Kitchen conversations
How do we make fresh food affordable and ensure food security for all?
This is our November 2023 Kitchen Talk. It is a tad tardy this month due to exciting content opportunities for the next month. More on that in December!
In Aotearoa, New Zealand, one in five children experience food insecurity. The Child Action Poverty Group Policy Brief on Food Security highlights specific problems plaguing food security, suggesting policies are adopted to ensure livable incomes and that food prices are not artificially inflated. Because food price anxiety is a thing now. Officially, the largest annual food price increase for more than 30 years (12.1 per cent in the year to March 2023) was reported. Redditors were questioning the validity of these figures. Fresh fruit and vegetables increased by 22 per cent in the same period. The Guardian published an interactive chart which is depressing, referencing that, at the time, supermarkets were making around $430 million a year in excess profits. The economies of supermarket scale allowed the prices to drop. For supermarkets.
Trace
How do we make fresh food affordable and ensure food security for all?
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that we will need to produce 70 per cent more food to feed the world’s expected population growth by over a third, or 2.3 billion people, by 2050. Intensification and novel technologies are presumed solutions, but Mother Earth provides. About a third of the food the world produces for human consumption every year—1.3 billion tons is lost during production or tossed or landfilled. It is lost at every stage of the food system. Landfilled food contributes to climate change, producing methane—9 per cent of Aotearoa, New Zealand's biogenic methane emissions and 4 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions are from food and organic waste. And there are other environmental issues. Food wasted equally represents billions of animals killed for no reason other than financial gains.
Aotearoa, New Zealand, produces enough food to feed 40 million people every year. We are a nation with a population of 5.1 million. Meanwhile, we export 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the food it produces and import a lot of nutrient-devoid foods linked to more negative health impacts. We have the third-highest adult obesity rate in the OECD. This RNZ piece, ‘Calls to feed the 5 million first’, quotes Poverty researcher Dr Rebekah Graham, stating that the “money we get from these exports doesn’t seem to be making it easier for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder." That said, much of the affordability or access discourse focuses too much on the surface without diving deep into the real causes. What about that wage and salary earners have not benefited adequately from increased productivity since the 1970s? That the rise in house prices since 2008 has exceeded that of all other economies in this Reserve Bank report. Or our out of control rents? In a country with soaring food prices, the reality of our economy today means food insecurity and hunger are persistent—33 per cent of households do not know where their next meal is coming from. Add the growing health crisis we’re seeing; access to nutritious food becomes even more urgent.
Activating our networks to create value from otherwise wasted food
If efficiency is a hallmark of good design, our food system has failed. Sometimes, repurposing or upcycling food waste is more realistic than trying to eliminate it. Minimising waste is always a worthy goal, but some degree of waste seems inherent to our food system. Food banks emerged here in the 1980s. This research article published in Volume 31, Number 4 of AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND SOCIAL WORK details how some of our larger hunger-relief organisations have led the charge to rescue food and get it to families, the people who need it. An interesting observation is that “None of the literature reviewed saw the rise of food banks as being caused by a shortage of food, but rather the issue is the reduction in a sector of society’s purchasing power in a climate of plentiful food”. The normalisation and institutionalisation of food banks were considered unacceptable as a solution to the crisis. The article states there were, by 1994, approximately 365 food banks in Aotearoa, New Zealand. This year alone, over half a million people are supported by a nationwide network of food banks. How many, though, is unclear.
Supermarkets provide food rescue groups with food. Waste is not incurred because the product was not wanted but because it was not priced appropriately because of the linear system that has been created. You cannot help but think what a self-fulfilling prophecy these interactions between food producers, retailers, and meal providers are. We cannot achieve the transparency to address the issues adequately. That what was designed to be wasted was now a public relations opportunity. But as Daisy Tam writes for Mould Issue 3, Parasitic ethics of food waste. “Food rescue enables us to see how resources could be channelled differently, but as an administrator of a local food rescue organisation bluntly put it, “the poor might not need the surpluses as much as we need them to help us consume the excess.” Indeed, the questions that come with the “gifting” paradigm shift with a change of perspective—as we continue to rely on charities to pick up the pieces of our unsustainable food practices, we need to see that food waste is everyone’s problem.”
