National Sustainable Food Summit 2011

The National Sustainable Food Summit was put on in Melbourne 5/6 April by 3 Pillars Network – on their website they say they ‘will be the leading knowledge network for sustainable business in Australia.’

When I saw the event advertised, I knew immediately that I wanted to go. Unfortunately, my $1500 research funding allowance over the duration of candidature from my School at the University of Melbourne was exhausted last year, and I used up my one funding opportunity for an overseas conference and research on last year’s trip to Finland and Italy, so I had to come up with the registration fee myself, which was not insignificant at $655 (the student price) for two days. Given that no papers were printed (for sustainability reasons – not even the program), I honestly cannot imagine why it cost so much except that it must have been a tidy profit-making enterprise for 3 Pillars. The catering was mostly sustainable, ethical food – free range meats, organic milk and the like, but I still think the price was very high, and sadly meant a lot of people who would have had a lot to contribute (such as small, ethical producers?!) weren’t able to attend.

But on to the event! Because it was organised by a private organisation rather than government or higher education, I was unsure what to expect, and even more unsure what the outcomes would be. A Summit implies gathering the best minds to apply to a problem with a view to informing policy, regulation and community leadership. I’m not entirely clear how 3 Pillars intends to pursue the former two, but it’s obvious that they and many attendees are in fact community leaders, and that this event brought a diverse group together to talk about climate change, food security and a sustainable food future.

I’ll leave it to you to ask questions about the sponsors – I was just relieved neither of Australia’s grocery duopoly were on the list, and the diverse representation from across Australia’s food production, distribution, retail and consumption spectrum was important, in my view.

The key messages I took away were simple: we need good policy and regulation to support sustainable food production and recognise the important role farmers play as custodians of our natural resources, the free market has caused private interests to corrupt aspects of the food system for personal gain that is not in the public interest, and we need to dramatically increase the public’s knowledge and respect for food from paddock to plate.

I’ve quite simply typed up my notes as I took them throughout the Summit (I also tweeted a lot of this on the hashtag #SFS). They are not exhaustive, and I do hope I’ve recorded what I heard accurately. Any corrections would be welcome. The full presentations are up on the 3 Pillars Network Event Blog.

Professor Robin Batterham – ‘What does food security mean and why is it important to Australia?’

• Population is projected to grow from 6 billion currently to 9 billion by 2050
• A greater proportion of the world, due to increasing affluence, will (want to) consume more meat and dairy.
• Increases in aquaculture.
• Markets are fully globalised
• France is subsidising farmers because they’re part of the environment and need preserving – a precious heritage and future?
• Points from The Coming Famine by Julian Cribb
  • A price on emissions and rising energy costs will lead to more expensive fertilisers
  • Peak phosphorus is upon us (Cribb argues we passed it in 1989)
  • 70% of ‘blue water’ is already withdrawn from the system
  • More soil degradation and erosion
  • Productivity gains have lessened/plateaued
  • Food prices track fuel/energy prices
  • Food riots track grain prices
• Australia produces enough food for 60 million people
• Although Australia produces less than 3% of global wheat supply, we are the 4^th largest wheat exporter
• More droughts and floods (climate change)
• Increasing price volatility due to global connectivity
• Increased reliance on imports
• The UK throws out 3 billion cartons of uneaten yoghurt per annum (use by dates are very bad policy/regulation)
• Australian expertise in low input agriculture can help us:
  • develop a carbon neutral food sector
  • develop innovative resource management
• Land planning focus must improve
  • should decrease taxes on peri-urban land still being used for food production

Dr Amanda Lee, Queensland Health

• Adults eat:
  • 20% too much red meat (yet young women eat too little)
  • 40% too much starch
  • 30% too many refined grains
• If 35% of the population is overweight or obese, has the free market failed us?

