By Nikki Stefanoff

With soaring living expenses, stagnant wages, and the financial hangover left by a global pandemic the ongoing cost of, well, everything remains on the up — particularly at the supermarket checkout.

The rising cost of groceries has, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), increased by 7.5% year-on-year and, with more of the same predicted for 2024, many Aussie households are said to be feeling financially overwhelmed and reaching out to food charities.

Late last year, Foodbank Australia’s general manager, Sarah Pennell, told The Guardian that the organisation was helping around a million people a month access food.

“What we’re seeing now is a new cohort coming into the charity seeking food relief, people that have never done it before,” Pennell said.

“In fact, 54% of food-insecure households now have someone in paid work. A job isn’t a shield against the cost-of-living crisis.”

Holding the supermarket duopoly to account

While inflation is playing a role in food price hikes, the supermarkets aren’t exactly taking the financial pressure off the consumer.

When the staggering profits of the big two supermarkets in Australia were recently announced, several inquiries into price gouging — when businesses charge prices far beyond what is considered reasonable or fair — quickly followed suit.

How, in one of the world’s wealthiest countries with a population of 26 million, have we got ourselves into a position of relying on a (very small) handful of retailers to provide us with affordable food?

It’s a question advocates ask themselves daily as they push for systems change, and no one is pushing harder than Melbourne-based health promotion charity, not-for-profit and social enterprise Sustain: The Australian Food Network.

Pushing for food systems change

Dr Nick Rose is Sustain’s Executive Director and describes the organisation as a ‘think and do’ network focused on using its experience and expertise to deliver food systems change in Australia and beyond.

“Our mission is to design and build better food systems,” he said. “So we seek to support the shifts to a food system that prioritises human wellbeing and planetary health rather than a food system simply driven by the bottom line of large corporations — something that's very much in the news at the moment.”

Sustain is part of a wider national and global movement working with a shared understanding that the food and agricultural system is a big driver of many of the crises we’re all facing.

“[Whether] it’s mental health, dietary health, climate change or species loss. so much of it comes back to the way we manage land and organise our food systems,” Rose said. “This [area] is where we feel we can have a positive impact and have been trying to do so for nearly a decade.”

Urban farming and the healing power of community

Sustain is a national organisation operating primarily out of Victoria where it runs two place-based urban agriculture spaces — Oakhill Justice Farm in the Melbourne suburb of Preston, and The Melbourne Food Hub in suburban Alphington.

Through these sites, and online educational events, the team runs programs including internships, school initiatives and corporate team-building activities — all aimed at advocating for urban agriculture and sustainable food practices.

With a background in law and community development, Rose helped establish Sustain after working for more than a decade in food sovereignty and sustainable food systems. His idea for place-based suburban farming came after returning from an overseas trip to see urban agriculture in action.

“I went overseas in 2014 after being offered a Fellowship from the Churchill Trust. After finishing my PhD, I proposed a project to the Trust about how to utilise abandoned urban spaces for agriculture and small businesses,” he said.

“The Trust supports individuals with ideas that could benefit the Australian community, provided they've seen something overseas that could be beneficial here, and so it approved my proposal. This allowed me to travel to places like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Toronto and various provinces in Argentina to learn from similar projects.”

When Rose returned to Australia, he began the process of founding Sustain. After establishing the Melbourne Food Hub in mid-2018 with support from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, they opened the doors to Oakhill Food Justice Farm — a working urban farm in the garden of an unused church in Preston — in 2021.

Co-designing a solution to food poverty and community support

Both of Sustain’s place-based initiatives have been co-designed with the surrounding community, something Rose thinks is incredibly important.

“For the Alphington project we had around 45 people in the room including local council staff and community members. For Preston it was harder because we were in the middle of the pandemic but we managed to run co-design sessions online,” he said. “It was a satisfying process and we’ve been iterating on the project ever since.”

Throughout the Preston co-design process the community talked about needing a place of healing and safety, and so alongside education programs, events and weekly volunteer slots for budding urban farmers, the team at Oakhill looked at how the space could support locals.

“A lot of people felt traumatised by the whole COVID experience, there was a real sense of isolation, loneliness and mental health challenges,” Rose explains.

“We always wanted Oakhill to be an active space for the community and somewhere people can just drop in — The Farmhouse is available for hire and has been used by a range of local groups and networks and we want to keep growing Oakhill’s offering. The biggest challenge for us at the moment is the long-term future of the Preston site, which is still owned by the Anglican Church.”

The site is said to be worth upwards of $4 million and includes the land and house (from where Oakhill Justice Farm runs) as well as a large, empty and derelict church building next door.

Rose and his team are currently in discussions with potential funders and local allies to raise the money for the site to be bought, transferred to a trust or cooperative structure and used as a permanent community facility, which would include the farm.

Campaigning for the human right to food

A large part of what Sustain does sits outside the realms of hands-on urban farming and inside the halls of government.

Driven by the belief that transitioning society to a healthier, more sustainable and fair food system requires good policy and practice, Rose and his team work to present state and federal government with strong evidence and examples of fair food systems in action.

“So far, The Greens have shown the most interest in this area and have already presented a sustainable food systems plan, including a $500 million statewide urban agriculture fund in New South Wales,” Rose says.

“In the Australian Capital Territory, where the Greens are in coalition government, they have also developed a local food strategy. However, in Victoria, there's no state-level plan yet, although some local governments do have strategies in place.”

Recently, there have been positive developments in federal and state governments regarding support for urban agriculture.

The federal parliament's National Food Security inquiry recommended exploring options to resource and expand urban agriculture and a parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales emphasized the need to resource and expand urban agriculture in the state.

Through Sustain’s advocacy, there will be two similar parliamentary inquiries into food security in Victoria this year, one focused on production and planning issues and the other on the impacts of food poverty and what steps can be taken to address it.

Sustain is collaborating with William Angliss Institute to host a Symposium exploring the issues raised by both inquiries with some of Victoria’s leading experts on 9th April.

The reality is that meaningful systems change is known to be slow-moving but there’s plenty for communities to do while they wait — volunteer at a local community garden or start planting in your backyard.

And if you live in Melbourne, the teams at Oakhill Justice Farm and Melbourne Food Hub will happily teach you how to start growing your food, connect you with like-minded others and link you to this growing movement for food systems transformation.

Shaping Victoria's Food Future: A Symposium for Collective Action is on Tuesday April 9 in Melbourne. Tickets at Humantix.