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Our Food System

Advocating for Change

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    Kat Lavers: how to engage with your local council to do urban agriculture projects

    I first met Kat at the Urban Agriculture Forum in Melbourne earlier in the year.  She presented on her experience working with local council and helping communities to get urban agriculture and community garden projects off the ground. Throughout her presentation she shared valuable insights into the workings of local government, along with a number of tips on

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    • If you could change one thing about the way you access fresh food, what would it be? For me personally I would love to be able to walk to a market garden where I could buy a weekly box of locally grown, freshly picked, nutritious, seasonal vegetables for my family. I’d walk down with my veg scraps in tow to toss into the compost bin. I’d chat to the farmer about how their week had been. I’d connect with others over what recipes we were going to cook this week with our box of fresh goodness. I’d show the kids the tomato plants and see if they could guess which root veg were growing below the surface. This is what I would change. This local food system which I’ve described is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to eat food that has travelled less and be grown with love, free of chemicals. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with our food, our farmer and our community. It’s an opportunity to teach our kids about where food comes from and how it’s grown. It’s an opportunity to know that our choices are creating a happier planet and healthier humans. It’s an opportunity to keep our money local and pay the people most deserving of it, the people growing our food. How do we, as a collective, tap into this opportunity post covid-19, and make it a reality?
    • New blog post! I’ve just shared my latest blog post where I reflect on how I believe that COVID-19 is a wake-up call to what food security really means to us. I’d love to know your thoughts. Link is in bio 👆 Enjoy! x Beautiful image is a @moonshine_madness print taken at @foodconnectbrisbane 🙏
    • There’s something that I find really magical about reading. I’ve read so many books on food in my lifetime and they have a way of filling my cup. Now that we’re all at home and finding ways to adjust to this new way of life, I’ve decided to jump online everyday at 1pm Brisbane time (AEST) and read you a short exert from one of the books I own. I’ll share information on food and it’s environmental impact, what regenerative agriculture is, a young farmers perspective on small scale farming, community gardens and food security and everything in between. The intention is to spread ideas, inspiration and information about the food system. As a passionate advocate for food systems change, I want to use this time to share what I know about the food system, and the ways in which we can create a better one moving forward. Right now, I’m choosing to do this through stories because of their power. I want to fill your cup and empower you with the knowledge and wisdom to think about how we can do things differently when it comes to our food in the future. I’m going to read a short 10-15 minute exert from a wide range of some of my most cherished books. So let’s take this time at home to learn more about our food. Where it comes from. How it's produced. The impact it has on ourselves, others and our environment. When we have a greater understanding of our food, then this can empower us to create the change locally that we need to create a healthier, sustainable and fairer food system. If you join live, you'll have the opportunity to ask me questions at the end. I look forward to seeing you there!
    • Farmers, you are the stars in my eyes. As our lives all strip back to the bare essentials, it’s in these moments that we realise the critically important role farmers play in our lives. Without our farmers we simply can’t feed ourselves and our families. Sure we eat for many reasons, but at the most basic level we eat for survival, and for all of us who don’t grow our own food, our farmers are the ones who enable the human race to keep living. Joel Orchard was the first farmer I ever interviewed on my blog, and I remember feeling so out my depth talking about farming! I honestly had no idea about what is was like to grow food for people. Sure I knew about food. I knew about nutrition and health. I knew about the political economy of food. And I knew about food policy. But farming was something I knew very little about. Talking to Joel ignited something in me. I started reading about farming and getting to know more farmers by talking to them and checking out their farms. And from that moment I fell in love with farmers 👩‍🌾🧑‍🌾 I love how much they LOVE growing food for us. I love their enthusiasm for connecting our communities around food. I love their passion for restoring our soils, increasing biodiversity and healing mother earth. I love that they show up everyday to work in the sun, get their hands dirty and nurture the seeds that feed us. From my heart to yours farmers. I am grateful for all you do 🙏❤️ Tag a farmer you know, and share this far and wide to let our farmers know how much we appreciate them. What do you love about farmers? Comment below and let’s tell our farmers how much we are thankful for continuing to work while we’re all hanging out home.
    • As I settle in for a period of undefined social distancing and isolation, it’s giving me an opportunity to reflect on the impact covid-19 will have on our current and future food system. With such a rapid change from life as we knew it, I have wondered if this virus is a kick in the butt to get us thinking at a faster pace about how we’ll respond as a global community, to climate change. It’s clear that the infinite growth our economic system has been structured around, is soon going to come crumbling down. And we know that this pursuit of infinite growth at the expense of other areas, has had huge repercussions on our mental, physical, community and environmental health. As Vandana Shiva states, the growth of the market will be unable to solve this crisis it create. Business as usual when it comes to our food and the way it’s grown, processed, transported, consumed and wasted around the world is no longer an option. I’d love to know, what does your future food system look like?
    • I am proud to say that I am a food citizen. Are you a food citizen too? Or are you a food consumer? These two words carry different types of power. They can change the way we think of ourselves, and impact the future of our food system. By identifying as a food citizen, we think about food more broadly than just something we put in our mouths. We are someone who is informed, and deliberate in our actions when it comes to food. When we think this way we can use our purchasing power to create positive change. You can read more about what it means to be a food citizen on my blog. Link in my bio!
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