Robert Pekin, Food Connect

• A reflection – while driving, you see manicured lawns and gardens. On the train, you see backyards, get a perspective of where and how much home food production is happening (not much in many areas?)
• Fresh produce consumption increases when people sign up with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box drop system
• In a CSA, 55% of the retail dollar goes back to the farmer compared with normal average of 15%
• We need to shift our focus from purely production to issues around distribution and consumption

Jock Laurie, National Farmers Federation

• Don’t blame farmers for lack of access and over-processing of food – that’s bad policy and business
• Bad policy and supermarket wars in the face of increasing costs of production are pinching farmers

Julian Cribb, author of The Coming Famine

• Farmers must double production (by the 2060s) with:
  • half the water
  • less land
  • no fossil fuels (eventually)
  • scarce and costly fertilisers
  • less technology
  • more climate instability
• Food stress leads to conflict, government failures, ‘refugee tsunamis’ and inflation
• Solutions:
  • Develop a new eco-agriculture
  • Urgently develop renewable energy sources for agriculture
  • Increase research and development
  • Fair incomes for farmers
  • Recycle urban sewerage for fertilisers
  • Bio-cultures and algae farms
  • New diet: 23,000 edible plants
  • Rehydrate, revegetate, re-carbonise
  • Teach respect for food

Kirsten Larsen, Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL)

‘Future Scenarios for Food? Victorian Food Supply Scenarios’

You really have to have a look at the full report to appreciate what an excellent bit of research this is from VEIL. I can’t do justice to the scenarios they propose here!

• Adjustment scenario – net food availability decreases
• Control scenario – food stability
• DIY scenario – mixed results

Michael McCallum, Global Foresight Network

• Transactional thinking and effort won’t get us there
• People have short-term agendas
• We need transformational thinking
  • Understand why (the shapers)
  • Deconstruct assumptions
  • Focus on where we need to go beyond now (transcendence – transformation is required)
  • Reconstruct meaning and new systems
  • Design integration pathways
  • Drive a change agenda at speed (urgent)
• Fundamentals of the new curve:
  • resilience – adaptability – sustainability – future focused

Consumption break out session

‘Obesity and climate change are two huge market failures’ (UK)

• In January 2007 (Australia) 78% of people were concerned about the environment
• Now it’s 60%
• Concern rarely translates into action
• A higher tendency towards green consumption generally leads to decreased consumption
• There is no consistent market segment that exhibits more sustainable behaviour – higher levels of knowledge correlates to less behaviour change?

Local food economies break out session

• When the population rapidly increased and food availability decreased in Cuba, people moved to cities – so the government invested in rural areas to draw people back out.
• Overly strict food safety is a barrier to local food production and distribution, including things like food swaps (pig days, etc)

Dr John Williams, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

• Must increase production while decreasing impact on the environment.
• Must make farming mimic natural ecosystems – they must generally be closed systems
• Pricing food for sustainability:
  • Reward the provision of ecosystem services (by farmers)
  • Need investment in the economic valuation of ecosystem services
  • Reward farmers for sustaining the land as a matter of public good
  • Cost of food doesn’t include the cost of maintaining natural resource base
  • Need government to create/adjust policy that creates incentives for sustainable practice and costs to the environment being internalised
  • Need market and trade policies that remove perverse subsidies
  • Regulatory framework to ensure food production does not lead to damage to natural resources and environment
  • Need an Australian Standard for sustainable agriculture for local and imported goods

Dr Tim Flannery, Chief Commissioner of the Climate Commission

• To address issues of an increasing population you need to address education and women’s rights in the developing world – alleviate poverty and you address population issues

Michael McCallum, Global Foresight Network

• Beyond an economic lens
• Pressures in current systems deliver poor returns
• Opportunities:
  • producing with constraints
  • food cycles not waste
  • focus on optimising high nutrition
• Reconnect people with food
• Accelerate knowledge and dialogue to deliver a new system

Richard Hames, Asian Foresight Institute

• We became ‘consumers’ in the 1920s – an audience member suggested we should be ‘food citizens’ rather than the more passive ‘consumers’
• Australia21 is setting up a Sustainable Food Lab
• Beyond today’s worldview:
  • Production – increase biodiversity, sustainable practices, conserve ecosystems, local and organic investment
  • Environment – resilient design, protecting diversity, valuing ecosystems, stewardship, adaptability
  • Consumption – not more, but healthier, national food reserve, greater equity, education and information

