Focus on Food Waste
Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 March 2012 06:33 Written by Grow Local Tuesday, 20 March 2012 06:13
In an average Australian household each individual generates almost 200 kg of food waste each year. In some households waste can be as much as 20% of the food brought into the home!
Throwing out food after it’s been produced, transported, and purchased compounds the environmental costs of our food consumption. In addition, if, instead of being composted, this waste ends up in a landfill and decomposes without oxygen it will be converted to methane, a greenhouse gas at least twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide!
Ethical Shopping - easier than you think!
Last Updated on Thursday, 02 February 2012 01:09 Written by Grow Local Wednesday, 01 February 2012 01:39
It’s easy to shop ethically when you’re at a farmer’s market. The stallholder will always be pleased to tell you if what they’re selling is their own produce - many will have signs proclaiming their apples are fresh from Stanthorpe or their corn is organically grown.
Things are very different in the pre-packaged world of the supermarket.
Where can you find out if the processed food you’re buying at the supermarket contains genetically modified ingredients? Who can tell you if the crops were harvested by child labour, or if the producers are being paid a fair price? How can you avoid that ingredient in shampoo that Orang-utan habitat in Borneo is being cleared for?*
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 February 2012 03:56 Written by Grow Local Wednesday, 14 December 2011 04:05
Spare a thought at this time of year for our Northern Hemisphere friends as they cower indoors, away from the biting cold, the slushy rain and the black ice. Oh, they put a brave face on it with festive cards that show cheery, snow-covered scenes and leave out the snowploughs, the salt-encrusted roads and the occasional hard labour with a shovel that it takes to get to the front gate.
And don’t even think about harvesting food from the ice-hard soil of your garden!
Compare that misery to South East Queensland where instead of a frostbitten nose the glorious sights and scents of summer queue up to assail your senses.
World Food Day
Last Updated on Thursday, 13 October 2011 06:41 Written by Grow Local Thursday, 13 October 2011 05:10
This Sunday is World Food Day. Established in 1979 World Food Day celebrates the founding of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation on October 16th 1945. World Food Day adopts a different theme each year, this year's is 'Food prices - from crisis to stability'.
The FAO's report confirms that right now food prices are higher than they've ever been before. The last time food prices approached this level - also after a year of weather-related crop disasters in 2008 - it triggered food riots across South East Asia and caused several countries to ban exports of scarce staple crops like rice and wheat.
Prices are expected to continue rising as crop-disrupting weather shocks become more frequent with the warming global climate. Rising oil prices also have a double effect on food prices. Farm costs for oil-derived fertilisers, pesticides and transportation rise with rising oil prices, as does the demand to grow more profitable biofuel crops, squeezing out food crops and increasing prices.
Kostas Stamoulis, economist and Director of FAO's Agricultural Development Economics Division talks about food price volatility and how high prices are likely to continue and possibly increase, making poor farmers, consumers and countries more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity in this short video.Visit the World Food Day website here
Download the UN report The State of Food Insecurity 2011 here
You can improve Australia's Food Security!
Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 September 2011 04:31 Written by Grow Local Friday, 19 August 2011 04:26
The consultation period for Australia’s first National Food Plan ended at 5pm on Friday the 2nd of September.
Read QCC's submission here 
National Food Plan submission.pdf
We think a National Food Plan is a great idea - but it’s pointless if it’s based on trekking food back and forth across the continent and ignores future resource problems.
You can help by making a simple submission telling the federal government to reduce Australia’s reliance on wastefully transporting food all over the country - and to prepare for a new way of farming.
A bureaucrat in the classic satire Yes Minister suggested writing guidelines to ensure an enquiry gave the ‘right’ answer. “Guidelines are like railway tracks,” he said, “once they’re down that’s the way you go!”
The Federal Government’s Issues Paper to inform development of a National Food Plan is a little like that Yes Minister enquiry - it follows a train of thought and encourages you to run on the same rails.
Fortunately it’s totally OK to ignore the guidelines and tell the government what you really think about our food security now and into the future. Growing local isn’t just about lowering greenhouse gas emissions from transport and getting fresher, healthier produce, it’s vital to making our food production more resilient.
Farmers, Food Prices and the Carbon Tax
Last Updated on Tuesday, 19 July 2011 02:17 Written by Grow Local Monday, 18 July 2011 05:56
A lot of sound and fury has been generated about the Federal Government's Carbon Tax. Unfortunately there hasn't been much light shed on what it might mean for Australian food prices or our food security.
There's even less information in the mainstream media about whether this tax will encourage local food production. Will it end to the 21,000km lunch? Will it price local producers out of the market by making overseas producers seem relatively cheap. Grow Local packed a lunch box and dug deep to find out.
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