Sustain’s Feeding Australia Submission

BySustain Team

Sustain’s response to Feeding Australia (the National Food Security Strategy Discussion Paper) outlines 11 key actions & recommendations for a food system that delivers genuine human and planetary health.

We strongly encourage all Sustain members and food advoactes to make your own submission via the DAFF portal. For tips, guidance and key links for making your submission, click here.

Download Sustain’s Feeding Australia Submission (Summary)
Download Sustain’s Feeding Australia Submission (Appendix)

Submission summary

Sustain’s submission outlines 11 key actions & recommendations – across three discussion paper sections – Principles, Key Priority Areas and Whole of System Considerations:

Principles

  • Ground the Strategy in the human right to food – commit to a ‘cash first’ approach to food security and commit to end foodbanks in their current form within 10 years.
  • Make human health and ecosystem integrity the fundamental underlying goals of the Strategy.  
  • First Peoples Knowledges: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have been sustainably stewarding this continent for tens of thousands of years. Their knowledges and practices should be the foundation for the Strategy. 

Key Priority Areas

  • Resilient Supply Chains: Invest in localised and diversified supply chains to build/strengthen local and regional food economies. 
  • Productivity, innovation and economic growth:  Move from total factor productivity to Total System Productivity (TSP) to incorporate currently externalised costs (e.g. burden of chronic disease, environmental degradation). Make the key output metric the numbers of Australians who are fed well and sustainably.   
  • Competition and cost of living  Support more diversified food retail environments e.g. municipal markets, greengrocers  Adopt a whole of government approach to cost-of-living pressures i.e. expand affordable and social housing, raise the JobSeeker rate well above poverty levels.  

Whole of System Considerations

  • Climate change and sustainability: Support farmers to make the transition by creating and resourcing a Centre for Sustainable and Regenerative Farming. 
  • People: Support the First Peoples to realise their aspirations for food sovereignty
  • Health and nutrition: Recognise fast and ultra-processed foods and beverages as harmful products and tax them the same way as tobacco and alcohol, investing the proceeds in the health and food security-supporting actions outlined above. 
  • Trade and market access:  Recognise the risk that growing food import dependency poses to national food security and economic viability of Australian farmers and food manufacturers  Diversify, decentralise and localise food systems to expand market access and build resilience.
  • National and regional security: Ensure that infrastructure and supply chains are resilient to foreseeable shocks e.g. geopolitical conflict. 

Join the movement

If you are interested in taking your food system advocacy work further, please consider joining the Vote for Food community space on The Australian Food Network – the digital gathering place for food system change-makers like you.

Sustain Team

Sustain is a “think and do” network, specialising in designing and building sustainable and healthy food systems. We work with governments, councils, and community leaders to help map local food systems, and develop evidence-based and achievable policies and programs. We sow the seeds of change with events, policy work, practice & thought leadership, capacity building, and collective action. We give people, councils, and organisations the tools they need to help them become empowered food citizens, supporting healthy communities, people and ecosystems.

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