Amandine
Are there alternatives to a capitalist food system?
It is quite clear that, while giving the illusion of abundance and nourishing populations, our food system is not reaching its most important goal by benefitting the masses. There needs to be more than the development of organisations that compensate for the waste and lack of access to a beneficial food system cycle to operate fairly. The current capitalist-based system requires change.
First, it is established that revenues are held by a small number of intermediaries, namely supermarkets. As mentioned above, In Aotearoa, New Zealand, supermarkets' excess profits for 2022 were close to $430 million dollars, while farmers and cooperatives registered losses from $680k to $2.1 million for the same period.
It is reasonable to think that in this situation, supermarkets are driving the price of produce and raw food extremely low to farmers while reselling at higher prices to consumers, resulting in a maximum margin profit. Cutting this middle-man structure and buying directly from farmers and growers would reduce the dollar margin between the producer and the consumer.
It requires viable frameworks, but these commercial structures already exist at moderate scales through cooperatives, CSA (community-supported agriculture), and farmer's market schemes. Populated by small-scale farmers, they focus on crop quality, encouraging the reduction of chemical input to grow produce. Smaller structures also highlight that in integrated growing practices, such as agroecology and agroforestry, the food holds more quality nutrients and is safer for the planet and its inhabitants. It is essential to underline that CSA or farmers' market structures also allow people, particularly city dwellers, to reconnect with their food, how it is produced, by whom, and where. It is also a reconnection with the cycle of Nature and the local community, thickening relationships and social endeavours.
In Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, For The Love of Bees, an organisation we are familiar with, through their pilot project Organic Market Auckland Garden, is leading the way for system change. First, it demonstrates the commercial viability of implementing agroecology urban farming to produce local, nutrient-dense, organic, regenerative, and climate change-resilient food funded through a CSA model. In addition, FTLOB is also building a network of community farms as a mentoring, support and networking solution for farmers to grow and evolve as a community and, again, to become more resilient and pose themselves as instrumental for climate change mitigation and biodiversity loss. As usual with pioneer initiatives, the limit is the price point access. It is still competitive compared to prices from supermarkets for organic produce but is difficult to align as an overall produce haul.
Outside of the economic capital of Aotearoa, New Zealand, other initiatives take place. One that caught my attention is the Soil Sisters network based in the Waikato. Founded by Fran Bailey, Soil Sisters aims to connect women working in agriculture and food to support and nurture change towards agroecological and regenerative food systems. Sharing ideas, help, meals and more, Soil Sisters re-establish connections between the protagonists of system change to push forward the change at the food source.
Te ao Māori practices to redesign a resilient food system for Aotearoa, New Zealand
In the context of Aotearoa, New Zealand, it is also crucial to integrate that system change also involves indigenous leadership. Through te ao Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa hold the values and cultural knowledge of the interconnection between Nature and people. Therefore, by design, Māori communities can implement the framework of transition from a settler colonial, chemically dependent way of farming against Nature to local, indigenous-based practices focused on community well-being, relationships and engagement of the population—care for Nature to care for the people. Change is about growing food for the people around us first, for a shift from creating inequities to working towards a more equitable world.
Examples of this work and skills are already taking place across the country:
Developed by Te Waka Kai Ora, the National Maori Organics Authority of Aotearoa, hua parakore is the first indigenous-based organic certification that highlights practices in alignment with mātauranga Māori and valorise, in addition to the how, the why of embracing practices in symbioses with Papatūānuku, the land. In this interview by Happen Film, Dr Jessica Hutchings, Māori researcher and figure of the food sovereignty movement, shares about the subject and the hua parakore certification.
