Today, the ACT Greens have announced an election initiative to scale-up our city's capacity to grow and produce food, giving Canberrans more access to healthy local food while bringing real competition to the supermarket duopoly.
"Growing the food that ends up on our dinner tables locally rather than importing it from across the country is good for farmers, good for the environment and good for giving Canberrans greater choice to buy and support local businesses," said Deputy Leader of the ACT Greens, Rebecca Vassarotti.
"The corporatisation of food production in Australia has created a food system that is vulnerable to climate change, unfair to farmers, and which sells food to Canberrans at exorbitant prices while big supermarkets rake in record profits.
"The ACT Greens plan will establish a new food hub in Fyshwick to ensure local farmers have the right equipment to pool, process and distribute the food they grow so that Canberrans can buy it straight from their local shops and markets, not from the supermarket giants.
"This food hub will empower Canberrans to boycott imports from the big supermarkets and buy more local food, giving them confidence in where their food has come from, who has grown it and why their food costs what it does.
"Under the ACT Greens plan, we will combine this new food hub with access to up to $1 million in interest free loans to support projects that help food producers get their food out to local shops so that they can more easily sell to Canberrans.
"For example, farmers might like to get together and purchase an electric van for food deliveries to local shops and restaurants, or as part of a box scheme direct to the front doors of Canberrans.
"These sorts of programs are the foundation to helping local farms and local farmers thrive. Our suite of initiatives will be good for farmers, good for the environment and good for the bank accounts of Canberrans.
Some of the key initiatives the ACT Greens have announced today include:
- Invest $3.5 million to establish a food hub which will allow local farmers to set up a base of operations for food production and distribution
- Protect prime agricultural land and so farmers have fair, long-term leases
- Provide $1 million in interest free loans to empower local farmers to invest in collaborative local food logistics and enterprise-building projects
- Revitalise and refurbish the Canberra City Farm in Fyshwick
- Establish a farm training centre which will run training and jobs programs for people at risk
- Provide $2 million over four years to fund five full-time equivalent primary school garden coordinators, to support school kitchen gardens
- Invest $600,000 over 4 years to create new large community gardens for the suburbs, using the Community Garden Grants program for smaller projects
The full list of our initiatives for local food is available on the ACT Greens website.
ACT Greens Member for Brindabella, Laura Nuttall, said the ACT Greens will give farmers confidence in the future of their business, guaranteeing fair and long-term leases and establishing a new future farming training program.
"For too long, farmers have been left in the lurch about how long they will be able to continue to run their business in the ACT. If we're going to scale-up the role of farmers in growing affordable food for Canberrans, we need to give them certainty," said Ms Nuttall.
"The ACT Greens will make sure farmers can have confidence in the future of their business by recognising prime agricultural land as part of changes to zoning rules, and providing long-term leases to create a pipeline of affordable and sustainable food for many years to come.
"Securing the future of our farming workforce will be a key part of our plan to scale-up affordable local food production in Canberra. That's why we will create a new education and training program to support people to become local growers.
"We will proactively open up this training scheme to Canberrans experiencing barriers to work, such as people who have experienced homelessness or have had contact with the criminal justice system, to provide them with stable employment and a pathway to learn about and succeed at being a local grower.
"This is modelled on successful long-term programs overseas that have demonstrated that local food is a pathway for people to rebuild their lives" said Ms Nuttall.
