Food Matters!

Food Matters! By Bruce Guerin

How do you sum up a conference which ran for four days, attracted hundreds of people and had to split into several parallel sessions just to fit in the issues people wanted to talk about?

With great difficulty – as Joel Catchlove, convenor of the super-successful Plains to Plate Convergence on the Future of Food in SA, found out when confronted with screeds of keen suggestions about what to put in the conference communique.

But it basically came down to a declaration that food really matters in our community, and that we need to focus on it much more effectively for a multitude of reasons, from basic health and wellbeing to environmental sustainability and the fundamental way we build and run our cities.

An absolute highlight of Plains to Plate was the opening night address by Graham Brookman of the Food Forest, who had had to leave their property with bushfires within cooee on two sides to catch the train to the forum at UniSA.

With all the benefit of his experience as farmer, innovator, teacher, campaigner and environmentalist, Graham laid out a vision of how Adelaide might look if it took seriously the need to have fresh produce raised and grown close to and within our urban and suburban communities and made accessible to all parts of the community with short distribution chains.

It was a memorable performance. See it for yourself – it is all up on the Plains to Plate site: http://futureoffoodsa.ning.com

There was a strong shared conviction in the last sessions of the conference that community and industry groups concerned with food need to work together to get our food issues higher on the public agenda.

That governments tend to focus on food policy as a matter of economics, and achieving strategic targets for growth, was underlined a few days after the conference when the State government’s food strategy was released, with next to nothing to say about food in and for our communities.

It was great that our three Slow Food convivia in SA combined to be a partner in this significant conference – and to see Tori Moreton handing out her Johnston almonds, David Inverarity giving tastings of his raw milk cheese, and a presentation on Coorong mullet at Slow-themed sessions. Not to mention Matoula Begakis and a select band of members presiding over an impressive information desk and display of local produce.