A draft National Food Plan putting food security first for corporations

Time for real change: The Government’s new draft National Food Plan puts the interests of big business ahead of health, equity, and food security.

The Federal Government released on Tuesday the green paper that will be Australia’s first National Food Plan. According to Secretary for Agriculture Joe Ludwig, this plan “will ensure Australia has a sustainable, globally competitive, resilient food supply that supports access to nutritious and affordable food.”

The plan is intended for the benefit of every Australian. However, on closer inspection, it’s actually the plan of large agribusiness and retailing firms. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone as it was developed in response to the suggestion of ex-Woolworths Chief Executive Officer Michael Luscombe for the creation of a food “super-ministry” prior to the 2010 Federal Election. The early stages of development were driven by a dominant corporate National Food Policy Working Group, which was formed following the election in order to “foster a common understanding [between the Government and the food industry] of the industry’s priorities, challenges and future outlook across the supply chain.”

Issues Paper Issues Paper, which was published in June 2011, included 48 questions, half of which focused on the need for a “competitive, productive and efficient food industry.” The only question was regarding the sustainability of the environment. The purpose of the “consultation” as a top-down, highly-controlled, and tightly controlled process was obvious, and the Government was in charge of setting the guidelines for acceptable topics and corporate representatives being granted an access point and direct line to decision-makers. Further liberalization of trade in agriculture and food, for instance, was not an issue in which the Government sought to hear the views of the Australian public. The free work was deemed to be of a certain public benefit.

Despite this depressing trend, many in the community acted in good faith during the consultation process. Two seventy-nine written responses were received, and many of them emphasized the need for radical and transformative policies to ensure that Australia wanted to build an ecologically healthy and sustainable system of food. Melbourne University’s Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, which developed the groundbreaking food Supply Scenarios report in April of 2011 and commented on the report’s findings:

Unavoidable, massive, and imminent changes to our systems for supplying food … will require major changes in the way we manage land and resources that are used for the production of food … These non-linear shifts mean that the past isn’t always an accurate indicator of the future. Therefore, care is required to avoid false beliefs about the likelihood of continuing in a normal business direction.

The green paper is founded on these assumptions. According to the report, Australia “has a strong, safe and stable food system” and “Australians enjoy high levels of food security.” the food sector in Australia can be described as “resilient and flexible,” and the country “has one of the best food systems in the world.” The paper focuses on the agriculture industry “seizing new market opportunities” and reflects that the prime minister has recently insisted that we be “the food bowl of Asia.” The other week on The Conversation, Allan Curtis carefully exposed the assertion that is the basis for much of the paper as an absurd scenario of optimistic thinking.

In this article, we will discuss some of the most important false assumptions in the proposed National Food Plan. They are generally implicit and reflect an overall dedication to open markets and free trade and a constant increase in production, which is a requirement in a capitalist society.

Flickr/Rainforest Action Network

Assumption 1: Food insecurity will mostly be addressed by increasing production of food

The green document makes a few concessions to the many dimensions of food insecurity. Poverty distribution inefficiencies, poverty, as well as political instability are discussed as an example. But the most important conclusion is that food needs to be produced, and the production of food will, in conjunction with liberalizing trade in agriculture, tackle the issue of food insecurity.

The Food Plan was first announced in the beginning; it was presented as an attempt to “develop a strategy to maximise food production opportunities.” The green paper now states that the primary strategy to ensure the security of Australia’s food supply will be to “build global competitiveness and productive, resilient industry sectors” that are able in a position to “seize new market opportunities” generated by anticipated growth in demand.

But food insecurity is growing in a world that is flooded with food. In Australia, it is estimated that about five percent of the population suffers from food insecurity; however, we are able to have enough food to feed around 60 million. Globally, we produce enough food to feed 11 billion people with a 7.7 billion population; however, nearly one billion people are suffering from chronic malnutrition, and almost 40% of the food we buy is wasted.