‘60% of the world’s investments at the moment go to weapons’

• Our opportunities:
  • Move swiftly to a steady state, low carbon economy using existing technologies
  • focus new investment on climate change adaptation
  • Conserve biodiversity and increasing nutritional diversity
  • Build resilience into the supply-demand cycle
  • Increase investment in sustainable rural farmers
  • Less the power and profit motives of Food, Inc (entire supply chain of big agro-industry through to retailers)
  • Embed sustainable practices – biomimicry, permaculture
  • Move from profit motive as a social priority to other forms of value
  • Legislate unintended consequences out of the system

Waste break out session

• Sustainability Victoria survey
  • 40% of household waste is food
  • Households report they throw out $2000 worth of food per annum
  • That’s 8L/week per household of food waste
  • 700,000 tonnes, or 7% of waste in Victoria
  • Identified four broad groups of people: Zealots, Planners, Triers and Wasters in order of minimal to maximum food waste. Education programs should target Triers.
• Katy Barfield, Second Bite
  • 7.5 million tonnes of food wasted per annum in Australia
    • ‘leakages’ and surplus food
    • pre-harvest
    • harvested – inefficiency/quality rejection
    • post-harvest
    • retail
    • edible
  • 1.2 million people in Australia are regularly at risk of not having enough food
  • We need to value food waste
    • economic value – food donors save on landfill, possible tax savings; real $$ value to community programs
    • social value
    • environmental value
    • health value

Don’t just ask ‘how do we produce more?’ but also ‘how do we effectively redistribute food throughout the system?’

Michael Velders, ARUB

One person’s urine provides enough NPK to fertilise 400-500 square metres of agricultural land

Ideas

• there should be a total ban on organic waste to landfill
• hospitality must separate all waste – compost and re-saleable/useable
• triple bottom line reporting
• ‘humanure’ should be accepted – ban on any sewerage into the sea

Michael Raupach, PMSEIC Expert Working Group on Energy-Water-Carbon (EWC)

PMSEIC – 2010 – ‘Challenges at Energy-Water-Carbon Intersections’

• Connectivity challenge – trade, media, education, information
• Resilience (from Resilience Alliance)
  • can recover from disturbances and shocks
  • can adapt by learning
  • can undergo transformation when necessary
  • resilience is a product of evolution
• Finite planet and connectivity challenges require new foci:
  • integrative thinking
  • holistic education (eg food knowledge)
  • holistic innovation
• Recommendations from the PMSEIC Report
  • Consistent principles for the use of finite resources:
    • ensure markets transmit full, linked, long-term costs to society
    • require resource accounting to be comprehensive and consistent
    • make markets work with non-market strategies
  • Develop and implement smart network methods
  • Build EWC resilience in landscapes
    • joint food, fibre, water production
    • innovative new technology (eg algal systems)
    • viable farms and rural communities
    • increase resource efficiencies and yields
  • Build EWC resilience in cities and towns
    • increase energy and water efficiency
    • recycle water with energy cogeneration
    • improve microclimates
    • change behaviours to reduce demand
    • stop sprawl with good planning, incentives
    • increase urban food production
  • Develop integrative perspectives
    • enhance incentives for integrative research
    • implement a new core research effort
    • ensure stable and ongoing delivery of essential information
    • a new education paradigm (Earthcare?) – preschool to adulthood, food awareness

Brad, CSIRO

• The public welcomes supply chain transparency, but then tackling environmental issues head on such as by pricing pollution, etc, is a very hard sell
• Different forms of reporting available – not everything needs to be on the label
• Perhaps on the label should include – carbon, water and land?

There’s a lot of information here, and many conversations to have about it all. I’ll pick up some of the threads in future posts. Thanks to 3 Pillars Network for putting on a very stimulating and informative Summit!

If you’re interested in Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical (SOLE) food, you should check out Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade. 🙂