, local farming communities, and Australian citizens as well various non-governmental and non-profit organizations of the nation (Enderton, Bregendahl and Topaloff 2017).
As stated by Enderton et al. (2017), local ‘shepherds’ that is the local farming families, consumers, distributors, community chefs and workers, and public health advocators who are the prime functioning members of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, prove to be successful in collectively directing the interests of local food system members along with successful representation and accountability at the federal governmental level. The selected organization actively uses this through the following steps consequently (Enderton, Bregendahl and Topaloff 2017):
- Informing the public concerning the autocracy presented by big retailers along with the importance of health literacy and local food production strategies.
- Consultation of local farming families concerning their needs and interests.
- Direct Involvement of localised groups in the improvement of local food democracy and governmental representation.
- Collaboration with each of the supporting members during the decision making process concerning food system improvement.
- Empowerment through the development of people’s food plan and national food councils as representative bodies of local food production and farming groups.
Conclusion
Hence from the above report, it can be concluded that a lack of effective food democratic principles is a pressing problem concerning the food system associated with the Australian scenario, and the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance is working actively for the achievement of the same, through active consideration, consolidation and representation of the local farming groups, consumers and associated members of the food production system. When critically analysed with the research conducted by Enderton et al. (2017), it can be concluded that the usage of effective shepherding principles have led to this organization yielding successful positive impacts on public health, industrial food system, citizen control and long term, food production amendments. However, considering the lack of governmental considerations, it can be concluded that the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance has to initiate further efforts for the successful implementation of food democratic principles in the Australian food system.
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