Academy of Social Sciences in Australia

2011 Annual Symposium

Session abstracts

Abstracts for 2011 ASSA Symposium: Food regimes and food security

Session 1: Food regimes and food security

A social-science based appraisal of the food system in Australia in the context of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC)'s report Australia and food security in a changing world (Canberra, 2010).

Professor Stewart Lockie

Food regimes represent historically discernable patterns in food production, trade and consumption. Such patterns have no particular explanatory power of their own. They are the product (at times, unintended) of intersecting strategies and practices in both the public and private spheres. The global shift from food scarcity to surplus in the post-War period was thus underpinned by a confluence of strong state support for agricultural intensification, export-led development and chemical and genetic innovation, and the emergence of genuinely transnational input supply and commodity trading companies. However, the post-War period was also characterised by conflict over the globalization project and its concrete manifestation in attempts to liberalize international trade through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and, since 1995, the World Trade Organization. Critics argue that the 2008 World Food Crisis served to highlight the ecological and social costs of petrochemical-based intensification and trade liberalization, along with the potential for a longer-term shift back to global food scarcity. Regardless of whether these arguments are accepted, in whole or in part, it is clear that population growth and climate change will represent enormous challenges to national and global food security over coming decades. Australia and Food Security in a Changing World notes that Australia's investment in food-related research and development is in decline, an aging rural workforce and falling enrolments in agricultural education are degrading the human capital on which innovation depends, productive land is threatened by urban encroachment, food imports are rising, and transport and distribution systems are poorly equipped to deal with food contamination or pandemics. The potential to address such vulnerabilities suggests that shifting into a regime of scarcity is not inevitable. It is argued here, however, that additional vulnerabilities associated more specifically with the globalization project, its underlying logic and its effects must also be acknowledged and addressed if sustainable patterns of production and consumption are to emerge.

Australia and food security in a changing world

Peter Langridge

Food is a fundamental requirement for survival. When it becomes scarce people will fight for it, yet when it is abundant we waste it. The transition from abundance to scarcity can happen rapidly; a major drought, a natural disaster or war, can suddenly plunge a community into famine. While the transition to hunger can be rapid, escape from hunger can be slow and difficult.

In Australia, we have had an abundance of food; we can produce more than we need and we have the resources to import food if necessary. However, we have faced crises for specific foods, such as the banana shortage after cyclone Larry in 2006, and our food transport, distribution and storage systems are vulnerable to disruption; for example, a major epidemic could restricted movement of people and materials resulting in food shortages in some urban centres. Perhaps Australia's most serious food security issue relates to the ways in which we consume and use food. Poor nutritional choices made by many in our community are developing into an increasingly important public health issue.

Global food security will demand the development and delivery of new technologies to increase food production on limited arable land, and without relying on increased water and fertiliser. In addition, the frequency and severity of climate "shocks" are expected to increase due to the effects of climate change. Australia can make a significant contribution to addressing this challenge. We have extensive experience in dealing with difficult and low input production systems. This technical and scientific expertise is valuable and well regarded internationally. However, success in technology development and delivery requires community support. Although our agricultural sector is one of our most productive and efficient industries, it struggles to garner community support for its activities. The decline in knowledge and interest in food production has probably resulted from the urbanisation of the Australian population and this shift risks limiting our ability to deliver innovation to the Australian and international food industries.

Following things and people: pathways from production through distribution to consumption

Professor Elspeth Probyn

In the short time since we envisioned this symposium, the questions raised by the sustainability of the food system in Australia and globally have magnified. As developments around coal seam gas multiply, and are often planned to be located in the most fertile agricultural land in Australia, food security has become an issue that joins strange bedfellows – such as Alan Jones and 'greenies'.

While there are several ways to conceptualise the pathway from production through to distribution and consumption, in this paper I will draw attention to the social and cultural embeddedness of food chains. I will use ethnographic material on several Australian fisheries to illustrate the historical and present day practices that must be taken into consideration if we are to properly begin to interrogate and intervene in ensuring sustainable food production in Australia. I hope that this will illustrate the exigency of social scientific studies to any discussion of food sustainability.

