Quandongs for breakfast

This week I attended a fantastic community forum called Think Global: Eat Local in Byron Bay.

After a screening of the film Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, there was a panel discussion featuring Cuban permaculturist Roberto Perez, Robert Pekin from Brisbane-based CSA Food Connect and Russ Greyson from the Australian Community Gardens Network.

It was all very stimulating and exciting for people like me interested in the relocalisation movement.

But it was when the panel opened for questions from the floor that the evening climaxed.

An empassioned woman grabbed the mic with gusto and started to talk about the importance of growing your own food locally.

She talked from her own experience about how she’d planted hundreds of fruit trees in the rental houses she’d lived in over a twenty year period in the area.

“Living in a rented house and think you can’t plant trees? No excuse,” she said.

When she heard that the Government was handing out fines for people planting unregistered banana trees she started planting more and more banana trees than ever before.

On one occasion kids snuck into her front garden to secretly take bananas from a tree she had planted.

When she suddenly arrived back home, the startled youngsters started to apologise profusely for ’stealing’ her fruit.

She said to them, “don’t apologise, I planted it for everyone to enjoy”.

But the clincher was a story about something that had happened to her at the Woodford Folk Festival.

Part of the ticket price for the festival was directed to planting native trees to offset the festival’s environmental impact (and presumably to create a nice glowing feeling for participants).

But the woman said she didn’t want a native tree planted from her money. She wanted a fruit tree.

The guy said it was not possible.

An argument ensued but the festival representative was adament that only native non-food-growing species would be planted.

The woman drove her point home with a classic comment that really challenges us to think about whether planting natives really is the best strategy for reducing our environmental impact and improving the amenity of our public places.

“What did you have for breakfast?” she asked the young man, “Quandongs?!”

For those that don’t know a quandong is an Australian bushfood.

Quandongs have amazing nutritional properties and are being developed for commercial production.

But quandongs, like many bushfoods, are still not a core part of mainstream Australian diet. And you wouldn’t live for very long subsisting on them, even if you could afford going price of ninety dollars a kilo.

So until we have a nourishing and abundant bushfood cuisine, I wholeheartedly agree that we should be planting fruit trees and other edibles in our public place.

In the face of real food security threats from peak oil and climate change, planting fruit trees is a great strategy.

In confining food production in remote rural areas we become alienated from how our food is grown and depend on fossil fuel-based agriculture with its ineffecient transportation model.

This makes it easier for farmers stick with industrial farming and its toxic chemical dependency issues.

Bring the food home I say.

Quandongs anyone? You can get them here.

Local visionaries join Farmer John to imagine Byron’s farming future.

With his straw hat, checked shirt and slow mid-western drawl, John Petersen seemed the quintessential US farmer. Only a conspicuous pink feather boa around his neck suggested otherwise. Petersen was in Byron over the weekend to promote the documentary film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, based upon his colourful life as a non-conformist in conservative rural America. John is a third generation farmer but is also a writer with a flamboyant sense of style.

The film depicts the rollercoaster ride of the Petersen family farm, based on Petersen’s memoirs. After falling into debt and ostracised from his community, Petersen is forced to sell his equipment and the majority of his farm. For many years he considered walking from the land in despair. Eventually recovering his pride and inspired to do things differently, he established one of America’s most successful Community Supported Agriculture farms, Angelic Organics.

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model adopted by Petersen was founded on a direct relationship with between farmer and customer. A group of interested people in nearby Chicago agreed to share the financial risks of the farm in return for fresh organic produce delivered through a box scheme. Through farm open days and deliveries they get to know who grows the food they eat.

“It was the rebirth, something impossible happening and coming back into being,” John said.

“Farms never do that.”

John observed “tremendous interest” in Australia in the CSA model which revitalised his farm. This groundswell is global, John said, with customers wanting to reconnect with the source of their food and farmers wanting to boost their dwindling incomes and enjoy a greater sense of meaning and autonomy.

After the film, Petersen (feathers and all) joined a panel of local food activists to discuss the potential of the CSA model and other community-based food systems in the Byron Shire.

Byron resident and event organiser Joanne Hay outlined her plan to establish a “herd-share” CSA in Byron. Shareholders buy a herd of dairy cattle and access raw milk while the farm manager gains a secure market willing to pay a premium for the product.

“Herd-shares are better for farmers because farmers get paid better. They’re better for consumers because we know we can visit our cows whenever we like, we know how they’re cared for and how clean the dairy is. It’s better for culture because our relationship with the land is stronger,” Hay said .

John Dolman, from the Santos group of stores, said that while CSAs pose a challenge for his business, it encouraged Santos - “a business which prides itself on ethical behaviour” to go along with this “wonderful community spirit.”

“For me, the practise that I do from my office, for example, is to support in any way and every way to support those efforts to create stronger communities. I see that Community Supported Agriculture is just a perfect place in which community is strengthened, and learnt about and practised.”

Former dairy farmer, Robert Peakin is the director of a Brisbane-based CSA called Food Connect. Peakin said there’s “a huge amount of interest” in supporting CSAs, whether it’s his “blue ribbon” social enterprise or a more traditional model.

“There’s millionaires literally camping at our door, waiting to see what they can put money into to help schemes like this go ahead.

“It’s really what everyone wants. Whether John [Dolman]’s selling it from his retail outlet and he’s got a whole bunch of committed people or whether it’s a stand-alone CSA, the traditional CSA model like John [Petersen] does. And any young bloke who’s keen enough can grab five acres and easily within three years can be feeding fifty families.”

Panellists agreed that the CSA model and other relocalised food systems such as farmers markets are a great way to encourage environmental farming practices and reduce food miles while building community at the same time.

“I think it’s going to be consumer driven, that there’s going to be a demand from people who are better informed and are more discerning. Plus there is the limitation of the resources to distribute food as we are today. And I think this will lead us to increased local consumption,” said Donald Recsei from Byron Bay Farmers Market.