Run by Lionel Hotene and Valerie Teraitua, Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae in Māngere East is a thriving community-based garden following the principles of mātauranga Māori and holds a hua parakore certified. The team and volunteers grow kai food for over 400 families weekly and, when possible, sell the surplus at farmer's markets. They also host a composting facility. In addition, Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae developed the Kai Ika project, collecting and cooking leftover fish parts from the fishing industry to prepare nutritious meals to support local families, reducing food waste on the same occasion.
Te Maara Kai o Wirihana is a collaboration between Manurewa High School, Middlemore Foundation and Counties Manukau Health. A Maara Kai initiative and social enterprise, Te Maara Kai o Wirihana is a community and educational urban farm divided into an education garden, a productive market garden, a healing rongoa garden, a food forest, a worm farm and a community garden with communal and allotment areas. Based on mātauranga Māori principles and following the Maramataka, the ultimate goal of the place is to provide nutritious food for the Manurewa community and improve the overall well-being of its people.
There are also many other places outside of greater Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. To pick one, the Kai Rotorua organisation, founded by Jasmin Jackson, is a volunteer-based, non-profit group that aims to regenerate the local food system, reconnect people to their food, and fight food insecurity. Kai Rotorua uses extensive outlets to re-implement a culture of the land: gardening educational sessions with schools, free veggie garden implementations, a community food hub, a farming network with purpose, and more.
Practical tools for individual activations to ensure food security
Community and a sense of purpose are paths to regenerating a fair food system in Aotearoa, New Zealand—participating in your local community activation, connecting with the land and your food, the people that grow it, and taking care of each other lays out the base of fair access to food for all. Along the journey, there are individual actions that can also help improve accessibility to food in the short term.
Growing food in your garden or land, if you have access to it, is a valuable way to save money and spend time outdoors, mitigating your mental health and acquiring valuable skill sets. A millennium practice, it is only very recently in History that some cultures stopped growing food by themselves. We interviewed my friend Ellen Eskildsen, who built a food forest from her suburban garden. Her first piece of advice is to start small and slow—cuttings from spring onions in a glass of water on your sunny window sill, a handful of jars with herbs on the balcony, some summer tomatoes in pots on your deck, or a herbal lay between two fruit trees in your garden. Gardening works at all scales. Jake Clark, from Organic Market Auckland, also suggested focusing on growing edible perennials producing easy pickings, such as sorrel, sea beet or perpetual kale, leafy greens that are uncomplicated to look after and are nutritious and fresh—easy to grow, edible crops.
Another way to access food that is less recognised and also somehow feels more scary is foraging. Homo sapiens were foragers, after all, and there is some logic in coming back to this ancient practice. And it is becoming more popular. The Spinoff dedicated a piece about foraging in Aotearoa, New Zealand. A while ago, I also discovered this interactive map pinning the places around the country where there was food to be picked up for free. Managed by the grassroots movement Pātaka Kai, it has more than 4.7 million views and includes the free food pantries populating the country.
Based in the US, Alexis Nikole, alias Black Forager, is also an incredible forager and an inspiration to take control of our access to food. Her YouTube channel received more than 41.8k views, and her following on Instagram goes above 1.6 million subscribers with a TikTok profile of more than 4.4 million. She's cool and gives us the confidence to learn and pick edibles from the wild world.
We can approach the food accessibility issue from various angles, feeding those facing financial hardship, curbing greenhouse gas emissions, or creating a more humane food system. Changing our approach to growing and accessing food establishes a chain of reactions at all levels. When we start growing our food differently, decentralising our food network and subsequently democratising the industry, we cultivate a new food culture. Planning for food security demands that we re-design our urban context to one that is walkable and mixed-use. The system is complex, and the challenge, enormous but exciting. To continue to consider everything from habits and behaviours to industrial systems in order to uncover how we might redesign the whole system in ways that we can provide for all. What is required is creative problem-solving.
How do you feel about food accessibility and food security? Do you feel that the place where you live is resilient enough to provide food for the local population? We welcome you to share your thoughts, experiences and opinions in the comments.