Session 2: The limits of production

The gendered politics of skilling the rural workforce

Dr Lia Bryant

For the PMSEIC human capital is ostensibly tertiary trained agricultural scientists, farmers and professionals who will be needed in increasing numbers to carry out the scientific and technological revolution necessary to lift the productivity of Australian agriculture. Meanwhile there is recognition of the importance of agricultural production and especially food and beverage processing industries that provide a labour market for rural residents. In this paper I focus on the food and beverage industries and examine the contradictions in the PMSEIC report between the necessity for job growth in rural areas and the definition of skilling the workforce. The essence of this contradiction lies in the appropriation of highly circulated policy driven phrases like "skills shortage" which suggests an undersupply of available workers rather than an examination of what constitutes a 'worker' and how local labour is utilised. Analyses of ABS and other data indicate that workforce profiles by industries and occupation are gendered and raced within the food and beverage processing sector with few Indigenous employees and women concentrated in low pay and low skilled work. The concept of "skilling" holds specific meanings as to which worker's bodies are deemed worthy to be skilled and for what jobs, including from where they will be sourced. Further, the confusion of skills shortages with gaps in skills universalises skill shortage and locates the problem with governments. I argue that to explore the long term sustainability of food production in Australia it is necessary to examine the labour market practices of food and beverage organizations, some of which are multinational, particularly in relation to recruitment, retention and training and how these shape rural labour markets as gendered, raced and classed. I give specific attention to the gendering of the rural workforce and examine how organizations both gender rural labour markets and are shaped by gendered practices associated with the places in which they are located.

Peak phosphorus: Implications of global phosphorus scarcity for food security and options for a soft-landing

Dr Dana Cordell

Peak phosphorus is likely to threaten the world's ability to produce food in the future if concerted efforts are not soon taken by policy makers, scientists, industry and the community. The world's main source of phosphorus – phosphate rock – is a non-renewable resource that is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. Further, remaining global phosphate reserves are controlled by only a few countries, mainly Morocco and China. The productivity of the Australian food system is highly vulnerable to phosphorus scarcity. Australia has developed its agricultural export industry on the foundation of importing phosphorus from Nauru, and more recently through substituting domestic production for at least half of all demand for fertiliser. Decreasing ore grades for phosphate rock, increasing concerns about the negative impact of runoff from soils, and the likelihood of future price increases all mean that a rethink is needed of the future of phosphorus in Australia, and globally. The current path for phosphorus use in the world, and in Australia is not sustainable, due to the significant levels of inefficiency, to the certainty of peak phosphorus in the coming decades and the vulnerability to potentially volatile markets. Moving towards a sustainable phosphorus future can be achieved by reducing our dependence on imported and domestic rock, by diversifying phosphorus sources through investing in renewable phosphorus fertilisers, increasing the efficiency of use throughout the system (not just in agriculture) and maximising recovery and reuse of phosphorus. These measures will also have positive environmental impacts by reducing water pollution, water demand, waste disposal to landfill and to energy consumption. Achieving such a scenario will require substantial changes to the currently fragmented institutional arrangements surrounding the food system. For example, developing new partnerships and policies between the wastewater and fertiliser sector.

Session 3: Systems of distribution and cultures of consumption

Inside the 'Food from somewhere' regime: preliminary results from the ARGOS Project in New Zealand.

Professor Hugh Campbell, University of Otago

Recent theoretical discussion about Food Regimes has drawn a distinction between global regimes organized around 'From from Nowhere' as against 'Food from Somewhere'. As a producer of high-value food exports, New Zealand is strongly situated as a producer of 'Food from Somewhere'. Some of its food export industries have begun to strongly invest in new plant and stock management techniques to meet the increasing expectations of elite international markets – now becoming leading exponents of using food audits, protocols, Good Agricultural Practice standards and certification systems to solidify claims about food exports as possessing inherently superior environmental/sustainability qualities. This presentation will examine some preliminary social scientific and ecological results from the ARGOS Project in New Zealand – a nine-year cross-disciplinary project investigating sustainability dynamics on over 100 farms and orchards involved in New Zealand's high-value food export industries. The combination of social science and ecological science methodologies provides some interesting insights into the dynamics that emerge within certified organic, Integrated Management or conventional production on farms and orchards. It provides an important (and cross-disciplinary) evaluation of the extent and implications of pursuing agricultural sustainability via the audit pathway to elite food markets.

How the lifeworld undermines the consolidation of the supermarket food regime

Dr. Jane Dixon, Senior Fellow, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University.

For a decade or so, supermarket chains have been positioned as the pre-eminent actors in global and national supply chains. Sociologists have argued that their actions have established the basis for a 3rd stable era in food production-consumption relations, although those same proponents now suggest that supermarket hegemony is being destabilised by processes of financialisation. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Goulburn Valley, where people are keenly food engaged, I describe local level forces that are undermining the authority of supermarkets to set the terms of global and national food system dynamics. The three contradictions unleashed by the supermarket model are: facilitator of rural town transitions to service centres and away from agriculture as they create and destroy livelihoods; progenitor of a moral economy hazard: save time, effort and money while navigating unhealthy food and not-so-fresh food choices; and, facilitator of flexible working lives through providing a convenient retail format while re-organising the social and temporal routines of communities. The authority of the major supermarket chains is under scrutiny from a range of perspectives, and they currently appear to act as a lightening rod of generalised discontent with corporate models of social and economic development.

Session 4: Food security in remote indigenous communities

Community stores and their role in the health of remote Indigenous communities

Dr Christina Pollard

People living in remote Indigenous communities in Australia are subject to food insecurity. Indigenous Australians suffer disproportionate burden from diet-related diseases, improved food security will result in health gains. Their location, financial and social resources, and the types and quality of food that's available to them through community stores is an issue. Improving remote Indigenous community's food security is an Australian Government priority. Interventions to achieve a secure, sustainable and healthy food supply to remote Indigenous communities with increased purchase and consumption of a healthy diet by community members as the outcome. The menu of interventions must address both supply and demand issues. Policy makers take three simple, yet difficult, steps when choosing which interventions are suitable to improve public health. Firstly, they define the problem; secondly, consider 'what could or should be done?' and thirdly, appraise a range of intervention options to choose the most effective in the real world.

Bringing food security to remote Aboriginal communities: Mai Wiru Regional Stores Policy.

Liza Balmer and Kirsten Grace

For years, Anangu at community level have been demanding action on food accessibility (including affordability) and food availability (including range and quality) in local community stores. The need for a regional stores policy on the APY Lands (remote far northwest SA) was first identified in the 1987 report of Uwankara Palyanyku Kanyintjaku - An Environmental and Public Health Review.

Consequently, in 2002 the Mai Wiru (Good Food) Regional Stores Policy was developed under the auspices of Nganampa Health Council, and in conjunction with Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council, as a result of a directive from Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (the land holding body). The process to develop the Mai Wiru policy was driven by Anangu (aboriginal people) from its inception. Wide-ranging community input and representation has been achieved through a participatory planning process, and the 25-member steering committee. Following the development of the policy, a strategic implementation plan was developed and implementation of the policy began in early 2006.

Mai Wiru was a first of its kind as a regional policy for remote Aboriginal community stores with a not-for-profit health focus and a potential for legislative enforcement under the powers of the local land holding body, APY. In May 2010 the Mai Wiru Regional Stores Council became separately incorporated with the development and establishment of a regional stores board and management.

Mai Wiru has been a leader in the field of food security for remote Indigenous communities for over ten years and has delivered major changes to the operation and management of remote Aboriginal stores. Mai Wiru has been cited by government for its constructive and real advances towards these social and health goals, and in 2007 was the 2007 National Overall Winner of the Heart Foundation Kellogg Local Government Award. But Mai Wiru's most important achievement is in bringing food security to 3,000 Anangu living on the APY Lands and giving people skills to manage their daily lives. As Robert Stephens, Senior Executive Officer of Mai Wiru said in the July 2011 Board meeting, "Mai Wiru is an Anangu organisation that's bringing all the stores together. On the APY Lands we should all be working together for good health and good food – 'pukulpa kanyintjaku' - We are going forward together happily in a good way."

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